Tex Murphy: Mean Streets text question?

[Threepwang]

Hi,

I have a problem with the Mean Streets game that I want to translate into French. There is already an official translation from the time but very imprecise and I love this game that I have already finished several times and that is the reason why I want to offer it a good translation today. A few years ago, a programmer made me tools to extract the resources from the game and thus be able to translate them easily. I also translated all the images in Photoshop. Thanks to the import / export tool, I was able to translate the whole game except for a single MS.EXE file. This includes the verbs, description after interaction and the words recognized by the game, as much to say that without translating it, everything that I have translated is useless. As it stands, my concern is that I have to replace a word or a description with exactly the same number of letters, which is not possible since French is a longer language than English. For example, I cannot translate the word PUT, there is no equivalent in French, in 3 letters and above all, that requires a synthesis impossible to produce and much less precise. The programmer who helped me at the time no longer gives any sign of life and I do not have the skills to find the solution on my own.

"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope."

[LokiReborn]

Hi,

I have a problem with the Mean Streets game that I want to translate into French. There is already an official translation from the time but very imprecise and I love this game that I have already finished several times and that is the reason why I want to offer it a good translation today. A few years ago, a programmer made me tools to extract the resources from the game and thus be able to translate them easily. I also translated all the images in Photoshop. Thanks to the import / export tool, I was able to translate the whole game except for a single MS.EXE file. This includes the verbs, description after interaction and the words recognized by the game, as much to say that without translating it, everything that I have translated is useless. As it stands, my concern is that I have to replace a word or a description with exactly the same number of letters, which is not possible since French is a longer language than English. For example, I cannot translate the word PUT, there is no equivalent in French, in 3 letters and above all, that requires a synthesis impossible to produce and much less precise. The programmer who helped me at the time no longer gives any sign of life and I do not have the skills to find the solution on my own.

"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope."

It's potentially possible to do. There are really 2 factors. First, are the existing strings unicode or utf-8? I say that because if not stuff like accents etc. might not work. As for actually updating the stuff in the EXE itself you could either use code caves (sections of the exe / data that aren't used) or you could add another section onto the exe and just do it there. In either case though you'd need to find the table / pointer to the original string and update it so it reads the new location. As you're asking for advice I'm guessing you don't know how to do this so any additional assistance would really require you sharing the files in question.

[Threepwang]

It's potentially possible to do. There are really 2 factors. First, are the existing strings unicode or utf-8? I say that because if not stuff like accents etc. might not work. As for actually updating the stuff in the EXE itself you could either use code caves (sections of the exe / data that aren't used) or you could add another section onto the exe and just do it there. In either case though you'd need to find the table / pointer to the original string and update it so it reads the new location. As you're asking for advice I'm guessing you don't know how to do this so any additional assistance would really require you sharing the files in question.

Hi LokiReborn,
Your help is greatly appreciated.

The game, the fr beta patch and the problematic MS.exe file:
https://www29.zippyshare.com/v/YePTiGVP/file.html
https://www29.zippyshare.com/v/88IDpLw6/file.html
https://www29.zippyshare.com/v/j7QFLodL/file.html
The French version Atari is in capital letters, without accented letters. I did the same. In fact it's a fully corrected port of the Atari ST translation. So there is no need to worry about unicode or utf-8 strings. For the rest of your explanations, that is way beyond my skills. It's painful because the game is 98% translated. I ears wide open for continued...

[LokiReborn]

Hi LokiReborn,
Your help is greatly appreciated.

The French version Atari is in capital letters, without accented letters. I did the same. In fact it's a fully corrected port of the Atari ST translation. So there is no need to worry about unicode or utf-8 strings. For the rest of your explanations, that is way beyond my skills. It's painful because the game is 98% translated. I ears wide open for continued...

