scummvm/devtools/create_bladerunner/subtitles

Blade Runner Subtitles

Blade Runner (1997) Subtitles Support

Some tools written in Python 2.7 to help add support for subtitles in Westwood's point and click adventure game Blade Runner (1997) for PC.

quotesSpreadsheetCreator (sortBladeRunnerWavs##)

(requires python lib xlwt, wave) A tool to gather all the speech audio filenames in an Excel file which will include a column with links to the audio file location on the PC. By Ctrl+MouseClick on that column's entries you should be able to listen to the corresponding wav file. The output excel file out.xls should help with the transcription of all the spoken in-game quotes. It also provides extra quote information such as the corresponding actor ID and quote ID per quote.

Note 1: A lot of extra information has been added to the output Excel file maintained for the English transcription, such as whether a quote is unused or untriggered, the person a quote refers to (when applicable), as well as extra quotes that are not separate Audio files (AUD) in the game's archives but are part of a video file (VQA) or were text resources (TRE) for dialogue menus, UI etc. Therefore, this tool is provided here mostly for archiving purposes. The online Excel file is available here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17ew0YyhSwqcqZg6bXrIgz0GkA62dhgViHN15lOu5Hj8/edit?usp=sharing

Note 2: Using the "-xwav" switch, this tool will export ALL game's audio files (that are either speech or speech-related) in a WAV format. This is expected to take up quite a lot of your HDD space.

Usage:

python2.7 sortBladeRunnerWavs02.py -ip <folderpath_for_TLK_Files> -op <folderpath_for_extracted_wav_Files> -m <stringPathToReplaceFolderpathInExcelLinks> [-xwav] [-xtre]

The tool requires the actornames.txt file, which is included in the samples folder, to be in the same folder as the tool's source (.py) file.

mixResourceCreator (packBladeRunnerMIXFromPCTLKXLS-##)

(requires python lib xlrd) A tool to process the aforementioned Excel file with the dialogue transcriptions and output text resource files (TRE) that will be packed along with the external font (see fontCreator tool) into a SUBTITLES.MIX file. Currently, a modified version of the ScummVM's BladeRunner engine is required for this MIX file to work in-game. Multiple TRE files will be created intermediately in order to fully support subtitles in the game. One TRE file includes all in-game spoken quotes and the rest of them correspond to any VQA video sequence that contain voice acting. Usage:

python2.7 packBladeRunnerMIXFromPCTLKXLS-04.py -x <excelWithTranscriptSheets.xls>

The tool requires the actornames.txt file, which is included in the samples folder, to be in the same folder as the tool's source (.py) file.

fontCreator (grabberFromPNG##BR)

(requires python image library PIL) A tool to support both the extraction of fonts from the game and the creation of a font file (FON) for use with (currently) a modified version of ScummVM's BladeRunner engine (WIP) in order to resolve various issues with the available fonts (included in the game's own resource files). These issues include alignment, kerning, corrupted format, limited charset and unsupported characters -- especially for languages with too many non-Latin symbols in their alphabet. This font tool's code is based off the Monkey Island Special Edition's Translator (https://github.com/ShadowNate/MISETranslator). Usage:

Syntax A - To export game fonts:
python2.7 grabberFromPNG17BR.py -ip <folderpathForMIXFiles>

Syntax B - To create subtitle font:
python2.7 grabberFromPNG17BR.py -im <imageRowPNGFilename> -om <targetFONfilename> -pxLL <minSpaceBetweenLettersInRowLeftToLeft> -pxTT <minSpaceBetweenLettersInColumnTopToTop> -pxKn <kerningForFirstDummyFontLetter> -pxWS <whiteSpaceWidthInPixels>

This tool also requires an overrideEncoding.txt file to be in the same folder as the tool's source (.py) file. The overrideEncoding.txt is a text file that should be saved in a UTF-8 encoding (no BOM), that contains the following:

1. A key "targetEncoding" with a value of the name of the ASCII codepage that should be used for the character fonts (eg windows-1253).
2. A key "asciiCharList" with value the "all-characters" string with all the printable characters that will be used in-game, from the specified codepage. Keep in mind that:
   • The first such character (typically this is the '!' character) should be repeated twice!
   • All characters must belong to the specified codepage.
   • The order that the characters appear in the string should match their order in the ASCII table of the codepage.
   • You don't need to use all the characters of the specified codepage in your "all-characters" string.
   • For any special characters that don't appear in the target codepage (eg ñ, é, í, â don't appear in the Greek codepage), you'll have to decide on an ASCII value for them (one not used by another character appearing in-game). In the "all-characters" string you should put as placeholders the actual characters from the specified codepage that correspond to the ASCII values you have decided above; The placeholder characters should also be in the proper order (by their ASCII value) inside the string.
3. A key "explicitKerningList" with value a list of comma separated tuples where each tuple specifies a character and its manually set kerning (x-offset) in pixels. Kerning can have integer (positive or negative) values. This list is optional and may be skipped, if you put a '-' instead of a list.
   • Example: explicitKerningList=i:-1
   • Don't use space(s) between the tuples!
4. A key "explicitWidthIncrement" with value a list of comma separated tuples where each tuple specifies a character and its manually set extended width in pixels. This should be a positive integer value. You can skip this list by not writing anything in the file after the previous (manual kerning) list.
   • Example: explicitWidthIncrement=i:0,j:1,l:1
   • Don't use space(s) between the tuples!
5. A key "originalFontName" with the FON file's original name in the game (the one that it should replace). Use SUBLTS for the subtitles FON.
   • Example: originalFontName=SUBLTS
6. A key "specialOutOfOrderGlyphsUTF8ToAsciiTargetEncoding" with value a list of comma separated tuples that indicates which character glyphs should replace the placeholder glyphs in your all-character string above.
   • Example: specialOutOfOrderGlyphsUTF8ToAsciiTargetEncoding=í:Ά,ñ:¥,â:¦,é:§,Ά:£
   • Don't use space(s) between the tuples! There is a sample of such file in the source folder for the fontCreator tool.

