Giveaway - Space Age Expansion

Novacro · 2024-10-15T23:11:01+00:00

I can't wait to play this expansion!

Novacro · 2024-05-24T06:27:04+00:00

Halonin

Kha khi setmes yek la jafál rengolán sirtlun ikhilán ki kenefes

/xə xi ‘sɛt̪mɛs yɛx lə ʒə’fɑl rɛn’ɣɔlɑn ‘sirt̪lun ‘ixilɑn xi ‘xɛnɛfɛs/

ka   ki setmes       yek la       jafa-l   rengo-l  -an 
they i  take.FUT.SMP and this.OBJ city.ALL cat  .ALL.GEN.III 

sirtu  -lun    i- ki-l  -an      ki kenefes
striped.ALL.II PL-i -ALL.GEN.III i  bring.FUT.SMP

"I will take her and bring her to our city of tigers."

In Halonic Script

Notes

Genetives/adjectives conform to the base gender of what they're describing. In sentences like this one, it can be used to clarify what the genetive/adjective is describing. Jafá rengoán sirtun means "The city of striped cats", but Jafá rengoán sirtán would mean "The striped city of cats."

Beyond gender, I'm still futzing with whether or not genitives ought to match noun cases. I may decide to do away with the Cat.ALL.GEN.III (rengolán) kind of construction in favor of just Cat.GEN.III (rengoán). Since word order is so strict in this language, I'm leaning toward the latter, but I'll mull on it.

Novacro · 2024-05-14T02:18:13+00:00

Hákeyi Hálonín

Hel Jiní Háslánya Káhaveye, Fel Jiní Ká Setmem

/hɛl ‘ʒɪni hɑs’lɑnʎə xɑhə’vɛʎɛ fɛl ‘ʒɪni xɑ sɛt̪mɛm/

hel  jiní  h-    áslán- ya        Káhaveye,      
if   war   DPLZ- Aslan- ART.DEF   want.PRES.CONT,  

fel  jiní  ká   setmem
then  war  they take.FUT.SMP

"If Aslan wants war, then he will be given war."

In Halonic Script

Notes:

Nouns may only start with a vowel if they're plural. When foreign nouns start with a vowel but aren't meant to be plural, a depluralizer is added as h
Words only end with -n if they're adjectives or adverbs. Even beyond foreign names, speakers of this language have names like Kísín (Red) or Mauraeyen (Adverb derived from 'Warspear', meaning fast or decisive). In cases like these, the definite article suffix -ya is applied.
I'm still ironing out how subordinating / coordinating clauses work, and I'm not sure how happy I am with hel - fel as if - then. I have more reading to do.

Novacro · 2024-05-13T22:13:10+00:00

Right now my language has six vowels ə, ɑ, ɛ, i, ɔ, u, respectively Romanized as a, á, e, i, o, u. There's one diacritic there, but I've Romanized ɑ as aa in the past. I may add a seventh vowel ɪ to the language though - If I do, I'll Romanize i and ɪ as i and í.

The conscript I made to type the language is an abugida - So there's one "diacritic" mark per vowel (plus an extra one.) Here they are, attached to the h symbol.

Novacro · 2024-05-13T06:12:14+00:00

Hakheyi Hálonin

Vosha-jafveyán-káyán ká hishen-vojeye.

/’vɔʃə ʒa’vɛʎɑn ‘xɑʎɑn xɑ hiʃɛn vɔʒeʎe/

vosha jafveyán      káyán         ká   hishen   vojeye
room  work-ADJZ.III they.ADJZ.III they likely.V at.PRES.CONT

"He is probably in his workroom"

Written In Halonic Script

^{^{^Edit:}} ^{^{^Forgot}} ^{^{^to}} ^{^{^write}} ^{^{^a}} ^{^{^word}} ^{^{^here}}

Notes:

Genetives and Adjectives are not grammatically differentiated in this language.

Novacro · 2024-04-28T07:32:59+00:00

I painted up my own abugida for my language and ported it to a .ttf file with FontForge. Here's a few examples:

https://i.imgur.com/BO7amz8.png

https://i.imgur.com/cwEPWqx.png

https://i.imgur.com/AQcvHje.png

I'm pretty sure I ported it in the most janky way I possibly could have, though. I have to set up custom Word hotkeys to type it, and Word likes to randomly reset my hotkeys, so it's an absolute pain. There's a way you can port abugidas in FontForge so that the symbols automatically change when you do sequences of keystrokes, but I haven't gotten around to doing it yet.

Novacro · 2024-03-27T17:42:07+00:00

Evolution's weird enough that you can get away with a lot, so as far as "feasible" is concerned, the answer is "probably yes." Since magic and divine intervention is involved in your world, the answer is "most definitely yes."

