That's ENOUGHT !!

[DaemianLucifer]

You are correct there.Considering the amount of text,that would be at least one error in every page.And only the bible has that many

But take a look at the code.Its written in english.I doubt that they would translate the code.So that means nival has nothing to do with the writing in the game.They did just the code,without any texts(or they did the texts separatelly).

[Sir_Toejam]

And only the bible has that many

lol.

indeed. too many translators involved with that one.

...and not enought fact-checkers.

[asandir]

i think it's pretty damn disgraceful, and JJ, don't try to deflect this one, there really is just no excuse for it at all

[Caradoc]

If you think this is bad, have a look at some of the XML files. An awful lot of element tags are misspelled -- like ARTEFACT. A lot of updates never got made when names were changed. Creature names are very different internally than what the player sees. Clearly quality has been compromised.

[Jolly Joker]

Sir_toejam, I would really prefer it, if you'd stop to post things like, please, don't embarrass you, or something along those lines. It doesn't contribute to anythiny, tend to be annoying more than anything else and provoke unfriendly answers. Especially when your post shows that you have no idea of how things are done.
In Germany you can take whatever book or newspaper you want, wou'll find a heavy amount of spelling errors, mistakes, typos and oversights. One of the reason is the fact that in Germany they are changing the written language since 10 years or so and meanwhile no one knows what spelling is the correct one. But even before that you wouldn't find a book without errors.
The reason is simple: the things are not proof-read the way it would be necessary. The editor suppposed to do it has, as a rule, too much to do to really go into things, especially if a translation is a bit messy. You will always find books, especially when translated from a more uncommon language like Swedish for example, that are so bad you could vomit when you read it - clear indication that no proof-reading was done at all - and this is happening ESPECIALLY with the big publishers because it's there where editors simply have too much to do and not enough people are hired.

With this game from what I've seen things are very probably run this way:
It seems, that IF THERE IS ENOUGH TIME things for all the ingame texts are done from someone who's a native English speaker. That means, the body of the basic game, let's say 90%, is - at some point finished, basically error-free and in acceptable English. However, some things are not finalized: some town bios, some hero bios, some tooltips; interface changes are yet to be implemented; most of all: the glossary is still not final and being worked on, since some of the working vocabulary is not good or some is even completely redone (like the spells). Moreover, there are logical problems, like the explanation for a victory condition may be badly phrased and so on.
What that means is, that at this point the 90% finished in-game text is in reality a wealth of errors and heavily under construction, and we are not far from final game version now.
So the main priority at this point is now "filling the blanks": getting the game to a 100% text. This seems to be done by someone who is NOT a native English speaker - it's the reason why you see lines missing articles or looking a bit garbled. It's more of a summary of things for the native English speaker after that to make it a complete text: the gist of what should be there.
The second thing is the glossary check: do all things have the correct names?
The third thing would be the correction of the last-minute entries: making it a 100% correct English.
The fourth thing is correcting the more serious errors: wrong text placements: the game may show a wrong text somewhere; for example, I seem to remember a problem with the Minotaurs and there was a running gag in the process of finalizing the game, that all combinations of combining Imps and Familiars with their respective abilities and descriptions had been run through before they managed the correct one.
Lastly you need to check for typos, oversights, misspellings and so on. Note that this is the most unimportant of those.
Don't think for a minute that this is easy: In the German version I somehow blundered the damage prediction: In battle, whenever you would put the cursor over an eligible enemy stack, the damage prediction would be garbled and was cut after the minus between the lower and the higher damage value (and you wouldn't see the killed prediction as well). It took me until patch 1.3 to find the error: a carriage return was in that line (for whatever the reason) and since the damage prediction has only one line the second line under the first wouldn't show. In excel you wouldn't see the carriage return. A very annoying bug, solely my responsibility. Well, since other people are involved as well, it may not even be my bug, but what the heck.
Another problem is, that the programmers are not going with the glossary. Each patch will see things like Holy Word again - which has to be corrected in the proof-reading process.
The bottom line here is: proof-reading is always behind a patch or so, because too many things are done last minute when there is no time anymore for proof-reading. Spelling errors have lowest priority, and afaik there is no special proof-reading process for that one.
If you think that's a special Nival problem: not so. It's common practise. There are times, especially in the big publishing houses, when there is no proof-reading at all for some things. I could name you books by well-known writers published by big houses you will be tempted to throw into the garbage bin.

