As far as writing up a guide on keeping it up to date -- for the love of god someone figure out what happened with all these fucked up translation efforts that never finished. From my understanding a lot of people don't like the Chinese modpack because the Chinese version forces down the throat a bunch of gangbang and ntr content that can't be disabled. (I am one of the people who didn't even take a look because of these issues I read about).
I just kinda dumped everything I got together from hours spent on hongfire archives, and got the best version I could find, while dumping a lot of useful info to know like --- how to play the game and what some of the game mechanics are.
I don't know about any history/chronology regarding the translations, since i only got the game and played it 1-2 months ago. Maybe related to hongfire got taken down and members lost contact with each others. Maybe some content/region restriction from their country/ISP(I can't open this site if i'm not using some specific method). Maybe some got bored and moved on to other projects or moved on to their life or maybe their PC/HDD broken. Or to make it worst, they moved on to the other world(yeah, i've lost some friends in some forums/online games fighting diseases, by natural disasters, traffic accidents, etc).
Regarding the quality of the translations, before MTL invented, all translations depends on the translator level of the language they translate. I'm sure not all translators are on the same level. Especially if the content have strong religion/culture/history base, not your typical daily usage or to make it worst, full of slangs/gags/gimmick (try ask a translator who have translated a chinese novel with a classic/historical/xianxia theme/era, or a Japanese translator how to define the suffix "-nano, -desu, -degowasu, -nanoda, -dattebayo" in anime/novel). An example in the RAI7PUK is the "Sex" command which in the game shows as "オルド". when I played for the first time was like "wtf is this menu means?Not exist in my brain/dictionary" or in the Fleet menu what those number means(good thing that i have played a lot of war games so I know what it means)
I myself have played the Chinese/Japanese games since the beginning of SNES console. On that time the internet is not available yet(at least in my country), no MTL/Translating software too, and i'm not taking classes in the related language. So I learned myself, translating only with a dictionary. The pain was real, like i need 10-30 minutes to translate a phrase(try looking for a specific kanji letter in a dictionary without the pronounciation).
If there was a way to make it understandable what is going on with translation efforts currently, latest version, maintaining translations, mod compatabilities and dependencies, I'd probably try more.
For the gangbang/ntr and other category mods that can't be disabled, maybe because the modders didn't know how to disabled it or just ignored it. As i've learned some of the game mechanics and logics(no, i haven't read the .hsp source code), there are variables/flags for tagging "events" in the game such as if you are a ronin, an officer, you're still single, etc. So the modders just ignored the NTR Flag or didn't use the NTR flag properly(usually modders mention the NTR content in the "readme" file)
When playing the game, the games are segmented into phases
- Player phase(where you using the game menu/interfaces)
- AI Phase
- Battle Phase
- Event phase
The Event Phase got segmented more, like they run the p[xxx] files, then e[xxx] files, then the p[xxx] files, then the u[xxx] files. Don't know which run first, but the game does validate for certain flags/triggers/conditions.
Now regarding the files in the "eve" folder(IMHO/CMIIW, all game contents/gameplays are here)
- e[xxx] : usually event based, like when Aslan died(Earth King), the faction run to their home planet and throne themself
- p[xxx] : gameplay based, such as pregnancies, invasion news, officers go MIA/captured, etc.
- u[xxx] : booked for mods
- x[xxxx]: *cough* sex *cough* related
- si[xxx]: scenario settings, used the csv files for setting the layout and who is kings, officers, ronins, relations, tech levels, etc
- sn[xxx]: scenario introductions
I can try with the mod compabilities, still playing it currently. But maybe i'll limited it only to the Original, not the full-overhaul-modded one(like MZ Mod / SSTM / others), since it's messed a lot of in-game-mechanics and other variables, or more like because is "not lore friendly"
. Maybe gonna create table of it, like mod titles, category, what does it do, in-game-variables/flags, dependencies, incompabilities, bugs(yeah some are still there, you know there are 2 pics when there is a conversation, but those pics are mine, so i'm talking to myself in a certain event mod, imagine if you accidentally install a gay mod
)
While troubleshooting the game for mods compability in the Original and MZMod, one of the main problem is the mods files. Like i said, the SSTM Mod were in Chinese encoding and only shown as mojibake(random ASCII characters) at least for me now. If you haven't installed the Eastern Language Pack or some Japanese Fonts, you will also have the same problem opening the Original files since they all are in Japanese Encoding(SHIFT-JIS if i'm not mistaken).
For maintaning versions, maybe setup a repository first for better management?Like github maybe or others?That way if somehow a better latest version shows up(whether it owned by people or just happens to stumble upon it), you can pool it/versioned and maybe compare it which it the latest or merge it if both versions are latest in their own rights.
