Community MetaSteam | October 2023 - Holy moly Snake, is that Tony Hawk?

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I'm generally also someone who prefers to err on the side of authenticity with localization -- nevertheless, one of my favourite localizations ever is FF12, and from what I understand that's also quite "punched up". However, it's also really good (still my favourite overall English voice performances overall in any JRPG, and by a long shot), so if you can produce a final output like that I guess I get inconsistent in my preferences.
 
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I wonder if this supposed preference for literal translation comes from people who are not multi-lingual. Because it just strikes me as such a misunderstanding of how language itself works. Language is the product of the culture, its own structural rules (how you are allowed to structure sentences and things like that), and its available vocabulary. If two languages are really close, in the sense that most cultural practices are shared or at least easily understood, if the structural properties are fairly similar and you have a mostly matching vocabulary, then any good translation will probably be relatively literal anyway.

But when you take something like Japanese, Chinese, or anything else that's very removed from most Western languages, then a literal translation is almost always the dumbest fucking choice. Maybe someone got used to terrible scanlations of mangas and can "deal with it", but it doesn't excuse how to the average person, most of those translations are complete gibberish and just bad. Good translation is always also good localisation.
 
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PC-tan said:
I'm guessing that the cars are not licensed?

But yeah that town does look cool to look at.
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Yep, cars are unlicensed but perfectly recognizable like Toyota AE86 on the demo.
According with faqs thread on Steam's discuss site will be mod friendly so I suppose devs are pushing for the community to do the work.
It's made by a little team so don't expect anything big but plays nice.

Liven up this last discussion topic to take away a little significance from the matter :P so that no one feels questioned XD.
 
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Mivey said:
I wonder if this supposed preference for literal translation comes from people who are not multi-lingual. Because it just strikes me as such a misunderstanding of how language itself works. Language is the product of the culture, its own structural rules (how you are allowed to structure sentences and things like that), and its available vocabulary. If two languages are really close, in the sense that most cultural practices are shared or at least easily understood, if the structural properties are fairly similar and you have a mostly matching vocabulary, then any good translation will probably be relatively literal anyway.

But when you take something like Japanese, Chinese, or anything else that's very removed from most Western languages, then a literal translation is almost always the dumbest fucking choice. Maybe someone got used to terrible scanlations of mangas and can "deal with it", but it doesn't excuse how to the average person, most of those translations are complete gibberish and just bad. Good translation is always also good localisation.
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I don't fully agree, or at least not in the context of highly specific / subculture translation tasks.
As an example, let's take FF12 and Persona 4.

The former is, in many ways, quite similar to a classic (western) high-fantasy tale. Princesses, political intrigue, ancient artifacts, a Renaissance-inspired society. Going with a full-on non-literal localization here makes perfect sense and led to a fantastic outcome.

The latter, however, is a story about Japanese highschoolers doing very Japanese highschooler things in a small Japanese town. You are never feasibly going to localize that setting (you'd have to develop an entirely different game). So, to me, attempts at "over-localization" of just the dialogue, in this specific context, make no sense. I'd argue that they tried that in Persona 2 (with a similar setting) and it was worse off for it.
That is not to say that I enjoy listening to American VAs using Japanese honorifics in English speech in a case like that; but honestly, personally I don't believe in dubbing for this kind of content at all.

To put it more succinctly, I think people rarely put enough emphasis on the type and specificity of the content that is being localized when they talk about the merits of more or less literal translation.
 
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ezodagrom said:
7 years later Xenoverse 2 is still getting DLC. :toucan:
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I've kinda wanted to play Xenoverse 2 since 2020 or something but I keep thinking it's been X years since it came out surely they'll announce XV3 soon. But the updates keep coming and they don't stop coming.

Maybe I'll just do the cursed thing and buy it next sale so they can announce XV3 a few months later.
 
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oh nice, this game released yesterday. I was looking for it since it was spotted on Switch eShop to be released this month.
No idea a Steam release was a thing, and even sooner than the Switch one.

PS:
Murder Mystery Paradox: Fifteen Years of Summer, Aniplex published game got a demo for the current Steam Fest.


if you have issues viewing the demo install it from here:
 
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Durante said:
I don't fully agree, or at least not in the context of highly specific / subculture translation tasks.
As an example, let's take FF12 and Persona 4.

The former is, in many ways, quite similar to a classic (western) high-fantasy tale. Princesses, political intrigue, ancient artifacts, a Renaissance-inspired society. Going with a full-on non-literal localization here makes perfect sense and led to a fantastic outcome.

