Re: [MUD-Dev] In-Game Languages

[Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt <hhs#cbs,dtu.dk>]

On Sun, 4 Apr 1999, Mik Clarke wrote:
> 
> Eli Stevens (KiZurich) wrote:
> 
> > Thoughts?  Comments?  Does anyone else have any projects along these lines? I
> > remember once, a long time back, KaVir had posted (on alt.mud.programming)
> > some pretty intense code for enforcing naming rules for PCs, making them
> > conform to a language.  If you are listening, do you still have those (and,
> > more importantly, do you want to share?  :) KaVir?
> 
> I tried something similer (using random garble rather than an predictable
> translation) and found an interesting problem.  Newbies couldn't communicate
> with anyone in character.  This made it very hard for them to ask questions,
> find their way around and make friends.  The solution now it to have everyone
> fluent in English and just let the other languages be garbled to those who don't
> know them.
> 
> Mik

This is perhaps the origin of TSR's (tm,r,c and all that) use of a  
'Common' language. What fun are elves if you simply can't communicate with
them at all.. (except perhaps as an enemy) it simply limits the scope of
the campaigns (both traditional and MUD-wise) if you cannot communicate.
And with a common language, which may be known by some but not all
non-humans you still don't opt out on the campaigns involving language
difficulties (or, just make the elves not _want_ to speak common).

Hans Henrik Stærfeldt         |  
email: bombman#diku,dk        |  voice:      +45 40383492 
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                              |
Student of Computer Science   | Scientific programmer at Center for
  and Information Psychology. |   Biological Sequence Analysis,
  at University of Copenhagen |   Technical University of Denmark.




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