Tenians Language Chat Extension for select FG 3.0 rulesets

[Trenloe]

Running a C&C game last night - one of the players reported getting error messages after each language message he received. The other 3 players reported no problems. Here's what he was seeing in chat:

It looks like for some reason his FG instance didn't get the language resourced downloaded properly...

I'd say get the player to "clear player data cache" (use the "nuclear" button in top right on the "Join Game" screen) as it looks like a portion of the extension hasn't loaded properly.

[Trenloe]

Thanks for the extension, I'll check the additions out...

One thing I wondered was whether it would be possible for the /listlanguage command to also list the unmodified language-to-font assignments (or for another command to do so)?

I had thought about this, but it would have to be hard coded, e.g. "dwarven = dwarven", as it is essentially a list of all of the fonts in the extension and I don't think there is a way of programatically finding a font name that is valid - especially one specific to an extension.

I'll look to add the default languages as hard coded to the /listlanguage command. This would then rely on anyone who added additional fonts to a custom extension to amend the hard coded list as necessary.

[Callum]

Ah, yes, I see. I'd been thinking there might be some way to do it programmatically, but if there isn't, it may not be worth adding a hard-coded list.

[Nickademus]

Running a C&C game last night - one of the players reported getting error messages after each language message he received. The other 3 players reported no problems. Here's what he was seeing in chat:

I had this happen to a fellow player in our Saturday game. We tracked it down to the use of a parenthesis in the text header to the left of the typed text. It would happen each time I used the /mood command.

The first time it affected one player but the next week it affected a different player and the first no longer had the issue. Clearing the cache didn't help since both players had to do so to fix other problems. We assumed it was the use of the 2.9.x language extension that was doing it and the GM turned it off. The game stopped before we could continue testing though.

[Trenloe]

I had this happen to a fellow player in our Saturday game. We tracked it down to the use of a parenthesis in the text header to the left of the typed text. It would happen each time I used the /mood command.

Thanks for the pointer, I'm unable to recreate - could you provide some more info on this please? i.e. steps/mood commands used, etc..

Thanks.

[Trenloe]

It looks like for some reason his FG instance didn't get the language resourced downloaded properly... thus I assume this is a FG app bug of some kind. Still, I figured I should post about it.

Reply #2:

I've looked into this more - and even if there was a problem with the "special message text" due to some other chat functionality this shouldn't stop the chat being displayed in the correct font, as this is not part of the special message handler - it is purely the GM side pushing chat in a specified font. Because the language font in the screenshot showing the issue is just the standard font - this is looking very much like this specific player's FG didn't download the extension correctly (as you supposed above), so it didn't have the available language fonts. If the player's console was open (type /console in the chat window) they would have seen a warning along the lines of "unable to load font elven".

dr_v - How have you configured the "elvish" and "orcish"fonts? The name for these fonts by default in the extension is "elven" and "orc", so I'm curious if you've used the new /setlanguage functionality or modified the extension directly?

If you used the /setlanguage functionality and if this issue occurs again please get the player to log out, clear their data cache and log back in and see if the same issue occurs, hopefully they will have downloaded the extension resources properly next time.

If you have modified the extension directly what changes have you made?

[Trenloe]

As I can't attach any files to PMs, and I can't attach lua files to here, I've attached my whole ext file. The main difference in the script is adding a new understandsLanguage function, and then calling that instead of speaksLanguage when looking to translate, and checking for "tongues" and "comprehend languages" among the list of languages at the appropriate places.

Thanks for that - I like the differentiation between speaks and understands, and the addition of tongues and comprehend languages.

I like the 3 new fonts too!

I noticed, like you I guess, that some fonts didn't have changed numbers; I hadn't spotted the problem with capitals.

I've been thinking about the random character addition, perhaps over thinking? I think you're right that what I originally did made things longer than usual in my first attempt at the code. I may re-visit and add/subtract a few characters based on the length of the original word, so this could help to keep the length down on average. Perhaps something like words of 3 or less just have 0-2 characters added, words of 4-6 characters have between -2 and +2 characters, words over 6 have between -3 and +3 characters - this would result in the total sentence on statistical average being slightly longer (based off 3 character or less words being 1 character longer on average), but the longer words would have a statistical net length change of 0.

I don't think I'll do a new release until the issues dr_venture and Nickademus have mentioned are checked and have a fix (if a fix in the extension is the right place).

Thanks for the ideas and the code - I'll definitely combine these into the next release...

[Blackfoot]

As I can't attach any files to PMs, and I can't attach lua files to here, I've attached my whole ext file. The main difference in the script is adding a new understandsLanguage function, and then calling that instead of speaksLanguage when looking to translate, and checking for "tongues" and "comprehend languages" among the list of languages at the appropriate places.

One thing I wondered was whether it would be possible for the /listlanguages command to also list the unmodified language-to-font assignments (or for another command to do so)?

Checking for 'Tongues' and 'Comprehend Languages'? Does this look for spell effects on the character? That seems like it would be cool.

[Trenloe]

Checking for 'Tongues' and 'Comprehend Languages'? Does this look for spell effects on the character? That seems like it would be cool.

It checks languages of that name.

Only an hour ago I added "effects" to the development list in post #2, as I thought an effect with a duration would be good to cover spells etc..

[dr_venture]

Reply #2:

dr_v - How have you configured the "elvish" and "orcish"fonts? The name for these fonts by default in the extension is "elven" and "orc", so I'm curious if you've used the new /setlanguage functionality or modified the extension directly?

I directly edited the extension.xml file to have all of the languages (and spellings) represented - the elvish and orcish entries are thus:

<font name="elvish">
<fgffile name="fonts/dnd4eelvish-regular-14.fgf" />
<color value="#000000" />
</font>
<font name="orcish">
<fgffile name="fonts/dnd4edwarvish-bold-14.fgf" />
<color value="#000000" />
</font>

I assume the entries are correct, as everything is just copied-pasted from other entries... or in the case of Elvish, I just changed that entry's spelling.

I haven't even looked at the /setlanguage command - which I will do now