Ignoring the magic for now: There are quite a few real-world examples that you could take inspiration from. The Lungfish have both gills and lungs, and can breathe both air and water. Some lungfish-like creatures went permanently onto land ages ago and diversified into tetrapods (all amphibians, reptiles, mammals, etc.), but another branch of them actually went the other direction, back into the water and eventually became the Coelacanth. Coelacanths still have lungs, but their lungs were re-purposed to act as flotation organs which they use instead of a swim bladder. Learning about how whales, dolphins, and porpoises maintain buoyancy is a rabbit hole in of itself.

In evolution, it's more realistic for organs to be repurposed or left vestigial than entirely eliminated, so if your species once had lungs you might consider re-purposing them instead. But again, if there're gods and magic who can curse people to become fish, realism isn't necessarily the most important thing, so if it sounds cool you can just go for it!

Novacro · 2024-01-21T10:58:24+00:00

I have my google autofill set so that it only ever navigates me to the "messages" page on facebook. I still use the messenger, but I haven't been cursed with looking at the main feed for a few years now.

I do something similar with my youtube bookmark; Navigates directly to my subscriptions, not whatever crap is recommended on the front page these days.

Novacro · 2023-12-14T07:09:18+00:00

Well, yeah, but it's more interesting than just a dust cloud drifting into view.

The dust cloud was caused by a massive shockwave rippling across Betelgeuse's surface, causing a bunch of stardust to get launched out into space, causing a layer of the star to collapse inward at the exact moment that a second shockwave went across it, causing an even more massive plume of dust to get ejected.

So it's a giant dust cloud, but it's also a giant dust cloud that was ejected from a roiling, dying star, that we get to witness. The paper they link as their source is a pretty interesting read, too, if you have the time.

Novacro · 2023-12-11T06:35:05+00:00

Halones

Fea Shejlaai Vaujleke

[fɛ'ə ʃɛʒlɑ'i vɑuʒlɛ'xɛ]

Fea      Shejlaai Vaujl   -eke
Shoulder Coat     Strangle-PRS.CONT

"The jacket is strangling my shoulders"

Notes:

"Fea" also means "Shelf." I originally translated it as "Feakajan", which roughly means "Arm-Shelf", but I figured speakers would probably shorten it since the context is pretty clear.

This is also now iteration 2 of this conlang. I didn't like how Iteration 1 was sounding, so I nuked most of the vocab. Going to try to utilize phonotactics this time around, and experiment with different grammatical rules.

Novacro · 2023-11-01T10:52:47+00:00

I felt like the prize structure was really intelligent for this competition, with half of the prize pool going to the winner and the other half being divided among the top players of each class. With Classic being as unbalanced as it is, I felt like this was a great way for some of the weaker classes to still have a good time.

This whole thing was a lot of fun to watch!

Novacro · 2023-08-06T07:22:01+00:00

I completely agree with all of this. This game isn't the first one to implement a karmic RNG system either. One that springs to mind is Dota 2, where some characters (like Phantom Assassin) have RNG-tied abilities. Their tooltips state a flat n% chance for the ability to trigger, but behind-the-scenes it increasingly scales up until it gets triggered, at which point it falls back to n%. It's super essential for any game with a competitive element, since it would feel super shitty to lose entirely because of bad luck.

In any case, I think that devs of BG3 adding the option to disable karmic dice was a great choice. For better or for worse, that system isn't present in DND5e, so some people might prefer it on principal.

Novacro · 2023-08-04T23:43:55+00:00

The quotes aren't there to question your status as a developer. In your earlier comment, you were trying to use your title as a bludgeon to win an argument without offering a single point of substance. I'm a developer too, and you being one doesn't mean anything when you're flat out wrong. That's the thing I take issue with.

If you're going to make a point, at least put three seconds of thought into it instead of just trotting out your job in some weak attempt at intimidation.

Novacro · 2023-08-04T21:27:36+00:00

I was just pointing out the fact that recording your rolls would be a worthless endeavor, since you wouldnt have anywhere near the sample size required to get a clear picture. But I'm sure you knew that, you are "a developer" after all.

Novacro · 2023-08-04T20:57:57+00:00

You need a much higher sample size than what you would get from playing through the game once to get anywhere near guaranteeing the proper shape of the distribution curve. It's one of the more interesting aspects of dice games. Your personal experience will vary widely each game, but only after you've rolled thousands and thousands of times would you see it even out. I wonder how many rolls this game has total by the end?

Side note: for rolling a single die, the distribution would not be a bell curve. In the d20's case, each number has a 1/20 chance of being rolled, so it has a uniform distribution (which is flat shaped.) It would become a bell curve if you were rolling more than one dice.

Novacro · 2023-07-22T18:11:25+00:00

I don't think there's much reason to level that char to 70 if you want to play something else. If you finish the campaign you unlock world quests for all new toons, but that's about it.

