agaricus5
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ErikH2000 wrote:

agaricus5 wrote:
Well, you'll give us few hints, no rules, two stories...
Expect us not to assume...
And that's all I have to work on...

Oh, I'm just joking--assume away! You guys have the wrong idea about the lines, that's all. And I shouldn't say any more.

I'm happy that people are figuring out the text.

-Erik

Wrong idea? Am I assuming the rules wrongly or am I just a poor speller (In Sihmpuhl Englihsh)?

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krammer
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First off, I think that Erik is using American pronunciation. This explains several minor problems I had. Try reading in an American accent if you are British, it helps.

I don't think the lines make a letter a long sound, which is probably what Erik meant, but I can't think of any other purpose for them.
Reasons...

I hope I'm closer this time than I was before...

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Watcher
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I just got another idea for the lines:



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agaricus5
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Ah, I didn't think about that... It appears to work now (I'm sorry Erik!)

Keep posting ideas, everyone; I'm not always right, and I could use some help in making a guide to "Sihmpuhl Englihsh".

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krammer
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Watcher wrote:
I just got another idea for the lines:

Click here to view the secret text

×The lines might mark that the syllable which the vowel belongs to is stressed.

I thought that too, briefly, but it doesn't seem to work. There aren't nearly enough lines in Wormspeaker for that.


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agaricus5
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krammer wrote:

Watcher wrote:
I just got another idea for the lines:

Click here to view the secret text

×The lines might mark that the syllable which the vowel belongs to is stressed.

I thought that too, briefly, but it doesn't seem to work. There aren't nearly enough lines in Wormspeaker for that.

Maybe it only applies to words with more than 1 syllable, with a significant stress on a syllable relative to the rest of the word...

Maybe?

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Sokko
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I hope someone will write a usage guide. It's pretty easy to read it (well most of the time anyway), but writing in it is another matter; knowing which consonants and vowels to combine, etc. Apparently it's more complex than I thought at first glance, if a trailing "n" really means "ing". BTW, here's a list of possible sounds for vowels (this is taken from my dictionary):

A

fat, lap (the short form)

ape, date (the long form)

bare, care (slightly modified long form, always followed by R)

car, father (halfway between short and long)


E

ten, let (the short form)

even, meet (the long form)

here, dear (modified long form, always followed by R)

the nearly-silent E in "over" and "under", which seems to be written as an O with a curved line within it (Southern folk frequently "drop their Rs", which means they pronounce it as "ova" and "unda")

and of course, the silent Es at the ends of some words, which are not written


I

is, hit (the short form)

bite, mile (the long form)


O

lot, top (the short form, identical to the halfway-between A sound mentioned above)

go, tone (the long form)

horn, fork (modified short form that usually comes before R, though not in Eastern variations of such words as "fob")

the strange "double-short" sound found in "book"

the "double-long" sound found in "tool" and "troop" (equivalent to a long U, which is what Sihmpuhl Englihsh uses to represent this sound)

oil, boy (combination of O and either I or Y, producing the same results)

out, doubt (combination of O and U, I think this might be represented by an A+U compound, since it sounds similar)


U

up, cut (the short form)

use, cute (the long form)

fur, turn (see above; same as the E in over and under, seems to be written the same way)


And the weird barely-pronounced sound called a schwa, which is:

the A in "ago"
the E in "agent"
the I in "sanity"
the O in "comply"
the U in "focus"

Often represented by an upside-down lowercase E.



As you can see, there are far too many vowel variations for a simple line to represent a change in sound. I think you're just supposed to assume the correct vowel sound, and the lines are used for something else.

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Sokko
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Wrong again, as usual. A simple line IS enough to change the sound, but not the line you think. This line is... (cue fanfare)

The Vowel Modifier!

And I even drew a nice little picture of it, but you can't upload pictures here, only link to their URLs. Man, why don't we just convert to phpBB? That would solve all our problems, and our smilies would actually be the same color and style!
Plus, the smilies would actually insert where your cursor is, instead of at the end of the message all the time, and we wouldn't have all these nearly invisible blue-on-blue links and buggy page numbers. Bah, I ramble.

Anyway, this is the little curvy line that starts out going right and ends going down. You can see it inside the Os in the title of The Wormspeaker. What it does is turn a "longish" sound into a "shortish" sound. Vowels are long by default; inserting a Vowel Modifier line makes them short. In order to pull this off, you need to assimilate many of the vowel forms into two categories. Read the previous post, and do the following:

A
Assume #3 is long and #4 is short.

