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Modding the language


piotr_garschin
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piotr_garschin

Hey, I wanted to do a mod (actually, just a translation into polish) of LR. I wanted to change all english words into polish and create the first polish version of LR. So, I downloaded JAM extractor, extracted LEGO.JAM file and tried to do the simpliest mod - I changed just ONE letter in "TIME RACE" phrase, made LEGO.JAM file again, copied into game's folder and... a game just went crazy because there wasn't any text in main menu and when I clicked for example on CIRCUIT RACE, I saw only few letters and words which means nothing. I just changed ONE letter in ONE phrase. What did I do wrong? It was my first step with modding, I am completely newbie with that.

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15 hours ago, piotr_garschin said:

I wanted to change all english words into polish and create the first polish version of LR.

Isn't there already a Polish version? I thought I'd seen videos of one, and since I know there's a Czech version I'd assume there'd be a Polish version since I know Cenega published LEGO games in both Poland and Czechia, at least with Rock Raiders. Maybe I'm misremembering, but if they didn't translate Racers into Polish like Rock Raiders was, but did into Czech, that'd be weird - but then again it seems the Korean version of Racers met the same lazy fate

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piotr_garschin
20 hours ago, grappigegovert said:

Did you use the SRF editor to edit the text?

OF COURSE I... didn't. I told you I am a modding noob :). I used notepad. Thanks man. I'll check it out and tell you about the results.

 

14 hours ago, Jessietail said:

Isn't there already a Polish version? I thought I'd seen videos of one, and since I know there's a Czech version I'd assume there'd be a Polish version since I know Cenega published LEGO games in both Poland and Czechia, at least with Rock Raiders. Maybe I'm misremembering, but if they didn't translate Racers into Polish like Rock Raiders was, but did into Czech, that'd be weird - but then again it seems the Korean version of Racers met the same lazy fate

I also thought that polish version existed. I even found an announcement where some woman was selling the game from Cenega (IM Group) and I bought it but, unfortunately, the game wasn't in polish and wasn't even in czech - only default languages. The only unique thing is a manual which is actually in polish. So, it means than polish version of LR probably DOESN'T exist. This is why I wanted to learn modding.  Now I'm gonna try. If I have the next problems, I will tell :).

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piotr_garschin

So:

 

1. I managed to change an SRT file (in that case it was Captain Redbeard opening phrase) and it worked - it displayed my own text (but without polish signs: ĄĘŻŹĆŃŁÓŚ).

2. Menu is still crashed:

 

28534298_1843128642373653_1108768782_n.j

 

3. I can't load every file with SRT Editor. In some cases it loads correctly but sometimes it displays an error during loading. It also crashed during loading a file with the menu text, so this is why the menu crashed?

 

I have Windows 7 and 2001 LR release.

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grappigegovert
20 minutes ago, piotr_garschin said:

1. I managed to change an SRT file (in that case it was Captain Redbeard opening phrase) and it worked - it displayed my own text (but without polish signs: ĄĘŻŹĆŃŁÓŚ).

You can only use characters that are available in the font file, so you'll need to add those characters to the font. I'm not sure if anyone has successfully edited the font files before though, I believe there were some problems because the bmp file was really specific or something.

 

25 minutes ago, piotr_garschin said:

3. I can't load every file with SRT Editor. In some cases it loads correctly but sometimes it displays an error during loading.

What files does it have problems with? There should only be a few srt files to edit anyway.

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piotr_garschin

I had a problem with a MENUTEXT file but now it loads correctly:

 

24wt0ua.png

 

What about the first line? If I add polish signs here, will it work?

 

EDIT: Now it works and doesn't crash. If I only managed to add polish characters... Do you know how Russians added their characters and ow do they display correctly?

 

And 4. Does the LEGO.JAM file affect on game progress? If someone installs my polish-languaged LEGO.JAM file, will it erase all his records etc.?

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5 hours ago, piotr_garschin said:

I also thought that polish version existed. I even found an announcement where some woman was selling the game from Cenega (IM Group) and I bought it but, unfortunately, the game wasn't in polish and wasn't even in czech - only default languages. The only unique thing is a manual which is actually in polish. So, it means than polish version of LR probably DOESN'T exist.

That is absolutely bizarre that the same company would translate it for one region it released to (the one with more letters even) but not the other, despite not screwing that up with other games as far as I can tell. Does the Czech come with Polish or anything else on it, or tacked on to the standard 10-language release like Russian is or what?

 

This site says the game was released with full Polish support, but it also says the game came out in 1998 and uses prototype screenshots so idk lmao.

 

(unrelated but if you have the manual does it have anything interesting in it?)

 

2 hours ago, piotr_garschin said:

EDIT: Now it works and doesn't crash. If I only managed to add polish characters... Do you know how Russians added their characters and ow do they display correctly?

