i know a few people have offered to help in an english translation, will this offer be taken up?
I tryed your game, pretty good however i noticed when i colonize a system only then square changes color, should not a few change color to my empire like in botf?

Because of the translation, everybody who wants to help can send me a PM or post in the forum.

Atm, only one square changes the color. It isn't fully implemented, yet. I have to think about an algorithm, when the squares will change their color.

Just a few words to the translation. Normally it should bee no problem to translate it into English because everything is saved in plain-text-files. Everything exept the buttons They are implemented as graphics and so they can not bee translated as easily as the descriptions. So someone has to make new buttons with English text. But please contact Pusti bevore so you know what ending the has to have and what size and so on.

Let me know if you come up with anything clever for this. Particularly dealing with disputed sectors.

Most of the descriptions are stored in files, but not all (e.g. special research descriptions and planet descriptions, later too). You don't need to make new buttons, because the text of the buttons is hard-coded. I have to translate it in the sourcecode. So there would be different version for each language.

Why not pull the button text from a resource file, or some other string table, and use a different source for each language? This is what I plan to do with ST:Supremacy. Basically, I use a unique key to pull a string from the table: ResourceManager.GetString("KEY"). First, it tries to get the string from the current language table (i.e. English), and if it doesn't find it there, it tries to get it from the default string table (i.e. German). If it still doesn't find it, it just returns the key, so you can see in the UI which strings are missing.

You could use this to pull titles and descriptions for buildings and techs as well. In your building and tech files, you could replace the titles and descriptions with keys that refer to entries in the string tables.

That's a good solution. I can change it in my program later. But at the moment, there are only few strings hardcoded. Of course, the descriptions should be in an extern file.

The cool part of the solution above is that you can implement it gradually. Because it will return the key to you if the string doesn't exist in the table, you can update your code before you populate the string table, and in many cases, it will continue to function properly.

For example, change...

btnAnnehmen->SetText("Annehmen");

...to...

btnAnnehmen->SetText(ResourceManager->GetString("Annehmen"));

...and it will continue to work the same way it does now. Then, later on you can add key-value pairs to the German and English string tables: <"Annehmen","Annehmen"> and <"Annehmen","Accept">, respectively.

If you use an external text file for your string table, you can put your building and tech description strings in there, and they will still be editable for mods. Then you just need to reference the string table keys inside of the tech and building data files.

For example, if in your buildings data file, if you gave your "Automated Farm Type 1" a title of "BLDG_NAME_AUTOFARM1" and a decription of "BLDG_DESC_AUTOFARM1", then you could include the following in your string table:

[BLDG_NAME_AUTOFARM1]
Automated Farm Type 1

[BLDG_DESC_AUTOFARM1]
This automated farm produces food. Blah, blah blah.

You'd just need a separate string table file for each language:

C:\botf2\Strings\de-DE.txt
C:\botf2\Strings\en-US.txt
C:\botf2\Strings\en-UK.txt
etc...

There isn't really even much point in having separate English US and English UK "languages" - you could quite easily do it in just English or Americanish.

People don't really care too much about stuff like that anymore, and it's not as if we talk that much different, like innit?

It's great to see that the two teams are already working together to help solve each others problems. I'd also like to say that i've now managed to get a copy of BotE, SirPustekuchen, and i've very impressed with what you've accomplished so far.

Your game will be awesome once it is complete.

I guess I'm not people then, because Americanisms just make me cringe. I would definitely prefer to play a game in proper English, if only because I like my u's in armour, colour etc.

Can you send me a copy MOE? How big is it?

Since most of the BOTF fanbase is in Europe, any English resources should probably use the Queen's English (en-UK). I tend to prefer it to American English anyway, and I'm American.

The u's drive me nuts :p They're used in Canadian English all the time too. It's pronounced color, damnit! Ou is supposed to make a different sound.

ou <> o

And I'm Canadian (well, my mom is - we live in the States.)

If you're going to be pedantic, "color" should be pronounced col-or, and I have never heard anyone say it like that, everyone says something closer to cul-er. English isn't the most consistent language when it comes to pronunciation, or spelling. It drives my (Austrian) girlfriend crazy

And Americans missing the U's drive me nuts, so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

I'll help out with the translation (as far as my limited language skills go).

