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[Angry Lawyer]

Hi.  I'm Angry Lawyer.  Some of you might know me from that HL2 mod Zombie Master.

So, as part of my portfolio, I need to produce development tools.  What better game to develop tools for than Dwarf Fortress.  So then to find a niche.

Languages are a bastard to make for Dwarf Fortress, there's a whole lot of entries to type for.  So my plan was to produce a language generator that'll instantly fill out a language file based on some simple rules.

So, what I've currently programmed, in a horrible console app form:

- Program asks for a language name
- Program asks whether you want to give any letters increased or decreased chance of being picked.
- The program creates an arbitrary number of syllables, based on letter weighting.
- Program autodetects the language_words file thing
- Using these syllables, an entire language is written to a new file.

What doesn't yet happen:

- Manual tweaking of syllables
- Pretty interface
- Any error handling at all

Once I've got it to a more userfriendly state, does anyone want to use it?  And any suggestions of additional features?  Eventually, I plan to plug it into a random race generator, or something.

-Angry Lawyer

[Kagus]

I played ZM extensively for a while, but I can't say I remember you.  You wouldn't happen to know a player called CrazyGoblin, would you?

Anyways, I suggest peeking around for a program around here called "Serkib".  It was made by a DF player who recently left the forums (and the game), and we're still somewhat in shock.

Mostly because he keeps popping back here from time to time, just to insist that he's really gone.

[Angry Lawyer]

You mean someone already made a language generator?  Damnit!

I'm the coder of Zombie Master.

edit: Well, with the apparent absense of Fenrir, I'll take it as a challenge to make a word generator that's more robust than his.

-Angry Lawyer

[ April 16, 2008: Message edited by: Angry Lawyer ]

[Jurassiced]

ehh serkib dont work though the game never picks up the file =\

[Idiom]

quote: I'm the coder of Zombie Master.

'A' or 'the'?
If it's the latter I'd shake your hand, but I need it to keep playing DF.

[Lyrax]

I would definitely like to use this, as I intend to eventually add all my own races with unique languages.

Would it be possible to group sounds together by type, and have them editable by type OR by individual?  

EXAMPLE: b, p, k, and t all belong to the 'plosive' group.  One can set 'plosive' to A_NUMBER, which will set each letter also to A_NUMBER.  This does not prevent one to changing, say, the 'p' value to OTHER_NUMBER.

Did I make sense just now?

[Greiger]

Although I like Fenrir's Serkib, I admit that it does have room for improvement.  With Serkib I got a few duplicate words here and there even with a rather big set of syllables.(Thank you Hague.)

I may have fixed it by adding even more words but I was at double the entries that the ones that came with had.

A simple word part generator may help too, lets you choose the ratios between different letters or sounds.  I have been having trouble trying to figure out a lizardlike language, for my Dracon because I can't even get any word parts "lizardy" without giving them a typical lisp.  

Just something that lets me say that I want 5% more Ses or gr sounds than usual would be plenty.

BTW: From the site Zombie master looks like my kinda mod.  You can bet I'm gunna be checking it out.  I have like 20 mods for UT2k4 but only what came with OB for HL2.

[ April 16, 2008: Message edited by: Greiger ]

[Hague]

Syllables.

[Angry Lawyer]

quote:Originally posted by Idiom:
<STRONG>
'A' or 'the'?
If it's the latter I'd shake your hand, but I need it to keep playing DF.</STRONG>

Currently "The", because the rest of the coders finished long ago, and it's down to me to polish up the last release and get it rolled out before I can focus on new projects.

quote:Originally posted by Lyrax:
<STRONG>I would definitely like to use this, as I intend to eventually add all my own races with unique languages.

Would it be possible to group sounds together by type, and have them editable by type OR by individual?  

EXAMPLE: b, p, k, and t all belong to the 'plosive' group.  One can set 'plosive' to A_NUMBER, which will set each letter also to A_NUMBER.  This does not prevent one to changing, say, the 'p' value to OTHER_NUMBER.

Did I make sense just now?</STRONG>

I have something akin to that - the program asks whether you want to give weightings to specific letters, rather than groups.  But you could go through all the plosives and ramp up their chances to big.

I plan to add a "check the syllables" thing, too, so you can make sure everything's awesome before you generate a wordlist.

Am I of the right mind to think that having the program check the resultant list for duplications is a good idea (although a bitch, because of the size of the file)?
Also, I think something to check for valid pronounciation could be good to add.

-Angry Lawyer

[umiman]

Valid pronunciation? I don't think that's much of a concern. Suppose you wanted to make a race of worms who could only speak wormish. Due to lack of any proper vocal glands, the only words they can form would be consonants of a liquid nature, "l", "n", etc.

In the same vein, you could have a race of orcs with oversized, blubber-filled jaws. Due to their nature, every word they say ends with some version of gnashing, "grubfggfhhh!"

Perhaps you could make it so the user can adjust the randomness between consonant and vowel?

[Angry Lawyer]

The pronounciation thing will be optional.

I didn't think of adjusting vowel ratios, actually.  Looks like I'll add it to the to-do list.

-Angry Lawyer

[Shanba]

Last time I tried to mod a language in, I ended up going through each word by hand and changing all the names. I then loaded the game up, tested it and found... that all the accented letters I had added didn't show up with the proper accent in game, instead showing up as dollar signs, or percentage signs etc.   :mad: I kinda gave up on modding a language in after that.

I would love this thing so very much.

[Istrian]

An intersting advanced feature (maybe too advanced) would be the ability to type a few (say 30-40) words of a language you want to generate, have the program analyse the structure of the words(common syllabes, most used letter, least used letters...) and generate other words from the analysis.

If it could read those words from a text file and write them back in, it would be great. We could then go through the list of words erase the ones that don't seem to fit in and have the program fill the gaps with the new list.

BTW, what programming language are you using for this app ?

[ April 17, 2008: Message edited by: Istrian ]

[Boksi]

How about using one word and generating derived words?

Say, if you had a civilization whose culture revolved around fire, and to lesser extent, battle. Let's say their word for fire is 'ter'. No relation to the Wheel of Time. Then battle, for example, could be terklaq or rinter.

Also, please add an option to use apostrophes(ter'klaq) and various odd characters such as é, ö and æ(ter'kláq).

These are, of course, just suggestions.

[Rick]

Here's a crappy language generator I wrote last year, emphasis on crappy:
http://www.privatepaste.com/460N17248I/download

Note that this was written for an older version of DF so I don't know if it works with the latest version.

(also, hello Angry Lawyer!)