[DaemianLucifer]

Sir_toejam, I would really prefer it, if you'd stop to post things like, please, don't embarrass you, or something along those lines. It doesn't contribute to anythiny, tend to be annoying more than anything else and provoke unfriendly answers. Especially when your post shows that you have no idea of how things are done.

Even though I agree with what you said next,this one made me laugh so hard And you are right to some extent.It is understandable why the game was so bad to begin with(ubi was cheap and rushed the game),there is no excuse for such an easilly fixable mistake that was spotted by the fans to stay in the next version.

[Jolly Joker]

I meant of course, that he has no idea of how things are run in that kind of business, not in general.
DL, excusable or unexcusable is not the point. No one starts figuring whether SOME spelling errors are more pressing or embarrassing or whatever than some others. You either start correcting them or not. But no one is going to say, hey, we have about a dozen really obvious spelling and grammar errors, let's go ahead and correct them, it will look better that way. It will be done when someone decides that it's necessary to go through all the text files once again and make a correction pass. Which makes sense. If they would correct that half dozen, we would see the following thread:
1) Hey, they corrected the "not enought movement points"!
2) Yes, but there are still TONS of spelling and grammar errors; they are a bunch of lazy...
3) Right. You know what, I really miss that particular error; it was so funny. Now that it's corrected, I start to notice the other errors more clearly. They really should...

[Naskoni]

Jelly man,

An interesting read (hmm, actually not really) but it only goes to prove further (contrary to your intention) how messed the process is in this company, and no, it is not acceptable.

To give you a point. Almost everything of what I read is in English these days - both technical and entertainment literature, my Bible is in English as well and to be honest it must be years now since the last spelling mistake I've seen, although if you really want to you can always buy a cheap book by an unknown publisher and find some...

Your whole charade might explain why something so simple slipped through the first time but it does not explain why it wasn't corrected (as there is ABSOLUTELY nothing complex in correcting it) in 1.3. The bug (yes, it is a bug, whether your UBI payment dictates you to state otherwise) was pointed out early enough and there was PLENTY of time for whoever to correct it. Irrespectively of who was personally responsible for doing it is still Nival's and ultimately UBI's responsibility so don't sell us this $#!+ about how it is not even a problem and then it is not Nival's or UBI's fault... If your standards are so low then excuse me if I take a minute to pity you - try that attitude in industry and see how long you last there... It took you the time for three (3) patches to locate the carriage return? Wow - no wonder you defend the other translator... According to a Russian around here they screwed the Russian version too - I mean they cannot translate into Russian as well? Why don't you defend that as well - it will be funny as hell to witness it

As for making a jack-@$$ out of yourself - well, you can hardly blame anybody but yourself for that one - why are so you surprised that people take notion, it is somewhat hard not to notice it

We all know by now that you will defend Ubival no matter what and that whatever they do is the best thing under the sun, their bugs are not bugs, their mistakes are actually intended features with plenty of forethought and their basic design for the game is simply perfect (was, is and will be), so spare us the polemic - we get the idea as it is I read you exclusively as a humoristic addition to the forum, so please, keep at it!

EDIT: Ha-ha - you don't disappoint - now you give excuses why it is actually better that they didn't correct the bug! Classic! They, in all their wisdom, knew about it and decided to ignore it for the good of the game!

[Jolly Joker]

Naskoni, seriously, I don't know who ran you over with a truck or what has made your life a mess that you are so intent on proving something to whoever with so much acid, ill will and personal venom. I don't know what world you live in, it cannot be the same than everyone else is.
You, will of course never make a mistake. And if you make one you will write a book to prove it wasn't your fault.
If you have a bible, why not read a bit in it? For example, the part about throwing the first stone.
As a last point, I've no intention to make this personal. If you disagree with what I say, that's your right, but you should respect the fact that your opinion is neither the only one in the world nor necessarily true or right or beyond doubt. If you are unable to accept the opinions of other people without getting a fit, at least show so much sense (decency seems to be too much to ask) to do it in more polite, respectful and less offending way.
In short: behave or get lost.

[DaemianLucifer]

I meant of course, that he has no idea of how things are run in that kind of business, not in general.
DL, excusable or unexcusable is not the point. No one starts figuring whether SOME spelling errors are more pressing or embarrassing or whatever than some others. You either start correcting them or not. But no one is going to say, hey, we have about a dozen really obvious spelling and grammar errors, let's go ahead and correct them, it will look better that way. It will be done when someone decides that it's necessary to go through all the text files once again and make a correction pass. Which makes sense. If they would correct that half dozen, we would see the following thread:
1) Hey, they corrected the "not enought movement points"!
2) Yes, but there are still TONS of spelling and grammar errors; they are a bunch of lazy...
3) Right. You know what, I really miss that particular error; it was so funny. Now that it's corrected, I start to notice the other errors more clearly. They really should...

