Author Topic: Multiple regions and languages  (Read 6415 times)

Offline BlueArrow

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Multiple regions and languages
« on: January 27, 2011, 09:14:01 PM »
When a software includes, for example, 5 languages, according current TNC the correct flag is M5.
But, when is released under multiple regions, for example 5, it should contain too M5?

Should not be instead "m5" for 5 languages and "M5" for 5 regions??

For example:

Some Title (1989)(Electronic Arts)(ES-FR-US)(en-es-fr-it-de) ===> Some Title (1989)Electronic Arts)(M3)(m5)

Opinions?



Offline TKaos

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Re: Multiple regions and languages
« Reply #1 on: January 27, 2011, 09:28:52 PM »
I personally don't see a point in using M5 for country code, country code means country of origin, so if a game was made by EA it's most likely (US) only because it's an US publisher and the game was originally released in the US and then shipped to other countries, so from my point of view I'd say use US only.
Also M5 makes no sense for countries, you can't see anywhere where it is from unlike languages, if you start a M5 rom for example you will see in which languages it is available.

If a game really got (US) and (FR) then you will have most likely 2 different publishers and maybe 2 different CRC's for each release.

~one more edit~
Even if Electronic Arts published that game in US, FR & ES then the country code is still only (US) because that's the country of origin, some companies have different labels.
In Atari 8bit for exmaple we have Atari Germany, Atari US, Atari France, that's why you'll see there that some games were published like this (Atari)(US), (Atari)(FR), eventhought it's only called (Atari) it is the Atari France part of the company, I think that I once talked to PandMonium about it and said we should keep it Atari only in that case because you can identify which part of that company published it because of the country code.
The bad part is when those different roms have same CRC code, then I'd always go and name the rom after the first release of that game.

Anyway, if you could give me a full TNC name of a rom with 3 country codes and an explaination about that rom and why it have 3 country codes I could help you a bit better.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2011, 10:02:57 PM by TKaos »

Offline BlueArrow

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Re: Multiple regions and languages
« Reply #2 on: January 27, 2011, 10:01:17 PM »
Mmmm... country of origin??

A company can be a multinational and the game can be developed / published / distributed in different countries. What about if the ES release doesn't have the same CRC than the US one? How we name them?

Using that approach doesn't make sense to me. I think region flag should be used for region of release. Other way there is no method to discriminate between different versions of the same software sharing the same attributes. For example:

This is a program with version 1.0 purchased in the UK published by Ocean Software with 2 languages (de-en) in 2 floppies:

Some Program v1.0 (1992)(Ocean Software)(UK)(de-en)(Disk 1 of 2).ima ===> CRC = 3F214E62
Some Program v1.0 (1992)(Ocean Software)(UK)(de-en)(Disk 2 of 2).ima ===> CRC = 170A333B

This is the same program but purchased in DE, with 2 languages too (de-en) in 2 floppies:

Some Program v1.0 (1992)(Ocean Software)(UK)(de-en)(Disk 1 of 2).ima ===> CRC = 7015A2BF
Some Program v1.0 (1992)(Ocean Software)(UK)(de-en)(Disk 2 of 2).ima ===> CRC = 094BEE96

Resulting names would be equal because we are using as region UK because Ocean Software was a British company.

So, in order to be able to know from what release the data comes and avoid name collision the second program should use DE (because that release was made in Germany, likely using another distributor which put the files in the floppies in other fortmat or including some other installer... etc, resulting in a different CRC).

That is what I think, which is not the law, of course :)

Offline TKaos

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Re: Multiple regions and languages
« Reply #3 on: January 27, 2011, 10:11:12 PM »
Lets say a german company produces a game, it get's published by EA in the US so it gets (Electronic Arts)(US) because that's the publishers origin (US), also it gets release by Bug-Byte in (GB) so it becomes (Bug-Byte)(GB).

Offline BlueArrow

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Re: Multiple regions and languages
« Reply #4 on: January 27, 2011, 10:12:34 PM »
Publisher is not the same as distributor.

For example, in Spain Monkey Island 2 was distributed by Erbe Software, but it was published by Lucasfilm Games.
Publisher is the company which under its mark or seal a product is released in the marked. But distributor is the company responsible for making that product be available in the stores and, in many cases, is the company that print the boxes and pack the different elements of the product.

If publisher flag is being used as distributor, all the NES files with (ES) flag should change the publisher field to (Spaco), for example.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2011, 10:15:21 PM by BlueArrow »

Offline TKaos

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Re: Multiple regions and languages
« Reply #5 on: January 27, 2011, 10:18:14 PM »
Yes forget what I posted before about dsitributor, I deleted that post already, I'm kinda tired and can't really discuss right now, will check it again tomorrow.
Will give some examples tomorrow if I can find the right ones.