For the exporting the game fonts mode, the valid syntax expects only one (1) argument:

1. folderpathForMIXFiles: is the path where the game's MIX files are located (STARTUP.MIX is required). The exported font files will be: 10PT.FON, TAHOMA18.FON, TAHOMA24.FON and KIA6PT.FON.

For the creation of subtitles' font mode, there are six (6) mandatory launch arguments for the fontCreator tool:

1. imageRowPNGFilename: is the filename of the input PNG image file which should contain a row of (preferably) tab separated glyphs. Example: "Tahoma_18ShdwTranspThreshZero003-G5.png". Keep in mind that:
   • The first glyph should be repeated here too, as in the overrideEncoding.txt file.
   • Background should be transparent.
   • All colors used in the character glyphs should not have any transparency value (eg from Gimp 2, set Layer->Transparency->Threshold alpha to 0). There's no partial transparency supported by the game. A pixel will either by fully transparent or fully opaque.
   • If you use special glyphs that are not in the specified ASCII codepage (eg ñ, é, í, â don't appear in the Greek codepage), then in this image file you should use the actual special glyphs - put them at the position of the placeholder characters in your "all-characters" string that you've specified in the overrideEncoding.txt file.
2. targetFONfilename: Example: "SUBTLS_E.FON". Keep in mind that:
   • As of yet, only the SUBTLS_E.FON is supported by a modified (non-official) version of the BladeRunner ScummVM engine.
3. minSpaceBetweenLettersInRowLeftToLeft: This is a length (positive integer) in pixels that indicates the minimum distance between the left-most side of a glyph and the left-most side of the immediate subsequent glyph in the input image PNG (row of glyphs) file. This basically tells the tool how far (in the x axis) it can search for pixels that belong to the same glyph). You can input an approximate value here and adjust it based on the output of the tool (the tool should be able to detect ALL the glyphs in the PNG row image file and it will report how many it detected in its output)
4. minSpaceBetweenLettersInColumnTopToTop: This is a positive integer in pixels that indicates the minimum distance between the top-most pixel of a glyph and the top-most pixel of a glyph on another row of the input image file. It is highly recommended, though, that the input image file should contain only a single row of glyphs and this value should be higher than the maximum height among the glyphs, typically this should be set to approximately double the maximum height of glyph.
5. kerningForFirstDummyFontGlyph: This is an integer that explicitly indicates the kerning, ie. offset in pixels (on the x-axis) of the first glyph (the one that is repeated twice). This can be measured by observing the indent that your image processing app adds when you enter the first glyph (typically it should be only a few pixels)
6. whiteSpaceWidthInPixels: This is a positive integer value that sets the width in pixels for the single white space between words for the subtitles in-game.

A suggested method of creating decent looking PNG with the row of glyphs for your subtitles' font is the following:

1. Create the font row in GIMP
   • Start with a new empty image, with transparent background. Choose a large enough canvas width (you can adjust it later)
   • Paste as a new layer a tab separated alphanumeric sequence with all your glyphs (as specified above). Choose white as the font's color.
   • Adjust your canvas' width and height to make sure all the glyphs are within its borders.
2. Add layers for shadows if necessary (recommended) by duplicating the original layer with the (white colored) glyphs to create layers that would be used for the shadow effect. Those layers should be colorified as black and placed behind the original layer, displaced by one (1) pixel from eg. the top, right, left, and bottom (it's recommended to do this for all of those four).
3. Merge all visible layers (maintaining an alpha channel for the background)
4. Select all and float the selection, which should create a floating selection with all the letter glyphs.
   • Promote that selection to a layer and duplicate it.
5. Choose one of the duplicated layers and COLORIFY it to pitch black.
   • Set the transparency threshold of this black layer to 0.
6. Finally, place this completely black colored layer underneath the other one and merge the visible layers.
7. Export your image to a PNG file.

This should get rid of semi-transparent pixels while maintaining the "aliasing" effect. There could be a better way but this should work ok.

Credits and Special Thanks

• All the developer guys from the ScummVM (https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm) team, and especially the ones involved in the implementation of the BladeRunner engine for ScummVM (madmoose, peterkohaut, sev and everyone else).
• The information provided in this blog (http://westwoodbladerunner.blogspot.ca) by Michael Liebscher.
• The creator of br-mixer (https://github.com/bdamer/br-mixer), Ben Damer, who also has a blog entry about the game resource file formats (http://afqa123.com/2015/03/07/deciphering-blade-runner/)