Template-based History Strings

[s0600204]

Hello modders!

After some deliberation and discussion, we are planning to (temporarily) purge all History Strings from all templates in vanilla 0AD.

These can be found in the xml files in the folder simulation/templates/ between the tags <History></History>.

What won't be touched:

• The simulation/data/civs/*.json files. (For now...)
• Anything else in the template xml files.
• The technology files.
• The aura files.

The reason we have decided to take this action is simple:

• The History Strings are not currently shown or used in any capacity in game.
• We wish to show them in game (specifically, using D297).
• But, they first need to be translated.
• There are a couple hundred of them.

Adding this many strings to transifex in one go is unfair to translators. We also have to check the strings to make sure they are okay (make sense, well spelt, grammatically accurate, historically accurate, etc). Thus, many of the strings will end up changed or removed, making much of the initial translation efforts pointless.

So the plan is:

1. Dump them,
2. Remove them, 
3. Review them,
4. Add them back, in batches, over a number of months (so as to not stress our lovely translators).

Why are we telling you this?

• This is a big change.
• Some of the mods you maintain contain history strings.
• You might want to check that they are okay as, if everything goes to plan, by the next release they will be visible to your players.
• Also, we may be looking into changing how History Strings (and historical content in general) are stored.

If you have any concerns or queries, post below.

Thank you for your attention.

(And it probably won't happen until next week at earliest.)

[fatherbushido]

If ever you need the patch for deleting them (r19943).

history_delete.diff

And a rough backup (ack output)

history_dump.txt

 

[Stan`]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone @niektb

Might be interesting to check how much breaking that will imply.

[fatherbushido]

(By the way,

- in technologies json files, we have description (currently it's mainly a global description of the tech) and tooltip (which describe effect).

- in auras json files, we only have auraDescription which at first only contained effect (as information about the related/source entity could be in the xml), but also in some cases (for example for catafalques) some history description.

While at it, one can perhaps fix/precise the design of those things - mainly from the gui point of view.)

[s0600204]

On 03/08/2017 at 0:35 PM, fatherbushido said:

(By the way, [...] point of view.)

The tech description and tooltip attributes, as well as the aura auraDescription attribute, are currently translated, so we're not touching those at this time.

Admittedly, it's true that the contents of the description attribute are not currently visible inside 0AD (the viewer will change that), and you're right, they should be checked and standardised at some point. (Also, I'd like to find out why auraDescription was named auraDescription, and not simply description. Or tooltip as that's what it's used as...) That can come later.

[s0600204]

On 03/08/2017 at 11:20 AM, stanislas69 said:

Might be interesting to check how much breaking that will imply.

Well, it shouldn't cause breakages, but if it does, we'll soon know: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/19960

And thanks to @fatherbushido for the patch