Improve English text for episode 1 release

[rootslinux]

I mentioned this several months ago to Bertram that there were a number of glaring errors and grammatical mistakes in the English text of the most recent release. I promised to go through and proof read all the text, but I only got part of it finished and then got busy with other things. I'm working on finishing what I started now, making minor changes to the wording and grammar of all text seen in the game. You can see what I've done so far by looking into my master branch. I believe the only thing I have left to go through now are the map files, which I started working on this afternoon.

I believe that every line I change will cause the corresponding line in a translation to be marked as "fuzzy", meaning that they will have to be rechecked. I don't think that the translations will need any updating, but translators should go through their text when this issue is closed.

Bertram: one thing I've left alone is that you seem to be capitalizing a lot of words that I wouldn't expect to. For example, in skill descriptions you have text like: "Deals damage with Fire and Wind elemental". You capitalize every damage/elemental type everywhere. This isn't correct and I wouldn't do it, but I'm not sure if you wanted it this way to emphasize these properties so I left them alone.

[rootslinux]

Also, you use elipses (...) way, way too much. I'm removing some of them because the text is annoying when you have three sets of elipses in a single line of dialogue.

[akien-mga]

I'm not a native English speaker, but I agree that there are IMO too many ellipses in the dialogues. When doing my thorough proofreading of the French translation, I removed a lot of ellipses to achieve a more natural feel. Same thing for the capitalised words, IIRC I tried to avoid capitalising things that do not require it for emphasis (plus it's way less common to capitalise words in French than in English, at least than in US English).

[rootslinux]

Glad that you agree with me. I was conflicted about the capitalization of Fenrir today (the wolf boss) because Fenrir is a proper name from a character in mythology, but the game seems to be trying to use the word as if it were a type of creature. I left it capitalized, but if it were my game I would have always used the term in lower case. I'm being conservative with my changes so whenever there's a word or piece of text I'm unsure about, I leave it unchanged.

[Bertram25]

Hey :)

@rootslinux You can remove ellipse and overcapitalization as you see fit. Some of the text there was done, redone, and re-re-re-done with sometimes tired brains and this is the only viable excuse I can see for it. I'll deal with updating the translations afterwards.

[rootslinux]

Okay, great. I think I only have one set of maps left to do (Mt Elbrus). Then I'm going to put the text through one more pass of corrections and send you the pull request.

None of the changes I am making add or remove lines of dialogue or text anywhere. I did this because A) it would require additional testing, and B) I wanted only to improve the original text, not rewrite it. There were only a couple places in certain scenes where I felt like it might be nice to remove a line or two, but its nothing major.

Going to try to wrap this work up before Monday. Should be ready by the end of next weekend at the latest.

[rootslinux]

Sent the pull request. Tips for writing further content in the future:

• Don't overuse punctuation characters like "!!!" and "??". One mark is sufficient. Having lines with various numbers of exclamations or question marks does not improve the communication of the text. Save this type of usage for extreme circumstances, or to emphasize further emotion. For example: "Orlinn! No!!!" or "My father's alive? What???"
• Please, for the love of all that is holy, take it easy on your use of ellipses. This was by far the most aggravating thing to read when I was playing through the last release, and also took a lot of work to fix. Use commas in the middle of a sentence to indicate a pause instead of "...". Ellipses should be used for things like interruptions or otherwise terminating a sentence prematurely. They can also be used to indicate trouble speaking (such as during the laughing attack scene in the shine).
• Don't capitalize words just because they're kind of important. Saw things like "inflicts Fire damage" and "Chosen One" everywhere. Proper nouns are capitalized. Furthermore, I uncapitalized the word "Goddess" most places because it is not (it seems) a pronoun, but rather a noun. In English, we use "god" to refer to a god, and "God" is the name of the Christian god, so we capitalize god in that case since it is a name. (I know, English is a mess).

Those things considered, everything else was pretty good. There were a few grammar errors here and there that were easy to fix. I feel like this will really improve the enjoyment of players in the future release since dialog is such an important part of a good RPG. And it will also make me feel better about being listed as the English proof editor in the credits. :)

[Bertram25]

Hey,

Don't overuse punctuation characters like "!!!" and "??" Please, for the love of all that is holy, take it easy on your use of ellipses. Don't capitalize words just because they're kind of important

Thanks for being frank here. XD I'll take care of that in the future. I'll also make sure my texts pass through those three pieces of advice before pushing.

(I know, English is a mess)

Really? Try French. ;) But yeah, it's a language full of little funny surprises.

And it will also make me feel better about being listed as the English proof editor in the credits. :)

And I'm happy you did the final touch, especially as the original project founder. :)

[Bertram25]

Done now #423 is rebased and merged. :)