Howdy, Stranger!
Communication and Interaction
I know this is early, possibly even too early to ask about these features that probably wont be implemented for a while. But since I am really excited about the game at the moment and still cant imagine it completely, I simply cant help it, so here goes:
The thing is, so far I still cant quite imagine how the Nowherians will interact. From the FAQ I learned that communication with NPCs will work through a 27-word vocabulary. Im wondering how this will work in practice... Will the words have to be typed out on the keyboard, will it work through a set of menus, similarly to current RPGs, or possibly somehow similar to the sculpting process from the Alpha 75 video where a tool seems to be selected and then used by clicking?
Like I said, Im probably asking this far too soon, so I understand if you dont give away any details yet!
Comments
Mmmmm a very interesting idea.
Maybe the words could be in "Categories" that could be put together to create basic "Sentences" which couldn't get terribly complicated but could get basic points across.
Maybe "Noun" words which refer to places or nowherians or groups, "Verb" words which refer to certain actions such as eating, fighting etc.
Then you could have tone words which are kinda like punctuation that set the "Tone" of the sentence from demanding, pleading, neutral etc.
That idea seems really cool! Not too simple (enough to get your point across) but not too complicated where you need to spend hours trying them or reading a tutorial of some sort.
hum... the only thing that i have to say, that's it's too bad to take the same base of our langage (relative to the categorie). Maybe, in the option of the game, it can be a switch "langage:standart/nowherians" , standard for your categorie, and nowherians for a syntaxe of language different? But it will do lot of more work for developper and it will be difficult too find how an alien langage may work, so i know it will no be implemented before a long time (if they choose to do it).
Yeah, if a vocabulary based communication is too much duangle could settle with a couple commands to other nowherians. I would probably abuse the system anyways and just cuss out all other Nowherians because im the big nowherian
I would say the "Category" idea seems pretty solid to me - but i would also be statisfied with a simpler solution!
When thinking about interactions, questions of how the interface will look also come to my mind - will there be screens to keep an overview of the relationships between my nowherians - and if so, will they be told apart just by their individual looks or also have names?
Ugh... so many questions - can't wait for more content to be rolled out
@Bobmeier I really doubt Nowherians would have names since they can't even make a catchy name for themselves (Thus being called nowherians)
Maybe their "Names" could just be random looking symbols that you could recognize rather than actually words. That and I'm sure each nowherian will look pretty unique, like snowflakes (But rapidly changing all the time)
I'm also guessing size would have an affect on communication and interaction.
A tiny 20 year old nowherian obviously has no buisness insulting big daddy 70 year old ancient nowherain, so I doubt he'd do it. Only nowherians of similar size would threaten eachother
My guess is that when they say they are using a 27 word language, they are going to be using a slightly modified version of Traumae.
@Markhci152
Interesting, I hope I won't have to learn a whole new language to play this game though x). Or else I will be a mute nowherian