There are only two ways to avoid this:One is not to sell an unfinished game,even though it might mean exceeding the deadlines and not getting money for the current quartal(which is the only thing ubi thinks about),and the other is to correct every bug as soon as it gets noticed and release a patch as soon as possible,even though it would mean having patches with numbers like 1.2729304

[okrane]

In what other games did you find as many spelling/grammar/logical errors?

[DaemianLucifer]

To give you a point. Almost everything of what I read is in English these days - both technical and entertainment literature, my Bible is in English as well and to be honest it must be years now since the last spelling mistake I've seen, although if you really want to you can always buy a cheap book by an unknown publisher and find some...

Just because you missed them doesnt mean there are none.Serriously,I doubt that there is even a single book in the whole world that has absolutelly no spelling mistakes.But as long as there is no more than 1% of spelling mistakes compare to the number of pages,it can be said that a book is spelled excelently.

Naskoni, seriously, I don't know who ran you over with a truck or what has made your life a mess that you are so intent on proving something to whoever with so much acid, ill will and personal venom. I don't know what world you live in, it cannot be the same than everyone else is.
You, will of course never make a mistake. And if you make one you will write a book to prove it wasn't your fault.
If you have a bible, why not read a bit in it? For example, the part about throwing the first stone.
As a last point, I've no intention to make this personal. If you disagree with what I say, that's your right, but you should respect the fact that your opinion is neither the only one in the world nor necessarily true or right or beyond doubt. If you are unable to accept the opinions of other people without getting a fit, at least show so much sense (decency seems to be too much to ask) to do it in more polite, respectful and less offending way.
In short: behave or get lost.

[Jolly Joker]

While that is possibly true, you don't want to patch your game every two days either. Exceeding a certain patch limit will produce a chaos:
Nival did NOT do full patches, mind you. We don't see patches like From 1.0_to_1.3_EU_collector. We just see patches from one version to the other, but in several versions which is already enough trouble.
A patch each week would create certain havoc all over the place
1.05
1.1
1.11 (US only)
1.15 (worldwide)
1.16 (EU only)
1.20
I certainly don't want that.

Now, give them more time. Sadly, that won't work either. If you give a team unlimited time to do something it will never be finished. If a team has more time from the beginning, the result will be the same because the planning is different and in the end there will be the same mess.
The only way to really go through with everything is: set a fixed date, for example March 31st. Then, when that date is so near that work would have to begin for compiling the retail version, give the team additional time, mainly for polish, say 6 weeks or two months. More won't cut it because everyone will eimply worl less hard.
This would probably have worked pretty well with Heroes V except there were some serious issues at the point the release was pushed back: the battlefield size (probably Nival's fault with Ubi insisting on making it bigger), hero portraits and some others that were no "polish", but serious design issues. Note, that Nival blames Ubi here, and in terms of game poslish they were right: if Nival had to be able to do it all their way the game would have been much more polished - the question is, would it have been better as well (which I doubt).
So publishing date would have had to be about a month later again - which would have been a very unlucky timing, at least that's what marketing will tell you.

[Naskoni]

To give you a point. Almost everything of what I read is in English these days - both technical and entertainment literature, my Bible is in English as well and to be honest it must be years now since the last spelling mistake I've seen, although if you really want to you can always buy a cheap book by an unknown publisher and find some...

Just because you missed them doesnt mean there are none.Serriously,I doubt that there is even a single book in the whole world that has absolutelly no spelling mistakes.But as long as there is no more than 1% of spelling mistakes compare to the number of pages,it can be said that a book is spelled excelently.

Seriously - I don't know why you have so many problems believing that there are such books, but there are and this is not a joke. I know that in Eastern Europe translations tend to be somewhat sloppy due to the desire of publishers to translate them as quickly and cheaply as possible, but most of the renowned English (British and quite a few US) publishers do a splendid job at it, which is why in Eastern Europe I will pay a fraction of the price for a book that is translated compared to buying the original in English. The last C++ book I bought cost me 75Euro for example - you can buy the translation for 20 or less, you can guess why the difference. I'm still to find an error of any sort in it too.

And, Jelly, give them more time? I'm not sure I'll manage to live that long, I'm not sure that they'll manage it either...

In addition - setting the publishing date further back would have achieved nothing - they gave the game for going Gold a whole month before publishing and release. It is not quite obvious that they were trying that hard to work on it before it got released. It is quite UNobvious what was this one month spent on too as the first patch came ages later and it hardly fixed or added a lot...

