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"Hurensöhne" in Situation: Comedy

imiimi
edited January 2007 in Sam & Max
Hi,

I don't know exactly what they are called in english (son of a bitch? orphans? widow?), but in german print media, those single words of one chapter that appear lonely on the next page of a passage are called "Hurensohn" or sometimes "Waisenkind".

There are a lot of these in Sam and Max: Situation Comedy. I don't remember whether there were in the first episode. There seem to be so many single-words on one subtitle screen, so they may be put there by purpose, but I find them bothersome when reading the subtitles. In many passages, the last word is displayed but instantly vanishing so noone can read it.

So if they aren't intentional, can you keep an eye on this in the next episode?

Imi.

PS: No, I am not deaf ;-)

Comments

  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited January 2007
    Yep, the term in English for the end of a paragraph ending up on the next page is a widow (vs an orphan, which is when the first line of a new paragraph ends up at the end of a page or a column).

    As for why it does that in the engine, I don't know. It's not intentional, I think the engine just fills up the amount of space it has to fill, and then when ti runs out of space it starts a new subtitle.
  • imiimi
    edited January 2007
    So the solution could be some kind of "if there would be only one or two words for the next subtitle screen, put the last 3 words of the previous screen there as wel" ?

    I think nobody cares when a full two-line of subtitles get a bit less words if the next one stays for at least some milliseconds ;-)

    Imi.

    PS: Anyway, Great game engine. It just looks nice, the sound is good, the lip sync is really cool and especally the face animations of Max just rocks!
  • ArrkhalArrkhal
    edited January 2007
    I think at least one of the developers has to be aware of the spacing, because if you skip a line of dialogue, the voice skips to the next line as well as the text.
  • DjNDBDjNDB Moderator
    edited January 2007
    In a related topic, as English is a foreign language to me, sometimes i had the feeling of subtitles vanishing just a little too fast for me to read and understand, especially when Sam used lot's of strange expressions.
    I wish there was a way to reduce the speed of the subtitles, which should also delay the next spoken line.

    For international users it would even be better if the voice actors would speak just a little slower in some situations, but i don't expect that to happen.
    However, maybe it would be nice to add an option to use time stretching to make them speak slower (maybe up to 20-30% so it doesn't sound too shabby) in real time.

    How you think about that?
  • LaserschwertLaserschwert
    edited January 2007
    Just a little correction here: The German term is "Hurenkind", whereas "Hurensohn" is actually a harsh insult. I'm actually surprised that its English counterpart "son of a bitch" isn't considered THAT harsh in the English language, and even used as a regular swearword (sometimes abbreviated as "son of a!").

    Yet, that doesn't mean that I feel insulted by the use of "son of a bitch!" ;)
  • DjNDBDjNDB Moderator
    edited January 2007
    Laserschwert wrote: »
    Just a little correction here: The German term is "Hurenkind", whereas "Hurensohn" is actually a harsh insult.
    That's much better, cause it's gender neutral. So the feminists don't have to worry :D j/k
    Laserschwert wrote: »
    I'm actually surprised that its English counterpart "son of a bitch" isn't considered THAT harsh in the English language, and even used as a regular swearword (sometimes abbreviated as "son of a!").

    True. It's more used as an idiom, not actually offending the mother.
    I personally find the MF word even more surprising.
  • LaserschwertLaserschwert
    edited January 2007
    DjNDB wrote: »
    I personally find the MF word even more surprising.

    Although I'm sure MF isn't referring to the mother of the "person in focus", but his success with older women :D

    What a thread!
  • Dave GrossmanDave Grossman Telltale Alumni
    edited January 2007
    Just FYI, the widows do annoy me as well. I looked into it some time ago (I think we were working on one of the Bone games), and it turned out to be slightly less trivial to fix than I had imagined it would be. So we decided to live with it while we deal with larger issues, but it is on the list of improvements we'd like to make.

    In the meantime I guess we could just write shorter dialog....
  • ErwinErwin
    edited January 2007
    I'm currently involved in a project for a German client (Deutsche Bahn) of the company that I work for, and I told my German co-workers about that funny word, Hurensöhne.

    Would you believe that the entire floor had never heard about that word? They didn't believe me at first, but looked it up on Google. They were like "How the heck did that Dutch dude know?". (I'm a terrible German speaker, by the way.)

    Uh, yeah. That was my story. :)

    --Erwin
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