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john connor

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Yeah, but in practical terms I can't see Dave briefing Chinese lawyers, so practicably unenforceable. Hasn't she just hacked the game, basically? I'm not au fait with current slang/meanings in this world, to say the least. But didn't she just take without permission, by hacking into a level of the game not accessible when you buy it? I guess that might not matter if there's no subsequent dissemination of the hacked product, for gain or otherwise. Dave doesn't seem to have reacted. But he's busy at the moment.
 

GoodGuy

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Yeah, but in practical terms I can't see Dave briefing Chinese lawyers, so practicably unenforceable. Hasn't she just hacked the game, basically? I'm not au fait with current slang/meanings in this world, to say the least. But didn't she just take without permission, by hacking into a level of the game not accessible when you buy it? I guess that might not matter if there's no subsequent dissemination of the hacked product, for gain or otherwise. Dave doesn't seem to have reacted. But he's busy at the moment.

EDIT: That's what she sounded like, at least.
But she also said:
I've changed executable files EXE and free scripts into Chinese versions.First of all, I would like to declare that the executable file is not encrypted. The C language is also very simple.But I don't want to decompile core files, which is very impolite to designers.

And this could mean that she has altered (other) executable files (from other programs and free stuff) before and that she took a look at the main executable file of CO2 (by trying to decompile it), so it could've been be a quick "sneak peek". A regular customer without programming skills and tools cannot access the file, of course, as you pointed out correctly.

Afaik, in C you can encrypt libraries and there are anti-debugging techniques, but these techniques may slow down maintenance and patching. Still, it's relatively easy to decompile C, afaik. But you don't get the full (original source code) that way.
And even without encryption, with non-trivial code sections with optimizations turned on and being stripped of debugging info, it usually involves a certain amount of effort and that's usually beyond of what ppl will be willing to invest, if they take a look at what they would gain from all the work.
C++ is a different matter, but you can still get ideas about what the code does. The OovAide project uses the Clang compiler for getting accurate details from the source code, for instance. Its zone diagram helps to show relationships between classes, and it can display hundreds (or thousands) of classes, where then directory filters make visual identification easier.
While reverse-engineering and altering is illegal in many countries (the TRIPS copyright agreement protects the re-use and distribution of the source code only, though, - afaik), some countries like Italy allow reverse-engineering to make given programs interoperable with other software, for instance.
I can't remember if CO2 was done in C or C++.
EDIT: But, in general, legal aspects aside, programmer ethics should keep a programmer from tinkering with code without permission, and she actually mentioned this herself, as she said that it would be rude to decompile code from other programmers:

But I don't want to decompile core files, which is very impolite to designers


EDIT: Whatsoever, I don't think such discussion (with her offering to translate the GUI and other elements of the game) belongs to this forum, maybe it could be discussed in a private message to Dave.
 
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共工熙雲

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Nǐ hǎo.
So, I get it. You don't want to translate the manual, but pretty much all the ingame buttons, pointers, messages and unit descriptions, etc., to make the game accessible to Chinese gamers who don't feel comfortable (or whose english proficiency levels are not good enough or even non-existent) when using an English game environment. While I think that the estabs (databank with unit details) could be localized (=translated) and then imported en block, buttons, ingame messages etc. are most likely hard-coded in the core files and not organized in a databank, so that localization may involve quite some manual work on the programmer side.
Since Dave is pretty much the only person working part-time on the game, currently, he might not have the time to do it. A shortened chinese manual might be the better solution.

Quality assurance might be another important factor. Dave does not speak the Chinese language, so he would have to get a translation service to review the quality of your work, for a chinese game version. Your English level isn't bad, but since even native speakers in this forum
misunderstood you several times, it's not quite clear if you'd be able to translate all of the English (military) terms. So even if you do it for free, there might still be some labor and money involved to get it done.

What Chinese language (or dialect) would you use?
There are so many dialects and even independent languages ....

