Antares: Übersetzungen

Translating one of the dungeon's many messages.

All right, we're trucking now. Some truly excellent readers managed to translate all the text in the game in a single day, making it go a lot faster, and also making it possible for me to play the game when I'm not online. As we're going to see, several things are still a bit lost in translation, but in general, I don't dread playing the game as much.

I also figured out how the in-game translation system works and used it to translate Kevin McFly's phrase into TOTE LACHEN NICHT ("the dead laugh not"?) and get the key to the game's first dungeon: Eriankeller. He also said something I don't quite understand about "the Krull" (the translation offered is: "And if you do not want to look after your adventure like this, than be on guard before the Krull..."), but it kind of became clear later.

This image is entirely out of context here, but I wonder where "tsirata" comes from.

But let me back up a bit. Having better translations of all the NPCs filled in a few of the holes. As you may recall from the back story, my characters' ship, Auriga, was shot down "by an unknown space station" while tracing a distress call from Hope, humanity's first interstellar ship. The planet we're marooned on is called Kyrion and the specific area (the first map) is called Lauree. The trenches I've been exploring were specifically built by the survivors of Hope, and they populate all the houses and shops. I guess there were quite a lot of them--enough to make a new society. 

With the key in hand, I returned to the store to purchase a lamp for the dungeon. The item in question is called a stablampe; Google Translate has issues with the "stab" part, but the "lampe" part seemed clear enough. I also bought aluminum-platte for my three lead characters and equipped it. 

Then I spent some time getting my characters fully rested and bought enough food to get the food meter up to about 2/3. At some point, completely without notice or fanfare, my characters leveled up from 1 to 2 and then from 2 to 3. These seem to have been accompanied by 1-point increases in a single attribute per level, and perhaps an associated skill increase. (I don't have any comparison shots from when my characters were at Level 1).

Ready to explore, I headed into the Eriankeller dungeon. I was surprised to find that it had typically fantasy-looking textures, but then again the entire game so far has been a fantasy RPG with a sci-fi framing story. The first level was 20 x 20, no space between walls, all squares used. It featured a dozen wall messages (something the developers picked up from The Bard's Tale), a couple of traps, a couple special encounters, and at least one fixed combat.

The first dungeon level.

It soon became clear that I hadn't brought enough stablampen because each one is only good for about 5 minutes. Rather than immediately return and buy more, I allowed myself the playing-like-a-jackass luxury of exploring and mapping the entire level first--running from every combat and reloading when my lamps died--and then going quickly through the dungeon for "real." I won't do this in subsequent levels, but doing it for the first one helped me establish the game's conventions.

I can't see "Willkommen" without singing the theme song to Cabaret.

 
There were messages everywhere, and most required me to use the game's translation system to render them from "Skrit" to German. This is accomplished by hitting the "translate" button and then typing the name of the origin language (and/or the name of the translation book that I'm carrying for that language). I don't know why the game couldn't just automatically translate if you have the book. Anyway, the messages:

• "Welcome!  You have just gambled your life!" (Near the beginning.)

• "Only perseverance leads to the goal--or to death" (You can just see this one on a motivational poster.)

• "Dead can sometimes be quite useful." (No idea. I guess you can still stick them with inventory.)

• "Someone has stolen my Thallium sword. The finder receives a reward!" (It amuses me that the translation both rhymes and has a near-perfect string of dactyls. I don't know if this is some kind of side-quest, or just a note to be on the lookout for a Thallium Sword.)

Would the reward be...a Thallium sword?

 

• "The cross to quench your hunger." (This seems to have to do with a cross ring (kreuzring) that I found in the level's one fixed combat. I don't know how it works. Perhaps wearing it causes the hunger bar to go down slower. I know you can't cook it.)

• "Do you own what 'nothing' is?" (No idea. Maybe a hint to keep an empty inventory space for some of the fixed encounters on the level.)

• "Containers are not only good for waste." (Okay... I haven't found any containers yet. That would be really handy if the game had some, because my inventory is getting tough to manage.)

• "Athindoar is the Umbekan Goliath." (Probably refers to some boss encounter later.)

• "Reason is the seat of resistance." (Some reference to the friction between the Umbeken and the Vunorers? See below.)

• "Enter at your own risk. In case of accidents, no liability is accepted." (This is at the entrance to the final area.)

• "Attention! You enter the path of no return!" (Further along the path. You can, in fact, return.)

• "This door carries death and destruction." (Just before the one fixed combat of the level.)

This is in contrast to all those games where you can sue someone if your characters get hurt.

