On Mon, 22 Jul 1996, Eduardo Gutierrez de Oliveira wrote:
> On Sun, 21 Jul 1996, Limratana wrote:
>
> (Snipped code about imp'ing of languages)
> >
> > What I'm working on now is your second idea. Do you know how the spells get
> > translated to some other language if you are not a spell caster? The crap
> > you see when someone casts a spell in the same room with you? Well you could
> > do it like that and then make a syllable table for each different
>
> I don't think so, what you see when a spell is cast and you don't know it
> is a fixed thing, I didn't even look at the code for this, since
> oculoinfra roughly translates intro infravision in latin. It must be
> fixed in the code.
If you go look near the end of Spell_parser.c, you'll see the syllable
table that I was talking about. The reason it looks somewhat like latin
is probably because of all those latin prefixes and stuff that we still
carry over to the english language. I don't know latin, but I guess it
was used slightly when making the syllable table..
> What I was thinking about was to make rules about words and make some
> sort of a dictinary that auto updates every time someone says something
> it doesn't have already there, so it grows larger and more complete,
> people would also learn a foreign language this way (Hey! I just though
> that maybe you could sell some kind of dictionary or magic book, some
> sort of pocket translator..:)
That sounds pocket translator sounds cool! Maybe assemble about 200 common
words that it will translate for you. I might try to implement this after
I get language working, if you don't mind me using the idea. :)
>
> > language which would translate each language differently. I reccomend
> > not making it random. The only reason you would want to put some random
> > letters in the language translation code would be to stop players from
> > trying to decipher it. And since it seems you like them to be able to
>
> Nope, not exactly, my idea was to put several rules as to what could
> stand as grammar and frequency of syllabes and specific letters (trolls
> would have more 'grls' and elves would have more rhyming) and only add
You might be able to do this with a syllable table like I described above.
As I'm working on language now, I'm trying to make synthetic real world
languages. What I do, when making the syllable table, I make the
syllables sound like common sterotypes, I guess you would call them, of
the language. For instance, if I wanted to simulate Italien, I would
make things like the English 'ing' convert to 'ini', along with the rest
of the letters of the word. So for instance, a word like 'jumping', you
might have j=kr, u=o, m=li, p=n, and ing=ini, so the word would look like
krolinini to anyone who doesn't speak Italien. This sort of looks like
Italien... well more then 'jumping' does. :) You could do this with
your orge and elvish language. You just have to make a list of the most
common English syllable themes, like 'ing', 'ere, 'er'. Things that
appear frequently in the English language... then use the syllable table
for the language to translate those into things that sound like what ever
you want them to. Rhyming is a little more difficult. You could make
the English common syllable translations end in 'ia' or something.. that
way you would have a lot of translated words looking like <something>ia.
and they would all rhyme. You can even split this up between several
rhyming themes. It's a little crazy how complex you can make all this,
considering it all comes out as nonsense. :)
> some sort of random modifier (so maybe if someone wrote 'house' and then
> 'blouse' they are more different than just the first half). My idea
> anyway was also that all translated words were put into a dictionary file
> ('troll.dic'? 'elf.dic'?) and when someone says something it'd get the
> word from the dictionary file if it was already there, if it was not it
> would generate the word *only once* and then put it in the dictionary for
> subsequent calls. This way the random factor would only affect every word
> only *once* in their lives.
>
Yep, but think even having to save each word only once based on one
radom effect will still get very tasking for the computer. Consider how
many different words you use a day. Then consider how many differnt
words 10-50 mudders might use a day, and some of them misplet 5 different
ways. Even if your dictionary files stay under 20K words, that's a lot
of work for most computers.
> > mud. And it won't just be things like Hello There.... you will get
> > things like Helli Tyrde... someone mispells something and it gets entered
> > into your database. :) have fun!
>
> Yeah, this is the only problem I can see... Maybe taking out the random
> factor and putting rules for specific languages (so one sounds more
> musical and another more growly) would be enough.
>
> Also, I don't know if I mentioned this...
>
> I don't mind people using the emote command because languages would be
> only another way of speaking to a select group of people, instead of to
> the whole world. All of the races would be able to speak some kind of
> 'common' accent (wouldn't it be funny if depending on the race or on the
> hometown some kind of accent could be said, either in the middle of
> sentences -PCs would hate this- or on the info text: 'Mythago says with
> elvish accent' every once in a while when speaking..:)
>
> Any more ideas? Or implementation? Do you have languages in your MUd? How
> did you implement them?
I haven't finished yet. But I'm very anti-communication. :) I removed
everything except say from my mud and put in radios that you have to set
on channels. The channel range is anywhere from 1 to 32,000, so whomever
you want to talk to, you will probably want to let him know what channel
you are on. I'm working on making the channel range 100,000 channels,
with something else more complicated (involving radio static) to make it
easier for people to
find what channels other people are talking on. I'm glad you mentioned
emotes! I had forgotten all about that. I'm trying to make language a
communication barrier, and emote would be an all too easy way to
circumvent it. Also, the message boards would be too. Hmmm, well I'll
have to work on that after I get language squared away. ;) Thanks! You
helped me with some ideas!
>
> Greets
>
> Myth
>
> PS: I got some sort of special procedure (for Merc MUDs) that converts a
> shopkeeper (actually, any mobile, I think) into a taxidermist, ever
> wanted to have a bag of green dragon skin? this guy buys a corpse from
> you in a gold coin and then sells you the resulting bag.:) This is really
> something funny. Specially when you take the hide of the minotaur from
> the bag of minotaur skin..:)
>
> If anyone would be interested in implementing the code and sharing it
> with the rest I could send him what I have.
I'd like to see this demented peice of code! :)
>
> I'd also make it so the capacity of the bag is affected by the level or
> the weight of the killed mob and that some kind of limitations are set,
> maybe good bags from evil mobs and cursed bags from good mobs, or
> something like it... magic bags from magic mobs..:)
>
> Greets
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Eduardo Gutierrez de Oliveira eduo@sparc.ciateq.conacyt.mx
> Administrador de Internet Internet Administrator
> Proveedor de Servicio Internet Internet Service Provider
> CIATEQ, A.C.
> Centro de Investigacion y Asistencia Tecnica del Estado de Queretaro, A.C.
> http://sparc.ciateq.conacyt.mx/
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 12/07/00 PST