Seems to be that something good is going to happen finally to the spanish community…

One user of HL2 Spanish Forums (www.HL2Spain.com) sent an email to the spanish voice of Alyx, who kindly answered the message confirming that a spanish translation is going to start being recorded in November. Maybe Electronics Arts will assume the cost of the translation to avoid the complains it had with the XBOX360 version when the PS3 version will be released. Anyways, this is weird:

360: No subtitles, no voices.

PC: Subtitles, no voices.

PS3: Subtitles and voices.

… O_o’

It’s an awesome new anyways. Let’s hope Valve will bring us that translation someday… you know what it’s said: Better later than never.

Our community became strong these past weeks and a as result of that, a good unofficial spanish translation for Portal was released a few days ago. It has been made with the famous voice sintetizer “Loquendo” and… well, I think this is the best you can do with that program. Portal was made to be translated with it. ^^ (I hope anyone never will think in translating Ep2 with Loquendo… it could sound TERRIBLE!), but not Portal… it fits just perfect.

You want to check how it is? This is how GladOS sounds with an unofficial spanish translation:

Well mates… now that things seems to improve, no more news about complains or angry spaniards. Let’s go back to the SDK-Project’s lifestyle! ^^

 Latest news reports that Valve has removed all the spanish GCFs from Steam Servers. That means the newest spanish members of Steam who owned an Orange Box recently will not have the chance of downloading the previous spanish translations for the previous Half-Life 2 episodes and related games.

We cannot understand why Valve is treating the spanish community in such way. We’re confused, dissapointed and extremely upset with Valve’s behaviour.

We haven’t received any official answer from Valve explaining any of those changes which affects directly to our community. What’s happening?

I’ve considered appropiated writting about this in English.

Is this a new way of “appartheid”?

Most of you, english speakers, are not concerned about the importance of this issue. You cannot see how important this is for us. TODAY we all knew XBOX360 and PS3 versions of Orange Box are not just without spanish voices, but also WITHOUT SPANISH SUBTITLES. This shouldn’t be so fucking annoying if people wouldn’t know that Half-Life, Half-Life 2 and also Episode 1 had spanish voices and texts.

Well, as everybody knows, Orange Box includes the previous chapters… and here comes Valve’s kick in our spanish ass: THEY HAVE REMOVED THE PREVIOUS TRANSLATIONS. What’s the point? You made a huge mistake even worst! Anyone here cannot believe how Valve has betrayed our confidence on their professionality. And I feel really disappointed with them…

How could this happened? Well, everybody has a very strong theory about this huge mistake. Steam’s survey checked our system components and the language we used in Steam, but in Spanish this survey crashed everytime we ran it. Just changing the language into english we could participate in that survey. But THAT WAS THE REAL MISTAKE: turning Steam’s language into English made the survey recognise the user as English. That’s why the spanish community is under the danish, polish, korean and swedish community, and believe me people, that’s just impossible. I usually post in www.hl2spain.com and there are about 17.360 users registered, and that’s just one community. There are more HL2 spanish communities in internet concerned about this problem.

It’s obvious Valve hasn’t translated this Episode into spanish because in Steam’s survey spanish users were under 7.600.

We are collecting signs to claim what Valve should have done in time: a simple translation. We don’t care if it’s good or bad… we just want our voices back, because Valve took them away.

If you support our cause, sign in the following link (It takes about 10 seconds):

Now, this is my own strike. No more english texts in this website for some time. Maybe in that way you will understand how important a translated text is for us. What about Ouija in Spanish? What about SDK-Project tutorials in Spanish? What about answering your questions just in Spanish? Well, I HATE THAT. If I work on something, I would like that most of the people could enjoy with it… that’s why I use English as the main language here.

Well, here is Babelfish and here Google Translator… enjoy from now on.

Yesterday at 4:00AM I finished Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and I enjoyed it, from the beggining until the end. Everything shown in the screen was just an indescriptible spectacle. Thanks Valve for another 6 hours master piece.