So good new and bad news, the good news is it's still probably doable, the bad news is I didn't realize this was a dos game. I can't honestly remember if I've ever really edited a dos executable before, and I don't have the tools installed to do it easily for sure I'll need to spin up a VM to try it on since they aren't supported on newer (I know you can run it in like a DOS emulators but that won't help with editing it)
The only other concern is I feel like I might not be able to add a new resource section as with dos the amount of allocated memory for the apps is a lot less so there might be some restrictions but until I get an environment going to test I won't know for sure what we have to work with (it's been to long)

The only other potential problem I see looking at the exe quick is some niche stuff. For example I saw part of it where it seems to pick a random value from a list in the / a manual ?
I think the exact example was like
Enter the ___ word from the __ page of the manual
The first part is a fixed length 3 character entry it uses "1st2nd3rd4th5th6th7th8th9th" as the string table for that, so if there isn't something similar in French the you'd probably need to updated the code to + strings so you can do have it work, for the example i'm sure it's like "1re 2e 3e 4e 5e 6e 7e 8e 9e" that could be used using the space to pad but you get the general point I'm sure.


You can add me on discord will be easier to go back and forth on stuff LokiReborn#4170

[Threepwang]

So good new and bad news, the good news is it's still probably doable, the bad news is I didn't realize this was a dos game. I can't honestly remember if I've ever really edited a dos executable before, and I don't have the tools installed to do it easily for sure I'll need to spin up a VM to try it on since they aren't supported on newer (I know you can run it in like a DOS emulators but that won't help with editing it)
The only other concern is I feel like I might not be able to add a new resource section as with dos the amount of allocated memory for the apps is a lot less so there might be some restrictions but until I get an environment going to test I won't know for sure what we have to work with (it's been to long)

The only other potential problem I see looking at the exe quick is some niche stuff. For example I saw part of it where it seems to pick a random value from a list in the / a manual ?
I think the exact example was like
Enter the ___ word from the __ page of the manual
The first part is a fixed length 3 character entry it uses "1st2nd3rd4th5th6th7th8th9th" as the string table for that, so if there isn't something similar in French the you'd probably need to updated the code to + strings so you can do have it work, for the example i'm sure it's like "1re 2e 3e 4e 5e 6e 7e 8e 9e" that could be used using the space to pad but you get the general point I'm sure.


You can add me on discord will be easier to go back and forth on stuff LokiReborn#4170

Hi LokiReborn,

I apologize for this late response, I had some impediments.

There is no copy protection in the PC version.
It is only on the Amiga version and Atari ST that the protection is activated.
In any case I did not have this problem.

This is the Dorian Gray program that I used to import and export
images and texts, maybe we can use that to modify MS.EXE?
https://www113.zippyshare.com/v/DpwG8LhZ/file.html

I am located in China and I do not have access to Discord or others.
But, If you want, I can send you my email by PM?

Thank you again for your help !

[LokiReborn]

This is the Dorian Gray program that I used to import and export
images and texts, maybe we can use that to modify MS.EXE?
https://www113.zippyshare.com/v/DpwG8LhZ/file.html

I am located in China and I do not have access to Discord or others.
But, If you want, I can send you my email by PM?

Thank you again for your help !

MS.exe isn't data it's an actual win16 program (Dos application) this is the program executable code and the text is part of the program, so you're actually modifying the program and making sure it all works. Sadly Win16 doesn't have PE so some of my original suggestions don't work either. Honestly I've never tried to modify a 16-bit program before. If you were patching a no cd check or something it wouldn't be too bad but editing the text is a bit more complicated and I'm not sure I'm familiar enough with the paging etc. to be able to do it.

[Blood]

Hi,

I'm Blood, i'm the author or the beggining of Mean Streets translation and work with Threepwang, he ask me to go here.

Thank you for all your advices and suggestions, i understand it's not easy way to translate text in Win16 file but what can we do ? It's worst than a protection to have put together txt and programm code in the same file

All i can do is translate and i really don't know how to modify win16 file without corrupt the file and the game in the same way...

Tell me if you have idea to do that.

Thanks

[Threepwang]

MS.exe isn't data it's an actual win16 program (Dos application) this is the program executable code and the text is part of the program, so you're actually modifying the program and making sure it all works. Sadly Win16 doesn't have PE so some of my original suggestions don't work either. Honestly I've never tried to modify a 16-bit program before. If you were patching a no cd check or something it wouldn't be too bad but editing the text is a bit more complicated and I'm not sure I'm familiar enough with the paging etc. to be able to do it.

Hi LokiReborn !

(My friend Blood came as a backup, this project is actually his.)

You hit the mark! Translating the text in the *.exe file without altering the program is precisely our problem.
If we can solve it then we can finish the translation.
But how to do it ? That is the question...