MasterOfYoda Posted April 9, 2017 Share Posted April 9, 2017 For the past couple of years I've been contributing some patches here and there to that russian Andoran mod that's been in development since forever, and I've come to the point where I don't really know if I'm putting a dent in what needs to get done. Rather, I've lost the overall picture of what actually needs to get done with it. The current state of that huge thing is, surprisingly, not completely horrible. The exteriors are basically finished for the one island they are working on(the other two are a wasteland, but everyone forgot they exist by now, the Colderan isle is more than enough), some interiors lack enemies and navmeshes but are well designed, and people are working on town npcs and quests right now. The mod itself is in open development on the russian forums where I got the esm and the resource pack, they started a russian wiki recently where they store npc dialogue, and they have an english map with some location descriptions that I translated a while ago. I've ran around the island myself, but there is not much to do besides leveling combat skills and looting. The main quest is in the works but I'm not sure if it'll help since I find main quests in TES kinda boring and I've not completed Oblivion or even Skyrim main quests. The dialogue being in russian is a bit of a problem since I usually use the english version where all russian text is shown as broken font symbols, but I will probably start using the russian Skyrim version when some more dialogue gets completed. If anyone else has seen or worked on this or other huge global mods - when is the point where the mod is considered complete and is there a list of things you need to get done for it to be considered a full experience? I was considering taking some of the tasks needed for the main quest since I think that is what should be done right now, but I could be missing something. I could also try to translate some of the texts and dialogue in the starting area to english if anyone is interested. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simtam Posted April 10, 2017 Share Posted April 10, 2017 Yes, an english translation would be nice. Make it play well with the english version of Skyrim - don't carry over non-english texts in altered vanilla forms. And quests can take lots of time to develop fully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MasterOfYoda Posted April 10, 2017 Author Share Posted April 10, 2017 Oh, I know it will take time. I did a quest mod for Oblivion back in the day, and Skyrim didn't really make the quest making experience any easier. That is why I need advice on what to focus on first. My best guess is - dialogue and lore in the starting locations for new players would be the first thing to do. About the translation - there are no vanilla forms used, everything has a new base object, but they have russian texts typed right in the textfields of cell names, dialogue, some items even. And I'm not sure how I should approach this. Would a separate esp with an english translation for all these be ok? Would it even work with a constantly changing esm?(last time I checked they merge new stuff into the esm every week or so) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simtam Posted April 11, 2017 Share Posted April 11, 2017 Often people who translate mods work independently of mod authors, and they ship a translated .esp file, and maybe changed papyrus scripts, if necessary. So from that point of view it's convenient to define strings in papyrus scripts that should be translated as properties. Cell names are typically overwritten by the language when working with Creation Kit and changing something in that cell. You can easily see what the mod changes with Tes5Edit. And if you learn the basics of Tes5Edit scripts, you can write down all these changes into a Tes5Edit script that makes a localized version of your mod, and reuse it when a new version of the "master" file is released, I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MasterOfYoda Posted April 11, 2017 Author Share Posted April 11, 2017 Hm... I'm a bit confused. Andoran has no esp files, only an Andoran.esm, which they constantly update with version control. What I was thinking of doing is - creating a separate esp file that has Andoran.esm as a master and translate cell names and dialogue there. I have no idea what will happen when the esm gets updated several times and the records my esp changes get changed in the esm. Thoretically it should be fine since the form IDs stay the same, but it seems a bit dodgy to me. I've heard of some localization tools that people use, but so far found only tutorials for translating english mods to russian with them, not the other way around. Those create a bunch of separate localization files that I just get lost in, and I have no idea if it is possible to un-localize a mod, especially an esm, with those. I know a guy who tried but all the water disappeared in the esm when he exported this whole mumbo-jumbo and he ended up scrapping the entire translation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simtam Posted April 12, 2017 Share Posted April 12, 2017 It should work your way, too. I mean, it's self evident what's going on when you load it in Tes5Edit and wait a few seconds for the green/yellow/orange/red colors to come up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MasterOfYoda Posted April 12, 2017 Author Share Posted April 12, 2017 Ok, I will try to make an esp with at least the chargen and location names translated to english. Where should I post the esp when it's done? I would like someone to have a run around the island and give feedback on what kind of main quest they would like and how they would want the archipelago lore represented in-game, but it's really hard to find people who are still interested in skyrim enough to check it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simtam Posted April 12, 2017 Share Posted April 12, 2017 There are a few people interested in quest-less modshttps://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/64smjv/questless_exploration_mods/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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