Oh, and about getting lost - this is so much like you - lecturing others on their "bad" attitude while calling them idiots and looking down on people every single opportunity you get for defying your self-proclaimed Oracle status and demigod's opinion (i.e. we are all such braindead morons and cannot understand nor grasp a thing about the game, it's mechanics or how it is being made and so on )

[DaemianLucifer]

Now, give them more time. Sadly, that won't work either. If you give a team unlimited time to do something it will never be finished. If a team has more time from the beginning, the result will be the same because the planning is different and in the end there will be the same mess.
The only way to really go through with everything is: set a fixed date, for example March 31st. Then, when that date is so near that work would have to begin for compiling the retail version, give the team additional time, mainly for polish, say 6 weeks or two months. More won't cut it because everyone will eimply worl less hard.
This would probably have worked pretty well with Heroes V except there were some serious issues at the point the release was pushed back: the battlefield size (probably Nival's fault with Ubi insisting on making it bigger), hero portraits and some others that were no "polish", but serious design issues. Note, that Nival blames Ubi here, and in terms of game poslish they were right: if Nival had to be able to do it all their way the game would have been much more polished - the question is, would it have been better as well (which I doubt).
So publishing date would have had to be about a month later again - which would have been a very unlucky timing, at least that's what marketing will tell you.

Thats true,and it usually works.However,ubi assessed nival wrongly and gave them a wrong time limit.Thus they have shown poor managerial skills.

As for the patches,galciv has loads of patches,and it isnt a mess.

[Mytical]

sorry


This : If you are unable to accept the opinions of other people without getting a fit, at least show so much sense (decency seems to be too much to ask) to do it in more polite, respectful and less offending way

From somebody who said this:
I'm getting really sick of this. It looks like reason is wasted here.?

Anyhow..I think grammer, spelling, and such should be the least concern here. I would put up with even "Youd o no tha ve enou ghm ove ment point.s" if other things in the game were made better. Seriously. I love the Homm series, and I actually do think JJ does make some good points, love debating him, even if he seems not to take anything anybody else says into consideration. Still, I am here to say that JJ does make some rather good points in his posts. Not that I agree with them, but they are valid for him. And it all comes down to what you want.

You want them to spend the time fixing grammer, or you want them to spend the time fixing other things? Me I am not the best at spelling or grammer, so I won't complain about such. I would rather all the time it would take them to fix it, even if only a few minutes, be spent making the game better. Just my 2c .

[DaemianLucifer]

Seriously - I don't know why you have so many problems believing that there are such books, but there are and this is not a joke. I know that in Eastern Europe translations tend to be somewhat sloppy due to the desire of publishers to translate them as quickly and cheaply as possible, but most of the renowned English (British and quite a few US) publishers do a splendid job at it, which is why in Eastern Europe I will pay a fraction of the price for a book that is translated compared to buying the original in English. The last C++ book I bought cost me 75Euro for example - you can buy the translation for 20 or less, you can guess why the difference. I'm still to find an error of any sort in it too.

I wasnt talking about books that are being translated here(and mind you there are some excelent publishers here as well),I was talking about books that I bought in their original form,either because there was no translation(D&D books),or because I prefered the original things(some of the terry pratchet books mostly).

And, Jelly, give them more time? I'm not sure I'll manage to live that long, I'm not sure that they'll manage it either...

In JJs defense,he didnt say that you should give them more time,but that was an answer to my post that the game shouldve been postponed.

In addition - setting the publishing date further back would have achieved nothing - they gave the game for going Gold a whole month before publishing and release. It is not quite obvious that they were trying that hard to work on it before it got released. It is quite UNobvious what was this one month spent on too as the first patch came ages later and it hardly fixed or added a lot...

That,again,is ubis fault for choosing the wrong strategy and the wrong developer.We will see how arcane does with their part of the series and compare.

Anyhow..I think grammer, spelling, and such should be the least concern here. I would put up with even "Youd o no tha ve enou ghm ove ment point.s" if other things in the game were made better. Seriously. I love the Homm series, and I actually do think JJ does make some good points, love debating him, even if he seems not to take anything anybody else says into consideration. Still, I am here to say that JJ does make some rather good points in his posts. Not that I agree with them, but they are valid for him. And it all comes down to what you want.