MANDARIN (or putonghua = high chinese),

WU (Yangtse region, Shanghai, Zheijang, Jiangsu),

YUE
or its dialect kantonese (Hongkong, Macau, Guangdong, North America),

MIN (Fujian and Hainan province)
or its dialect Hokkien? (widely used in South East Asia, South China Sea, even used by Chinese living in the Philippines),

just to name the most common languages and dialects.
Looking at your English level, I am guessing that you are either from the Shanghai, the Hongkong, or the Bejing area. No?
In fact, I translated most of the Chinese manuals. But the publicity is not good for me, and the market reaction is that people want to get more explicit meaning in the game, rather than looking back and forth between the game manual and the words and buttons. That game experience is actually terrible. Please don't say, "people who really like it don't mind."." Such words. Because what I do is to face the whole social market, there must be a more acceptable way to attract them.
I have the ability to translate all the text. Including the terms, abbreviations. A lot of fans in my translation process are willing to do text proofreading. So do not worry about quality.
Chinese speak mandarin. Many Asian countries use it as a second language.
CO2 can be reverse engineered. And - as I understand it, that's what she did already, to some extent.
She has to ask Dave for permission to do that, even according to Chinese laws, if I am not mistaken. On a sidenote, it's not impossible to prosecute copyright infringements in China anymore, these days.

There is a popular misconception regarding chinese copyright laws, btw. The laws have existed for years already, but Chinese authorities rarely enforced these laws. It got somewhat better during the last 2-3 yrs, after international pressure increased. It's different with patents, though, as the patent agency had a tendency not to grant patents for a good number of foreign inventions/developments (often with the excuse that they weren't sophisticated/new enough), so that foreign companies fell back to protecting and getting patents for small parts, say for a sophisticated tank cap on a chainsaw (like STIHL did, German manufacturer of trimmers, chainsaws, etc.). Chinese backyard factories kept putting out high volumes of chainsaw copies, even up to the point where they copied their color (orange) with a slighty changed logo (say STIEHL, STIL, etc. lol), where then European customers even went to official STIHL retailers for warranty repairs, as they looked pretty much like their chainsaws. lol
With foreign-chinese joint-ventures, the Chinese often forced the foreign companies to either publish the design details of their patents, or even to handover the patents to the Chinese shareholders of the joint-ventures. Many German SMEs moved away from maintaining Chinese production facilities, as they did not want to lower their pants like that, anymore.


Infamous example: The Transrapid train project (Siemens) in China, with a magnetic levitation train line from outskirts of Shanghai to the Pudong airport (30 km). The contract envisioned to establish a testbed line which could serve to promote sales of long distance lines to China and other countries. The concrete track guideways were supposed to be built by the chinese. The contract contained an agreement of a limited knowledge (train frames, guideways, afaik) transfer, but the core of the train drive (encapsuled superconductors from Siemens) was not part of that deal, according to German engineers. During construction, the Chinese kept asking questions about the drive's innerds, looked at blue-prints, etc. After the line was established, they suspended all future plans, saying they would build conventional high speed trains for long distance traveling and Siemens was out of business. The high speed trains (further developments of copies from other countries) and railway lines were built, indeed, but nine years later, the Chinese had also finished their first own Transrapid maglev train, with 100% of the parts being made in China. :p
If you just open the main program file is also "peeping", I can only apologize. But at least in what I know about the environment. Generally speaking, only encrypted files represent "not allowed to enter"". If there is no limit, it means "editable"".

I do not quite understand your "programmer ethics", programming technology is my self-study at home.At least I just know I spent a lot of money on this game, and then I have reason to want to see everything that can be opened. But if a file is encrypted, then it represents the author's core. Not allowed by the player to view. I don't need to crack anything to open exe, it's just use a small piece of software to open it like a folder. If I offended the rules. I sincerely apologize to Dave. I'm sorry. But I never wanted to offend.
 
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Shadrach

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I have opened the exe in Resource Hacker on several occasions to change the DPI scaling settings in the manifest. Can't really do anything but change some minor thing like icons, some of the UI text and so on. Can't really see any moral issues with doing that, as long as you're not trying to circumvent copy-protection and distribute the game.

That game experience is actually terrible.

Now that's just plain wrong. The UI's got some problems, sure - specifically that it doesn't scale to high-resolution displays making everything tiny and unreadable. Other than that it's a fine UI and does its job perfectly adequate.

Do they think the game would be better off with looking like a Chinese MMO with all kinds of colourful buttons and flashing effects? Half-nude elf ladies and dragons?

Not really sure where the OP is going with this. If they want to offer their services to translate the game to Chinese, fine, but that should be taken directly with the publisher, and it's up to the publisher if there's a market value of paying to get the game translated. With a niche game like this, I doubt it, even with the Chinese market. Even if they offer to do it for free, there's always costs in time, with testing and QA for even a translation.

Also stuff like this makes me wonder:

In addition, the bottom color of the interface is very disliked. That's the most important thing.
Listen to me. If just ask my personal feelings, I think the interface is actually acceptable, but I hate that color.

I have no idea what that means, language barrier (and possible auto-translation) aside. Screenshots would help :snaphappy:
 
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