Time / Language

[size=150:fw5btgz1][b:fw5btgz1]Static Language Conversion[/b:fw5btgz1][/size:fw5btgz1]

As we all know, any unknown language is portrayed as random gibberish — that being, each letter in the message is replaced by another random one. I suggest this random replacement be changed to a static conversion. Make each language have its own replacement list in which to draw from. Look at things this way: I do not speak German. I have taken no German classes, I have no friends that speak German. I’ve heard it on movies and seen it in books. How is it that I know "bitte" means please, or "danke" means thank you? Association and subjection. From observing the context of which someone uses words, and by remembering them, you can recognize them later as what they mean.

It should be the same way here in LotJ. Obviously, it’d be too complex to give each language its own grammar rules and such, but this can be a close second solution. If people are subjected enough to a language to realize that "fha" means "yes" in Huttese (or some other random language), they can somewhat understand what the person who spoken has said. Yes, I can see why people would object to this. Specifically because it does not deal with your character, but rather with your own memorization for these letter combinations. I realize some hard-core roleplayers will insist that if they wanted their characters to kind of understand a language, they’d train it to 10 or something like that, which leads me to my next suggestion…

[size=150:fw5btgz1][b:fw5btgz1]Partial Language Comprehension[/b:fw5btgz1][/size:fw5btgz1]

You’re in school, you’ve taken a few classes of French. One day you’re walking down the road and you hear two people speaking French! One man says something, and you fail to understand. The other man says something, yet you still cannot catch what he said. Ahah! Third time’s a charm! The first man speaks again, and it is clear as day!

Unfortunately, this isn’t how it really works. As far as my understanding goes of the LotJ language system, you have a chance to completely understand something as long as you have invested [i:fw5btgz1]any[/i:fw5btgz1] time into researching it. If this is wrong, discard this entire section. Instead, I propose a system in which partial comprehension is possible. Instead of checking a percentage to see if the entire message will display or not, why not put that check in the function that actually garbles the message to begin with? Obviously, at some point or another, you must loop through each letter of the message and change it if the person who hears it cannot understand. Before you change the letter into some other random letter, make the percentage check there, giving a partial translation depending on your knowledge of the language. I do realize this does not reflect true language studies, since you will be partially translating the whole thing, where as in life you’d most likely only catch a few whole words. This seems like a simple change, and I believe it’d bring a little bit more to the MUD as a whole.

Some Hutt says, "Ah, you have found my secret item! You shall be rewarded!" in Huttese (completely understood)
Some Hutt says, "Ah, yzu habd knfnd hy hfjcref iteg! You shfnh be rjdardhed!" In Huttese (partially understood)

Just as in real life, if you have trouble understanding someone, you may ask them to repeat what they’ve said. You can compare the messages to find consistencies and determine what the message says.

[size=150:fw5btgz1][b:fw5btgz1]Galactic Time Standard[/b:fw5btgz1][/size:fw5btgz1]

It seems that there is some confusion when it comes to time. Some people use in-game time, some use real time (which should actually be classified as OOC, shouldn’t it?). All the time, I see people using real time and game time mixed, which seems to really confuse people, especially newer players (I was a victim of this, at first). I propose there should be a Galactic Time Standard set in place. This could either be enforcing the use of in-game time, dubbing OOC time spans as OOC information, or conforming the in-game time cycles to real time, meaning one hour is actually one hour. I’m sure there are other ways for remedying this particular issue, but these are just a couple that have come to mind, so please feel free to contribute.

Donno how easy this would be to implement but it’s worth a shot.

On a slightly easier note, I thought of something the other day. High int (22-24 or so?) should show the language being spoken, but not the translation of it. Most of the languages in Star Wars are pretty easy to recognize, and I’d imagine a smart person could pinpoint it.

I suggested pretty much this very same language thing. Also, there is no &quot;galactic time&quot; and it is completely legal to use OOC time and IC, can’t see a problem with it unless you have IC birthday every RL day <!– s:P –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt="" title="Razz" /><!– s:P –>

Only problems I see.
the language change would make it easier for people to crack learn a language bypassing code limits and then start makeing built in script translators. The reason its random jibberish is you have no idea what the lang is. once you hit about 40-60% in the languages you start to recognize random words in the sentance and at 99% you understand it completely people dont usally know this because they dont learn langs slowely like I do :p

Time, the reason people go by time is code time 1 irl min is 1 hour gametime and it gets silly if you spend all day on and oh I went for 2 weeks without sleep for a larger conversion 1 day irl is 2 months icly. 6 days 1 year. Chars would be old bittys by the end of era. We use the in game time as an rp choice and ignore it for silly things like makeing armor wich takes about 60 hours game time to sew. While mechanics wise this is feesable most engineers makearmor without pause till complete. Again silly.