In this thread
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... c&start=60
in reference to the Art Style Guides
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... uide:Aeran
I made the following suggestion:
Unfortunately, I'm not a linguistics expert -- I have forgotten my Spanish and German from disuse and am largely failing to learn Hangul. But we all have imaginations, and content that has thought behind it will provide the immersion and believeability a good game needs. So, I invite discussion of what the major races and/or factions' linguistics might look or sound like. I'll start, so you have something to poke holes into.I suggest you include a description of their writing, and how often they use it. Humans, for example, put labels all over their modern-day craft: "Danger," "Rescue," "Remove before flight," "Lift Point," "Grade X fuel only," and so on. Would the Aera or Rlaan do something similar? Depending on the faction, a good concourse design would include signs in multiple languages as well as pictoral (such as modern-day international road signs vs. traditional US road signs). The artists can't make signs without knowing what Aera script might look like. For the human factions, maybe there is a font that they prefer. For all we know, someone in here knows how to make custom fonts for the major alien races.
Proposal:
Aera are reptiles. They have no noses and breathe through their mouths, so they probably gasp and hiss when they talk. When we get to the point of recording the radio chatter (did I mention that I'm a voice actor?), the Aera should probably sound like someone hissing in an alien language (say, Latin in a raspy voice) overlaid with a "Microsoft Sam" mechanical-sounding voice which is your onboard translator. Of course, the Mechanists might sound like the translator by themselves. But since the translator will try to translate alien broadcasts literally, the translation should sound a bit strange. A good example is the "I just killed an enemy" broadcast that the Rlaan use: "Hulls pop like vibrant seeds. Photons splash in a formless void. I am sticky." I love that!
Aera hands might not be as dextrous as humans' due to their claws* (not an evolutionary vestige like human fingernails) and they are somewhat paranoid. Therefore I theorize that their writing might be something you could write quickly, with no implements other than your claws, so you could get back to surviving.
But, we have a real-world alphabet that developed out of people carving symbols with a knife into wood or bone, or chiseled into stone. It is the runic alphabet, of which here is one example:
http://simplythebest.net/fonts/fonts/futhark.html
I am NOT suggesting we adopt runic as the Aera script -- JRR Tolkien made it too famous for that. What I am suggesting is that Aera script would be linear in nature, based on what we know about them, and might have a similar look and feel as runic.
As a special bonus, I suggest a new Rlaan haiku-like broadcast. They might say this when they are "neutral" to you:
Please discuss and offer your ideas about the factions and their linguistics, speaking, or writing. Write some new broadcast lines. Try to relate your ideas to what we already know about the races.Such beady eyes! How can you fly straight? Keep your distance.
Turbo
* Technically, the art style guide is not clear on whether Aera have claws, but given their history I imagine they would need them.