The latter, however, is a story about Japanese highschoolers doing very Japanese highschooler things in a small Japanese town. You are never feasibly going to localize that setting (you'd have to develop an entirely different game). So, to me, attempts at "over-localization" of just the dialogue, in this specific context, make no sense. I'd argue that they tried that in Persona 2 (with a similar setting) and it was worse off for it.
That is not to say that I enjoy listening to American VAs using Japanese honorifics in English speech in a case like that; but honestly, personally I don't believe in dubbing for this kind of content at all.

To put it more succinctly, I think people rarely put enough emphasis on the type and specificity of the content that is being localized when they talk about the merits of more or less literal translation.
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I personally don't think using honorifics in English text makes a lick of sense, it looks artificial, I can never recall what anything aside -san or -chan is meant to mean, and short of including an in-game lexicon that breaks it down to you it feels completely meaningless. As most games don't have such a feature, you are left with something that the text itself simply assumes that you already know about, which to me is a failure of a translation process.

Games like Persona series are clearly harder to translate well, exactly because a lot of its elements will include references, both subtle and obvious, to cultural minutia that any person who grew up in Japan will be able to effortlessly pick up on, that you cannot assume of the general audience that plays the game in English to be able to parse. I have seen some clever solutions here, where you basically put in meta text that speaks at moments about the Japanese language or culture, and tries to explain something as it occurs. I think Persona 3 Portable had a few such moments. Kinda awkward, but probably the best you can do.

You mention Persona 2, and I don't really understand your point there. To me the two Persona 2 games (Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment) are as of yet the highlight of the series (not yet played 4 or 5), and far more interesting than the incredibly boring P3P. I never had a moments issue with the English text
 
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Mivey said:
You mention Persona 2, and I don't really understand your point there. To me the two Persona 2 games (Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment) are as of yet the highlight of the series (not yet played 4 or 5), and far more interesting than the incredibly boring P3P. I never had a moments issue with the English text
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I think Durante meant Persona 1 which indeed got Americanized during localization.
 
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You will never get a perfect result when translating works from one language to another, especially if they're very different in their structure, you will always have to compromise on something.

In the specific case of Japanese translation, I don't have any background on it other than studying Japanese for 3 years, but having a literal translation would end up not making sense unless you're a massive weeb that is on top on depictions of all things Japanese language in drama, and even then I'm sure something would escape you.

There's a massive challenge in providing context to audiences that are not familiar with Japanese language highschool jargon, which would be 98% of the people, especially since a lot of how language is used in Japanese media is very far removed to how people speak in real life.
 
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Mivey said:
I personally don't think using honorifics in English text makes a lick of sense, it looks artificial, I can never recall what anything aside -san or -chan is meant to mean, and short of including an in-game lexicon that breaks it down to you it feels completely meaningless. As most games don't have such a feature, you are left with something that the text itself simply assumes that you already know about, which to me is a failure of a translation process.
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I can't really agree with this. There are less than 10 widely used honorifics in Japanese. In my opinion, if you want to play a game with an inherently Japanese setting, it's not too much to ask that you learn them -- because in exchange, it will transport a substantial amount of meaning every time 2 characters interact, especially if it happens for the first time, and without the burden of trying to write around the fact that you don't have honorifics and need to transport that same amount of information (but without making the lines substantially longer or changing the animations, because those are generally the real-world constraints of localization).

To me, this is similar to other types of more niche entertainment. I.e. there's fantasy stuff which frequently expects you to have at least some a-priori understanding of what a dwarf or an elf is, or science fiction which assumes a basic familiarity with space physics that not everyone who is completely new to the genre will have. Obviously, entertainment is different from science or just real-world knowledge in general, but I still feel like the core principle that something more niche is allowed to (and might, overall, benefit from) some prior knowledge applies to both.

Knurek said:
I think Durante meant Persona 1 which indeed got Americanized during localization.
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Yes, absolutely, I mixed that up. Sorry!
 
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Mivey said:
Interesting, didn't know that they promised this. They have never implemented this in any future games after OS1. Not even in Baldurs Gate 3, though it wouldn't really work there in all areas, like the shadow-cursed lands, for obvious reasons.
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I believe it may have been a stretch goal, but it's been a while. I remember Swen saying it would essentially have doubled the development time or something like that.

Act III of BG3 would've been crazy with day/night and NPC schedules though. Even more buggy and overwhelming, too.