Sadly though,that usually means in the next few weeks hell say nothing but gibberish

You want them to spend the time fixing grammer, or you want them to spend the time fixing other things? Me I am not the best at spelling or grammer, so I won't complain about such. I would rather all the time it would take them to fix it, even if only a few minutes, be spent making the game better. Just my 2c .

List of wishes,from the most prefered one down:
I wish there was no need to fix anything(a perfect game)
I wish there was very little need to fix anything
I wish they fix the few bugs that are there
I wish they fix lots of bugs that are there
I wish they fix at least the major bugs
Screw this game!

Gues in which stadium I curently am

[ThunderTitan]

Now, give them more time. Sadly, that won't work either. If you give a team unlimited time to do something it will never be finished. If a team has more time from the beginning, the result will be the same because the planning is different and in the end there will be the same mess.

Yet somehow you feel the need to always protect them...

You want them to spend the time fixing grammer, or you want them to spend the time fixing other things?

As stated before, it's not Nival that does the translating. Some of us seem to have forgotten that.

[Sir_Toejam]

Sir_toejam, I would really prefer it, if you'd stop to post things like, please, don't embarrass you, or something along those lines. It doesn't contribute to anything, tend to be annoying more than anything else and provoke unfriendly answers. Especially when your post shows that you have no idea of how things are done.

only JJ could take something as simple as a fix for an irritating typo and turn it into a 57 plus post thread.

the emphasis is on the part you are projecting.

I meant of course, that he has no idea of how things are run in that kind of business, not in general.

which kind of business? the gaming industry that i spent 6 years in, or the prepress industry i spent 2 in? The company that was involved with the prepress industry was actually a German co., btw. (Helios).

be careful what you assume.

...and neither of the companies in those fields i worked for would have let something this sloppy get by.

I'm sorry things in Germany have apparently gotten so sloppy; first I've heard of it.

newspapers, of course, are an entirely different area, and proofreading on papers in the states isn't good any more either.

However, there are times when the paper *gasp* has NO spelling errors in it.

and there are times when books get published with NO spelling errors.

go figure.

It will be done when someone decides that it's necessary to go through all the text files once again and make a correction pass.

guess how long that takes to run a spell check on the entire set of text files for this game.

about 5 minutes on my machine.

you want to be apologetic for poor quality in books or games (or any other consumer goods)? go right ahead. don't expect me to join you though, as that logic is really pathetic when you think about it.

While that is possibly true, you don't want to patch your game every two days either. Exceeding a certain patch limit will produce a chaos:

LOL. ever heard of quickfixes? happens all the time.

is this the first game you've ever been involved with, or what?


@Mytical:

You want them to spend the time fixing grammar, or you want them to spend the time fixing other things?

it's not an either or thing. this kind of thing is just sloppy work; it literally took me 5 secs to fix it once i knew where it was located (they already knew this).

if everybody had the attitude that a car is just fine so long as the manufacturer made it so it runs when you buy it, but forgets to paint it or upholster the seats, you're gonna start seeing a lot of cars with seriously messed up details.

I really hate this argument that we should "settle" when the little things are being overlooked for the big things.

It's a position that starts one on a very fast slippery slope to poor quality in everything in consumer goods, and politics as well, come to think of it.

As stated before, it's not Nival that does the translating. Some of us seem to have forgotten that.

and yet the company that contracts out a job is still responsible for the quality of the content that contractor creates. Nival may have contracted out the job of translating the game, but it's NIVAL that is still responsible for the content of the game in the end.

that's simple business.

[Jolly Joker]

Sir_toejam, what you are saying is, that where you used to work that kind of quality would not have been published. Helios isn't a big publisher and if you read what I wrote, you'll have read the line "especially the big publishers". You should take a look into "Böses Blut", from the well-known author Arne Dahl, published by Piper where you will read such nice things as "er sprach in Zungen" at least twice on each page. I could name a plethora of books from any number of publishers who obviously have not been edited at all. Additionally, in Germany now everyone has their own way of spelling: if you work for Heyne (who are now belonging to RandomHouse), for example, you used to get a script of "house rules" for spellings and writings - which accidentally was the same as that one favored ny the Frankfurter Rundschau, while the Springer Verlag has gone back to doing things the way they were before something was changed. And so on and so forth.
Of course the same is true for computer games.
There is yet another reason for poor quality translations and localizations: the fact that either translators and/or proofreaders may not have a real clue about the "world" they are in and have to work with. This was, for example, one of the reason why the Spanish version of the game was so unsatisfying at first.

And I'm not excusing things. I only try to explain them. A little more understanding for people being between a rock and a hard place might be in order; next time it could be YOUR mistake people are crying for your head for.