FFXiV Translator add-on (not injecting nor modifying client)

Hello FFXiV Community!
Fist of all, sorry for my bad english (there is my main reason why I want to do this) hope I can be as clear as possible.

I've been playing a while now but just 2days ago I purchased another copy for my nephew which understands very few English so the questing is hard from him somethimes. Even worst I feel he is missing a looot of the beauty of FFXiV by not beeing able to understand the story behind the quests (some of the are meeh but some other are awesome).

So I just decided to start working on a translator ... now I know modifiying or injecting the game client is againt the EULA but I have this idea (made first test today with very prommising results) of translating it using OCR on the fly.

And I would like to know if this is against the EULA or I can try to make it live.
Also some toughts would be welcome.

Since I have this serious forum limitations the full article is http://ffxivadventures.com/tools/translator
Plese go there and ask the questions I can't post here much

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Errors

Just to pose some questions (just to keep a discussion going):
- Are you taking an entire screenshot and looking for the image patterns you pointed out? (which would include chat being part of the original image)
- What's preventing the software reading of chat log?
- Are you going to be OCR'ing from within your add-on or sending the image off to a service to have it OCR'd?
- Why not change the language setting on your client?" (as someone else asked, is your language not supported?)
- With current OCR technology it's fairly slow in processing (unless you've got decent hardware behind it). How do you plan on making this faster than what's currently out there?

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I do never take fullscreen shots ...
First because the ocr would take forever to make it text and because the simpler the image gets to the OCR app the better.

Second, I'm using an OCR from withing the app (using ocrac http://www.gnu.org/software/ocrad/) and sending to a translate API (using BING at the moment).
The app runs locally until it sends the petition to the API of bing. the screenshot are not stored are taken, processed and overwritten.

here I leave an overview image
http://ffxivadventures.com/tools/tra...CR_process.jpg

Not sure if this is against EULA. However, I really doubt they would ban for allowing more people to read dialogue.

Technically it "Reads game data" so it is against the EULA.

As it stands the policy on third party applications for FFXIV is as follows.

"What's the first rule of add on club?"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jynx

Technically it "Reads game data" so it is against the EULA.

As it stands the policy on third party applications for FFXIV is as follows.

"What's the first rule of add on club?"

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I'm not sure if this is considered reading Game data at the end the rule that can be broken is the Data mining one.

Quote:

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2.5 Data Mining. You may not intercept, mine or otherwise collect information from the Game using unauthorized third party software.

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But I'm not collecting the data. Is like typing the quest text to the google translate page and reading from there. Any ways I'm going to try to get a response from a GM. Since I found this nothing like cheating, infact I think it could reach even more people to the game

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jynx

"What's the first rule of add on club?"

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What add-on club ;D?

You are free to interpret however you want but much like parsers, the program collects and reads game data (Text in this case). Has been shown to be frowned upon by the developers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jynx

You are free to interpret however you want but much like parsers, the program collects and reads game data (Text in this case). Has been shown to be frowned upon by the developers.

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Im not trying to interpretate for my benefit. But banning someone for in example, recording gameplay is ridiculous and it is a way of reading and collecting data from the game.
Rules are there for a reason but common sense is sometimes more important.
Anyhow I'm not developing till I know this is as safe as recording gameplay

Common sense wont save you.

Your best to wait for SE to release their Add on support and propose it through the official channels they will eventually offer rather than risk your account (And others by association to your third party software) being nuked for something so trivial. Yoshida said to use common sense when using these programs and to not go around shouting that you are using them.

So take his advice and don't go around shouting that you are using something like this. Wait for the official support that they told us we would get...eventually.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jynx

Common sense wont save you.

Your best to wait for SE to release their Add on support and propose it through the official channels they will eventually offer rather than risk your account (And others by association to your third party software) being nuked for something so trivial. Yoshida said to use common sense when using these programs and to not go around shouting that you are using them.

So take his advice and don't go around shouting that you are using something like this. Wait for the official support that they told us we would get...eventually.

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May you are right. I'll wait

First off if you are OCRing on the fly in video quite impressive. I would say that no you are not breaking any rules. My understanding is you are basically taking the video stream and running that stream through an OCR program that reads the text out of the image/video and translates that to your language? This is no different than a live stream or FRAPS video. You should not be breaking any rules by this. Another analogy is Photoshopping a screenshot by adding or replacing text. You should be fine.

IF you were breaking some sort of rule, than everyone who records or streams in game footage is breaking the same rule.

Well it's not video OCRing it's from an image when it detects a distinctive image patter like for example the lil arrow on the dialog box here http://ffxivadventures.com/tools/tra...-24-38-130.jpg

I know bannin for this is ridiculous but it's too much work to not be able to freely share it.

I am guessing you cannot simply change the regions language for your nephew? From English to maybe a language he would understand? You do this right from the launcher main page.

http://s3.postimg.org/6ezvcmpeb/language.jpg


I changed from English, to French, and now the entire game is in French and I cannot understand it! lolol

http://s30.postimg.org/r9rbfz30x/fresnch.jpg

There's lots of third party apps out there that aren't officially supported that people use. Being that this one isn't malicious, I'd put it out there. Just don't advertise it here. (Do it somewhere like Reddit)

Just to pose some questions (just to keep a discussion going):
- Are you taking an entire screenshot and looking for the image patterns you pointed out? (which would include chat being part of the original image)
- What's preventing the software reading of chat log?
- Are you going to be OCR'ing from within your add-on or sending the image off to a service to have it OCR'd?
- Why not change the language setting on your client?" (as someone else asked, is your language not supported?)
- With current OCR technology it's fairly slow in processing (unless you've got decent hardware behind it). How do you plan on making this faster than what's currently out there?

I am not sure why but I gathered that the OP is from a Spanish speaking country and that language is not supported.
What I meant by video is the game's output video stream as you would have to read that in some fashion to automate the screen grabs for the OCR process.
This project of yours is quite interesting. I can see so many uses for it. Non localized console games for example.

I agree this project needs to be out there, it can improve accessibility for more than just this game.
This "add-on" for lack of a better way to put it is far different than the "xxx club" in that it takes freely displayed information by the game, ie; the image display, and reads it to find the text and translates the text. Where as "xxx club" displays semi hidden data, ie; data stored in memory unless read from a stored file. It provides no advantages that players do not already possess, IE, understanding the dialogue. In short I proclaim this TOS safe. Not that I can make that call but make it I did :P.

I personally have not looked at the OCR market offerings so I am not sure how many programs offer similar functionality, but there is a reason OCR services are expensive, and if this is a unique offering keep it up, it could go somewhere.

This looks familiar :)