Xenophonia for Empire TW

**Beiss** · May 03, 2008, 02:50 PM

Empire TW will likely be released about a year from now. Naturally, it's going to suffer from the same monolinguality as M2TW and RTW does, and naturally, I'd be interested in making a new mod to introduce multilinguality into Empire TW as I did for M2TW. There are several reasons why such a mod for Empire TW would fare better than Xenophonia has -

Empires is set in the 18th and 19th centuries. There should be tons of resources to work with when doing the translation and research, which wasn't the case with Xenophonia. Many of the factions didn't even have a writing language at the time. Hell, for some factions, we didn't even know what language they spoke to begin with!

Because of the above mentioned facts, it's reasonable to assume that the vanilla speech is considerably closer to what can be historically correct than was the case in M2TW. If the English had been speaking AD 1080 English in the game, no one would have understood what they were saying, which CA wouldn't have liked. But if the British speak 18th century British in vanilla ETW, it'll just add to immersion for everyone, because only very few people won't understand what's being said. I'm guessing, and hoping, that CA tries to have people in the game talk reasonably historically correct.

There's a Swedish faction in the game. I'm Swedish. This means I could be a voice actor, not just a coder type of modder. If I can get a Swedish voice pack out there, it should inspire others to help out to cover the other languages as well.

Of course, there are reasons to believe that a voicemod for ETW won't succeed as well:

One problem with Xenophonia was that we couldn't find the people we needed. Worst of all, when we had translations for a language, we couldn't find voice actors. Finding voice actors for an ETW mod could be easier, since speaking like people did in the 18th century should be a lot easier than speaking like they did in the 11th one. Also, if I can manage to make a Swedish voice pack myself, that might encourage others to help me out moreso than now, when I'm just cracking the whip.

The other problem with Xenophonia was that we were unable to make the people who actually joined stay with us and not quit 2 seconds later. The only solution I can see here is to not allow people to join unless we really believe they want to help, and this will probably mean that we won't get anyone to join at all, if the fact that working with 18th century language is so much easier than working with 11th century ones isn't enough.

Supposedly, there are 50 factions in ETW. Needless to say, this means a lot of work. We should be able to produce at least one voice pack though (yeah, I'm talking about the Swedish one), which is more than what Xenophonia managed. It would be insane to even being to think we could cover them all.

We have no idea how much speech Empires will have compared to M2TW. Maybe it's way more. Maybe it's less. I'm guessing it'll be even more (though I honestly wonder how many DVD's a game can take up...)

Now... those of you who enjoyed the mod are really the only hope here. I need your help. Tell me what can be done to prevent a voice mod for ETW from failing like Xenophonia has. Tell me how things should be done in order to succeed. Any suggestions are welcome.

The one idea I have is the one I mentioned in the thread where I announced Xenophonia's death - to have one person for each language who doesn't actually do anything but who is responsible for finding the talent we need for that language, who can tell me what his language's current status is, a loyal person who stays with us. You could be one of these people. All I'd need from you is to be a loyal fan who's ready to surf the internet a few minutes every day and look for new staff members.

The other solution is to openly affiliate ourselves with a well-known mod who everyone is waiting for. It doesn't feel like Xenophonia can attract enough people by itself, but if it had been part of a greater mod, one that could attract people with screenshots and trailers, we'd likely have an easier time finding the right people simply because we'd have the main mod backing us.

Is anyone here even interested in a new voice mod for ETW, or did I just write all this text in vain?

**Captain Blackadder** · May 16, 2008, 11:14 PM

I agree that it would be a lot easier since most languages would have gone through their last major influence and would basically be identical to modern day languages except for turn of phrase and things like that. Possibly you could take foreign the german/french/italian versions of the game and use that presuming CA uses historically accurate phrasing.

I would be interested to help but I am Australian and only speak English so my accent would be wrong.

**Beiss** · May 17, 2008, 04:42 AM

At least you realize it

'course, who knows if Australia will be in the game... Anyway, of course I'm going to do with Empires what I did with M2TW... if it's possible.

**Isvtan_Kiraly** · June 30, 2008, 06:18 PM

To be honest, there is no way you'd ever be able to complete this project for 50 factions. I say aim to get it done for the 10 playable factions. It's far more realistic. These 10 factions are going to be the major ones, with plenty of speakers across the Internet. You'll have a much easier time with this than the M2TW, trust me.
And if you don't feel like shooting yourself by the time you're done (if you're done) the 10 playable factions, then you might want to try to do some of the other non-playable factions.

**Beiss** · July 05, 2008, 12:35 AM

Wise words, Isvtan. I realize I probably won't be able to do much more than I did with M2TW, but I have a pretty good shot at implementing Swedish, in addition to any localized languages. Like I said in the first post, it would be insane to even being to think we could cover them all. I honestly don't know much about which factions will be playable or not, but if Sweden isn't one of the playable ones, I'm gonna be pissed and make a Swedish voicemod anyway, because there's is going to be mods where Sweden is playable, and there's going to be more than just one. Most of the other playable factions should be covered by the localizations.