Hello Global BATTLETECH Community,
After announcing that localization would be delayed in our 1.2 update, I wanted to open up this thread to help personally communicate where we are and where we are headed with the localization of BATTLETECH. We know you're frustrated with the delay - we're also frustrated and disappointed with the time it has taken to create French, German, and Russian versions of the game in fulfilling our Kickstarter promises. As the Producer of the game, I also want to acknowledge and take proper responsibility for this delay as a production issue, which falls on my shoulders. You deserve a deeper explanation as well as closer communication going forward, directly from me.
First, I will spell out a quick history of the localization effort on the project so you understand how we got where we are today. Second, I will share a brief roadmap for how we are correcting our previous mistakes going forward. Lastly, when we know more, I'll update this thread.- you should feel free to post your questions or comments here, and I'll do my best to respond in a timely manner as warranted. I understand that the proof is in delivery, not in whatever I write here, but at least you will not be in the dark about where things stand.
Brief History: We did our first export of text from the game for delivery to translators in early February 2018 - three months before launch. This was completely in line with our anticipated schedule for localization, as finishing touches on text would require a second export right after launch and we would wrap up QA in the few months afterward. So far, so good.
In the run up to launch and near post-launch period, we were stretched too thin on both the production and engineering side to address localization as intended, and we began to fall behind. Not unrecoverable to our promised timeline yet, but enough to send up red flags. When we were able to assign an engineer to localization development, a new text export was immediately created and sent to translators - it was larger than expected, but nothing too alarming - and testing began in earnest to track down the last of the text that had not been sent for translation. Except…
...The “last of the text” - uncovered over the next month of testing and corrective engineering work - turned out to be exceedingly large, basically another ⅓ of the entire game. We realized far too late that the lack of standards for the ways text had been implemented in the game (and admittedly had not been well-tracked), not only skewed our perspective on the scope of the potential issue early on, but made it exceedingly difficult later to extract the text for translation purposes. This was not known until very recently and that large set of text is currently in translation, which brings us to the present situation and announcement.
What Now? I should pause here to say that our colleagues at Paradox and the translators have been patient and accommodating of these internal challenges, and Paradox not only shares our studio commitment to get BATTLETECH localized as quickly as possible, but supports our efforts to position ourselves to meet or exceed expectations for localization going forward.
We are only focusing on delivering French, German, and Russian versions for the base game at this time. To be clear, no other languages are currently under consideration. Estimates now put those three versions out to you in Beta form in the range of mid-late October. We will not hold any language releases to wait for the others. As soon as one or more are complete, we'll release the Beta versions to you.
Moving forward…
I apologize for the delays and thank you again for your patience, I also understand that you just want to play the game! We want you to play it as well and are doing everything we can to get back on track with localization. We assure you that there was never ill-intent from anyone at HBS or PDX regarding localization - only missteps in oversight that we deeply regret. I’ll be posting again here soon as questions or more info come up.
Chris Klimecky
BATTLETECH Lead Producer
After announcing that localization would be delayed in our 1.2 update, I wanted to open up this thread to help personally communicate where we are and where we are headed with the localization of BATTLETECH. We know you're frustrated with the delay - we're also frustrated and disappointed with the time it has taken to create French, German, and Russian versions of the game in fulfilling our Kickstarter promises. As the Producer of the game, I also want to acknowledge and take proper responsibility for this delay as a production issue, which falls on my shoulders. You deserve a deeper explanation as well as closer communication going forward, directly from me.
First, I will spell out a quick history of the localization effort on the project so you understand how we got where we are today. Second, I will share a brief roadmap for how we are correcting our previous mistakes going forward. Lastly, when we know more, I'll update this thread.- you should feel free to post your questions or comments here, and I'll do my best to respond in a timely manner as warranted. I understand that the proof is in delivery, not in whatever I write here, but at least you will not be in the dark about where things stand.
Brief History: We did our first export of text from the game for delivery to translators in early February 2018 - three months before launch. This was completely in line with our anticipated schedule for localization, as finishing touches on text would require a second export right after launch and we would wrap up QA in the few months afterward. So far, so good.
In the run up to launch and near post-launch period, we were stretched too thin on both the production and engineering side to address localization as intended, and we began to fall behind. Not unrecoverable to our promised timeline yet, but enough to send up red flags. When we were able to assign an engineer to localization development, a new text export was immediately created and sent to translators - it was larger than expected, but nothing too alarming - and testing began in earnest to track down the last of the text that had not been sent for translation. Except…
...The “last of the text” - uncovered over the next month of testing and corrective engineering work - turned out to be exceedingly large, basically another ⅓ of the entire game. We realized far too late that the lack of standards for the ways text had been implemented in the game (and admittedly had not been well-tracked), not only skewed our perspective on the scope of the potential issue early on, but made it exceedingly difficult later to extract the text for translation purposes. This was not known until very recently and that large set of text is currently in translation, which brings us to the present situation and announcement.
What Now? I should pause here to say that our colleagues at Paradox and the translators have been patient and accommodating of these internal challenges, and Paradox not only shares our studio commitment to get BATTLETECH localized as quickly as possible, but supports our efforts to position ourselves to meet or exceed expectations for localization going forward.
We are only focusing on delivering French, German, and Russian versions for the base game at this time. To be clear, no other languages are currently under consideration. Estimates now put those three versions out to you in Beta form in the range of mid-late October. We will not hold any language releases to wait for the others. As soon as one or more are complete, we'll release the Beta versions to you.
Moving forward…
- We are building an in-house localization team that starts with a producer and engineer dedicated to the effort.
- We are setting text implementation standards for the entire HBS team to follow so that no new text ends up falling outside our string collection tools.
- While we will still be offset in translating new content in the near term (i.e. Flashpoint), our goal is to be in sync and sim-shipping localization with new content by spring of 2019.
I apologize for the delays and thank you again for your patience, I also understand that you just want to play the game! We want you to play it as well and are doing everything we can to get back on track with localization. We assure you that there was never ill-intent from anyone at HBS or PDX regarding localization - only missteps in oversight that we deeply regret. I’ll be posting again here soon as questions or more info come up.
Chris Klimecky
BATTLETECH Lead Producer