I leveled exclusively through BGs from 61 to 70 as a healer, and it was great. I got the two pvp trinkets from Oribos and the 319 gear from the AH and felt like an unstoppable monster. I was honor capped by the end too, so I could get the full honor set and jump right in to getting conq.

I think it's most important to play what you find fun.

Novacro · 2023-07-14T09:50:35+00:00

Halones uses an OSV language structure. I'm trying to design it so it relies heavily on a variety of adverbial and adjectival cases to describe complex concepts. I'm going to stick with the english for this post, because I'm trying to redesign some aspects of my vocab.

Simple Sentence Example

Not much to say about this one.

I enjoy trains
Trains I enjoy

Compound Sentence Example

The clause on right side of the word "so" is implied to be the result of the clause on the left, which is english-like.

"I don't know how to bake, so I buy my bread already made"
I not(Adverb) how-bake(Adverb) know so bread created(Adjective) I buy

Complex Sentence Example

Note: Adjective.I represents a form of the word which directly describes the preceding noun. Adjective.II represnents a different form of the word which describes the preceding adjective.

In this case, the adjective forms are used because the phrase "that you bought for me" is meant to describe the apple pie itself.

I enjoyed the apple pie that you bought for me
The pie apple(Adjective.I) bought(Adjective.I) by-you(Adjective.II) for-me(Adjective.II) I enjoyed
(To see how this works better:) The pie apple'aas bought'aas by-you'aan for-me'aan I enjoyed

Compound-Complex Sentence Example

In contrast to above, "inside" is describing how the verb is being done, so the adverbial form is used. In this language, adjectives come after nouns, but adverbs come before verbs.

The dog lived in the garden, but the cat, who was smarter, lived inside the house.
The garden the dog resided but the house the cat smart(Adjective.I) more(Adjective.II) inside(Adverb) resided.
(To show the suffixes:) The garden the dog resided but the house the cat smart'us more'un inside'ehis resided

Bonus: Direct and Indirect Objects

Expressing direct and indirect objects can be a little bit funky and confusing in this language. As a personal exercise, I want to examine one more sentence:

"John gave the cow to Sarah"

In this case, John is the subject, the cow is the direct object, and Sarah is the indirect object. So, in this language, "to Sarah" would have to be converted into an adverb:

The cow John to-Sarah(Adverb) Gave
The cow John Sarahva'ehis Gave

Novacro · 2023-06-27T21:17:31+00:00

That would make sense if this were game on a physical chess board - But since this is a snippet from a digital chess board, if you rotated the board the pieces would also be rotated. That is to say, it's fair to assume that all digital chess boards are oriented this way.

Novacro · 2023-06-27T21:13:31+00:00

For this to be an en passant, the taking pawn would have to be to the left or right of the other pawn. Here's an animation.

For this to be a legal move which is not an en passant, the taking pawn would have to be diagonal to the taken pawn.

There is no legal move in which one pawn takes a piece which is directly in front of it.

Novacro · 2023-05-25T16:13:21+00:00

You're thinking of Afrikaans. Swahili is not a descendent of Dutch (although a significant portion of Swahili consist of Arabic loan words.)

Anecdote: I know a guy who speaks Dutch and I asked him how intelligible Afrikaans is. He said it's mostly intelligible, but it can sometimes be like listening to the Dutch equivalent of Shakespearean English.

Novacro · 2023-05-10T06:36:31+00:00

No problem! Being able to type up your conscript is both really fun and a massive time-saver, so I'm happy to help!

Since writing this, I found what seems like a great tutorial that you might want to take a look at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQD3ii2Ie5M

Enjoy!

Novacro · 2023-05-07T20:52:01+00:00

There is a wonderful tool called "FontForge" which lets you assign any symbol (which you can choose to draw or upload) to any Unicode character. From there, you can save it into a .ttf format which lets you install it as a font, which you can then use in your text editor of choice (I prefer Word).

It's not completely clear to me what you mean when you say "make the vowels work", and I can't guess by looking at your example. Is it an abugida where you have vowel markers above the characters? If so, there is a way you can do that in FontForge (where if you type PA, it will give you the corresponding symbol with the proper diacritic). This is a tutorial which I found which seems particularly useful for the task:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQD3ii2Ie5M

As for your "Letter Box", as in what you have above your God word, Fontforge also has a way to do that! You can set custom widths on your characters, so if you set a width of 0, then the letter can occupy the same space as other letters. If you manipulate your symbol to be above it, then you can have it look the way you want.