There were also two fixed encounters with NPCs. The first was with a homeless-looking Umbeke. The game noted that his clothes were "shabby and torn" and that he "does not fit the description of the Umbeken from Dvorak," so I don't know how I knew he was Umbeken at all. Anyway, when I entered his room, he was ranting:

"...revenge. They shall die, these murderers. Yesss... I will have my revenge on each and every one of these dirty Vunorers! I'll send hordes of Questonants their way. I will order them to suck out the Vunorers' brains! Hehe hehehe... the Vunorers will beg me to leave them in peace. On their knees, they will ask for forgiveness for what they did to my children. And they will restore Lauree to what it used to be... and then they have to make me their ruler. I will have all the power, ALL OF IT! But first, I'll have my terrible revenge... Or I'll draw the Asthanes' attention to this system. They will trample the Vunorers with joy. They will make an example out of the Vunorers--so that no people ever again dares... anyway, this false friendship between us and the Vunorers will be at an end. Hmm, such a transmitter would..."

It's a trap!

So definitely some friction among the game's alien species. I don't know who the "Asthanes" are--some species from another planet I guess. The game noted that as I left the room, "one of your party remarks, in jest, that affairs here are worse than on Earth. You aren't in the mood for jokes, though." I'm not sure what bothers me more: the game putting words in my character's mouth, or the game telling me how another character felt about it.

Now we know what happened to the shadowlords when they left Britannia.

The second encounter was with a shadowy projection of "a mighty being in a brown tunic." It wished me better luck than "the fools who came before" and gave me something called a tokero (no German translation) which seems to be a weapon, although no one in my party has the skill to use it. It bade me farewell with "may the Tahun never leave you." Another reference to the "Tahun," which sounds like some kind of deity or religious system.

The level culminated in a battle with "Kruul," whom McFly had warned me about, albeit with a different spelling. A little flying impish creature, he destroyed me when I first encountered him, but then I was just screwing about.

My characters are actually refusing to fight because my morale bar is so low.

Later, exploring the dungeon for real, and having leveled up in between, I was able to defeat him. He left me 2000 experience points (the highest before him had been around 600), $600, and a few items including the "cross ring." Beyond him was a passage down.

The spoils of victory.

A few notes on what I've discovered of the game's mechanics:

• When it comes to weapons and armor, characters are limited in what they can wield by their combat skills. When viewing items in the store or in inventory, a little symbol appears next to the item if the character can't use it. So far, my most skilled characters have eisenstangen (iron bars), and my weakest has to make do with a rippenknochen (rib bone). I assume that as I increase levels, these skills will increase.

• The value of the weapon helps determine its damage rating. Current armor class is indicated by the letters "SW" in the character portrait. I don't know what "SB" means. It might have to do with mental defense. Are there any German phrases for which these letters would make sense for physical defense and mental defense, respectively?

• You can have characters analyze items to find out what they do. They don't even have to have the items in their possession. You just click the little magnifying glass, type in the name, and the character comes back with something like, "you can cook that" or "I think that's a weapon." Very neat.

• My inventory is getting very tight. Every character has only six slots, and between weapons, armor, quest items, healing items, and food, they go quickly.

• The various commands to study your enemy before combat give you a decent sense of what attacks to use. You have to have fought the enemy previously, though.

Eva recommends psychological attacks.

• As I mentioned in a previous post, the second bar under each character's portrait is his physical health. The third is his mental health. To heal characters, you have to use one of a variety of items that works on either type of health; for instance, bandages for physical damage and aspirin for mental damage. How much you heal depends on the healing skill of the character using the item.

• You can't save in dungeons. I'm trying to force myself not to use save states to get around this.

• I don't know if there's an absolute mapping system (i.e., if each square has fixed coordinates), but there's a relative one. You can use the "locate" button to set an origin point, and from there the game tells you how far you are from the point.

Checking my position before heading down.

• You can talk to your characters! At any time, you can hit the "mouth" button and either cycle through all the characters or choose a specific one. So far, they haven't said much that was interesting.

Bio-splatter ragout will do that to you.

• Restoring a character's energy by sleeping takes a long time--like almost 20 minutes of just sitting there. The android needs no sleep.

• No food is consumed when resting in the landing craft, which is nice.

• If you run out of food, a character immediately dies. That's pretty harsh. I'm not sure how long it takes to kill off other characters after that.

In short, there are some odd and interesting innovations in the game. In the last session, I finally settled into a comfortable groove, and I'm looking forward to what's next.

I did hear briefly from one of the developers, Kjell Droz. He confirmed that he and his friends ("school boys," but I don't know what age) were primarily influenced by The Bard's Tale on the Commodore 64, and he suggested that Antares includes "many labyrinths and five or six cities," so don't expect a quick end. I wrote back with some more questions, and I hope we can get some more development and background information from him.

Time so far: 9 hours
Reload count: 12