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[KittyTac]

We could just have whatever the first dwarven civilization that is generated speak Dorwaf.

Has a similar problem.

[bloop_bleep]

We could just have whatever the first dwarven civilization that is generated speak Dorwaf.

Has a similar problem.

But there's no retconning, since it's decided during worldgen?

[KittyTac]

We could just have whatever the first dwarven civilization that is generated speak Dorwaf.

Has a similar problem.

But there's no retconning, since it's decided during worldgen?

There's the inherent problem with completely fixed languages: they don't make much sense in a deep procedural fantasy universe generator.

[Dorsidwarf]

We could just have whatever the first dwarven civilization that is generated speak Dorwaf.

Has a similar problem.

But there's no retconning, since it's decided during worldgen?

There's the inherent problem with completely fixed languages: they don't make much sense in a deep procedural fantasy universe generator.

There’s also the inherent problem with completely procedural languages: its incredibly hard to give a damn about them, being a vast amount of procgen to make content that you don’t really interact with and which will be totally wiped the next game you play. It runs into the problem of games being *too* different from each other, except perhaps at the maximum setting of “meaningless procedural soup”.


Having a cross-universe static dwarven language makes no less sense in the story creator of DF than the cross-universe existence of dwarves. (And yeah, I know procedural races are planned, see “procgen soup”.)

[KittyTac]

Compromise: Semi-fixed languages like Dorwaf at low randomness, fully procgen languages at higher randomness. Perhaps editable with an init setting so you can have procgen stuff at low randomness.

[Nihilich]

Hey, so I taught Chat GPT how to speak Dorwaf based on this forum post, and then got it to write a short-story in the language. This is what it wrote:

Code: [Select]

Kez sulizuzlun kôt vaheg, vawav rîkût kît nuvìnbil. Do kez sábif sêf sûg thîk, chezkut mûrith tànk. Vatez gîbkut, kez dûmpiv ken zhér. Tez sulid tîn kît yuhoth, kît hujôr sêf sovasav kùt.

Ri, kez taklut púp kît zîk vatez zhôk, gis wavav kim. Vatez sulîk tâg kez sut kûtchi, ken zhîzhun kît tîn. Do kez suliv sêf hunthar kûtchi, kît mosav sêf zul. Kît vabik sûk kûtchi, kez sut sêf chîk.

Vatez zûp, kît chikûz gîbkut ken zhîzhun kît tîn, kez hujôr sêf mosav sovasav sûg. Kez mûrith gîbkut, chezkut zûp. Ken zhîzhun kît tîn, kez sulisôb sûg. Tez sulid sûg kît yuhoth.

Rî, kez taklut púp kît zîk vatez zhôk, gis wavav kim. Vatez sulîk tâg kez sut kûtchi, ken zhîzhun kît tîn. Do kez suliv sêf hunthar kûtchi, kît mosav sêf zul. Kît vabik sûk kûtchi, kez sut sêf chîk.

Vatez zûp, kît chikûz gîbkut ken zhîzhun kît tîn, kez hujôr sêf mosav sovasav sûg. Kez mûrith gîbkut, chezkut zûp. Ken zhîzhun kît tîn, kez sulisôb sûg. Tez sulid sûg kît yuhoth.

Translation:
I wake up early, seeing the sun rise. I'm hungry and need food. The others wake up, and I start threshing wheat. You grind it into flour and half of us cook.

Yes, I hear that we have been ordered to meet with someone, by the river. We go there, and I see a fish. You catch it and we cook it. I find some berries, and we have enough to eat.

Again, I hear that we have been ordered to meet with someone, by the river. We go there, and I see a fish. You catch it and we cook it. I find some berries, and we have enough to eat.

We pack up, and start walking towards the river again. We see a group of people, and half of us draw our weapons. I start walking towards them, and they give us some water. We continue towards the river.

(Note: This story is intentionally left ambiguous, as it could apply to any group of travelers in any situation. It's up to the reader to imagine the context and motivations behind the actions of the characters.)
I also got it to write a cheeky forum insult:

Code: [Select]

Tezik kêt vup sîzàdum hu shîgîth.

Literal translation: "Your message is a bucket of garbage."

A better translate bot could be made by inserting a longer rules/better formated rules prompt into the machine (I only copy and pasted about three screens of grammar).

[Laterigrade]

It could be used in adventure mode to create more immersion, atmosphere, realism. Creates enormity in the world, distant worlds. With my human player I go to the land of the dwarves and they speak their language. If my human player has read the book he wrote sixofspades he will simply see the dwarf text with the translation, otherwise he will not get it and he will not understand anything unless you bring an interpreter.
It could be done that a human can not learn a foreign language in less than a year, reading at least one hour a day (at play) the book (new skill)
I think it's essential for a game like DF that is fantasy but realistic.

I don't really want to hijack this thread, but if the OP has abandoned the project, I will take over. Personally imagine the end goal to be tolkienesque, with Dwarvish being Semitic-like, Human perhaps being English or Middle English like and so on. Of course, if OP is interested, I would love to work with them.

I always think it’s sad (and somewhat funny) when someone pops out of nowhere and announces they’re ‘taking something over’ and then subsequently disappears.

[SixOfSpades]

Kez sulizuzlun kôt vaheg, vawav rîkût kît nuvìnbil. Do kez sábif sêf sûg thîk, chezkut mûrith tànk. Vatez gîbkut, kez dûmpiv ken zhér. Tez sulid tîn kît yuhoth, kît hujôr sêf sovasav kùt.
. . .
Translation:
I wake up early, seeing the sun rise. I'm hungry and need food. The others wake up, and I start threshing wheat. You grind it into flour and half of us cook.

