I though about making my own language for an rpg several years ago. In fact there was three languages each beening an evolution of the previous. Although my language consisted mainly new sympols for the letters in the english alphabet. Altough I didn''t include every letter in each of my three languages for instance the old language only had 20 letters in it. While later languages included more letters some of which where combinations of letters.

But then I relized that what I had done was not create a language but an alphabet. Since a language contains more then just letters it also has grammer, and syntax. So I you''ll have to include those in your language design unless you want it to simply be english with a diffrent alphabet.

As far as using it in game it could be both fun and interesting provided it was done well. You have to think long and hard how the player will learn the language. For instance if you want to compare it to egyptian hieoglyphics then you have to relize that without the chance discovery of the rossetta stone then they would have gone untranslatable to this day. So somehow you going to have to teach the language to the player either through primers like in FFX or by having them encouter teachers who will pass on the meaning of symbols, or perhaps having something similar to the rosseta stone.

Teaching the player the language effectivly will be what makes or breaks the system for the game.

Also are you planning making the players do the translations themselves? Or having an ingame auto translator substituing letters and words as known.

The latter is similar to another idea I had for game that took place in medival europe where not everyone spoke english, some knew german or latin. The player would have language skills in all three which would determine how well they understod that language low skill would result in incomplete or mistranslation.

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

quote: Original post by Magius
Are you considering this in the context of dead civilizations only where the player can ascertain and deduce information that may lead to a quest that concerns relics or history of that civiization

Precisely. The idea being the civ new they would become eventually extinct, and they wanted to make sure a path could be found to the record of their civilization to tell their story, (as well as offer payoffs to other curiosities or incomplete data in the gameworld to add value to the discovery) and simultaneously ensure the player would be able to comprehend the language by the time they arrived at the records repository.

quote:
or are you also considering this in the context of natural communication with living individuals?

It was used as written communication between individuals while the civilization thrived, but the society was heirarchal in that not everyone could create a written record, and, only important long term records were created, and, a certain segment of the society (much like the scribes in Egyptian culture) was primarily in charge of the creation of records. The ruling class's purpose in creating this function of society was for the purposes of leaving a record for those to follow to give them key information to deal with problems that would arise again long after they were all extinct.

quote:
The reason I ask is that in the context of a written or pictoral history there isn't as much room (not to say that there isn't any) for consequences following from misinterpretation or misrepresentation.

I agree, and half the challenge of this creative problem was to find pictographic, symbologic and alphabetic types of imagery that were predelected to as little misinterpretation as possible. Think of the cave paintings that were found in france years ago that were some of the oldest writings ever found. Even though ten thousand years or more of time had passed, it was clear to the observer that the originator of the symbols was relating key events and functions of their lives. For example, the two major pictures were of the hunted animal that was a common source of sustenance, and not far from it was a picture of the female form. Pretty clear priorities and communicates much of what was on the mind of man ten thousand years or more ago, all wrapped up in a few symbols painted that were pretty much beyond misinterpretation.


To expand that into a more comprehensive alphabet, so to speak, I looked at how hieroglyphics were drawn as individual symbols and as concantenated strings representing not just concepts but relationships. I also looked at early Nordic methods, and pretty soon came to some basic conclusions of how to relate the symbols once I devised them.

quote:
I think that (although probably more difficult to implement) when the state of the game could rely on the way a player interprets a "living" language adds a level of realism and suspense that creates a very interesting dynamic. That said, ideas based on the interpretation of an older civilization's relics and ruins could certainly add what I think would be a very interesting hook for objectives and goals.

One of the things that I really wanted out of this aspect of development was the player to not have to feel like they would have to learn a very strange symbology set in order to simply have translation tasks for useful or even necessary information, I wanted to use the symbols for the entertainment value that they can be.

For example, a circle can represent completion, wholeness or unity in a subjective sense (albeit the first subjective interpretation, which is where I wanted things to click for the player while interpreting what they saw, so it invoked wonderment and conclusion nearly simultaneously, an added gameplay value as I saw it), and it's no wonder it has been used to represent things like the sun, the tribe/community/family, inclusion, and so forth for a very long time.

I then secondarily chose appropriate colors for these symbols, based on what kinds of pigmentation would have been available to the civ at the time they existed, so that the sun could be represented in gold, or ochre, or black if it was an eclipse, or both if partial.

Then, I chose scale (or size) of the symbol to represent priority or importance, though I threw a few curves by placing key info in a more normal scale so the player would have to remember and use their mind to a tiny degree to make the information workable later, and last I chose location.

Location is kind of subjective, but what's not? People climb to the top of the Himalayas nearly killing themselves for the sake of enlightenment and nothing else. People can never leave their computer workstation chair for days and feel like they've never been more productive in their life. But for the game, I felt that the more important the information was, the harder, or more challenging it should be to find. I don't do this every time, because I want the reward system consistently upheld, but I don't make it super easy for the player either.