STHX said:
Paradox Interactive writes down MSEK 171 of capitalized development cost for The Lamplighters League - Paradox Interactive

It seems The Lamplighters League is another recent bomb. A Harebrained Scheme developer on the other place seems to be implying the team is already no more. Guess Shadowrun is going back to being dead
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This is a real shame. All I wanted from HBS was another CRPG. Them being owned by Paradox made a World of Darkness CRPG seem possible. Probably not anymore.
 
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Dandy said:
Act III of BG3 would've been crazy with day/night and NPC schedules though. Even more buggy and overwhelming, too.
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Just reached Act 3, and it's already crazy big compared to anything before in the game. Adding a proper day/night schedule to all NPCs, is kind hard to imagine, honestly. And the game is already dense and complex enough as it is, frankly.
 
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Same person by the way





PS I forgot who it was but I do remember some big name dev being surprised with Hammer, this was way back when Half Life Alyx released and these tools were first made available to people who had purchased the game.


Something about how pretty much any one can easily design a level and all of this other stuff.

Unreal is definitely good at a number of things but level design is clearly not one of this things.


Speaking of level designs, (even though ID Tech is not available to the public) I'm curious as to what John Romero would say when looking at current ID Tech and coming it to Unreal. I could be wrong but I think he was suggesting that for a FPS game that Unreal is the way to go, when it recent years that doesn't seem to be the case. Unity is rather meh and there aren't many available options for new styles of games unless you want to make a Boomer Shooter game. Is this accurate?
 
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I randomly downloaded this because I thought it was something completely different and uh...

It's basically like tonyhawks pro skater combined with twisted metal aesthetics but it's a roguelike card game...?

You do BMX or skateboard tricks while shooting hordes of demons/monsters and get new cards/abilities

It's actually pretty fun
 
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Also if you like Classic Fallout at all or Arcanum also I saw someone else mention it some palce else so shout out to them for helping me not forget

Just came out into full release and still has a full demo, supposedly the game can be beat without any combat and even if you fail everything the game will compensate for that dn make it so you can actually beat the game (From what ive read)

I played a an older demo of it awhile ago and it was great but read about it coming out into 1.0 recently so mentioning it because it was awesome

 
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PC-tan said:



Same person by the way





PS I forgot who it was but I do remember some big name dev being surprised with Hammer, this was way back when Half Life Alyx released and these tools were first made available to people who had purchased the game.


Something about how pretty much any one can easily design a level and all of this other stuff.

Unreal is definitely good at a number of things but level design is clearly not one of this things.


Speaking of level designs, (even though ID Tech is not available to the public) I'm curious as to what John Romero would say when looking at current ID Tech and coming it to Unreal. I could be wrong but I think he was suggesting that for a FPS game that Unreal is the way to go, when it recent years that doesn't seem to be the case. Unity is rather meh and there aren't many available options for new styles of games unless you want to make a Boomer Shooter game. Is this accurate?
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Huh, suddenly I feel a whole lot better with my decision to go down the route of building out the world in my project with Trenchbroom and importing the exported meshes from there.

Torn on whether or not to get HammUEr though, since I'm bleeding-edge on 5.3 right now and it seems that it's only updated to 5.2 as of now.
 
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STHX said:
Paradox Interactive writes down MSEK 171 of capitalized development cost for The Lamplighters League - Paradox Interactive

It seems The Lamplighters League is another recent bomb. A Harebrained Scheme developer on the other place seems to be implying the team is already no more. Guess Shadowrun is going back to being dead
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So the mistake they made was only cutting out one NPC from the game to sell as day one DLC. What they should have done instead is only give you one NPC for FREE when you buy the game at full price and then any time you encounter any character within the game who can be recruited, they ask for $8 real money to join your team. That would have been thematically appropriate both in-game because they are mercenaries looking to get paid and also in the real world because Paradox are greedy shitbirds who are always looking to find new things they can cut out of a game to sell back to you as DLC.

That would have ensured huge financial success!

Can you tell I'm annoyed by that bullshit? Yea, I know, it wasn't the day one cut content DLC that tanked this game. It was, however, what dissuaded me from picking it up when I was right on the fence. The demo was oozing in charm and atmosphere. The gameplay was a bit simplistic and had some awkward design choices but that doesn't necessarily make a game bad. The new Shadowrun games were also fairly simplistic CRPGs but they were still well written and fun to play. A game doesn't have to be super complex to be fun.

Business decisions tanked this game. It needed more time in the oven, maybe more budget, definitely a better release date in a less crowded period and maybe don't be so greedy that you start chopping up the game into DLCs before it's even out. Oh and also they increased the regional pricing of the game on launch day in several countries. They did announce in advance that this price increase was coming but that announcement was hidden away in the Paradox forums and not communicated anywhere on Steam. They're doing the same thing for Cities 2 as well. All around shitty behaviour from Paradox and now HB studios will pay the price.

didamangi said:
Looks like there's new stats tracking your purchases/licenses yearly. Check it here.

edit: Nevermind, looks like it's an augmented steam feature. Pretty cool though.
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This is quite interesting...

