Thank you, questions and feedback

[Bartleby]

Hello,
first i want to say thank you for that game. great someone ist doing this . freeorion looks already quite good.

some questions:
1. why are @gmx.de and @gmx.net emails not allowed to register in the forum? gmx is quite populare here in germany :/.
2. does some1 know whats the difference btw. the languagefile ger and de?
3. if i want to help with the translation. do i just edit the string with an editor like mousepad and post the result to the forum?
4. how is construction calculated? has something to do with mining and industry i guess, but not sure how. really hard to understand how the game works at begin.

yesterday i installed freeorion on xubtuntu 11.04 and version v0.3.15. works good until now. some featurerequests .
- the first 200 turns are REALLY boring. cant say it an other way. i saw that you will chaneg the cost of the colony-ship. thats a good direction. maybe the player could also get a bonus of +2 to all resources with building the imperial palace?
- a +10 turns button would be great.
- the productionscreen is not easy. if u have more than 10 planets the buildorder is hard to see. would be better if you could first choose a planet and than see, what it builds.
- there is no chance to see what u have already build, or?
- u dont see that u need mining (resources) if there is no "-15.20" (negative value). it took me quite long to understand why my production is so slow .
- researchprice is "10*5" or 500*1" or "20*25"... hard to see what is cheap to build first. for me one number would be easier.
- the researchdiscription does often not really help. u dont know what does the tech or the techbuilding. something like: - gives 10% production would be great .
- why do u need to focus on one thing as a planet. would be nice to choose: make all resources, but all just 15%. instead of 100% food...
- where is the button "back to menu and save or load"?
- option to autosave over the old save.
- techtree: option to the list where u can say: just show techs with less than 1000points needed.

well... sry. i know its all under development and i was not testing the newest version, but well... mainly i wanted to say: great work .

[eleazar]

Hello,
first i want to say thank you for that game. great someone ist doing this . freeorion looks already quite good.

Thank you! and welcome to FreeOrion.

1. why are @gmx.de and @gmx.net emails not allowed to register in the forum? gmx is quite populare here in germany :/.

Probably we were getting spam from them.

2. does some1 know whats the difference btw. the languagefile ger and de?

I don't know, somebody probably wanted to translate in a different style.

3. if i want to help with the translation. do i just edit the string with an editor like mousepad and post the result to the forum?

Here's the translation instruction page: http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/Languages
I think all the translations are pretty far behind on the new strings added since 3.16.

4. how is construction calculated? has something to do with mining and industry i guess, but not sure how. really hard to understand how the game works at begin.

There's a quick-play guide, which may be out of date in some areas, but is a good place to start.
http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/V0.4 ... Play_Guide

yesterday i installed freeorion on xubtuntu 11.04 and version v0.3.15. works good until now. some featurerequests .
- the first 200 turns are REALLY boring. cant say it an other way. i saw that you will chaneg the cost of the colony-ship. thats a good direction. maybe the player could also get a bonus of +2 to all resources with building the imperial palace?
- a +10 turns button would be great.
well... sry. i know its all under development and i was not testing the newest version, but well... mainly i wanted to say: great work .

There are a lot of changes and tweaks, especially in SVN since 3.16 to make the opening of the game more fun and much more active. There's probably more that needs to be done, but you should have much less desire for a +10 turn button.

- where is the button "back to menu and save or load"?

"Options" in the upper right.

[Geoff the Medio]

1. why are @gmx.de and @gmx.net emails not allowed to register in the forum? gmx is quite populare here in germany :/.

Because there were a lot of spam accounts being registered from that domain.

2. does some1 know whats the difference btw. the languagefile ger and de?

They are two independent translations, possibly with some style differences, and probably with different subsets of strings translated.

3. if i want to help with the translation. do i just edit the string with an editor like mousepad and post the result to the forum?

More or less. You need to make sure all the string labels (the capital letter lines) are the same as in eng_stringtable.txt. Also check your stringtable by running the game frequently; there can be problems if the format isn't followed, and it's not always obvious what will or won't break the format.

