Translating and Modding

Translations

Pirates and Traders is a game with a lot of text. It is - I hope - part of the charm of the game, but it is also from time to time an obstacle for players who live in non-English speaking parts of the world being able to enjoy the game. Unfortunately, the very size of the game text is also an obstacle to efforts at translation - it means that it is not a commercially viable decision for me to spend money on a translation effort, and it makes the actual attempt at performing a translation a considerable undertaking.

Nevertheless, people have attempted this task, and we currently have an almost complete translation of the non-story text of the game into German.

So if you're really keen on translating whole (or parts) of the game into another language, I have decided to make the text files available for download.

pirates_text.zip

This includes the character introduction stories, and the basic text files for the game (all the buttons and flavor text you'll encounter in the game). Both the English and translated versions are there, so you can compare and see how it should be done.

WARNING: The above files contain SPOILERS.

If you do decide to try a translation, please let me know by e-mail; that way I can try to help coordinating if several people should independently decide to attempt translating to the same language.

The adventure story files are not included in the zip file above. Those are only distributed if you contact me with a request (and other parts of the game are translated), since they contain heavy spoilers to playing the game.

If you're working on a translation, and you have files that you want to test, contact me and I'll be happy to build a test version for you to check the translation out in.

Modding

As mentioned in this blog post, I have decided to allow modding of Pirates and Traders. Unfortunately, due to the way Android is constructed, this is not a trivial matter - unlike on a PC, you can not easily replace or modify files.

But there are other options. Below are some typical examples of how you can get your mods into the game, if you're interested:

• New personal items
  • Have an idea for a new personal item that you think should be in the game? Look at the text entries in the person_item.xml file, write up your idea (and suggested effects), and send me an e-mail with your suggestion.
• New ship improvements
  • As above. Check the ship_item.xml file, and send me an e-mail with your suggestion.
• New character background
  • Character backgrounds essentially limit what skills, items, and traits you may start with. Have an idea for a character background you want to see in the game? Check the existing backgrounds and write up a five part story with the list of improvement options you think the background should have, and send me an e-mail.
• New story/mission
  • Have an idea for a story/mission that you think could be cool? First, plot out the idea (with story segments and choices for each story segment).
  • Contact me before you start writing and pitch the idea. That way I can let you know whether the story script will work for this or not. I'll also send you some sample story script to look at.
  • Write it up.

Any mods accepted will be added to the game as optional content that can be used with new player characters (not existing ones, sorry). Note that there are a few provisos:

• Content must not be objectionable. The game is played by children and has to satisfy the terms of service on several app stores, so certain content cannot be accepted.
• The mods must - for the most part - fit within existing game functionality. I will certainly consider making minor code changes, if I like a mod enough, but my coding time is very limited. Adding fleets and similar is not practicable at this time.