Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: gmd.de!ira.uka.de!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!gatech!destroyer!cs.ubc.ca!newsserver.sfu.ca!sfu.ca!neilg
From: neilg@fraser.sfu.ca (Neil K. Guy)
Subject: Re: Adventure design
Message-ID: <neilg.729550953@sfu.ca>
Sender: news@sfu.ca
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
References: <930112.095148.ahaavie@pcifm02>
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 21:02:33 GMT
Lines: 38

ahaavie@ulrik.uio.no (Anders Haavie) writes:

>I want to make an adventure program based on a norwegian tv-series
> made in the 1970's. Good idea? I like it. The only problem I have
> is that I want to make the  whole in norwegian, and all the
>"adventure design programs" are made in english.

>Is there any way to solve this problem?

 You might, of course, find that whoever owns the rights to this TV
show might complain...

 Anyway, yes. I'm also somewhat interested in the whole issue of
translating games. I'm still toying with the idea of making a French
language version of the game I'm working on. I'm using TADS, and as
far as I can tell it should be possible to get a rudimentary system
going. The problem is that Norwegian would have to have the same basic
grammatical structure as English to work. (does it? I don't know.) If
you can formulate sentences as "verb the direct object with the
indirect object" or whatever, you should be able to change the names
of all the nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. to Norwegian words.

 Of course, if the language is far removed from English - like
Japanese or something - and doesn't use Roman letters and a vaguely
similar sentence structure you'll be out of luck.

 TADS 2.0 does let you change the error messages generated by the
parser, so that's not a problem. One potential stumbling block is the
entry of accented (diacritical) letters. On the Mac TADS right now I
can't enter accented vowels (TADS thinks they're punctuation) and so
I'd only be able to accept non-accented vowels. Which would be
unacceptable to a French speaker. You can *display* accented
characters (and any characters in the extended Mac character set) just
fine - it's entering them that's a problem.

 An interesting problem, in any event...

 - Neil K. (n_k_guy@sfu.ca)
