How do we localize ArcheAge

    Hello, Habr!

    In January of this year, we announced that we became the publisher, localizer and operator of the ArcheAge game , created by XL Games Inc. About how this process is going, I will tell in this post.



    A little about

    ArcheAge is MMORPG by Lineage designer Jake Song. ArcheAge recreated what was in Ultima Online 15 years ago - the ability to change the world of the game: choose your own role, be a warrior, a pirate, anyone. It is not necessary to be a hero and fight, you can be a civilian, build yourself a house in the village, sell items and capture the economic market of the whole game.

    For three years, there was a closed beta testing of the game, and more recently, a release took place in Korea. Millions of Korean players are already playing ArcheAge. Surprisingly, most of the game’s fan sites were created in Russia - this is the most anticipated online game of 2013, and we are doing everything so that it is the Russian players who get to know the project first in Europe.

    Localization as it is

    I think, it’s possible not to remind once again how good localization is important for games - for sure many have their favorite localization mistakes, which are often associated with the process of finalizing the game.

    The Mail.Ru Group employs about 70 people over ArcheAge. These are not only editors, testers, managers, etc., but also programmers, engineers, designers, producers, marketers, and many others. Let’s look at the points, which quest we went through and how the developers simplify our lives.

    So let's go.



    First we get LK (Localization Kit) - this is all the texts, graphics, voice acting, all that the player sees on his monitor.

    - Structure Localization Kit

    Here we are lucky. All files are formed according to the principle of the SQL database, from which developers extract texts in XML format, and this is 71 files, each of which is responsible for a certain part of the description (skills - names and descriptions of skills; buffs - names and descriptions of buffs; quests - tasks, etc. .P.). But this structure also has a minus - we cannot change the base ourselves and substitute texts on our side. We have to ask developers to make patches.

    - Translation from Korean

    Korean language undoubtedly introduces its own difficulties. Firstly, finding competent specialists is not easy, and secondly, not everywhere a translation can be verified without a build. Translation speed from Korean is lower than from English.

    ArcheAge has about 4.5 to 5 million Korean characters. Translated into Russian - 8 - 10 million characters. By the way, we had the same amount of work at the time of the beginning of work on The Lord of the Rings. However, it was a little easier there - the world is known, Tolkien himself wrote about how to translate (he has notes for translators). And the translation was from English, it is always easier.



    - Glossaries

    The glossaries for NPCs and place names are very detailed. If in the latter, everything is fairly standard - a zone, city, mainland, etc., then the NPC glossary is amazing! In addition to the character’s name, the developers indicated his race, gender, age, geographical area where he meets, mood / speech features (friendly, friendly, educated, curious, annoyed, infantile, etc.). This is the first time we’ve seen such a detailed NPC glossary from developers.

    Not without humor. One of the characters (race - ferret, human-cats) in the glossary is called "Guard Captain Ivan." Cat Ivan would have looked great in the Korean game, but we still changed his name.

    - Content update

    Developers update content very quickly. At the moment we are working with the initial version of the texts, however, we plan to receive materials from all updates released by March 2013. We also do not recall such speed of working with content and opening new features.



    - A World with History The

    world of ArcheAge is based on the books of Jung Min Hee. Accordingly, we have a certain world that we cannot change. In this, the work is again similar to the work on The Lord of the Rings. Before taking up editing, we had to study many articles, translate some key parts of the book, understand who the main characters are, their motivation and characters.



    - Case system

    The current version of LK has a case system, but it is a Korean case system. Combine it with the Russian does not work. We are actively working to make changes to LK that will allow us to use case variables.

    That is, we will not need to write something from the category “Go to the city of Moscow”, where “Moscow” is a variable that can only be in the nominative case. We want to be able to substitute "Go to" Moscow "." While we are not sure that this will succeed, the changes affect not so much the LK structure as the base structure and the addition of new tags.

    Build Development

    As soon as a certain percentage of texts is ready, we give them to the developers to build the first build - this is the first version of the game in which Russian and Korean texts are mixed. This is necessary in order to understand how beautiful the font looks in the game, whether we guessed correctly with the substitutions, how the Russian text in the picture looks at all. Editors see that there are no errors in the text, discrepancies in terms, and verify the correctness of names.

    Testers look at all the texts in the picture live, make sure that there are no typos, errors, old versions of texts on the screen. They also check the functionality of the game, make sure that the game does not “crash”, that any quest can be submitted and passed, that the NPCs are in their places, and that the correct rewards are given for completing the task.



    And about support

    Technical support of the project will be carried out around the clock. At the moment, our specialists are actively studying the game, collecting material on the basis of which the remaining support staff will be trained on this project. This is not just a brief description of a particular mechanics or functional, but a detailed lecture material, which can fully be both a reference and a complete training manual for specialists. In addition, in the learning process, an internal test server is actively used, as well as accounts on the official Korean server, where specialists can fully feel all the subtleties of social interaction between players and during the game feel all the possible difficulties and problems that an ordinary player encounters.
    In addition, we are actively changing the communication interface of players with the support service, making it more convenient and casual. It will be easier for players to find a ready-made answer to their question, it is easier to understand the process of processing the request created by him and the methods for solving it, and to get a specialist’s answer faster.

    Localization work is in full swing. Closed beta testing is planned for autumn 2013, after which the date for open beta testing and the launch of ArcheAge will be determined. Today I described only the very first steps, if there are questions and suggestions, I will be glad to discuss in the comments.


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