ALFA Books Reading & Writing

New models, textures, & integration of 3rd party content.

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bartleby
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ALFA Books Reading & Writing

Post by bartleby »

Im wondering how hard it would be to Combine something like this

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... tail&id=99

With the language scripts ALFA has now...

Does anyone know how the language selection and speaking works and how hard it would be to take apart and modify?
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darrenhfx
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Post by darrenhfx »

Looks pretty cool.
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Wynna
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Post by Wynna »

If you could not only make a persistent ingame text system (which is something I've been praying for) but make a persistent ingame interactive reading system WITH PICTURES :eek: ... You would be my hero.
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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

The books seem fantastic, would be a very nice addition to our UI, certainly. As far as languages go, it'd be a serious undertaking to manage translation of written text- potentially do-able, but a big job. One would basically have to climb in and use the private functions internal to the DMFI languages, and use them to customize the output drawn on the book pages via the GUI.

Would you want a book written in Alzhedo to appear in english to a PC who knows alzhedo? Or have it appear in the letter-replacement code, with server message box text translating it? The letter-replacement doesn't have the same immursive quality as seeing non-english letters and characters, certainly. But I could easily envision setting the language on a book via a local variable in the toolset (or even a choice of the author's, if they were made writeable by players ingame).

Any way you slice it, this opens impressive possibilities for RP. If I didn't have so many other things on my plate right now, I'd look into integrating it entirely with the DMFI tools package (I'm on their design team, so could probably get it into an upcoming version release).
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bartleby
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Post by bartleby »

Finding the time is always the hard thing i havent been able to look anything over in any detail yet still at work.
Would you want a book written in Alzhedo to appear in english to a PC who knows alzhedo? Or have it appear in the letter-replacement code, with server message box text translating it? The letter-replacement doesn't have the same immursive quality as seeing non-english letters and characters, certainly. But I could easily envision setting the language on a book via a local variable in the toolset (or even a choice of the author's, if they were made writeable by players ingame).
What i was thinking off the bat was to have a GUI button labeled translation that let you switch between english and the language the text is written in if you know the language or have an apropriate spell active.

For reading i was thining just store the text to the book and just translate it as the pages turn.

For writing setting a var on the book saying which lanugae it is or actualy parsing through the text looking for soemthing like <e> some text <\e>
maybe on entering the text having it look to make sure you didnt use anylanguage you dont know and if not writing it ...

Do you know how many languages are currently supported and of those how many of them dont use standard text?

Im not sure how to handle writing pictures in game yet but coudl try to figure something out ... should be easy enough to let a dm make a book with pictures or the like thoguh ...

Eh just a rough outline so far havent looked at it for more than a few minutes. If anyone has any other ideas I could use em. Thanks.
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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

The DMFI code supports most, if not all, of the FRCS languages, plus a few besides. However, they are all implemented using a normal-english letter substitution code- so they tend to look like:

"OuAaRttstaa bhaUtamEE! Katacamba ootasns mUisf."

So, it does the job in terms of making non-spoken languages unintelligible, but isn't terribly immursive otherwise.

I've posted on the DMFI forums to see if they'd be interested in integrating alternate-language books to their systems so it could be used on many PWs, we'll see what kind of response it gets. Activity level over there has been minimal of late.
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bartleby
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Post by bartleby »

Plain old letter replacement would probably be my first stab then and depending i may try to do letter replacement depending on how directly the lanugages correlate to one another. I dont know all that much about most of them im afriad...

Its easy enough to come up with a script that after translation picks graphics for letters depending on a naming convention that has a good deal of repetition IE elv_01 = A elv_02 = B and so on and so forth and then being able to do something like drv_01 so you can grab the number from the letter and the language from the book ...

So long as there predominently exists coresponding english letters that part of the script should be relatively easy and small realy ... with just a lot of naming individual letters of alphabets the right names.
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Wynna
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Post by Wynna »

How's this coming, Bartleby? I'm still very keen to have something like this in for Silvy Uni!
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bartleby
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Post by bartleby »

Im starting to finish up the summoning system just realy have to finish up a good rough pass at making the creatures as true PnP as possible (Up to LVL 4 creatures right now) and add in a good way of doing Unsummoning.

So Im finaly ready to start looking at building books but as a first step I could use some good references for faerun languages and how they work compaired to english. Ive looked around google but i figured some one might already have a good reference.

If its not too much work i would like to try to have the actual alphabets in as well as the translations.

Im confused about something though i was under the impression that the DMFI code was actualy translating some things from english to elven or dwarven or what have you. Is it not doing this in any way? If it is translationg I would like to build something in that preserves the actualy translations through to the runes or alphabet subsitutions.

If its not it should be just as easy to make it look as if it is anyway by just doing a semi random rune or alphabet subsitution.

I guess worst case senerio should be a bunch of pictures of runes or odd alphabet letters attached to a page based on what a PC or DM has recorded that are completely unintelegable unless a PC has the right language knowledge or spell.

Also are we worried about object sizes because i was thinking of just storing the text on the book object itself if that was acceptable ... otherwise i dont realy know anyting about how alfa does what it does with databases and such.

Any way anyone know a good faerun language site?
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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

DMFI uses a letter replacement code for languages- it's consistent, but bears no real similarity to canon languages, and uses normal english letters. It's downloadable off nwvault if you want to look over how they do it- far less ambitious than what you're talking about, though.
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bartleby
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Post by bartleby »

Some very preliminary Books but they might give a decent general idea.

The first picture is some sample text just typed in to get an idea of what it would look like. The second picture is the exact same sample text in draconic. The two folds on the tops of the pages will be clickable to turn the pages. Lot more needs to be done but so far so good.

Image
Image
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Post by Magonushi »

:eek: That looks awesome
Current PC: Helga Hornraven
Next PC: Coming Soon
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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

Simply brilliant. Can't wait to try to work some of this into the servers.
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Post by hollyfant »

That's Klingon! :borg:
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bartleby
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Post by bartleby »

That's Klingon!
Hehe yeah i jacked all the fonts i could find that looked even close I cant find good descriptions so if anyone knows where to get fonts for faerunian languages i could use them. Till then i only have the best aproximations i can find.

Oh and fixed width would work the best. I think im going to have to learn how to make fixed width fonts and try to rip some of the ones i have apart and remake them to be fixed width in order to get the books to work well and simply.
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