While working on the names of my various races and nations, I found my self developing an extended vocabulary for each language. For example, the Human equivalent of Nation is Ano. Their word for city is ven. Their nation is called Ano d'Avennes (Nation of Avennes, named after the first king). Their capitol city is, of course, Ven d'Avennes.
They also have words for Elf and Dwarf: Alno and Devo, respectively. Their name for the elvish nation is Ano d'Alno, or Ano d'Rul if they're trying to be accurate. Same for dwarves, Ano d'Devo. Or, Ano d'Nol for accuracy.
Obviously, the elves call their nation something different, as do the dwarves. The above is simply how it is referred to within the Human language.
Taking this a step further, I started developing other vocabulary, such as a word for sword: Sen'Var (lit: sharp blade). From there, I extrapolated the words for long sword and short sword: Eldo Sen'Var and Alno Sen'Var.
My thought is this: why not refer to things within a nation by their tongue? Instead of buying a Long Sword, you buy an Eldo Sen'Var (Long Sword). Obviously, there would be an english translation next to the item's name to avoid confusion.
Another option would be to adopt an FFX method of replacing key words. Each language would have a list of words and associated english equivalent. When learning a language, words are chosen at random from the list (no repeats though) and added to a vocabulary list for the player. Whenever a player is presented text, the text is parsed and known words are replaced with the english equivalent.
For example: Let's say that the human word list is 100 words long (for simplicity's sake). Each percentage I learn in that language, I learn a new word. Let's say that I learn the word for Sword. Every time I see Sen'Var, it will automatically be translated to sword. I would still see it as Eldo Sword and Alno Sword though.
Thoughts?
ID:153351
 Apr 30 2004, 6:37 pm
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Apr 30 2004, 7:35 pm
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DarkView
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The downside is people can learn the language out of character. You'll also have a hard time implementing this into any player made text, since most players don't spell well enough in English for it to translate.
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DarkView wrote:
The downside is people can learn the language out of character. You'll also have a hard time implementing this into any player made text, since most players don't spell well enough in English for it to translate. Maybe you could have two parsing ways then, one for the words he wants to translate, and if the words arent found in there, then just use a letter parser to randomly skew the 'english' letters around, hence indicating that they 'dont know' the language enough to speak it. The only bad thing is the people who occasionally mis-spell words, those would come out jumbled aswell. (a bit un-feasable, but funny none the less) | |
This would really only be for text going to the player from the game, not regular chat. Regular chat would follow a less immersed layout.
Although, I could try and write an algorithm that matches words based on scores. W0rd would have score of, say, 75 (percentage) when matched against Word. While potentially processor intensive, it would put it one step further to full immersion. [EDIT] After some field testing, I'm pretty sure I can work out a decent algorithm to match words. My big concern is something like this: word list = "hello","hell","good","bye","goodbye" input = "hi" return = "hell" I don't think it's worth the effort to attempt to make a context matcher to go along with the word matcher. Obviously this is a relatively simple error and would simply result in "hi" being added as another form of "hello". However, I kept this example simple. I'm sure bigger and nastier errors would crop up later. I can only imagine what players would do to the poor thing :P I guess my only answer is to keep a look out and keep the word lists easily modified during server uptime. | |
I made a language library a long time ago... It's not the most effective but it was inspired by the FFX method.
~Ken | |
NeoHaxor wrote:
I made a language library a long time ago... It's not the most effective Then why'd you bring it up you bum? =P Really, though...post it as a demo. It's like saying, "I've got a possible cure to the common cold." then not releasing it. =P | |
Goku72 wrote:
NeoHaxor wrote: He has released it. http://developer.byond.com/hub/NeoHaxor/Languages | |
Jon88 wrote:
Goku72 wrote: *cough* >.> | |