Crisis in the Steam Translation Server (STS)

Greetings, dear ghosts and surprised former readers who now realize they forgot to remove this blog from their RSS feeds. Today I bring something of importance I'd like to share about videogame localization and, more precisely, the STS.

Those of you who follow or used to follow my blog Las Chancletas de Hermes, written in Spanish, may remember about the Steam Translation Server, a crowdsourcing tool by Valve Software for fans to translate their games for them. I once was a member, although my opinion on it has changed A LOT over time (heh, overtime).

With good reason, too. Today I read about the terrible situation that the Spanish group of the STS is currently going through. You can read all about it following the link below. Even though I haven't translated for the STS for years, Ï found it quite relevant, since the translation of the entire Steam website depends on this.


https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/44yl24/how_a_whole_language_of_the_steam_translation/

I now very few people still visit this blog, and even fewer will read this. Anyway, here's a quick copypasted TL;DR by the author of the Reddit post:

TL;DR: There has been a huge mess involving Valve’s employee Torsten Zabka and the Spanish team of Steam Translation Server that has resulted a strike from the whole team, and 2 valuable colleagues being expelled, one of them being a Valve employee that also got fired. We want to share the story to reach Valve’s attention and show the community that not everything around is pretty.

Thanks to @fjgaldo, former mod of the Spanish STS, for telling me about this.

George W. Bush

Today is the 4th of July, the Independence Day in the US. I don't usually bother about it nor celebrate it but, casually, this week I've been working on some old videos of mine. One of them is the recording of a presentation I did two years ago in class, along with my pals Oroszlán and El gato agrio.

We turned a boring presentation into a somewhat fun stage act. It's about the former POTUS George W. Bush. I uploaded the video inmediately as private, but I haven't released it until now.

This week, as I said, I've been working on subtitles for this video, just to keep practising now that lectures are over, so I'm making it public on this 4th of July, NOW WITH SUBTITLES!!

Note: Subtitles are available in Spanish and English, translated by me. Don't be too harsh.

Dungeons & Chimneys: Level up!

Avast, my dear readers! I would like to have written this post two months ago but I couldn't do earlier. You know, between exams and holidays you end up forgetting everything. Better late than never at all, as we say in Spain. Welcome back to Dungeons & Chimneys.



Levelling up from level 1 to level 2 is probably the best gift a DM can give to the party. Every class has its pros and cons but, honestly, all of them suck at level 1. Especially clerics.

But level 2, on the other hand, is so cool. Everybody gets their skills improved. They start being good at something specific and are able to use their skills more often or more efficiently. Level 2 is a very well deserved reward for having suffered so much trouble at level 1. Level 3 is cool as well (new feats!) but we didn't go that far on our little campaign.

Dungeons & Chimneys: DM Tricks (or Treats)

Greetings, everyone!

Yesterday I spoke with Minna, my DM when I played D&D in Guildford.

It had been a while since our last conversation and she seemed happy that I was doing ok in my game. I asked about hers but it seems it's been paused for a couple of weeks because of exams and stuff like that. Exams start next week for me, which is something I'm not looking forward to, actually.

Anyway, Minna and I had a pleasant chat about the best and worst things about DMing. We shared some DM tricks — and cheats.

Dungeons & Chimneys: Noobz & Prohs, Or The Other Way Round

New players are just great.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not being sarcastic. Honestly, players with absolutely no experience in RPGs are the best role-players at the end of the day, because they lack everything that regular videogamers expect of an RPG. Experienced players often forget how to think as their characters and tend to commit meta-gaming — which is not very convenient in a D&D game.

Let me show you a couple examples.

Dungeons & Chimneys: Investigation Vs. Combat

Greetings, adventurers! Enjoying your Easter holidays? I've been quite busy lately — it seems that the more days I have free, the more troble comes to me. But, fortunately, it seems I found some time to write about Dungeons & Chimneys.



We played again last Monday. Although one of my players wasn't able to come, it was ok. I avoided combat situations for the moment, because I want all the group to be there when they come, so we started the actual plot of the Freeport campaign.

Dungeons & Chimneys: Ahoy, mateys! Welcome to Freeport!

It's on! IT'S ON!!



My D&D campaign started yesterday. Finally. After almost a month of problems and a thousand of postponed plans, we have finally started. We weren't as prepared as I would have wanted, and there was some trouble during the session, but in the end everything was OK.

Dungeons & Chimneys: Mustering my players!

Greetings, ladies, gentlemen and goblins!

As I said in my previous post, I will soon start a D&D game in my university, inspired by my adventures in Guildford.



I managed to convince two people to play along, and a third one is interested in have a try at least for a while. This means I managed to find a total of three players for my campaign. I wish I had a fourth one, but for the time being I will have to fill that gap myself with a character of my own - which will be an excellent chance to try other playing styles.

This can change in the near future, but the party will most likely be composed by a ranger, a mage, a monk and a cleric (that's me).

