Confusing message label: "Psychic drone (male)"

[Elevator]

When the "Psychic drone" event happens, the message "Psychic drone (male)" (or female) occurs. A lot of players find this message confusing. They often think that it is a some kind of drone aircraft which has male gender somehow.

We (the official Russian translation team) tried to find a solution of this problem, but this string cannot be significantly modified in translation files. Strings that are responsible for "Psychic drone" and "male/female" parts can be easily found and modified, but the format string:
"<Psychic drone string> (<gender string>)"
seems to be hardcoded in the game scripts.

The best solution may be to move this format string to translation files (e.g. "Mods\Core\Languages\<Language>\Keyed" directory) so we can modify it and make the resulting message more clear for players.

Steps to peproduce:
1. Create a Psychic drone event with developer tool.
2. Look at the message on the right-bottom of the screen.

Looking forward to your replying.

[nccvoyager]

So, you are saying that the event messages (specifically "Psychic Drone" in this case) are difficult or impossible to create a translation file for?

(As for the translation itself, I suppose "the drone of an engine" is difficult to translate to some languages.
Perhaps "rumble" or "buzz" would make for better translation, while maintaining the same basic underlying feeling of the statement?)

[Elevator]

The correct translation of "drone" is not a main problem. Of couse there is a russian analog for "buzz" or "rumble".

The main problem is that in any case the result string will be like "buzz (male)", which is not correct either. The main problem is that this template with brackets doesn't allow to make the message clearer. In any translation.

[Tynan]

This isn't a bug since the game is working as designed, it's a translation clarity request. Moving to translations.

I prefer not to make formats modifiable though, for various reasons.

Can you say what you think the format should be?

[Elevator]

Hello, Tynan.
Thank you for moving this post to the more appropriate location.

We have "psychic drone" entry and separate "male"/"female" entry. I thing the clearer message can look like:

  "psychic drone (affects male people)"

For this case the template will look like:

  "{0} (affects {1} people)".

This template needs to be translated, of course, but on the other hand, the result message will be much clearer for players.

You say that there are some reasons not to make format messages modifiable, but translation files contain a lot of such lines. Maybe one single line will not be such a big deal?
If i'm wrong, maybe there are some other ways to do it?

[Tynan]

That's too long as a letter label.

It's just a title, the player can just read the letter to learn more about what it means. Once it's happened once, then they'll understand.

[Elevator]

Maybe the better solution will be to move "male"/"female" entry (for psy-drone event) to a different location.

Now "male"/"female" values are taken from "Keyed/Menus_Main.xml" file. These values are used in different contexts and meanings (as nouns and as adjectives). This makes translation diffucult.

So, we can use the same "{0} ({1})" template. But the text for {1} could be taken from another location. Advandages of this approach are:

1. Translators can place there whatever they want to provide better translation for their language.
2. They can also translate the original "male"/"female" in Menus_Main.xml better, because there will be one context less.
3. This approach doesn't require making the template modifiable.

What do you think about that?

[zeidrich]

What about just trying to make the localized message more succinct but meaningful for the result?

I mean, "buzz (male)" or "drone (male)" might be confusing, but what about "unhappy (male)" or "stress (male)"?  That is much more clear about what the actual effect is, and then you can also still hover over it or use the envelope to see the full description.

[nccvoyager]

It sounds like a good compromise, though it still runs into the same issue of appearing that the stress has a male gender, as opposed to an effect on the male gender.

Perhaps using a plural for male/female here would help?
This would imply that the psychic drone (singular) effects males/females (plural) while only adding one English character to the label.

This would help eliminate the confusion created by pairing a singular effect with a (primarily) singular gender reference.
(Usually used as a or the male, though it can be used as the entire male population in English.)

[Elevator]

Perhaps using a plural for male/female here would help?

This requires adding a new label to resources. This is exactly the solution I suggested:

Maybe the better solution will be to move "male"/"female" entry (for psy-drone event) to a different location.

As I metioned before, "male"/"female" values are used on many different places. If you fix them for one place, other contexts will be broken. For example, if you replace "male" entry by "males", your colonists will be described like:

"Males colonist of Crashville, age..."

The only way to change "male" to "males" (or to anything else) for psychic drone event is to introduce a specific keyed value for this purpose.

[nccvoyager]

This is true...
So, where does this leave the issue?

[Elevator]

So, where does this leave the issue?

There are "male"/"female" value usages I have found:
1. Psychic drone event letter label: "phychic drone (male)"
2. Psychic drone event letter: "Every colonist of the male gender winces in pain!..."
3. Human description: "Male colonist of Crashville, age..."
4. Animal description: "Male muffalo". Can be overriden for some animals, e.g. "rooster"
5. Animal description in trading dialog: "Male muffalo". Cannot be overriden.

For English language all these structures are OK, but for Russian... it was a terrible headache to find a minimally appropriate "male"/"female" translation that fits most cases. For case 1 it seems completely impossible in current implementation.

[Elevator]

The problem doesn't seem to be fixed.

[nccvoyager]

I suppose that we never gave Tynan a sufficient answer as to what the template should be for this event label.

In English, putting something in parenthesis just after something else usually implies that what is inside the parenthesis is linked to what is outside it.
So, "drone (male)" in English, would (roughly) be read as "drone affecting males" in a longer form, with the implication being that "male" is being used as an adjective rather than a noun in this case.
Putting something in parenthesis before something, however, still implies it is linked, though in a different manner.
"(Male) drone" for example, would imply that a drone is of the male gender, being used as a noun.
In English, at least.

From what you stated (quite a while ago now, realistically,) in Russian, both the translation for "(Male) drone" and "drone (male)" imply that the drone is of the male gender.
This is unintended, obviously, though I can definitely see how it is an issue.

Outside of allowing modification of the template, I am unsure how this could be rectified.

For this specific case, use of something like "мужской" might be preferable, though still imperfect.
(Roughly, the translation to English would be "drone (men's)" which is better than before, though not perfect.)
Of course, since this case still uses the same keyword, it is impossible to change only this one instance at this time.

@Tynan, my suggestion would be the addition of another keyword, for use in this label at the least, which is a "male" adjective instead of noun.
(For the English translation, "male" is still entirely acceptable. In English, "male" can be used as an adjective as in this case, though in other languages, a different word altogether may need to be used.)

[VincentJ]

Anyway, I've never understood that event. That kind of sensorial powers is almost not developped in the game, and suddenly you have this sentence displayed on your screen ? A robot or a person is changing the mood of your colonists, and it's very hard to explain why.

The effect is cool, I think everybody agree, but it is so badly presented that I would prefer the game without this event.