Grokking Megalettering
v2.0
Hello there! In this Tutorial, I'll guide you through the typical way of how a new Megatokyo-Strip is translated (or lettered, hence the name) using Megalettering.
Our first step is to know what we deal with.
Knowing the Editor
Look at this picture: editor.png
I marked every spot with ared number. These spots mark the following:
- The actual strip that's going to be translated or lettered.
- Language-selector.
- Strip-selector.
- Baloon-selector. We'll get into this later
- Debug-selector. This is normally not used. Highlights the balloons and text with a line.
- Balloon Edit. Dangerous stuff lurks here. Since the krauts(german) have done all the balloons and all of us have checked balloon locations and characters, we don't need this tool.
DO NOT TURN IT ON! Many have turned it on, deleted a balloon and made a fools of themselves!
- Locking mechanism. An user can lock a strip so that noone else can edit it. But other users can pick the lock. If the original editor goes AWOL other user can force the lock by re-locking and then unlocking.
- Strip-section. Here you can change the number of the script, the name of the Strip ("Text"), the Date of publication. You can even assign a thread in the forums to it.
- Balloon and Text -section. This is where you determine the (x,y) of the location of the text and add translated text.
- Force Update of the current strip in editing.
Now we're going to look closer to the 2 most used tools in MegaLettering.
Strip-section
Looking at this picture: editor2.png
Here we can see all the necessary things you need to add a strip(or modify) in the language chosen in the language-selector.
- ID. Simply the number of the strip you want to add or modify.
- Text. Translated name of the strip.
- Date of publication. Simple, the strip in question is made visible on 00:00AM of that day.
- If there is a future strip already done, let's imagine someone did 321 already but rest of you are at 211, then the 321 usually has a date far in the future. Tick this box if you want to insert or update a strip with a date that is _before_ the date of another strip in the database.
- We all can get a small forum on the big m4d server. This is reserved for the strip's thread.
- Insert/Update. Simple, either insert a new strip in to your language or update the date or head title.
- Reset all the data in the fields.
You just select the strip id, put the title and choose a date and hit Insert/Update, simple. After that you can select the inserted strip in the long list of strips.
Balloon-section
Looking at this picture: editor3.png
- Location of the bubble, panel and balloon.
- Balloons character.
- The center location of the text, examples later. This can be selected by either manually setting the (x,y) or simply clicking with your left mouse button somewhere on the comic strip.
- Actual translated text.
- Trim... This removes leading and trailing spaces from the lines in the text box.
- Update, simple, updates the balloons text and/or center location. Danger here: "Update" is the default action when you press return while in any of the input fields except the text box, so if you just created a new shape and hit enter, you change the last shape instead.
- Reset.
Sorry about the finnish. That's actually translated ML.. YES, you too can do it :)
But here is the original with the text in the correct place
example.png
And on this one, I left-clicked, while having the 4,1 balloon selected, far far away. Which resulted in displacement of the text
example2.png
The rant-section should be some-what self-explanatory.
That's it.