Home of the official "Grammer Mod"

The title is incredibly, hilariously ironic.

See now, I find the current descriptions mildly amusing. So, y'know, I don't want them changed.

When comes the "Spelling Mod" ?

In any case, I like the text. It has a light-hearted attitude to it. Everything sci-fi doesn't have to be dull statistics and dire outlooks.

i find the text to be one of the best parts of the game.

I love this game's flavor text. Sometime I have to make myself stop and read it because I just keep hitting the okay button, but it is usually worth it.

I find the game’s descriptions to be very unique and refreshing, but also in need of review and grammar/spelling revision. If you plan to keep the essence of what the writers wrote, then you might be on to something (and I bet stardock would integrate your modifications into the release build), but if you are out to change all the text, then you won’t have much support.

I agree though, that a game of this excellence is surprisingly lacking in textual polish. The spirit of the writing is wonderful, but needs a buffing!

I would be willing to accept text and provide revised versions for you if you wish.

Actually, what might work better then a “mod” would be a word document simply consisting of the existing blocks of text, accompanied by the revised versions. This could be sent to stardock as a “gift” from the community, which they could review themselves and reintegrate into the game. I would certainly support this.

As a matter of fact, if you were to talk to Brad and get his OK, and make the initial word doc, then I would revise the entire thing for you.

-Brian
[email protected]

my 2 fav. lines
1) "'Woot' or atleast thats what our scientists were yelling..." -- thats just to great
2) "Its better, ok. What do you want the PR was out today"

And both of those lines have errors : ) I'm up for a game-wide textual review.

-Brian

Well even if I don't agree with your premise, I can at least give you a hint. You'll want a good text editor. One with some XML editing features to make the work easy. There's some other threads in mods section posting some links to some.
The one I use is notepad+Link

It is very useful for coding a bunch of languages not just XML, its loaded with features. Specific to your task it will be able to check XML syntax and alert you if you forget a tag. Which can be easy to do inadvertantly (or missed it if you copy/paste etc..) . You can even expand and collapse sections. Oh as you see, if you clicked the link, its a free download.

Thats where I'd start you, making sure you at least have the right tools. Then I'd point you to your game's install directory. Inside your Galciv2 directory, I made a backup copy of the Data folder. I'd suggest you do that as well before making changes. Just in case. In the Data/English directory you'll find several files. GC2_Conversations.XML would be a good place to start. It has the dialogue for the diplomacy screens.

What you referred to in your original post here would be modifying all the core ships. That's do-able too.


Well good luck in your endeavors.

errr do people actually bother reading ship descriptions........beyond the core colony ship and constructor i never use core ships.....so i dont care what the text says

Because they are funny.

What do you have against cheese. (except saved by the bell on Adult Swim thats just strange aand unusaul torture.)

Even though this topic that criticizes grammar has a typo in the title, I'm still going to say my opinion on this matter

In my opinion the texts in the game are very often lame. I for one like to have a bit of "roleplaying" flavor in my strategy games, and the sometimes idiotic replies from other races in diplomacy really ruin the "atmosphere" or "mood" of the game for me. Also, some research descriptions look like they've been written an hour before the game was shipped out... Come on, humour is good, but this game is overloaded with lines that are simply too lame to be funny.

I read through the thread about how poor the game's textual presentation is. I'd like to one-up that statement. I think it's not only poorly written, I think it's completely uninspired/uninspiring. I can't recall right now, but I believe the description of the scout vessel is something like "I look for things; it's what I do." S, why don't some of us get together, portion out the game's text (as much as can be edited) and revamp it? I don't have the slightest clue where to start, but if nobody with any mod experience shows up, maybe I'll start picking at this by myself to find a starting point. =$= Big J Money =$=

I only play with custom ships, and make my own silly little ship quips.

I like the light-hearted quotes that accompany the core vessels -- particularly the one for the scout. I'm not too proud to admit it made me laugh out loud the first time I read it...

The text in GC1 was much, much better. By comparison, the GC2 text seems like it was just thrown together at the last minute. (I'm talking about the quality of the text, irrespective of the obvious grammar and spelling errors.)

Ya, My favorite GC1 text was one of the descriptions for some of the good raced when you had the AI set below par.
I think it went like

" The Altarians are... well nice, really nice. Unfortunately they seem to think that nose picking is a form of communication. We suspect there’s a bit to much lead on there home planet."

Or one of the evil races descriptions that went like this
" The Drengin are so stupid they have been known to super glue themselves to the door while trying to glue the door on the wall..... So much for being evil. "

To go with the first reply, you do know it's spelt "Grammar" right?

Sorry, I kind of disappeared for a while. Yes, I know the proper spelling of the word is "grammar". I purposely spelled it "Grammer Mod" to poke harmless fun at GalCiv2. I think my sarcasm was fairly obvious, considering the secondary title I attached to this thread. I'm a a little disappointed that the mood of the thread was set by those who weren't clever enough to catch the sarcasm, but it's my fault for staying away for so long.

