Ask Community for In-Game Text

    MacThule

    MacThule

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    Schine can save some time (i.e. $) heading into the Galaxy Update series by soliciting community contributions for in-game warnings, notices, labels, item descriptions, tool-tips, and other text.

    You just need a sticky thread asking for it, or open a project for it in Phabricator. Or both.

    Briefly state that contributions are agreed to belong completely to Schine if used, any comment on the thread agrees to this condition. Include a simple format template people can copy paste and edit in their comments to make submissions easy to pinpoint in a code file using a search/select/replace function (i.e. CTRL-F, or its equivalent).

    Format
    Current text (exactly): Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
    Suggested replacement text: Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo.


    Forum members can make contributions by commenting them. Then in a few months when you're super busy with Galaxy Update issues and polishing towards Beta, whoever handles the text can just sit down for an hour or two, sift through the comments (focusing on well-liked comments may help speed up the process), copy the best to a text doc, polish them up to be consistent and coherent, and paste them into the code using CTRL-F to find the current text, and paste selections over it (hopefully including some witty or funny ones, or some generically RP-sounding ones that still clearly communicate their meaning). With enough contributions, the engine could even be made to cycle through a selection of several variations for certain warnings to make them fun/interesting!

    Don't solicit input on display time, fonts, graphics, etc (for now)... just get the improved text into what's already there. Saves the time of composing/refining excellent in-game text elements for a more polished-feeling interface, but still gives Schine total control of the process.
     
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    jayman38

    jayman38

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    This can help build alternate-language translations also. (E.g. French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, etc.)
    "Suggested replacement text: (French) ...."
     
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    MacThule

    MacThule

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    So... this is still an issue, and cannot be entirely addressed through the translation project.

    Tooltips in the Reactor UI are a seriously confusing mess of improperly used "by"s and "to"s and inconsistent approaches to showing percentage changes. It's bad. And the text for those does not show up in the translation project. Some of these tooltips indicate effects vastly different from what they actually do:
    • Stealth Usage Duration says "increases [STEALTH] usage time by 150%" but it actually increase usage time "by 50%," or "to 150%" if you want to put it that way, although believe that "by 50%" is clearer.
    • Jump Power Efficiency says "decreases [JUMP] charge power cost by 90%" but it definitely does not seem to remove 90% of the power cost. I think it decreases the jump charge power cost "to 90%," or decreases it "by 10%" (which I think is better)

    Also... the function names coming out all-caps and bracketed (i.e. why does [STEALTH] have to look [LIKE THIS]?) makes the whole affair look messy and inconsistent. Overall a bit discouraging to read. These tooltips are very busy as well, which contributes to them not being extremely readable - there's no reason for them to repeat the name of the effect because the player is currently moused-over. Chamber Upgrade doesn't need to be [CHAMBER UPGRADE] - it's an eyesore. And the RC% consumption info at the end of each tip is extremely helpful, but should probably be in italics or a different shade or size. They are relevant, but not to the effect itself - they are essentially meta-data about the cost of implementing the effect, so distinguishing them might help the tips feel less 'busy' and overwhelming.

    And why are we looking at 1/10ths of percentages? Can't we just clarify this by eschewing fractional percentages in this is system or rounding them up for UI purposes (i.e. 15% instead of 15.0% and 28% instead of 27.5%)?

    I would be happy to write up a set of proposed alternatives, because it's a core system and we constantly interact with it... but I do wish I could C&P the originals into a file to work with instead of needing to Alt-Tab back and forth to read the tooltips and manually copy them all into a text file... particularly not knowing if the effort will even be meaningful.

    Example:

    Current:
    -----------------------------------------------------------------
    Jump Powerefficiency 1
    Decreases the power usage of your Jump Drive.
    decreases [JUMP] Charge Power Cost by 90%
    decreases [JUMP] TopOff Power Cost by 90%
    RC: 10.0%; Total branch up to this: 15.0%
    ------------------------------------------------------------------

    Suggested:
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Decreases your jump drive's power consumption by 10%.
    Reactor capacity required: 10%
    Total reactor capacity cost to reach this point in this branch: 15%
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Alternative (if debug text is absolutely necessary in the UI of a normal player's client):
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Decreases your jump drive's power consumption by 10%.
    [Specs: Charge Power Cost x0.9, TopOff Power Cost x0.9]
    Reactor capacity required: 10%
    Total reactor capacity cost to reach this point in this branch: 15%
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     
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