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Until 2015 the Steam store in my country was in USD but retail games used to have regional pricing so my purchases were heavily skewed towards retail.

When regional pricing, local currency and payment systems support was introduced my purchases directly in the Steam store skyrocketed.

You can also see the Covid pandemic bump in spending even though that was a terrible time in my life personally.

And finally you can see the effect of Valve doubling regional pricing at the end of last year which has dropped my purchases back again. In fact, many of my 2023 purchases are games which still had old regional pricing. Also you see the effect of more and more publishers and even indies abandoning regional pricing altogether.

I knew all of this was happening while it happened but it's nice to see real stats backing those trends.
 
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PC-tan said:
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The editing feature is cool. Unity cannot do this out of the box, but some paid editor extensions allow you to do so.

I remember trying hammer back when I was 13 or 14 and I couldn't figure it out... (In my defense I didn't speak any English... although I'm just realizing it wouldn't have mattered given the fact that I didn't RTFM nor did I even try to find said M).
 
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jads653 said:
Robocop demo got an update. Stuttering has gone to a minimal amount. Still, the performance compared to the visual is not on a level I would expect it to be. But atleast this is becoming playable. Don't use the ingame frame limiter though, some horrible frame pacing. Game is fun though, if you dont mind the jank.

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Yup. On first load (or after installing new drivers) the game basically freezes and stutters for 10 seconds with the CPU spiking to 100%. Once it's done compiling shaders cpu usage drops down to single digits and the game runs smoothly (on my 3070). With that said, they should display a message that the shader cache is building...
 
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Can't say I share people enthusiasm about Robocop. Maybe it was my lack of sleep yesterday, but it felt very decent on the fanservice front but very poor on the fps one.

By the way, a question spawned by the demo, is 99% GPU use 'normal' or should you be nervous ? I don't know shit about tech. On one hand,it seems logical that hardware is build to be used at 100%, but on the other...
So, is this usage amount business as usual or not ?
 
If you're running a game without active FPS limiting (either directly by an FPS limiter or indirectly e.g. by V-sync when you're at the monitor limit) then it's perfectly normal for a GPU to sit at basically 100% utilization. The only reason it wouldn't is if you were limited by something else in the system.

(To clarify, "active FPS limiting" here means that you are actually hitting the limit; having a limit set at e.g. 120 FPS but running at 60-80 is effectively the same as unlimited for this discussion)
 
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Decided to play SIFU before finally embarking on Baldurs Gate 3 and Dave the Diver. Which made me realize that them + Alan Wake 2 and Mario Wonder will take me so long time to play through that I might as well just not buy anything else for a while.
 
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RE: Localization, you have to think of it more as "interpretation" rather than straight translating. When I provide translations for JP youtubers, i often do have to ad-lib this or that for adding context and intentions, because a straight TL from Japanese can sound very weird or hard to parse without it.

If that stuff bugs you, just gotta learn JP. I play JP games in Japanese and Western games in English. :dabblob:
 
sanhora said:
Nearly every person in Hotto speaks in haikus. Stuff like that is very impressive but it's not at all faithful to the original. The writing in JP DQ is extremely vanilla but they punch up the localization to an absolutely ridiculous degree.
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I really loved the writing in Dragon Quest XI. Another great example for me is XSeed and the Trails games. There's so much pointless "haha" nonsense they remove in the Sky and CS1 and 2, and so much flavour they add to Estelle that makes her stand out so much more than the original Japanese would (from my understanding).

Talking about DQXI makes kinda wonder what they are planning with 12. Seems to be its own new, "darker" thing, but it seems kinda sad not to follow up on the ending of 11 which seems to indicate a remake of DQ3, basically.
 
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yep cause all western games have the same culture and all asian games are japanese.
/s
poor devotion (taiwanese) or whiteday (korean) developers. : (. (and I give precisely these two examples because they are games specifically based on and nourished by their respective cultures and folklore.)
 
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Tried the Echoes of the Living demo. I'll definitely check out the full game. It's such a blatant RE clone it's actually kinda funny, even the green/red/blue herbs are in there. You use a computer and floppy disks instead of a typewriter and ink ribbons to save though, so there's that.
Seriously though, the game is good. If you like classic RE you wont be disappointed.
 
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