Unfortunately, what that first line actually translates to is this:
I half-[null] [null] plural [null]s, people indeed-[null] have ten [null]s. [null] I kangaroo-[null] is [null] need, compare[null] talked [null]. Y'all [null], I [null]die the wheat. You half-[null] [null] have over-[null], have neglect is all those [null].
That's with [null] representing anything that isn't an actual word in the current Dorwaf vocabulary.

That an AI like Chat GPT failed to reproduce a fluent reproduction of a fake language on the first try isn't surprising at all--it did what AIs are programmed to do. They don't actually write essays or draw fantasy art, they just create what looks like essays and fantasy art. It's only on close examination that one notices that the elf has too many fingers and that George Washington was not sinister buttocks at the Battle of Fort Ticonderoga. Your Chat GPT experiment even fooled (and impressed!) me, right up until I pulled out the actual Dorwaf dictionary, because it looked so much like a real story in Dorwaf. So don't feel bad, it was a pretty decent result for such a small sample of text for the program to use as an example. It even got the 'wheat' part right.

I always think it’s sad (and somewhat funny) when someone pops out of nowhere and announces they’re ‘taking something over’ and then subsequently disappears.

To be fair, when he wrote that I'd been absent from the thread for about 6 months, so I can understand his motivation. As well as his "disappearance" when he realized the size of the task he'd just stepped forward to claim. Dorwaf is something of a beast even in my own head, I wouldn't like to try wrestling with a similar project that came from somebody else's brain.

And, full disclosure, I have essentially stopped. Sure, I'd like to continue working on the language, but it's so far down my list of Leisure Projects that I doubt I'll really work on it again. Ever. Especially when it looks like things like AIs might end up doing the work for me. So if Toady One expresses any interest in making Dorwaf (or anything like it) into a cheap fantasy-language generator, I'll give him my notes & a few pointers on how I think it could work . . . but that's pretty much the extent of what I see as potential developments on this idea.

[Nihilich]

Kez sulizuzlun kôt vaheg, vawav rîkût kît nuvìnbil. Do kez sábif sêf sûg thîk, chezkut mûrith tànk. Vatez gîbkut, kez dûmpiv ken zhér. Tez sulid tîn kît yuhoth, kît hujôr sêf sovasav kùt.
. . .
Translation:
I wake up early, seeing the sun rise. I'm hungry and need food. The others wake up, and I start threshing wheat. You grind it into flour and half of us cook.

Unfortunately, what that first line actually translates to is this:
I half-[null] [null] plural [null]s, people indeed-[null] have ten [null]s. [null] I kangaroo-[null] is [null] need, compare[null] talked [null]. Y'all [null], I [null]die the wheat. You half-[null] [null] have over-[null], have neglect is all those [null].
That's with [null] representing anything that isn't an actual word in the current Dorwaf vocabulary.

That an AI like Chat GPT failed to reproduce a fluent reproduction of a fake language on the first try isn't surprising at all--it did what AIs are programmed to do. They don't actually write essays or draw fantasy art, they just create what looks like essays and fantasy art. It's only on close examination that one notices that the elf has too many fingers and that George Washington was not sinister buttocks at the Battle of Fort Ticonderoga. Your Chat GPT experiment even fooled (and impressed!) me, right up until I pulled out the actual Dorwaf dictionary, because it looked so much like a real story in Dorwaf. So don't feel bad, it was a pretty decent result for such a small sample of text for the program to use as an example. It even got the 'wheat' part right.

You're right, and it's basically what I expected in that regard. It needs to be trained on grammatically correct databases of preexisting dorwaf text, not on rules.

Still, it's a proof-of-concept. Such a thing, with slightly more work, IS now possible. I was hoping to get some ideas generating with this post.

[SixOfSpades]

You're right, and it's basically what I expected in that regard. It needs to be trained on grammatically correct databases of preexisting dorwaf text, not on rules.

Still, it's a proof-of-concept. Such a thing, with slightly more work, IS now possible. I was hoping to get some ideas generating with this post.

Except, of course, that "grammatically correct databases of preexisting dorwaf text" are never going to exist . . . at least, not without expending considerably MORE effort than would be required to code an actual rule-based dorwaf generator in the first place. The fact is, rules are 100% essential. Without them, any sentence, regardless of language, would be nothing but gobbledygook. And the fact that Chat GPT was "willing" to make up fake words--and especially so many of them--shows that it's never going to be useful in producing any actual dorwaf text; or at least, not directly. What you might do is have it generate text in English, while also limiting its vocabulary strictly to words that have direct dorwaf equivalents. Then it should be relatively simple to just do the word-for-word transposition, and there's your story in dorwaf: All the words would be in English grammatical order, of course, but that's a damn sight better than a string of mostly non-words.

[Nihilich]

You're right, and it's basically what I expected in that regard. It needs to be trained on grammatically correct databases of preexisting dorwaf text, not on rules.

Still, it's a proof-of-concept. Such a thing, with slightly more work, IS now possible. I was hoping to get some ideas generating with this post.

Except, of course, that "grammatically correct databases of preexisting dorwaf text" are never going to exist . . . at least, not without expending considerably MORE effort than would be required to code an actual rule-based dorwaf generator in the first place. The fact is, rules are 100% essential. Without them, any sentence, regardless of language, would be nothing but gobbledygook. And the fact that Chat GPT was "willing" to make up fake words--and especially so many of them--shows that it's never going to be useful in producing any actual dorwaf text; or at least, not directly. What you might do is have it generate text in English, while also limiting its vocabulary strictly to words that have direct dorwaf equivalents. Then it should be relatively simple to just do the word-for-word transposition, and there's your story in dorwaf: All the words would be in English grammatical order, of course, but that's a damn sight better than a string of mostly non-words.

i'm gonna prove you wrong

[SixOfSpades]

Well, I hope you do, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Good luck, though.