Offline BlueArrow

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Re: Multiple regions and languages
« Reply #6 on: January 27, 2011, 10:19:31 PM »
Oky. Good night :)

Offline TKaos

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Re: Multiple regions and languages
« Reply #7 on: January 27, 2011, 10:21:07 PM »
Yea I better get some sleep soon. :P
Maybe we can also talk tomorrow via msn/irc, might make stuff a bit easier.
Again to that Ocean Software question, in my opinion it should be still (GB) because it's published by Ocean Software, if the german release had a different publisher then it should have the (DE) flag.
Somehow can't stop thinking about that now.... :P
Imo it's way too difficult to try to find about which floppy the media come from, even if you can identify the media from the german floppies it was still published by Ocean Software = (GB), also there are tons of files floating on the web you will never be able to identify them as specific releases, only as published by some company most likely, so your maybe thinking correct that you say it should be (DE) but it's simply not possible to do that for all media so we should stay for 1 way of using the country code which is the publisher.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2011, 10:34:01 PM by TKaos »

Offline PandMonium

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Re: Multiple regions and languages
« Reply #8 on: January 28, 2011, 03:16:02 AM »
Good topic, we need to discuss it (and other parts of TNC too) and clear it out in our TNC guide.

As i already said to you, i'm not clearly sure how the flag was created and what it meant to be, the TNC guide we have now was based on the older ones that already said the same thing.

My personal view of it is a mix of both cases, it was created to identify the "country of origin", in other words the place where the software was created and also released or published. Nowadays (for a long time actually) we have huge game studios and multinationals that produce games which are shipped to all around the world, sometimes with different editions (eg pal/ntsc, eu/us/jp, west/asia/world). In part of these cases it is hard to see a logic reason to use country flags (at least atm).

For example the upcoming release of Gears of War 3, developed by Epic and published by Microsoft and developed by Epic Games. I suppose there will be a few different releases, at least PAL for Europe with 5 or 6 languages (en, de, fr, sp, it?) and an NTSC version for Americas/Japan?. In this example i don't see how a country flag can be used.
It was all made by Epic in US (i guess), no point in having the country of origin in both images as the US. On the other hand, it will be released pretty much everywhere, the PAL version all across Europe and more but we will not put there M50 or something.

I see this flag used more in older systems or specific to software released in (origin) or for a specific country (for!), so i join your two points but used to a lesser extend. For example some game or app produced / released here in Portugal (and in portuguese) for some system (say Spectrum), i would probably use (PT) in this case.

Other example could be Windows, an OS used worldwide, produced in the US but we don't use (US) for it, given the fact that it has localized versions for most of the countries, we have a case where country or language flags must be used to identify the image. Language flag sounds good here, but Brazil and Portugal both use Portuguese and there are different versions of the OS for both (Brazil uses pt_br, while here we use pt_pt). I guess a country flag would be the logical choice here.

In case of Fedora (linux distro), it does not have one version per country / language but a single image (lets imagine they don't have more than one, depending on the system etc), with internalization and currently supporting 108 languages ( https://translate.fedoraproject.org/languages/ ), so it would get a M108 ;D ... or no language/country flag at all.

Keep posting your opinions! :)

Offline BlueArrow

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Re: Multiple regions and languages
« Reply #9 on: January 28, 2011, 11:50:29 AM »
I think you are in the right track PandMonium.

Region flag is more necessary in older software than in newer/current software. Today is hard to identify or to asign regions to a software release. I think the better solution with current retail software is to identify it using barcode numbers.

Gears of War 3 (2011)(Microsoft)(Bc. 3800065711135)

In systems with specific version codes or numeration, that should be used. For example: NES, SNES, GB. N64...

NES Examples:
Gremlins 2 - The New Batch (1991-02-21)(Sunsoft)(NES-2Z-FRG)
Iron Tank - The Invasion of Normandy (19xx)(SNK)(NES-IT-ESP)
Kung Fu (1991-11-15)(Irem)(NES-SX-ESP)
Simpsons, The - Bart vs. the Space Mutants (1991-12-12)(Acclaim Entertainment)(NES-Q5-ESP)

GB Examples:
Alleway (1990-09-28)(Nintendo)(DMG-AW-ESP-1)
Pinball - Revenge of the 'Gator (1990)(HAL Laboratory)(DMG-PB-ESP-1)
Tennis (1990-09-28)(Nintendo)(DMG-TN-ESP-1)

And so on...

At least, from Nintendo codes you can extract the region (and, in SNES, the language if the software is localized).

Opinions?
« Last Edit: January 28, 2011, 12:02:23 PM by BlueArrow »

Offline TKaos

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Re: Multiple regions and languages
« Reply #10 on: January 28, 2011, 03:33:08 PM »
If a game was published in US then it becomes (US) if it then was shipped to other countries then it's still (US).
If the game got modified for the german market then of course it shouldn't be still (US) but (DE).

In my opinion that's the way how to do it, that way there can't be 3 country codes in 1 filename.

Offline BlueArrow

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Re: Multiple regions and languages
« Reply #11 on: January 28, 2011, 04:05:38 PM »
I agree with you on that approach.

Offline TKaos

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Re: Multiple regions and languages
« Reply #12 on: January 28, 2011, 04:10:24 PM »
Well that's kinda what I ment yesterday but somehow couldn't find correct words. :P