Translation for LBA2 documentary

[Lupin]

So here it is, I'm on the subtitles now...
If there are English mistakes, let me know!
I think the previous translator didn't quite understand some parts, or mis-translated. I might myself have made some nonsenses but on the whole, I didn't invent things that were not said, didn't distort any bits, and I made some investigations to solve some mysteries because some parts are really hard to understand even though French's my mother tongue. I think it's important for you to know of Frederic Taquet mentioning the software Softimage and his mates Merlin Pradot, Ludovic Rubin and Benoît Boucher ("Merlin, Ludo et Ben"), as well as Didier Chanfray.
'Nx' (Nexgen processors) instead of Unix is less important as a detail, but I think it might sound interesting to some of you to know what processors they coded routines for.
Some figures were false too...
Anyway, here is the thing:

FREDRICK RAYNAL – Creative boss

There is a lot more dialog in LBA2 - the story is much more 'twisted'.
LBA1's story was relatively simple, so there's now more story - but there's also more action because we doubled the surface, but the game is only slightly bigger. This way, you may be kicking around a bit more, but above all there's a better repartition of things.
In LBA1, you had to fight every time to progress, now it's more: “I'm outdoors - I'm going somewhere” and when you go inside more things happen.

I think we have adjusted the progression, with some moments a little more thrill-less, fights, and more reflection, etc.

Outdoors we were giving you space to run around, but indoors you got hurt when you ran into the walls. The players didn't like that at all. Now you can run everywhere and slip on everything, so it's less realistic, but it makes the game much more playable. As a result, in the same state of mind, we added something. Normally, that's when you selected 'Normal' behavior that you can search cans, find coins, talk, do things like that... Now, as we decided you can effectively stay in 'Sporty' mode without being hurt, we added a key to do the 'Normal' action - talk, search, etc - while using any behavior.

Something we also improved is the holomap. The holomap permits you to see the planet – that is the same planet as in LBA1: Twinsun, and you had arrows, because each time you learn something important to the story, an arrow points the place where you're supposed to go, and so we added a new layer to the map, where you see the precise island you are on. So, I'm in Twinsen's house here, and I already have something to do there, at the Pharmacy, because in the story, the Dino-Fly crashed himself down, so you have to find something to cure him, but that's just the pretext to introduce all the disasters that will happen afterwards.
So this is made to make the players life easier, because the world is big, and we didn't want him to spend all his time searching for where to go - so this way is more direct.

So, this is the tool to edit all the places you go through. If you want an idea of the number of polygons - well I don't know about the houses, but there's between 100 and 400 polygons for all the objects here, and if you just count the grounds, they represent an amount of polygons (...)

The program checks on which processors it runs. It checks if it's a Pentium, a Nx, a Cyrix, etc, and according to the processor, the program jumps to the routines best adapted to the computer. We will certainly try to make a 3dfx version, for future use, but it won't be ready for the program's release...

SEBASTIEN VIANNY - Main programmer

In fact, this is the coding tool, which is made to give life to all the data, all the resources brought in by the artists, the musician, scenarist, etc. So the coders use this tool. Once the maps are built, once all the sets are ready, the coders can integrate a character into the scene, using the mouse, by a double click at the place where they want to create the object. So here I'm going to (...), here it is, I've placed a character in the scene, then, this character can be programmed.

Each character has two phases of coding, one to edit all his trajectories, movements, so we create some flags. We create some flags like this, and so he moves from one flag to the next. So this is the 'moving' section, and there is also an 'events' section where we code his reactions to events. If Twinsen tries to talk to him, what will he answer ? If he tries to hit him, how will he react to Twinsen's aggressiveness, etc, etc.

For example, a character, a 'warrior' will have the job of guarding a door, and Twinsen will for instance kick another guard, and the one that has been kicked can say "Watch out! Someone's here! Come and help me!", so he will be appointed a new job and run toward the hero and try to hit him too, and then he will think “Now the hero is too far, I'm going back to guarding the door!”.

The hero is programmed too, for each scene, to know which 'events' are set there. He can know at anytime what's his position in the zone, and according to this, behave differently. For example, if I go near this object, I mean, this point, and if I have the right object in the inventory, he will go here and open a door. All those things are programmed in the hero's life where he is told: "If you are in front of this zone and you chose this object in the inventory, then open the door".

ARNAUD LHOMME – 3D modeler and animator

So this is a tool that allows to build characters with 530 polygons, which is a reasonable number to make fluid animations.
Once we've sculpted the character, we have to animate it. We can set the position of each joint and sub-joint, to build the anim, and each time it refers to the 'keys'. You can see here the number of key positions that have been drawn, for example there are 6 key positions for this anim - well, I have sort of ruined the first one - but when I play the animation, the engine creates much more frames because between each key frame there are a lot of interpolated frames.

