What?!?!?! Austin Powers ISN''T authentic???!!! NNNNOOOOOOOOO!!

Seriously though, this sounds like a very entertaining idea. And the cave idea is good.

Very interesting idea! The trick will be designing the game in such a way that communication is worth the player''s while. The easiest way to that would be to require cooperation to avoid dying in the game world, which would have to be serious enough that the player would want to work to avoid it; it''s kind of tricky because in real life dying is a big deal; people get hungry, tired, there''s danger and these things are important enough to influence the person to work to overcome them. In a game, on the other hand, nothing that happens is really a big deal to the player; games are entertainment and if the reward is not greater than the effort that must be expended the player simply won''t take the initiative.

That''s a long way of saying you may have trouble getting the players to expend the effort to build a language; early man would have done so because they HAD to; Jonny gameplayer can go watch t.v. if they don''t feel like turning grunts into a meaningful language. Which means...

(A) You''d need to make it easy on the player. Include rich gesture/body-language expression. Have a wide range of objects in the game world. Also I tend to agree with the person who suggested using phoenomoes instead of grunts; make the potential words sound neat with a wide variety of possible word sounds; after all that will probably be the driving factor behind the majority of the early word choices, at least until rules of pronunciation are formed.

(B) Encourage communication by presenting the player with teamwork situations; for example give each player different skills; Grog is very fast but not terribly strong, Kronk is as strong as an ox but slow; Krugg is good with plants; others are good at stalking animals, etc. If you have diverse strengths and weaknesses, no one person will be able to make it on their own; everyone will benefit from cooperation.

(C) Try to discourage inclusion of existing languages into the caveman language.

Anyway that''s all on the subject for now.

P.S. I like the idea a lot. Grunts or phoenomes would both be cool.

quote: Original post by Korvan
In the Clan of the Cave Bear series of books, the Neanderthals communicate mostly by using sign language with vocalization being used for personal names and emphasis.

Damn it ! you beat me to it
Anyway, Korvan is quite right, the Children of Earth series (of which Clan of the Cave bear is the first book) is a magnificent study of the prehistoric times.
It''s not just a simple little novel, it''s more a research work carried over many years by the author Jean M. Auel
Each book is full of wonderful everyday life details, each book is very different from the others.

On the topic of languages, the Neanderthal (they call themselves "Clan" men) use mostly a full body language with gestures and the occasional grunt, usually for names. Interestingly, even if each tribe can evolve its own "sign" language (although it''s not jut the hands, but the whole body) if the tribe is very far from the rest of the Clan, they still all have an ancient language, the ritual language, taht can be understood by each and every living Clan person.
the Others (the human, I dunno which, maybe "homo habilis" at this point, but I dont think Cro Magnon yet ?) have a wide variety of spoken languages, with similarities sometimes, and total misunderstanding other times (a bit like us nowadays, if you wish).

The books are centered on Ayla, a human (non-Neanderthal) orphan adopted by the Clan, and raised like a Clan woman, with all the problems it causes, and all the differences she has.
In the following books, she discovers life alone, then with humans, then she travels, and in the last edited volume (The shelters of stone), she discovers the family and tradition of her lover.
It''s a pretty massive serie to read, especially since the style of Jean M Auel is extremely detailed and verbose, given that it''s not exactly a fictional work, but rather a novelised work based on a lot of research and archeological evidence.

---------------

On another topic, if you absolutely want to design a language, you might wanna think what its purpose is and the inherent problems that the language generate.
For instance, how do you express notion of time : Past, present, future ? Are they actually necessary ?
In the series Children of the Earth (above), numerical notions are considered magic and counting with your fingers is reserved to shaman; and even they have a limited knowledge of it. Similarly, the passing of time is the domain of the shaman who trains years to know only bits and pieces.
How do you express "I" "you" "he", the existence and distinction of personalities ? If you dont, what kind of mental models does that suggest for the society you try to describe ?
If you cant pronounce a name, how can you call it out loud ?
If you cant vocalise, how do you talk when there is no light ? Or when the person is very far and dialogue depends on little gestures ?

Hope this helps




Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

Oh, I almost forgot... in the words of the wonderful Librarian :

"Ook"

(Discworld fans, raise your hands!)

quote: In the following books, she discovers life alone, then with humans

My favorite part is the ''life alone'', which is actually more of a ''life with some awesome animals''.

Im liking this concept very much. Be sure to do it.. while there are MANY things to work around, you just might have a hit here... I would certainly pay for a game like this

hey silvermyst...

any progress on this? i''m keen to see how you''re getting on with building a brand spanking new language... ...

keep us informed... ...

You could build an iconographic language very quickly using a screenshot & thumbnail system with drag & drop.

well, you could just make it like the Unreal Tournament or similar game style. you choose a message to play, like "I found food!" or something, and it would display that in text, but your character would say something like "Arr Ahf Fhud!" or something.

also, try listening to different languages, languages which you''re not familiar with. you''ll notice that there''s a pattern of highs and lows as far as volume and tone within sentences, as well as hearing many words repeated. For example, the word "the", "and", or "i" are spoken many times in the course of a conversation, and to someone from russia or arabia heard us talking they''d think we were saying the same thing over and over again.

so, experiment with making up words for you, i, they, we, it, here, now, later, earlier, etc.

and the icon thing sounds like a good idea, but why not take it a step further, and make steam come out of their mouths? like it''s the ice age? oh, sorry, that was stupid. heh.

it''d be cool to have the volume and intensity of the grunts vary with the distance between the talkers and the background noise. in the middle of a stampede or something, where twigs are snapping, hoofs are rumbling, and the animals are breathing heavily, it''d be cool to hear tense, loud bellows instead of grumbles and utturs.

i like the idea of letting people develop their own language, but... still... that''s a bit weird. it''d be fun, yes, but... who''s gonna teach the language?

You could learn the language just by listening to your character speak whenever performing an action or describing an environment... eventually it''d stick.

To allow the language to grow on its own, you could make each word/logic element like a sticky note that could be attached to any object/action in the environment... then new users could download a language template from the tribe and learn the language as above ^.