BUT…

… we feel a bit cheated around here. I really enjoyed with your game, I swear, but is more than obvious that anybody here in Spain was born with an english dictionary under the arm and, to learn this language is just an optional decission that the people takes in any moment of their lives. Spanish people, in fact, doesn’t speak english by nature. Made that important point I ask… where are the subtitles and audio tracks which are supossed to be included in the Orange Box which I paid one month ago ? I repeat, I don’t mind, I loved the game and probably I’ll play it again…

BUT…

what the hell you were thinking Valve? We are one of the biggest foreign (yes, because we are foreign… anywhere) gamming communities and we really do an strong effort buying all the original products on Steam, because sadly we’re also a huge piracy consumers. But Steam changed our minds! We like to buy through Steam… it’s like piracy, but paying… now more than ever, as I can see, because the pirates now are you, stabbing us an english sword right on our back and pushing us to the sharks. We feel forced and betrayed. Sorry for that Valve, but I’m sure this is not a misunderstanding. You waited until the release day and you didn’t tell us anything about this issue. That’s something SONY is used to do… but not you guys. You were cool until the day you cheated the whole spanish (and italian) community. Now it will be harder to get our respect for you back, than solving the problem when you could solve it in time.

I will be a consumer of your products forever… but I don’t feel you love me anymore.

Now listen to me carefully, because the bomb is about to explode in the spanish and italian community:

PREPARE FOR UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCES (or not?… ¬¬’)

Orange Box was released yesterday at 9:00 AM … just when I start to work at the studio. Such a cruel torture should be punished Valve! Anyways, after finishing my job I stayed a couple of hours playing Portal until I finished it when it was around 9:00PM or later. I didn’t feel dissapointed in any moment with Portal, and that’s a very good impression for me. No bland moments, no hard controls… just my brains, my fingers, my two interdimensional portals, enough time, a good computer and me. I loved everything… except the spanish translation… it was missing perhaps in another Universe, although I prefer to play it in english.

I trully believe Portal is just the beggining of something else, bigger and better. What was the relation between Aperture Science and Black Mesa? They were just enemies in bussiness or somewhere else? Who is that woman? My first though was: “Uhmmm… Alyx’s mother?”. With Portal my imagination blew up as it did with other games like Shadow of the Colossus or Katamary. The whole game is the cake they promissed us! ^^.

Actually, the best cake I found in Portal was that insane and ironical song in the credits roll. Here it is with lyrics! Enjoy it!

STILL ALIVE

This was a triumph.
I’m making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Aperture Science
We do what we must because we can.
For the good of all of us.
Except the ones who are dead.
But there’s no sense crying over every mistake.
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
And the Science gets done.
And you make a neat gun.
For the people who are still alive.
I’m not even angry.
I’m being so sincere right now.
Even though you broke my heart.
And killed me. And tore me to pieces.
And threw every piece into a fire.
As they burned it hurt because
I was so happy for you!
Now these points of data make a beautiful line.
And we’re out of beta. We’re releasing on time.
So I’m GLaD. I got burned
Think of all the things we learned
for the people who are still alive.
Go ahead and leave me.
I think I prefer to stay inside.
Maybe you’ll find someone else to help you.
Maybe Black Mesa. THAT WAS A JOKE. HAHA.
FAT CHANCE.
Anyway, this cake is great.
It’s so delicious and moist
Look at me still talking when there’s Science to do.
When I look out there, it makes me GLaD I’m not you.
I’ve experiments to run. There is research to be done.
On the people who are still alive.
And believe me I am still alive.
I’m doing Science and I’m still alive.
I feel FANTASTIC and I’m still alive.
While you’re dying I’ll be still alive.
And when you’re dead I will be still alive.
STILL ALIVE.

I have been a bit dissapeared in the past 4 weeks because I’m kinda consumed mostly by my job. We’re developing an incredible good looking game using Unreal Engine 3 and after 8 hours using that editor everyday it’s really hard switch my mind in “Source Mode“. I usually come back to my home tired needing to watch a movie, a chapter of Heroes, House, IT Crowd or just to fall over my bed (specially if my girlfriend is close). ^^

In the top of all, I fall sick yesterday (wonderful…). But maybe that was exactly what I needed… time to do nothing… in other words… time to work in Hammer again!

I have a long weekend just for me to work in my mods, experiments and spanish videotutorials. So, tomorrow or this Sunday I will publish more stuff… but I don’t know what kind of stuff yet. Just expect the impossible!

The following video is the base of a bunch of videotutorials I will publish in spanish explaining what is neccesary to create such good looking scene, studying one by one the entities I used and which are their function. Hope you like it!