E
Assume #3 is long, and #4 is a short O followed by an R, which modifies the sound

I
No change needed, there's only two forms!

O
Assume #3 is long, #4 is a short U, and #5 is a long U

U
#3 is a short O followed by an R, which modifies the sound

And this is pretty obvious, but the schwa is not written. Now we have two general categories, short and long, for each vowel, and The Vowel Modifier makes it short, while its absence makes it long.

(takes a bow)





...though I still have no idea what that other line is for. It does appear to be an accent of some sort, but it appears in far too few places. Perhaps it's yet ANOTHER vowel modifier! Nah...

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Schik
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Sokko wrote:
And I even drew a nice little picture of it, but you can't upload pictures here, only link to their URLs. Man, why don't we just convert to phpBB? That would solve all our problems, and our smilies would actually be the same color and style!
Plus, the smilies would actually insert where your cursor is, instead of at the end of the message all the time, and we wouldn't have all these nearly invisible blue-on-blue links and buggy page numbers. Bah, I ramble.

If we can import the existing users/messages/etc into phpbb, I would have no objection. The more recent versions of tForum require more recent versions of PHP and/or MySQL than drod.net has, so we're not able to upgrade. I believe phpbb has less demanding requirements.

However, unless we could keep everything we've got here, including users, messages, and any modifications we've made (challenges, room pictures) I strongly doubt we'll change over.


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ErikH2000
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I'm replying in a different topic - "re: move to phpbb" on the "site" board.

-Erik

[Edited by ErikH2000 on 05-22-2003 at 04:54 AM]

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Watcher
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Sokko wrote:
Anyway, this is the little curvy line that starts out going right and ends going down. You can see it inside the Os in the title of The Wormspeaker. What it does is turn a "longish" sound into a "shortish" sound. Vowels are long by default; inserting a Vowel Modifier line makes them short.

Just a quick comment here: I think the line is drawn this way because the letter is supposed to be a vowel+H compound. It looks somewhat like the curvy line in a lowercase h.

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krammer
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Sokko wrote:
Anyway, this is the little curvy line that starts out going right and ends going down. You can see it inside the Os in the title of The Wormspeaker. What it does is turn a "longish" sound into a "shortish" sound. Vowels are long by default; inserting a Vowel Modifier line makes them short.

Ahem... I believe this is what I put in my earlier post - curves make vowels shorter - although it was in secret tags so you may have missed it.

You explained it much better than me though.
One minor point - the short O is actually an A+W (see the first sentence of Wormspeaker). An O with a "vowel modifier" (good term for it, Sokko) is the E+R letter.

As I said before, I think this is due to American pronunciation differences - the vowels in "spot" and "dark" are the same.

[Edited by krammer on 05-22-2003 at 03:36 PM]

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Watcher
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agaricus5 wrote:

krammer wrote:

Watcher wrote:
I just got another idea for the lines:

Click here to view the secret text

×The lines might mark that the syllable which the vowel belongs to is stressed.

I thought that too, briefly, but it doesn't seem to work. There aren't nearly enough lines in Wormspeaker for that.

Maybe it only applies to words with more than 1 syllable, with a significant stress on a syllable relative to the rest of the word...

Maybe?

I took another look at the pictures, and this seems to be correct. The line is never found in words with only one vowel or vowel compound, if you count the -ing suffix as a vowel compound. On the other hand, it is quite common in words with more than one vowel/vowel compound.

Any other ideas?

BTW: agaricus5, now that we know what makes a vowel long and what makes it short, you can see for yourself that the e in 'neathling is long.

[Edited by Watcher on 05-22-2003 at 01:39 PM]

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krammer
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I feel really stupid now... the clue to the vowel problem was staring us all in the face.

"Sihmpuhl Englihsh"

The short vowels have been followed by a letter H. So Watcher is right, the modifier is a vowel+H letter.

And on a totally unrelated note - why aren't all the in-game scrolls in Sihmpuhl Englihsh if that's how everyone writes in Dugan's kingdom?

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Schik
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krammer wrote:
And on a totally unrelated note - why aren't all the in-game scrolls in Sihmpuhl Englihsh if that's how everyone writes in Dugan's kingdom?

Because we couldn't find the correct characters in Unicode?

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Sokko
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No kidding. You'd need a million characters to represent all the possible letter combos; really, the only way to write in it is to use a picture file.