I was a bit hard in my OP, but I'd like to make it clear that the light-hearted and comedic nature of GalCiv's flavor text is not what bothers me. What bothers me are the few places (particularly ship descriptions) where it's obvious that someone was running out of time and decided to forsake creativity altogether. That, and the many typos that plague the game are my motivation. So, don't confuse this undertaking as a "rewrite" of the all the text in the game. It would really only be a project to polish things up a bit. The goal is actually to change as little as possible. In fact, I'd like it if every bit of text we do rewrite were first examined and voted on to see if it even requires revision in the first place. It seems nobody is willing to help with it, so I might just do it by myself. Thanks for the help, Shogun.

Marcathonas, you know that "spelt" is a type of wheat, right?

=$=

I'd certainly be willing to help. I teach English to college kids for a living, so I am somewhat competent at editing text.

There is, obviously, a lot of text associated with this game. Any attempt to make extensive corrections should coordinate the efforts of several people. For my part, I'd also have some technical questions concerning how best to modify the .xml files.

See now, I find the current descriptions mildly amusing. So, y'know, I don't want them changed.

Same here, i find it nice that they dont take the game too seriously

Big J Money I offered support.

-Brian

DWellsian, read Shogun's post. I think that Notepad++ might be a good way, although I won't download it until tomorrow, since I am going to bed now. Basically what we'll need is an editor that can automatically copy and gather all the proper text when we give it the instructions. I'm hoping N++ will do that. I was browsing the files myself in Notepad, and it really does not look like the changes will be too extensive. I am also thinking that we might have two tries at it. The first round through will be a very conservative effort, with the goal of making only the most necessary changes. The second go will be to make things a bit more creative where it's lacking.

=$=

BJM, I'm going to download the final 1.1 today and take it out for a spin. I figured I'd wait until the beta-releases had been finalized before tackling any grammar corrections - the devs might have done some corrections on their own. Unfortunately, it looks like Large Scale Building still gives you "the power to be very, very large hulls," so there's still work to do.

Oh, and spleeze_ also offered support above. I'll check out Notepad++ in the next couple of days and maybe get started on something this weekend.

By the way, your plan for taking two passes at the corrections is a good one. In fact, I was going to post something suggesting the same thing but I decided to wait and see what the response to this thread was like. If we're going to make two passes at it, on the first go-round we should correct obvious mistakes but also note particular entries which we might like to "improve" for later.

Here's a little taste of how things might work. I went through one of the shortest .xml files in GalCiv 2 - the one containing ship descriptions ("GC2Ships").

There are four level-1 corrections needed [bracketed comments only provide explanation/defense for the change; the actual process of editing will not involve making bracketed comments like these]:

Defender = "Watch it: I bite." [Better than original because "I bite" provides explanation for the "watch it."]

StarFighter = "Watch it: I bite." [As above]

CombatTransport = "Take out planetary defenses without backup using the Combat Transport, an invasion vessel
that can both hold more troops and attack enemy craft." [Original said "take our" and addition of "both" makes the
parallel phrasing clearer.

PirateShip = "The vessel of space pirates, this ship is a mishmash of stolen ship parts mounted on a stolen hull. But underestimating this junky-looking ship could prove disastrous." ["Mishmash" is incorrect as two words in the original - it should be one word or hyphenated. Junky-looking is also two words in the original and should be hyphenated. I think "mounted on a stolen hull" means about the same as the original "mounted on the hull of a stolen ship" and is much smoother. "Disastrous" is more apt than the original "deadly" because "underestimating" is used as a noun here and needs an adjective, not an adverb, as a modifier.]

Now, some suggested changes or areas for changes. I have six:

Scout: "I find stuff. It's what I do." [I think a period here more precisely mirrors the way you would say this if you were
trying to be funny. Say these lines as punctuated in the original, with just a slight pause; then say them with a
somewhat exaggerated pause as the period would indicate. I think you'll agree.]

Defender/StarFighter: "Now you die." [I don't like having the same description for two different ships. In the interest of
a little variety, here's a possible variation more or less in keeping with the tone of the original descriptions. Better
suggestions are welcome.]

Battleship: "You only hurt the ones you love." [The original just sounds a little clumsy to me. I think this one is a little
more absurd and funny - more what the original was trying to be.]

SledgeHammer: "Time for some education in pain." [The original bothers me because "educator" and "teacher"
mean pretty much the same thing, so the joke is kinda lost. 'Pain is a teacher and I'm a teacher' is pretty much
what it says. That's not funny. Not that my correction is hilarious or anything, but I think its stupid bravado is kinda
fun.]

Ranger/Excalibur: "It's all mine." [I'm sorry, but no one says "It is all mine." You say "it's." Particularly when you have
a big, powerful ship like the ranger and you don't have time to put up with any more Drengin mess.]

Transport: "Meet exciting new people on strange, alien worlds and kill them." [The original hearkens back to the old
bumper sticker about joining the army and visiting new places and killing the people you meet there. My alteration
is an attempt to make this description match the rhythm of that sticker - which I think sounds much better than the
current Transport description.]

Transport [alternate]: "Conquering the galaxy, 1000 legions at a time." [Because let's face it, when you're building
transports your thoughts have definitely turned to conquering the galaxy.]


I know most people use their own ship designs so these changes would probably mean very little - but they show the basic idea of what a grammar mod can do.


[Edit: my "formatting" indentation didn't take, so I just added some space to break up all that text.]