Czech translation

[Tycho]

Does anybody know if there was a Czech version of 1994 Enemy Unknown? If so, where could one get a copy of the SMALLSET.DAT and BIGLETS.DAT files?

[kyrub]

Kdo potřebuje českou verzi?

 

(Not that I have one, just curious. Thought I have been the only active cz on this forum.)

[Tycho]

Not for me per se, but someone trying to make a czech translation of EU but the problem is with displaying the special characters in the game. I thought someone like Zombie might know or have access to them.

[silencer_pl]

Have you PM'ed him directly?

[silencer_pl]

Tycho, I've checked Polish version of the TFTD - it contains special characters, so I don't think Czech version would be any different.

[Tycho]

It doesn't seem so. Someone has attempted to import the smallset.dat character from the Czech version of TFTD into EU but there are some formatting problems. So I was hoping someone on the forums might have a copy if there is such a version.

[silencer_pl]

I don't think so. In that time the publisher for Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia was IPS Computer Group (today known as Cenega) and any translation of X-COM officially begun from TFTD and stopped at Apocalypse since when Interceptor hit the market it was already under Hasbro, which didn't care that mach of eastern market. Enforcer wasn't even released here.

 

Back in that days I've also tried translating EU to polish, but can't remember if I've used any special characters also I was replacing text in hex editor directly and didn't have any formatting problems.

[Zombie]

I don't have a Czech version of EU sadly, probably because it doesn't exist (been looking for years and haven't seen it and MobyGames doesn't have it listed either). That said, I didn't realize that a Czech version of TFTD even existed. Nor did I realize that a Polish version of EU/TFTD existed until silencer sent me them...

 

Tycho, what type of formatting issues was this person having? If they are importing a set of characters from TFTD into EU, the file sizes better match exactly. I'm assuming the formatting was fine in TFTD? The main possibility is that some/most/all of the smallset Czech characters are bigger than the original English EU record counterparts. Dumping that into the EU English version of the game would cause overlap issues. Spacing of characters is handled by the executable (somewhere, not sure where though - you may know more). That's my guess, though Bomb Bloke would be the one to ask.

 

Just thinking out loud, but maybe trying to import the smallset into a different version of EU (like Polish or German) would work? Though, here again, the boundaries of the Czech character must be the same size or smaller than the base language's smallset record or else there will be overlap anyway. If you can find out where the TFTD exe handles character spacing and edit the EU exe to match, that might work as a permanent fix.

 

- Zombie

[silencer_pl]

Polish EU didn't have polish translation in-game, only manual and box - TFTD was translated and replaced at the Spanish(?) position

[Tycho]

Luckily, the TFTD character sets are the same size as EU so they "worked" but the formatting was off. With some hex editing, I better positioned the characters in SMALLSET.DAT. For the capitol letters in SMALLSET, I had to cut out some bytes from each letter to allow the umlauts, and such, to be seen. Luckily the capitol letters are "stretched" so removing a section from the right places doesn't make them look strange. The actual letters are squatter but only seem different when compared to the original set.