To people who create language packs....

[xbenjaminx]

Hey everyone,

I have asked this before and got completely ignored. I went through technical support and they told me to post here where I also got ignored so I am going to try my luck again.

Long story short, I am autistic (not sure if this is relevant) so my attention to detail is somewhat obsessive and I also have an interest in languages. Unfortunately looking through the language database the families, groups and subgroups are horribly wrong as so many groupings are missing. I would like to be able to correct some of the groupings such as getting rid of the underscore in atlantic_congo and correcting the rest of the database. Through my own research I have information for over a thousand languages to go into the game and that's only from three continents.

So my question is: Is there a way to edit or change the families, groups and subgroups of languages?

[Wolf_pd]

As it was logged as a bug, not many editors will have seen it.

With regards to the languages, using the editor as is, it is not possible to edit families, groups and subgroups. The information for those items is not editable. I am not sure if there is a way to access and thus edit those items).

[Wolf_pd]

Also, considering this is a question and not a download, i have moved this and the regions thread you posted to the main Editors page.

[xbenjaminx]

Thanks Wolf. The closest I got to it was finding the entries in amongst the comp_editor.fmf file. I was able to add an entry to the language family, and even select the entry in the editor, but the other fields came up blank or not at all. Not to criticise SI, but it feels like the languages were done in such a half assed manner.

[Wolf_pd]

4 hours ago, xbenjaminx said:

Thanks Wolf. The closest I got to it was finding the entries in amongst the comp_editor.fmf file. I was able to add an entry to the language family, and even select the entry in the editor, but the other fields came up blank or not at all. Not to criticise SI, but it feels like the languages were done in such a half assed manner.

You might want to consider rephrasing that last sentence.

The way they have been done is limited, true.

There are a few reasons for that. One being that adding every language to the game is a massive amount of work, while the amount of speakers can sometimes can be counted in the 100s of people speaking the language. This means the work of adding the language outweighs the impact of adding the language by a mile. I mean, do you want SI to add every language on Papua New Guinea (more than 500) when there are only 305 Papua New Guinea persons in the database?

[xbenjaminx]

I'm not even talking about adding every language to the game. I get that obviously time constraints, data constraints and even space constraints within the database itself would make adding every possible language to the game impossible. There are over 7000 spoken languages in the world that we know of, not to mention hundreds of sign languages on top of that as well so it would be a monumental task compiling that data and also deciding on a criteria to decide if a language is relevant or not. 

I suppose half assed might be a little harsh but there are plenty of obvious errors throughout the database. Giving us the ability to amend things like this would either allow for people like myself, who have the time (and interest) in doing something like this to make the necessary corrections and/or additions. Modding is a big and important part of this game, so the entire community could benefit from it. The same can be said for regions and stuff which we are discussing in the other post (yet to read). I think if we had more freedom and flexibility over things, and admittedly there is already a lot, but it would give us the ability to shape the game the way we want to shape it. This might bring up some issues for online games, but there are workarounds for that too.

I don't mean to cause offense with my words, but unfortunately I'm not always as diplomatic as I would like to be. I guess what I am saying is, as good as Football Manager is, as powerful as the editor is. it's still a long way from reaching it's full potential. 

[Wolf_pd]

41 minutes ago, xbenjaminx said:

I'm not even talking about adding every language to the game. I get that obviously time constraints, data constraints and even space constraints within the database itself would make adding every possible language to the game impossible. There are over 7000 spoken languages in the world that we know of, not to mention hundreds of sign languages on top of that as well so it would be a monumental task compiling that data and also deciding on a criteria to decide if a language is relevant or not. 

I suppose half assed might be a little harsh but there are plenty of obvious errors throughout the database. Giving us the ability to amend things like this would either allow for people like myself, who have the time (and interest) in doing something like this to make the necessary corrections and/or additions. Modding is a big and important part of this game, so the entire community could benefit from it. The same can be said for regions and stuff which we are discussing in the other post (yet to read). I think if we had more freedom and flexibility over things, and admittedly there is already a lot, but it would give us the ability to shape the game the way we want to shape it. This might bring up some issues for online games, but there are workarounds for that too.

With regard to the obvious errors, feel free to log those. I understand you want to fix them yourselves, but bugs are always helpful. Just know that if you log a bug right now, it will take a while before it is picked, being the quiet season at the moment.

With regards to more freedom in the editor, if I knew a way to open things, I would do so. I have a wishlist that can keep SI occupied to the end of days

[xbenjaminx]

At this stage I am pretty sure we all have a wish list of things we would want, and I have only been diving into this game for about two months. To be honest the way I look at it at the moment is with the new release coming out in November time, there's not a lot of point in fixing those errors just now.

[Wolf_pd]

23 hours ago, xbenjaminx said:

At this stage I am pretty sure we all have a wish list of things we would want, and I have only been diving into this game for about two months. To be honest the way I look at it at the moment is with the new release coming out in November time, there's not a lot of point in fixing those errors just now.

It depends. If you are running into database errors, it is always worth pointing them out to the researchers.
If you want to fix them yourself in FM23, true, then waiting for FM24 will be the better option.

[xbenjaminx]

True. I'll keep  it in mind and I appreciate you getting back to me on this subject.

[Jorgen]

Perhaps the realism mod does a bit what you want to do with the db. The creator made a lot of changes to regions and languages. Perhaps not as much as you like, but it is a start 

 

[xbenjaminx]

On 23/08/2023 at 20:19, Jorgen said:

Perhaps the realism mod does a bit what you want to do with the db. The creator made a lot of changes to regions and languages. Perhaps not as much as you like, but it is a start 

 

I already have this mod and you're right it's a good place to start. I also have Nik33's language pack so I plan on diving into both and seeing what changes they've made if any, to the fields I want to change and hopefully figuring out how they've done it.