[Scummvm-devel] Fan translated versions of games

[Max Horn]

Hi Paul, all!

Good question!

Am 24.11.2010 um 04:08 schrieb Paul Gilbert:

> Hi all,
> 
> I was wondering is there a general policy on whether detection entries for
> fan translations of games should be accepted or not.

I don't think so, but it would indeed be desirable to codify this into a clear "fan translation policy". More on this below.


> 
> The reason I ask is that I recently rejected a submission for adding a
> detection entry to the Tinsel engine to detect the fan translated Polish
> version of Discworld, based on vague recollections that it was generally
> frowned upon to include detection for fan translations of the games.

This differs between engines. There are no detection entries for fan translated games in the SCUMM engine (at least I am aware of none, and none is marked as such; if anybody knows better, please let me know).

Yet a quick grep for "fan translation" revealed that the KYRA and SAGA engines already contain a few fan translations. Maybe other engines do, too; if anybody knows of examples, please speak up!


> But
> looking through the Wiki and forums, I'm having trouble finding any
> definitive earlier discussion on the matter. At most, I could only find this
> comment from Sev:
> 
> One main thing which we are concerned is that all fantranslations have to be
>> distributed as patches. I.e. no copyrighted material should be distributed
>> on those sites. Otherwise you will get no support from ScummVM Team.
>> 
> 
> So am I correct in presuming that adding detection entries for the fan
> translations are fine, so long as it's confirmed that the person/group
> involved are only distributing patches rather than the full game illegally?
> 


Yes and no. What you say is in my eyes the absolute minimum, but not necessarily sufficient.

For example, for the SCUMM engine, we don't generally add detection entries for fan translations. 
This works well because the (custom) SCUMM detector is very good at fallback. For me, I can disable MD5 detection and it still detects 99% of my (considerable) SCUMM game library pretty much accurately. In a few cases it can't decide between a few possibilities and so the user has to pick which one is right; this then adds the correct gameid to the file, and the user can subsequently play the game just fine.

From my point of view, here are some jumbled together reasons for not adding fan translations:
If we add a fan translation, that kind of makes it look as if we officially endorse it. That's risky, as usually we can't easily tell if it 100% legally clear; nor whether it is of good quality. Sure, it is not our responsibility to test that, but I personally dislike "endorsing" a crappy fan translation. 
Also, sometimes multiple translations are floating around, for which do we add support? Maybe even for all? Sometimes we get submissions for translations that are still work in progress, and we don't really want to add a new MD5 for the "same" translation every week. 

So it's much easier to simply endorse *none*, esp. since they work anyway (at least in the case of SCUMM games). So then the the only remaining reason to add them is to shut up the MD5 warning messages.

Yet this strict point of view may not be fully appropriate for other engines. Maybe for a certain language there is one definite and well-known fan-made translation which is clearly legal, and then adding a detection entry makes life easier for everybody. Plus, for some engines a "(near) perfect" fallback detection may not be achievable. For some engines, it may even be necessary to add more than detection entries to support fan translations, so in that case, explicit support for a fan translation is the *only* way to make this translation playable for users. 
I think that this is the (well, "a") reason why the Kyra and Saga engine support a few fan translations explicitly.


So, to summarize, the following could be a start for our policy. However, others may have alternate views, so we may need to modify this.

<quote>
By default, we do not add explicit support for fan translations. Game engines should strive to still make it possible to use fan translations by means of good (fallback) detection.
Exceptions can be made when the only way to support a fan translation are code modifications going beyond a detection entry, and which are specific to a fixed game version. In that case, the fan translations should be reviewed with care. For example: Is it legally clean? Is it stable (not going to be modified in the foreseeable future) ? Are there alternative translations, if so, which of them to support? Is the translation known to be bug free, or does it cause the game to crash in certain circumstances? Etc.
</quote>



Cheers,
Max