I hope someone will write a writer's guide soon; while we may be able to read it, I think many of us are still in the dark as to exactly when to use compounds and when not to use them, and when you do, exactly what lines to add. And you're right, the Vowel Modifier looks like the line from a lowercase H. That makes sense. And I never would have guessed that "Sihmpuhl Englihsh" was a clue itself.

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Malarame
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Wow...I've been lost almost since this topic started. I guess I'm just not cut out for cracking codes

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zex20913
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krammer wrote:
And on a totally unrelated note - why aren't all the in-game scrolls in Sihmpuhl Englihsh if that's how everyone writes in Dugan's kingdom?

There are several reasonable explanations for this...

Beethro is intelligent enough so that he can translate it immediately, as Sihmpuhl Englihsh is not his native tongue and he still thinks in English.

Perhaps the designer of the game did not want to write out all of the scrolls into S.E., as it would be much time spent for something that may possibly drive potential gamers away. "Hmm...this game looks cool...wait a sec, what the heck does this say? Forget this, man. I need my Doom."

The Dungeons may have also been built before S.E was introduced into the modern world, and therefore all scrolls would be in normal English.

My question about the scrolls is...how did they get to where they are? They're pretty far down, and if the dungeon expanded after the original build, who put them there?! It seems highly unlikely that the Neather would give clues for the last level. Is there some omnipotent being who holds smitemasters close to his breast? I don't know...maybe Erik should create the religion of Beethro...in S.E. of course

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krammer
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Wow, didn't realise everyone was going to get so upset or I wouldn't have suggested it. I didn't really expect Erik to have gone through the hassle - although I'm sure it would be possible to create a Sihmpuhl Englihsh font. I'm no programmer though, as you may have guessed.

And zex, how do you know Sihmpuhl Englihsh isn't Beethro's native language?

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zex20913
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krammer wrote:

And zex, how do you know Sihmpuhl Englihsh isn't Beethro's native language?

All of the stories Beethro tells/his ancestors tell are in regular English. Also, S.E is a way of writing the language, not speaking it...um...yeah. I guess I really don't know, and I just assumed. And you know what that does.

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agaricus5
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zex20913 wrote:
All of the stories Beethro tells/his ancestors tell are in regular English. Also, S.E is a way of writing the language, not speaking it...um...yeah. I guess I really don't know, and I just assumed. And you know what that does.

I do too....

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agaricus5
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Any dates and years yet Erik?

I'm getting impatient to finish the puzzle off!

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ErikH2000
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agaricus5 wrote:
Just so all the stories and puzzles can be put together in some sort of chronological order, and to give them a more realistic feel, do you think that you could give us some dates and years for some of the occurances and stories you wrote?

A "year" has 333 days. B.D. stands for "Benedat's Discovery", when he proved the world was a pie--one eighth of a pie, to be exact. This realization prompted a modern age of Constructed Thought. Educated people began calling their world "the Eighth" and acting really snooty at certain parties.

The Wormspeaker, Verse 1.
This is something like a fairy tale, so the exact date of its occurrence (or even if it occurred) is unknown. The tale itself is ancient--pre-B.D.

142 B.D. - Story of Beethro (Beethro enters the dungeon). Three weeks later he resurfaces.

The next day - Smitemasters' meeting where "seeding" is discussed. (ch. 1 of BtD)

143 B.D. - Beethro opens the Roasted Roach Grill. It does okay, but is plenty hard work for Beethro.

144 B.D. - Beethro's tale (end game sequence).

147 B.D. - Voniffa visits Beethro at his house. The seeding complaints come up again, this time directed at Beethro. (ch.2 of BtD)

Hmm. This was actually a good exercise for clearing up a few points in my head. There were several facts that had to be reconciled. Hopefully, this is all consistent with what I've written so far. A lesson for me is that I should probably maintain this thing or I'll end up introducing "continuity" problems.

If anything else should be cleared up, let me know.

-Erik


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agaricus5
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ErikH2000 wrote:
A "year" has 333 days. B.D. stands for "Benedat's Discovery", when he proved the world was a pie--one eighth of a pie, to be exact. This realization prompted a modern age of Constructed Thought. Educated people began calling their world "the Eighth" and acting really snooty at certain parties.

How imaginatively amusing!

So what happens when you reach the edge of the pie slice? Do you just fall off the edge for a short distance before being re-pulled by gravity to the surface again?

If anything else should be cleared up, let me know.

-Erik

What about the calendar and the measure of a day. Do minutes and hours exist in the world of Dugandy?

Oh, and just out of interest, do you know the volume of the pie and its mass...it would be interesting, and I might be able to do something with the data...

