"TDS Text Extractor & Checker" - for 'Thief - Deadly Shadows'

Author : -gnartsch-

Version: 0.5.2

Updated: 08/17/2013

Content

About "TDS Text Extractor & Checker"

"TDS Text Extractor & Checker" is a small Java-program that allows you to extract all the texts from a TDS fan mission and which also checks for a couple of formal issues that could be found within.

Text extraction

The texts in TDS are hard to review, since the texts contain a lot of TDS specific formatting which is not really relevant when it comes to proof-reading & spell-checking.
Also, the files are distributed over various directories and keeping the content consistent may become difficult, if you do not know which text refers to which topics.

The tool can help here a lot, because it

So, you can pick the output file that was created by the tool and

Format checking

OK, so far I told you only half of the story ;-)

Besides extracting the texts, the tool also automatically scans the text-files for common problems, which may cause the content to appear broken IN-GAME.
You will see such problems in the outputfile being commented with ### ATTENTION ###, followed by a description of the problem.

There are a couple of known issues, which may cause text to appear broken or not at all in-game:

The tool identifies such issues and the warning stated in the output file should tell you what to look at.

Download

TDSTextExtractor (TDSTextExtractor_v0.5.2.zip, 11 KB)

After download, extract to any folder of your choice. E.g. into

C:\games\TDSChecker

Prerequisites

In order to use "TDS Text Extractor & Checker" you need to have :

How to use

  1. Extract the TDS fanmission that you want to check
  2. Open a command-line window and go to the directory where you extracted the tool
    C:\games\TDSChecker
  3. And run 'TDS Text Extractor & Checker' by specifying the folder where the fm was extracted plus the language for which you want to extract the texts
    tdschecker.bat C:\games\TDS_FMS\my_mission english
  4. A text file will be generated in the folder from where you called the batch file
    C:\games\TDSChecker\my_mission_english.txt

Now you can fetch the file and give it to someone for review, feed it to your favorite spell-checker, or simply scan the file yourself in order to see if some texts are not translated yet...