4. how is construction calculated? has something to do with mining and industry i guess, but not sure how. really hard to understand how the game works at begin.

Construction, Mining and Industry are all independent meter which are determined by effects from species, techs, buildings, and specials. You can hover over the icon to see a breakdown of what effects are contributing to the meter value for a planet.

- why do u need to focus on one thing as a planet. would be nice to choose: make all resources, but all just 15%. instead of 100% food...

Because if there are dozens or hundreds of planets in an empire, choosing small increments of various production options would take to much time, and because having to choose just one thing means you need to actually make a choice of what to focus on and can't do everything.

- where is the button "back to menu and save or load"?

There's a menu button at the top right of the screen during a game...

[Bartleby]

1. why are @gmx.de and @gmx.net emails not allowed to register in the forum? gmx is quite populare here in germany :/.

Because there were a lot of spam accounts being registered from that domain.

would be nice if u would add that to the FAQ or write in the registration. was a bit strange that a complete big freemail-company is forbidden. first i wasnt sure what was wrong.

2. does some1 know whats the difference btw. the languagefile ger and de?

They are two independent translations, possibly with some style differences, and probably with different subsets of strings translated.

subsets of strings? dont know if i understand that right (language). u mean 2 ppl tried to translate and noone did a merge? well. at least i think the ger-translation works better right now.

Construction, Mining and Industry are all independent meter which are determined by effects from species, techs, buildings, and specials. You can hover over the icon to see a breakdown of what effects are contributing to the meter value for a planet.

hm.. no hover at the top-task bar here. maybe a 3.16 thing. there is only the planet discription and that one dont show the negative values because of the production (see 2. screen).

There's a menu button at the top right of the screen during a game...

[/quote]
well... i cant see that one (1. screen).

hm.... thx both for the answers. that was very nice. think i need to install 3.16 to help with translation... never compiled in my life. i will take a look if i have time .

[eleazar]

I don't know why it is doing this, but you can see 2 pixels width of the button on the edge of the screen there.

[Geoff the Medio]

...add that to the FAQ or write in the registration.

Listing every blocked domain isn't practical, and I don't know how to modify the registration text. I could re-enabled registrations from those domains, though.

u mean 2 ppl tried to translate and noone did a merge?

Two different people translated into German. These two translations were intentionally done differently, so can't be (sensibly) merged.

Construction, Mining and Industry are all independent meter which are determined by effects from species, techs, buildings, and specials. You can hover over the icon to see a breakdown of what effects are contributing to the meter value for a planet.

hm.. no hover at the top-task bar here. maybe a 3.16 thing. there is only the planet discription and that one dont show the negative values because of the production (see 2. screen).

I'm not clear on what you're asking. I was referring to the popup over meters icons on planets panels on the sidepanel.

There's a menu button at the top right of the screen during a game...

well... i cant see that one (1. screen).

The right edge of your screen is being cut off by your taskbar thing. See attached...

[Bartleby]

thx.
well. i am too stupid to compile myself. installing boost was too much for me :/.
maybe i will reactivate my old windows... used it last time one year ago.

questions to translation
- if something is changed in the english translationstring are those parts automatically changed in the translated strings like "Ger stringtable.txt"? just asking, because there is so much english in that file and i dont think that other person didnt translated all .
- would it be enough to test translations in 3.15?

[Geoff the Medio]

if something is changed in the english translationstring are those parts automatically changed in the translated strings like "Ger stringtable.txt"?

If you mean, when a change is made to eng_stringtable.txt, is a corresponding change made to the other stringtable files, then no. Stringtable files are only updated when someone updates them specifically.

would it be enough to test translations in 3.15?

Most strings will be the same, but some will have changed. If any strings are missing from the translated stringtable, the english original will be used in its place in either version. There are also some changes to the expected format of some of the strings, with regard to parameters like the %1% and %planet% that appear in some strings, which will not work properly in older versions, or for which older stringtables won't work properly in the new version.