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zex20913
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Just for clarity's sake, is the smiters meeting the day after the third week? This may confuse some as you have written it.

Also, with the gravity thing, I think that it's an "odd corner", I'll call it. You can stand on either side, and look down, and see things that appear "sideways" to you. If you were on one side, and a buddy on the other, both would seem to be standing on walls. If a third person was directly on the "odd corner," they would appear diagonal to both. This is the appearance during the immediacy of creation, where gravity has not yet rounded the corner, making an "odd hill", at least for the sides of the pie slice. For the corners, I suppose that it would be a "very odd corner" where six people could form a star of David, one triangle on flats and one on diagonals, at the beginning of time, making a neat topological figure. After time, it would be a "very odd hill", where you could gradually change your orientation. That would look really cool.

Now, the all important question is: Is it cherry?

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ErikH2000
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agaricus5 wrote:How imaginatively amusing!

Thank you.

So what happens when you reach the edge of the pie slice? Do you just fall off the edge for a short distance before being re-pulled by gravity to the surface again?

The west and east sides of the pie are continuous, and stepping off one side just places you at the other. In fact, there can be no one border that marks the west or east side. However, the Eighth does have a specific width for any latitude.

The north and the south sides are also continuous, but since one end is small and the other large, the connection is harder to picture. Moving north from the tip of the pie causes you to explode when you are uniformly distributed along the entire southern border. Conversely, moving south from the crust end of the pie causes you to implode to a single point. As you can imagine, one would see some strange sights at the north and south borders.

What about the calendar and the measure of a day. Do minutes and hours exist in the world of Dugandy?

A day is measured by the cycle of the sun. The sun comes up out of a hole in the ground in the morning. You don't want to be nearby when it comes out since it is very hot. The sun falls back into the hole later and that begins nighttime.

The length of a day is about the same as ours. Hours, minutes, and seconds come in proportions equal to ours.

Oh, and just out of interest, do you know the volume of the pie and its mass...it would be interesting, and I might be able to do something with the data...

Let's say the surface area is about 1/8th of the Earth's. I can't talk about volume without saying what's beneath the surface, and that is for the delvers to learn!

-Erik

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ErikH2000
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zex20913 wrote:
Just for clarity's sake, is the smiters meeting the day after the third week? This may confuse some as you have written it.

Yes, he goes to the meeting the day after he gets back.

Also, with the gravity thing, I think that it's an "odd corner", I'll call it.
...

Heh. It looks like you have the same taste for weird topologies as I do. Somebody take away that guy's M. C. Escher book!

-Erik


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zex20913
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But is it cherry?!

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ErikH2000
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zex20913 wrote:
But is it cherry?!

The Eighth is not actually a literal pie. It is pie-shaped.

-Erik

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agaricus5
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Don't worry Erik...What you will see is just a friendly scientific argument...

ErikH2000 wrote:

agaricus5 wrote:How imaginatively amusing!

Thank you.

So what happens when you reach the edge of the pie slice? Do you just fall off the edge for a short distance before being re-pulled by gravity to the surface again?

The west and east sides of the pie are continuous, and stepping off one side just places you at the other. In fact, there can be no one border that marks the west or east side. However, the Eighth does have a specific width for any latitude.

The north and the south sides are also continuous, but since one end is small and the other large, the connection is harder to picture. Moving north from the tip of the pie causes you to explode when you are uniformly distributed along the entire southern border. Conversely, moving south from the crust end of the pie causes you to implode to a single point. As you can imagine, one would see some strange sights at the north and south borders.

Implode and explode? Is someone trying to mess around with space-time, mass and relativity for some unknown reason?

And anyway, from what I know of gravity, to make something implode to a point and bend space like this needs a tremendously strong gravitational field, so why doesn't the whole of this pie slice become attracted to this mass and implode into it?
And... even worse, if the point happens to be infinitely small... then it appears we are looking at nothing other than a black hole with an infinitely high density and an infinitely large gravitational field which should suck everything around it into oblivion at the singularity
And, another thing, if this singularity or point has such a huge gravitational field, then how would we be able to see it, assuming we could get close enough to it to observe it, as no light will be able to escape from it, and because of this, time should also stop moving at the black hole.


If anyone disagrees, or finds any flaws in my arguments, then please reply... I'm not an expert physicist by any stretch of the imagination (I'm still only at GCSE level) and so I'm always willing to learn from my mistakes...

And, Erik.... I'm sorry!

[Edited by agaricus5 on 06-04-2003 at 12:02 AM]

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