FREDERIC TAQUET – Senior artist

In the first place, Didier Chanfray explains his ideas, lets us participate in the storyboard elaboration, on technical things too, because we have to know if what we want to do can be done with Softimage. We can almost do everything, because Softimage is quite a powerful software, though we have some production orders, we have to make it in time, so we try to do as many things as we can with as many effects as possible while keeping the whole thing coherent (artistically speaking). A huge amount of time is needed for calculations and preparation, for example, I've been working on (??) for 6 months, and sometimes I additionally prepare some databases or some technical things that Merlin (PARDO), Ludo (Ludovic RUBIN), or Ben (Benoît BOUCHER) can't do and I bring them Softimage's easiness to model to produce some objects. In fact it's a whole. It's truly a team work!

PHILIPPE VACHEY - Musician

In fact, I kept in the same state of mind on LBA2 as I was on LBA1. For example I chose it to sound very orchestral. The difficulty in a video game as opposed to a movie, when you watch a movie the music fits exactly the take you're watching. The main difficulty is to achieve a music which is dynamic and progressive enough to make the player stand the repetition. Because when you play you usually go through the same level a certain amount of time. So, obviously it has to be as consistent as possible.
The creation and composition side is made here in Lyon, and the final artistic production is made in Delphine's Studios in Paris.

Oh, and by the way, the video is often cut, and I'm sure they said many more things than what can be seen in the video, I wish we could get the full content of the video. I know someone suggested that before, but my point is, I could ask Fred if he knows something about this... I hope he does.

[Quetch]

WOW THAT'S GREAT !!!! thanks a bunch link btw: does anyone know where Fred lives right now ??? In France, but where ???

[elmuerte]

can you make an srt or at least a timestamped file that I can upload to google video and updating this video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...63451326806484

info about Google Video CC: http://video.google.com/support/bin/...er=26577&hl=en

[Lupin]

That's what I'm doing precisely now (improving the translation a little too). I'm making an srt.

[Quetch]

Fred .... France .... where exactly ?

[morshem]

Lyon?

[Lupin]

Axx may know... I think it's Lyon.

[Streg]

yeah i think so too

[Quetch]

I'm asking this cause my mom's in france for a whole month and maybe she could meet with Fred and ask him stuff I know it's a wacky idea but wtf

[Lupin]

Do you know how many LBA fans live in France ?

[LBAWinOwns]

2, you and vulture, or maybe that ellimac/elliptic too. (how the hell can anyone separate those XD, all I remember elliptic = evil)

[Streg]

I actually found a lot of french sites discussing about lbas (even in subforums)...

[Lupin]

Yeah, there are many French guys who love LBA (or loved) and don't know enough English to browse the MBN. My 2 brothers for example. There were once more French members on the MagicBall. Are ellimac/elliptic the same person ? I'm not sure. I know ellimac from real life and she's not exactly evil...
Anyway, here is the srt, with quite many changes after all. I didn't think I would spend the whole evening on it, now I'm exhausted and I've still got to clean my apartment . Damn it! I changed the ".srt" to ".srt.txt" to be able to upload it here.

Enjoy!!!

[Kobold]

I don't think that ellimac and elliptic are the same person, it's just that LBAWinOwns confuses them.

[ChaosFish]

Originally Posted by LBAWinOwns

all I remember elliptic = evil

[Battler]

Elliptic is from the U.K., while Ellimac is from France. Elliptic is evil, Ellimac is good.

[morshem]

There were once many other Frenchies here, don't know what happened to them.

[StraToN]

Well, just to answer you, I am French too but I didn't post since... <put a date here>. I'll try to come some more, but currently time is something I really need...

Link > Excellent work on improving my translation, it is more close than mine ^^.

[Lupin]

Originally Posted by StraToN

Well, just to answer you, I am French too but I didn't post since... <put a date here>. I'll try to come some more, but currently time is something I really need...

Yeah, I understand so much.

I think your English is better than mine, thought there were some details I caught after watching it several times and I wanted to share them, especially the names quoted by Frederick Taquet. And I couldn't help changing a few things.

[elmuerte]

updated the videos with the new subtitles

[morshem]

Don't forget to also update the one on the site, if you haven't yet .

[Kobold]

You are posting really beautiful landscape images there, but I don't think there's need for them.

[elmuerte]

Originally Posted by morshem

Don't forget to also update the one on the site, if you haven't yet .

already did.


What are you trying to do Sinars?

[StraToN]

Originally Posted by Link

I think your English is better than mine, thought there were some details I caught after watching it several times and I wanted to share them, especially the names quoted by Frederick Taquet. And I couldn't help changing a few things.

You're right about the names Frederic Taquet quoted. In fact I cut them off because I just didn't understand what he was saying. Sound isn't really good in this video, especially in this part.

Anyway, even if you think my English's better than yours (what I absolutely don't think so ), it remains a great way to learn and improve your skills, by translating, watching VO movies, listening and most of all, speaking. That'd be such a great thing to organize world-sized events like, uh, "Little Big Meeting".

Whatever, improving those subtitle to make them even more accurate is the best we all can do. It is just fair that French people understanding things can make other people understand.