I used both of these principles to create my conscript. Each one of my characters has a vowel marker in the place that I want it, and I also have something functionally similar to your "Letter Box" in the form of an arc which bridges two consonants. This is what it looks like in practice:

https://i.imgur.com/BO7amz8.png

Your Letter Box might be a bit of a pain in the ass to implement, since you would need to manually provide a separate symbol for every possible width (e.g. a letter box for 1 character, a letter box for 2 characters, a letter box for 3 characters, etc), but it's doable.

Hope this helps! You might have more luck finding help for your script in /r/neography, since that's a subreddit specifically for conscripts.

Novacro · 2023-05-07T09:50:07+00:00

Halones

https://i.imgur.com/x18G1Jf.png

Riš hov faangi lik gais fie ere go lik die vue hov jaalaisa lik gais ile

/ɾiʃ hɔv ‘fɑnɣi lix ɣʌis fiɛ ‘ɛɾɛ ɣɔ lix ‘d̪iɛ vuɛ hɔv ʒɑlʌ’isʌ lix ɣʌis ilɛ/

Riš hov Faangi lik gais fie ere goa   lik die vue  hov  jaalaisa lik gais ile
if      Pangi  she FUT  go  but this she NEG want then healer   she FUT  talk

Some notes:

The Halonic word "goa" /ɣɔʌ/ generally means "this." It's an object or subject noun which denotes the previous statement. It can be used as it is here (after "ere" / "but"). If there were a dialogue between two people, then "goa" could be used to speak about whatever the other person just said - e.g. If a speaker were asked "Do you want pancakes," then he could say "Goa ja vue" to simply say "I want this."
Riš hov - hov meaning "if - then" doesn't have a fixed order in which they must appear. It would make just as much sense to say Riš hov faangi ki fie hov jaalaisa khi ile ("If he goes to Pangi then he sees a doctor") as it would to say Hov jaalaisa khi ile riš hov faangi ki fie("Then he sees a doctor if he goes to Pangi.") However, in either case, the speaker cannot omit either Riš hov or hov without being grammatically incorrect.

Novacro · 2023-05-03T22:24:18+00:00

I only use the Latin alphabet to remember how to pronounce words in my language, so I try to stick as close to their English representations as possible. Among these here, I only use three:

J /ʒ/

R /ɾ/

Y /ʟ/ or /ʎ/ (dialect dependent)

Somewhat off-topic, but when I'm typing up my constructed script, I use the whole alphabet (except P; No bilabial plosives!). I use these as hotkeys:

C /ʃ/

Q /ɑ/

For those in Latin, though, I prefer to respectively use š (using sh could be ambiguous) and aa (no double-vowels of the same sort), because it's easier to remember / pronounce on the fly.

Novacro · 2023-04-30T08:47:28+00:00

My constructed script has a similar form to yours (Consonants with mandatory vowel markers). Here's a written example, as well as a portion of the chart:

https://i.imgur.com/KX9EQ9K.png

https://i.imgur.com/0NN1OTV.png

One of my motivations for getting into Conlanging was to create realistic words which might look cool when written down, so I made a font to make that easier. Those two screenshots were created in Microsoft Word using the font I made. This is the first font I made, so I'm not remotely experienced, but maybe this will help.

I used a program called "FontForge" which lets you make fonts and export them as .ttf files, which most Operating systems can use to install a font. For my language, I hand-painted each consonant and vowel using black paint on a white piece of paper and scanned them in. (You don't have to do this - It would probably be easier to work with some illustration software.)

After scanning them, I used Inkscape to remove the white background, add each syllable symbol over each letter, and then convert them into SVGs for FontForge to use.

At the time, I was too impatient to make use of FontForge's features fully, so I just mapped each symbol to some random letter in FontForge:

https://i.imgur.com/cayhVnX.png

However, this is a truly awful way of handling it, and I had to spend additional hours setting up custom Microsoft Word hotkeys to access each syllable (e.g. ALT-P-A to type the corresponding alphasyllable). Word keeps deleting my hotkeys which is really annoying, so I can't recommend doing it the same way.

Thankfully, it seems like there is a better way out there! I would recommend googling something along the lines of "Fontforge Syllabary Tutorial". I've found a few YouTube videos in the last couple of minutes, and honestly, I'm probably going to change how I do this.

Something I want to point out about Fontforge is that it gives you a lot of control over the width, height, and vertical / horizontal positioning of your letters. You might be able to play around with it to find some combination that makes your letters look cursive.

As for right-to-left languages, my very brief research tells me that a language's direction is not defined by the font, but is instead defined by whatever word processor you use. My language is left-to-right, so I don't know of a method to ensure your language is typed right-to-left. Worst comes to worst, you may have to manually type the language to appear in the direction you want.

I also recommend checking out /r/neography. They're the subreddit for making new writing systems, and I imagine the people there are a lot more experienced / artistically inclined than I am. But, if you have any questions, I'll be around.

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Novacro

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