I’ve noticed numerous errors in the dialog spoken by NPC’s when compared to the corresponding in-game subtitles. I’ve made the corrections in the closecaption_english.txt file but the corrections are not appearing in-game. As best as I can determine, it seems the closecaption_english.dat file may need to be recompiled to reflect the changes. Or maybe there’s an entirely different way to accomplish this.
I’ve followed instructions provided on the Steam website but I can’t find where the recompiled .dat file is placed on my computer, if in fact I did the procedure correctly. Anyone have a clue?
Take your modified closecaption_english.txt and drag and drop the file on captioncompiler.exe in your ./steamapps/username/sourcesdk/bin/orangebox/ folder. It doesn’t work if you use any other than the Orange Box version of the compiler.
After that there should be a closecaption_english.dat file in the folder. Copy that and place it in your ./steamapps/sourcemods/BMS/Resource/ folder, overwrite when prompted. And there you go, you should now see your changes in-game!
While translating the script into Finnish, I’ve also noticed that there are a quite a few mistakes in the English captions. Sometimes captions differ from the spoken lines, which I figure is because before release the people working on the captions only had access to an old version of the script. There are also a lot of missing tags.
Thank you for your quick and detailed response, kyyrma.
I followed your instructions (I had already done them previous to your reply, unsuccessfully, thinking I had done something wrong, hence the reason for my post) and all that happens is I see a quick image of a DOS window and then nothing, no compiling process or status or job completion dialog. Is the recompiled .dat file supposed to appear in the same folder as the captioncompiler.exe? If so, I don’t see it.
It’s a shame because I’ve been going through the english.txt file and comparing the text to the actual .wav audio files and so far I’ve come across about 50 errors. BM is such an incredible accomplishment and in my own little mini-dev way, I’m trying to contribute towards making it even better.
Once again, thanks for your response.
Update: I didn’t know that Steam needed to be open. Tried several times again and the Caption Compiler just keeps on crashing, so I’m out of luck.
You could try running cmd.exe (I assume you are comfortable with the command line) and navigating to the folder where captioncompiler is located. After that simply type captioncompiler.exe closedcaption_english.txt (the text file has to be located in the same folder as the compiler)
This way you should see the output from the compiler, so at least we can get an idea what is going wrong. Copy and paste it here.
I just realized something… And I should’ve pointed this out earlier. Have you actually ran the Source SDK tool from Steam? You have to run it at least once before you can use the compiler (starting the SDK somehow configures the files).
I’m more than happy to help. As a person with slightly bad hearing and the attention span of a 3-year old, I take captions in video games seriously
Just to be sure and to eliminate any possible assumptions, how does one do this? Please be detailed in your instructions. Will I need to reboot my PC afterwards?
Kyyrma,
Well, much to my embarassment, I discovered what the problem was in creating an updated closecaption_english.dat file to reflect the error corrections that I’m making to the closecaption_english.txt file. I neglected to have the Source SDK tool running… duh !!!.
I performed a correction for a closed-caption dialog error that occurs at the main lobby desk between “Barney” and the scientist. After updating the appropriate files, I went in-game and confirmed the correction. Halleluiah!!!
Unfortunately, in trying to get all of this to work by trying things on my own and suggestions I found on the internet, my closecaption_english.txt file, to which I had already made about 50 corrections, was wiped clean… Arrrggghhh!
So, it’s back to square one. But I’m even more pumped now to begin again knowing that in the end the closed-captions displayed within the game will accurately reflect what all of the NPC’s are actually saying.
Once again, thanks for your suggestions, and even more so, for showing an interest and taking the time to try and help someone in need.
Yeah, I should’ve mentioned that earlier. I think you only need to run she SDK tool once, and after that the compiler should work stand-alone.
Sorry to hear about your file, but I’m still glad that you got the compiler working. Correcting the captions is a necessary endeavor and I hope you’ll find the time to keep at it. I know people playing with the captions on are a marginal group at best, but that doesn’t mean they should get an any less polished product.
If you don’t mind, can you explain in detail the purpose of these tags and what problems occur as a result of them missing. What’s involved in inserting these missing tags?
I assume it’s related to the playing of sound effects files (I’m not that “green” of a noob).
Adding the tag in front of a caption line causes it to be triggered only when Full Captioning (usually meant for the hearing impaired) is turned on. So…
Triggers the line “[Screaming]” when Full Captioning is on.
Now the problem with BMS is that a lot of these sound effect lines have not been properly tagged with , which causes them to display even for players who would only want to see captions during dialogue.
The tell-tale sign for a line that should have the tag is that it’s nothing but a single sound effect closed in brackets. If a line contains both a sound effect and dialogue subtitles, it shouldn’t be tagged.
the clr:red,green,blue is a tag used for choosing a color for the line (google rgb color coding if you don’t know how to pick colors with rgb-values). This is sometimes used for emphasis, but mostly to distinguish between different people taking part in simultaneous discussion. It can AND should be used together with the tag.
EDIT: the quotes below refer to the explanation at the bottom about re-cutting the audio, but I typed it in the wrong part and I can’t copy and paste in this message editor. No way I’m typing all of that again… fucken Apple man.
instead of
it is an exception, as it also contains subtitled dialogue in addition to the [Under breath]-part. If it was tagged with , the line wouldn’t trigger at all for players with only dialogue captioning on. I believe some games have separate captioning files for Full Captioning and Dialogue Only, which avoids this problem, but not only would making them take additional coding effort from the BMS team, the end benefit would be rather neglible (no [bracketed sounds] visible to Dialogue Only users whatsoever). Other method would be cutting up the audio so that sound effects would be in their separate files…
I’m hoping that covers most of your questions! feel free to ask if something was left unclear though.
Also I apologize for any and all typos in this post. I wrote this on my tablet during my lunchbreak…
Kyyrma, how are you doing? Well, I hope. Just wanted to let you know that I released an updated closed caption mod a few days ago. You can find it here. Hope you can make use of it, somehow.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