I have no idea how to view the font BMP files but the text file contains a lot of gibberish ASCII Latin characters, eg. Imperial Grand Prix "ИМПЕРСКОЕ ГРАН-ПРИ" being represented in the text files as "ÈÌÏÅÐÑÊÎÅ ÃÐÀÍ-ÏÐÈ" - unlike Rock Raiders, which outright uses Russian two-byte ANSI(?) that your computer has to know how to read, which requires special .DLL files to not crash. I know the EXE in Rock Raiders had to be modified for the Russian release to allow for Russian characters (same for Japanese), while other languages just used random characters like % or ^ along with a modified font BMP to display those symbols as something like Ñ or Ø instead (the Hebrew version also did this to an extreme for some reason). Racers, on the other hand... For other Latin-written languages it seems to be exact characters stored, but I don't really know how it stores Russian, just that it's not in real Russian, and it's okay with me using an English keyboard to type Latin characters into driver's licenses despite also supporting Cyrillic (the Japanese version, on the other hand, will crash if I'm not using a Japanese keyboard). Maybe if anyone here knows Russian and can look at the Russian version/demo they can figure it out better?

I guess your best bet would be to look at the Czech version and see how it handled letters, if you can find it or that person on here who has it can help you out? I honestly don't know nearly as much about how Racers handles this stuff as I do with how Rock Raiders does, sorry I can't be more helpful.

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piotr_garschin

Oh, you are very helpful :).  I know russian and I have russian version on my PC (some guy from Russia manage to copy his game and upload it) and demo russian version is on my YT channel (I have a link in my profile description, see below). But I am absolutely noob in programing so maybe you want the link to this full version in russian? I could send you in PM.

 

I searched for the polish patch/mod ("Lego Racers polish patch" is: "Lego racers spolszczenie") and there is not any result. Only few forum posts without replies and some cheaters who wants me to click the link with "LR polish patch" and then it redirects me to the site which requires my phone number, so probably I would pay some money for nothing. In all, it wouldn't be a disaster if I made this mod without polish characters. I can replace typical "polish" words with the synonims which don't contain these signs. And, polish people understand the words without these characters, for example during messaging on Facebook we don't use them in majority, even when it's required. It's just faster and more comfortable. Of course, It would be nice to made this mod in "full" polish but if it's impossible...

 

Czech version would be very hard to get. Maybe only if I searched in czech announcements sites, I'm gonna czech (!!!!) it out later. I have visited Prague two times and maybe someday I will come back there (beautiful city, btw) but it would be a miracle if I found some shop with old PC games and there would be Lego Racers :).

 

I didn't find any unique info in polish manual.

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piotr_garschin

OK, I have done all translation. But still have some problems. It's about "GO!" and "FINISH" lines. I wanted to translate them to: "START!" AND "META" but instead of "START!" (later I tried without "!" but still fail) only "S" appears and instead of "META" appears nothing...

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grappigegovert

That's probably because the in-game HUD uses a different font file which doesn't include the wanted characters.

You might be able to replace the in-game font with the menu font to work around this.
Try deleting IGNUM.bmp and replacing it with a copy of FONT_THS.bmp in the gamedata\common\<lang>\ folder
You will also have to edit LEGOFNTS.FDB with the binary editor to reflect this change.

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piotr_garschin

Do you know which characters are available in these phrases, except letters from GO and FINISH words?

 

I'm gonna use your solution later. Thanks!

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piotr_garschin

I only opened this file in notepad, which, of course, crashes the game, if I edited in it. I saw that in game are used the characters: 123456GOFINSH! Will this binary editor help me open this file and change the characters to these I want (123456STARMEA! - the numer of characters is the same)?

 

EDIT: I replaced the files you told and tried to change GOFINSH letters to STARMEA in hex editor but the game still shows letters from GOFINCH. I place a screen from hex editor below. This file looks the same with and without replacing IGNUM by copy of FONT_THS.

 

e9eslz.png

 

EDIT 2: The only solution from GOFINSH letters for polish language I found are: O instead of GO (3,2,1,0) and FINISH (though in polish this word should be written FINISZ).

 

EDIT3: How to open these BMP files IGNUM and FONT_THS?

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grappigegovert

All of the files with extensions ending with a b (such as legofnts.fdb) can be opened with Will's binary editor:

Normally, you should be able to convert bmp files with 

But as I mentioned, the font files are somewhat special and I believe the bitmap decoder doesn't work on 'em.

For the solution I proposed you won't have to actually open the bmp files though. Just make a copy of FONT_THS.bmp and rename it to IGNUM.bmp.
After that, you need to edit the fdb:

eZidx76.png
Copy the block under font_ths over the block under ignum, so they are the same.
I just tested it myself and it worked (It looked a little funny but that's what you get when replacing fonts).

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piotr_garschin

OK, done, and I finally have "START!" and "META!" but I noticed 2 new problems now:

 

1. START and META words, such as the numbers of places, became smaller than they were (now they have the same size as normal game's font).

28536766_1845347168818467_454177990_n.jp

2. A question mark in "ARE YOU SURE?" ("NA PEWNO?") dissapeared and a strange symbol appears instead.

28512141_1845347202151797_1337800054_n.j

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piotr_garschin

So, I guess that nobody knows how to change it, so I decided to return to the classic IGNUM but not english but german which allows to create FINISZ word. Instead of "GO!" I use just O (3,2,1,O). The effect is pretty nice. Soon I'm gonna record a movie and show the effect of creating the first ever polish Lego Racers version.

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