I've begun working on some of the .data files, but noticed a problem:

in the Buildings.data file, I've changed the first description, no problem, but once I altered the second description. (Type 1 Automated Farm), every production building after primitive farm was missing.

That was me. Opened up in a different tab, the forum all of a sudden didn't recognise me as logged in.

EDIT: nevermind the previous comment. A single character was missing from the name, causing the mess.

Don't worry about the signing out, electroshokker, there's a bug in the forums that signs people out mid-post. It doesn't strike very often though, so consider yourself lucky.

...

I don't know if know about this, SirPustekuchen, but I think i've found a bug in the game. When I try to build a Starbase, I lose my Outpost, (Obviously) but I get my Troop Transport back - and there's no sign of the Starbase...

If you want, I can give you a BuildingDescrtiption-Editor. There you can easily change the names and the description of all buildings. You can copy the descriptions from the original botf. There is a file in the "stbof.res", named "edifdesc.bst", where you can find all the description. Also there is a file for all tech descriptions. At the moment, we rework the minorrace descriptions. After that, I can give you a minorrace description editor, so you can change these descriptions, too.

I will change the hardcoded strings, too. (by the way mstrobel mentioned, so there is a string table for each language)

I've set up a topic here to organize the translation effort.

Is it posible to play as other races besides the Coalition yet? i wasn't sure if it was yet?

No, cdrwolfe, you can only play as the Coalition at the moment. It is an alpha release afterall. I imagine that updates or something will be offered when those sections of the game are done. For the moment though, the most important thing is sorting out the translations, bug fixing, and only then adding more features.

I dont know if it's a buig or just because its alpha, but dilithuim which is needed to build ships doesn't seem to replenish, and so because you only start with 10 in storage to begin with you can only build 10 ships.

Still very nice UI to begin with

I noticed the same problem myself. I'm assuming it's because the Dilithium extractors or whatever haven't been added into the game yet - none of the resource collectors have, in fact, even though there is the population screen for it. The only way to get the resources at te moment is to buy them - and annoyingly you can't buy Dilithium.

It'll probably be in a future release, as I said.

Quick qustion for BOTE devs! When the game will be fully translated in english?

I can't say it. I think we will translate some parts next time. So with the next release you get a "more english" bote.

Sorry if I missed it, but is there a detailed manual, on how to actually play?

Enjoyed BOTF for many years, and there are a few things I can't figure out.

How do you create outposts and starbases? Troop transports don't give me that option.

Is there some sort of item database, so you can direct technology towards certain hulls?

How do you land troops on a planet? I bombarded for many turns, till the Heyoun stole a minor race right out from under me.

Special techs are a great way to specialize each race. Did it strike anyone as odd, the number of science type special the Khaorons get?

Going to answer a few of my own question after a few hours of playing.

I had tried to create an outpost at long range. While the transport could go there, it could not build there. Works just like BOTF.

Name with the picture of a phaser wasn't translated, but loading troops is easy enough.

If I can make a suggestion.. A way to abstract resource transportation would be great. It's quite a pain keeping duranium and iridium flowing to your big industry worlds.

One more question. SOL has every resource. Yet I couldn't mine iridium and crystals there. Why is that?

"One more question. SOL has every resource. Yet I couldn't mine iridium and crystals there. Why is that? "

You were probably not at a high enough tech level to build the mining facilities.

I like the way you have to transport raw materials to planets which don't have them but the interface for loading them onto the transport could be made simplier, i.e you have to select the mulitpul you wish to load meterial on at. so if you have capacitity to load 7500 you have to load 7x1000 and then 5x100. Could it not be adjusted that you just do 8x1000 and on the last click (8th) it would only load 500 not 1000 as the capacitity was reached.

I would be great if it were automated to an extent. That you could say, assign transports to shuttle 90% of that planets mineral income to SOL for example.

a manual is under construction explaining things like this. that "last-click"-idea actually is a good one. will see when it gets implemented.