Dungeons & Chimneys: Introduction

What is this? A new post on this long-forgotten blog? And a new section, too? Astonishing! Could this be the umpteenth attempt of resurrecting The 9th Circle of Hell? Yeah, it is!



"What is to expect now? Are you going to talk about dungeons? And chimneys?? You have finally gone nuts, haven't you?" These are some of the questions I suppose my readers (the two of them) will be asking. What is the purpose of this new section? Easy answer. As you might know if you have been following my other blog (in Spanish), I have been playing a lot of Dungeons & Dragons in the UK, and that is one of the things I will miss most, for the UJI has no Games Society in which to spend hours rolling dice and attempting to murder Tim.

Given this situation, I felt sad about not being able to play D&D anymore. Suddenly, I had an epiphany (noun; an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure), possibly caused by the British lack of sun: I could be a DM! I could run my own D&D game! I didn't feel that I was prepared for this responsibility, but I couldn't hurt to try.

Comeacrossness: Italian Singers

Greetings, people!

When I have class until late, I usually have dinner at the Pizzería Agora, in the UJI. It's a good place to eat, with Asturian Veal as the main ingredient for its dishes. But today I'm not talking about the food: today I'm talking about some people I saw there last Thursday.

Nihon FTW (日本 フォ デ ウィン)

Greetings! I don't know what's happening but, on the recent weeks I had more contact with the Japanese culture than I've had within the last two years.

Hammertime: Need a displacement here!

Hello there!

One of the most fun steps in the creation of a map in Hammer is creating terrains, aka displacements. It is also the one that causes most errors, at least in my maps.

CP_Parchis (remember it's just a codename) includes a castle on the top of a mountain, so terrains are essential. Since it is a floating castle, those mountains collide with the edge of the map - the skybox. This usually causes lots of errors. I've been trying to put up with the following problem:

Finding displacement neighbors...
Warning: invalid neighbor connection on displacement near (4.84 3584.00 0.00)
Warning: invalid neighbor connection on displacement near (-64.00 4096.00 0.00)
Warning: invalid neighbor connection on displacement near (2.96 4111.19 143.51)

Comeacrossness: Scrap crap dealer

Hello there! So much time since I posted some Comeacrossness: it seems that weird people are scarce in Castellón these days. Nevertheless, yesterday I saw a strange man.

HammerTime: The CP_Parchis Project

Greetings!

In this new section, Hammer Time, I'm going to talk about my first steps at mapping with Hammer. Hammer, in case you are wondering, is a map editor for the Source Engine (HL2, TF2, CSS, etc), also known as VHE (Valve Hammer Editor). I already had some experience with this tool, although none of my first works is good enough to show it here. I suppose my current project won't be succesful either, but I just want to write about it. So, here we go!

Exam Article: L4D Saga Review

Hello there! It's been a while since my last post in this blog. Sadly, I don't have so much time nor ideas, and when I write something, I tend to write in Las Chancletas de Hermes (you know, my other blog). But now I have something in English I wanted to show you - although I know no one will read it.

Recently I made a preparation test for the Advanced Cambridge Exam. One of the exercises in the Writing part consisted on writing an article of 180-220 words, comparing two videogames: their graphics, pros and cons and prices. Piece of cake.

This has been one of the best writing exercises I've made ever - my score was 18/20. So I decided to publish it (the corrected version the teacher gave me back).

Good Bye, Leslie

There goes one of the best comedians ever.

Why couldn't have died the other one?

EYE! Me Bottle O' Scrumpy!

Hello there!

Today a friend of mine and a regular follower of Then 9th Circe of Hell (should I say the most regular?) is having some surgery. I'm talking about Christian.

He's visiting the operating room, but not for a sex change (sorry, I just had to make the joke). He told me that from now on, he's not needing glasses anymore. I don't really know very much about these kind of operations, so I can only say "good luck" and put some slightly related video I found on youtube.



Hope everything goes well!

Butterflies in the Stomach

When I see you, I feel... butterflies in the stomach.

Hello there! It's been a while, innit? This is the problem of Summertime: you have no time for blogging.

Anyway, I promised to devote a post to talk about butterflies. No, not those bright-colored-winged insects. The only interesting thing I know about those is that their tongue is called "proboscis".

I'm talking about butterfly knives, a.k.a. balisongs. Wikipedia says a balisong is "a folding pocket knife with two handles counter-rotating around the tang such that, when closed, the blade is concealed within grooves in the handles". This image may help understanding the description.

OVERTIME: Mac Fortress 2

Hello there!

You should try TF2 now. And I realise I say this every time there is a big TF2 update, but this time I have damn good reasons!

This weekend only, you can play TF2 for free, AND you can buy it (via Steam) with a 50% discount!

Las Chancletas de Hermes

Hello there!

I had been thinking about this for some time, but only now have I found the time to do it. I've just created another blog, this time in Spanish!

Its title is "Las Chancletas de Hermes" and the URL is www.laschancletasdehermes.blogspot.com.