As you know, all this has really done is created more work, lol, cause now I have to look at the topography of the gameworld and figure out how many places I can find to plant these bits and pieces of the 'map of language' as it were.

I wanted the player to get a sense the translation was almost seamless interpretively once they had a working translation schema (sort of like, if the player learns fifteen simple 'letters', they can read hundreds of sentences interspersed all over the game world on all kinds of objects), and most importantly of all, I wanted the player to feel in an entertaining sense they were reading words and legends written a very long time ago, experiencing vicariously what the dead civilization and the ascribing character themself had experienced, creating empathy and reward responses in the player for having taken minimal effort to learn the syntax, and being able to deal with current, potential or future game challenges as a take away value for their efforts.

Now you can see why it took so long to figure out, but I am glad I did. It was a big device in my game, meant to work with other devices.


Adventuredesign


[edited by - adventuredesign on October 26, 2003 9:15:44 PM]

quote: Original post by sunandshadow

Hmm, I was actually filing font creation under "appeals to the artist in me" not the writer, but yeah, that is definitely one of the fun parts. I doubt it would be a merketing success though - my language is a syllabary and as such any font set for it wouldn''t map onto English - only if you wanted to use the created language itself would the font be of any use.

I''m not really interested in word games (with the exception of this nift java magnetic poetry applet I saw recently) - I meant what I have is basically already an article on ''how to create languages'' and I was just thinking of adding more info about grammar and some stuff on how a created language could be used to enrich a game design.

I think this would be a neat article.

quote:
Anyway, I don''t have your email addy, but my ftp access is back up so I''ll just post what I have and you can grab it from there. It was written for an English class where the teacher hadn''t even heard of creating languages before, so please excuse the elementary tone of the intro. Hope your set up for word documents with embedded images; if you have a problem tell me, I could convert it to html and lin the images.
Clicky

Thanks,

Addy

I should mention the reality that this invites guides to be written and posted online that teach the language, or that simply translate everything in the game into English. If you want the language idea to work, you''ll have to make it fun and not seem like a hindrance to anything, or people will just look for shortcuts.

~CGameProgrammer( );

-- Post screenshots of your projects. 100+ posts already in the archives.

quote: Original post by Magius

adventuredesign:

You said that a class of people were in charge of producing the written records. Have you thought of the possiblity that the records left by the civilization could be biased? That is, since everyone in the civilization is not capable of producing written records, the events actually recorded concerning the society could be from the "ruling class's" point of view (as is the case in many records we find, I had just wondered if you had considered this).

No, there is no bias, and for a good reason. It's the old dramaturlogical reliant called, "What's at stake?" What is at stake is far too important for anything other than clarity and truth to be absolutely necessary. Introducing bias in this game or story element would have detracted from a, the functionality of the device's original needs that had to be met, b, the dead language is only a subplot dovetailing into the main plot later on towards the end, and bias would be better represented elsewhere in another story element, such as main character opposition, for example.


Or could it have been a society ruled by the intellectual, where the power to write meant the power to rule?


Nah, that would have been making things too complex for the reasons underlying the creation of the device in the first place. Elevating the drama of that aspect of the story too high would detract from the original conflict, unless you are writing a Homerian or Ovidic epic, which this game is not stylized after, even though it is epic on other senses and contexts.

quote:
I'm not exactly sure how much of what the player interprets affects the game, or how much of what the civilization was like is important to the game, just advancing an idea.

It's critical to the final solution to the game, and compels the player to think and put things together, some of the aspects of gameplay I advocate. You'll understand it better when you see it implemented in context.

quote:
In addition, if it does play that major of a role, it would be interesting to ascertain different view points of the society, perhaps one of the poorer subjects did indeed acquire the skill for written records and depicts the society in a totally different, perhaps even more meaningful light.

Were the society that sophisticated, that may be useful, but then you would be getting into developing another story or subplot, and not a device for exposition of data useful for gameplay advancement, but you don't want to just spell it out for them in some manual unless that is your design standard.

To me, the acquisition of the writing skill by somebody outside of the intended class would be overdesign and overplot. That is not the type of civilization this culture is designed to represent. They are benign, incorrupt and philosophical/spritual for a reason relevant to player motivations in the overall conflict/challenge of the game. I suppose once the player got the knack of what, where and how this information is imparted, and for what purpose, you can throw in some ancient grafitti or jibberish copycat to daunt the player, but I don't know how productive, budget conscious or added value to gameplay that would actually be.





[edited by - adventuredesign on October 27, 2003 1:24:57 AM]

geez, all I can think of are the Mr. Saturns in Earthbound for SNES

Make a custom language for a computer game? Ever heard of Quake-C? heh I know that''s not what you meant for what it''s worth (and Quake-C really is a language, but a programming language)