Half-Life 1 - Closed Caption

[qabRieL]

Hello there.
I'm interested in translating games, I already translated the HL: S but, I would like to import this translation into original Half-Life.

Is there anyway to do that? I found a tutorial on the web, maybe this can work. (I couldn't do anything, because I don't know any programming language.)

www.qabriel.ucoz.com/hlcc.txt

Thanks in advance.

 

[tschumann]

You'd need to make a mod or plugin to get that functionality as the original Half-Life doesn't have closed caption support.

 

[kupocake]

This is kind of anecdotal, but I do specifically remember an issue of the UK-based PC Zone magazine featuring a letter from a person with impaired hearing who wanted to make it known that that he was under-served by the games on the market at the time. He specifically mentioned Half-Life, and PC Zone actually got a response from Valve saying that they would very seriously consider closed-captioning for future titles (though Half-Life itself couldn't or wouldn't be modified).

Not saying it's the origin of closed captioning in Source games, but it is certainly one of those things that makes you realise that Valve deserve their position in the industry and that they got there be listening to the genuine issues that people were having with their games.

But yeah, I think you'd have to do some outright modding thing. We do have a Specific Set of modding forums for that, but not sure how much info you'll get out of that lot

 

[Barnz]

I've been helping OP to make a subtitles for Half-Life, but there's a character limit on the Steam version, making the engine crash when you pass it (it's maximum 78 characters in a single line). There's no option other than hacking the engine, which might get you VAC Banned if you play the game online.

 

[kupocake]

Don't a lot of JRPG translations get around similar problems by altering the fonts to allow 'characters' which actually contain more than one symbol? Or would doing that not work / involve editing the engine?

 

[Barnz]

That's a good question. Like many Japanese games, Half-Life does use bitmap-based text for screen messages, but changing them doesn't seem to have any effect on the engine. There's VGUI system, but unlike HL2 version, it doesn't support true type (vector based) fonts.

 

[tschumann]

I've been helping OP to make a subtitles for Half-Life, but there's a character limit on the Steam version, making the engine crash when you pass it (it's maximum 78 characters in a single line). There's no option other than hacking the engine, which might get you VAC Banned if you play the game online.

Yeah, I think you can get around that though, if you parse the map's entity data yourself.
I don't think that tutorial is the best way of doing it though (I don't think it will display text when characters speak). Are you doing this with a mod or plugin?

 

[Barnz]

I actually got most of the code working, thanks to Paranoia. I borrowed their code, which makes things easier, but there's still some small problems.

Edit: Nevermind, it's now fully working.

 

[Otto-Grainer]

This is kind of anecdotal, but I do specifically remember an issue of the UK-based PC Zone magazine featuring a letter from a person with impaired hearing who wanted to make it known that that he was under-served by the games on the market at the time.

I do believe I say you may be referring to this link, old chap:
http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=maximumpc

Is that the same fellow? Also, I'm sure this link may come in handy for such a topic, and funny you mention Japanese:
http://www.geocities.co.jp/NeverLand/7842/

 

[qabRieL]

Well, a little bump.
I need someone who knows C++, I'm having some problems. (Like, the subtitles of the train ride don't appear, because of the ambient generic or something...)
So, if think that you can help me, I can be reached at: [email protected]