idanwin Posted March 30, 2013 Report Share Posted March 30, 2013 (edited) Will it be possible to use writings, such as egyptian, arabic, ... in the unit names?In the egyptians design document we have the hieroglyphs for certain buildings/units, but - of course - we can't use those in the game yet.It would be nice to be able to do so, and it would also help with the 'historically based' image of the game. Edited March 30, 2013 by idanwin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordGood Posted March 30, 2013 Report Share Posted March 30, 2013 that would be AWESOMEbut would we have to create an entirely new typeface just for the Egyptian cultures?and would we change the other cultures too? Sanskrit for the mauryans and a legitimate greek alphabet for the hellenistic cultures?and if we don't know the original alphabet, then we have a problem with inconsistancies between legitimate and phonetic wordsa cuneiform typeface? lol that'd be cool though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idanwin Posted March 30, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 30, 2013 (edited) It's true that for some civilisations this could become a problem ... but we could say that we already have this problem ^^ all civilisations except the romans have their names written in the wrong alphabet xDDepending on how difficult this is, this could - I believe - be a worthwhile addition to the game.BTW, I retitle the post to something more general.would we have to create an entirely new typefaceNot necessarily; we could just have an image for each building/unit,we could make a typeset with only the necessary letter,or we could use existing typefaces for these alphabets (where available)... Edited March 30, 2013 by idanwin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zoot Posted March 30, 2013 Report Share Posted March 30, 2013 I don't think we'd want a separate image for each name/phrase, that would be very complex - especially with our very static GUI where the size of everything is fixed. But it shouldn't be a problem to use the standard text renderer if you can find an adequately licensed font. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idanwin Posted March 30, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 30, 2013 ... or if I make it myself, if it has to come to that ...I've made fonts in the past, but they were always latin, and contained only 26 letters ... I like our alphabet. I can't imagine a chinese person saying: Hey, I'm bored of these fonts, I'll make one myself for my website!Anyway, I'll have a look on the internet.Greek shouldn't be hard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zoot Posted March 30, 2013 Report Share Posted March 30, 2013 If I'm not mistaken, this is our standard font: http://dejavu.sf.net.../DejaVuSans.pdf (PDF)It supposedly supports "Greek" script, which I assume is identical to Ancient Greek? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kosmo Posted March 30, 2013 Report Share Posted March 30, 2013 Actually making a real good font is quite a lot of work, as there are a lot of typographical things that have to be considered.Beside that, I don't really see the benefit. How would I e.g. be able to remind the differences of the arabic name of two units? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idanwin Posted March 30, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 30, 2013 Beside that, I don't really see the benefit. How would I e.g. be able to remind the differences of the arabic name of two units?True, not saying making a font is easy, but making a latin font is something an artist can do on his own, making a chinese font must be ... crazy.If I'm not mistaken, this is our standard font: http://dejavu.sf.net.../DejaVuSans.pdf (PDF)It supposedly supports "Greek" script, which I assume is identical to Ancient Greek?Yup.Beside that, I don't really see the benefit. How would I e.g. be able to remind the differences of the arabic name of two units?You always have the generic name beneath. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lilstewie Posted March 30, 2013 Report Share Posted March 30, 2013 (edited) Sanskrit or Pali is written in a script that's not used anymore. How they write it now is modern.Ashokan edicts Edited March 30, 2013 by lilstewie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lion.Kanzen Posted March 30, 2013 Report Share Posted March 30, 2013 hmmmm imagine the bronze mod, and their alphabet, or iconography, i ont know how we can trauce voices if we decide use voice sound for different civs.the iconography is most complex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atenmeses52 Posted March 30, 2013 Report Share Posted March 30, 2013 For egyptian there is a word processing program used by egyptologists (It's Open Source!) called jSesh that will export hieroglyphs to unicode characters. Here's the website: http://jsesh.qenherkhopeshef.org/An easier option would just be to write out the Ancient Egyptian words in the Coptic (Christian Late Egyptian) alphabet, which is supported by dejavusans... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
historic_bruno Posted April 2, 2013 Report Share Posted April 2, 2013 Will it be possible to use writings, such as egyptian, arabic, ... in the unit names?In the egyptians design document we have the hieroglyphs for certain buildings/units, but - of course - we can't use those in the game yet.It would be nice to be able to do so, and it would also help with the 'historically based' image of the game.I think the problem with this is they wouldn't really communicate anything to the player, if they weren't familiar with those writing systems. Even transliterated words, if you know the alphabet, can seem familiar and you can try pronouncing them, etc. That said, it would be interesting to show names in the original writing systems somewhere, where they are known, maybe in the manual or the in-game unit info screens (TBD) or civ profiles on the website. They would likely only clutter up the in-game UI though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kosmo Posted April 2, 2013 Report Share Posted April 2, 2013 (edited) Afaik LaTeX is at least sometimes used to typeset Hieroglyphs, so it should be possible to do within the manual, but it would require some work.I have no experience with HieroTeX [1] but I guess it would work.Regarding other writing systems I see one problem: What if they are written from right-to-the-left? I don't think LaTeX can actually properly handle this, maybe XeTeX or LuaTeX, but I don't know enough about these to be sure.E: the hieroglf-package looks like an alternative. Example with other ancient wirting systems [2][1] Installation instruction: http://www.gierds.de...XnicCenter.html[2] ftp://ftp.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/pub/mirror/tex-archive/fonts/archaic/asamples.pdf Edited April 2, 2013 by kosmo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
historic_bruno Posted April 3, 2013 Report Share Posted April 3, 2013 Afaik LaTeX is at least sometimes used to typeset Hieroglyphs, so it should be possible to do within the manual, but it would require some work.I have no experience with HieroTeX [1] but I guess it would work.We could use an image instead of text 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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