Runic Font Question

This is a great Runic Learning thread by @Truthveyor
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/a-free-game-for-learning-runic.47781/
Another by @Rustic Dragon and @Kacey Cupcakes
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...b-runic-and-how-it-is-properly-written.43249/
~Time Lord~

 

That might work nicely! I'm using the fonts Dame Lori created continuously in my art, and they certainly work well, but I'm betting that someone along the line forgot to replace the older "non-dot" font with the later "dotted-font" for the sake of books (or it was done on purpose due to some usage issue I'm unaware of)... Looking at the examples on the images above (such as the Runestone), if we were to change them again, I'm wondering if we should go further still, and not only place the "word divider dot" for the space button (instead of the period button, where it is now in the newer font I'm using), but additionally place a "sentence divider double-dot (a colon mark) for the period button (and all other "sentence-ending" punctuation marks instead).... Would this be the correct way to handle it Rustic? Was this used to separate sentences in the older Ultimas?

 

I have the software to add dots or double dots wherever you want them. And plenty of time this weekend to do it. You could also name the new font.

 

@Scottie One of the few pieces of evidence I know off hand of complete sentences in Runic was from the cover art of the Ultima 6 Game manual:

As you can see, the dots are spaces, two dots in a row are used for a comma, and the dot and an ankh made a period in this case.

 

And if we're going to do this, we need to figure out how to handle comma, question mark, and exclamation mark.

 

คุณพูดภาษาอังกฤษได้ไหม

This is a language that has no need (or uses?) for separations. You think Modern runic to Old runic has had transition?



~Time Lord~

 

I know that one isssue with that is that word wrapping still makes dots at the end of lines, which is not lore friendly?

On kind of side note I wish there were runic characters for numbers to make things easier

Actually since the new runic is kind of has character-character transitions built in for the alphabet it would be nice to extend that to digits and punctuations. It might not be so "pure" solution, but it would be practical one.

 

Hmnnnn!!! Interesting! I wonder if Ultima ever had Runic equivalents to question-marks, exclamation points, and numbers?

I'll run this by Richard, and see if he has anything to add to this... He's been dealing with interviews all day here, so I'm not sure how soon I can grab some of his time....

Scottie ^_^

 

Just to add to the discussion, here's an excerpt that explains a bit of the history of Runic in old Britannia:

"
The citizens of Britannia are a diverse people who have
survived many challenges to the rule of Order. Their ancestry
can be traced to a time before the Sosarian city-states were
formed, a time when a loose confederation of druids and
mages flourished alongside a meek but industrious
agricultural populace. Relics of ancient times can be found
throughout the land and traces of the ancient language of the
land can be found throughout modern Britannia.
In your travels you will no doubt come upon the
occasional sign or placard written in a curious runic script.
Passed down from one generation to the next, this written
runic language is directly descended from the language of the
druids of old."

Directly descended from the druids before even Sosaria's city-states. So old, and passed down by the generations, that it could have easily been forgotten and only rediscovered in New Britannia through artifacts, similar to runic on earth. Though who knows - perhaps there is a druidic order with some writings (or carvings) preserved to withstand the test of time.

 

This theory doesn't entirely marry up with

- but I do agree more generally with what you're saying (and thanks for the excerpt!)

 

That would be awesome, Sir Frank! However I'm betting it may take longer than this weekend for Richard to figure out what he'd like to settle on for this stuff... I'll PM you at some point soon and hit you up for your generous offer if I can get Richard's eyes on this and derive a conclusion....

Well oddly enough, in the case of our game, it kind of does. I’m referring to the "event" that happened in our game when the moons shattered, called the Cataclysm...

Now, as an important note, I’ve been asked to mention that none of the elements of our game are directly built upon any existing property, and are instead inspired by the old paper RPG campaigns Richard ran many years ago. Of course, any similarities are due to the fact that later computer games he created were inspired by those as well! ^_^ That being said, SotA combines not only these older RPG elements, but a mixture of newer elements that have never made an appearance in Richard’s works before.   

If you recall, both from the "Sword of Midras" book as well as most of the "ancient fiction" we tend to offer in our game (whenever we refer to the days of antiquity before the Cataclysm) we use vague words and names that don't always match up to what most folks seem to "remember" about the past (and with very few exceptions, not exactly matching other existing game properties... ^_^) ...  

The book itself indicates that when the Titans fled their world to escape their own Cataclysm, they discovered to their dismay that a similar catastrophe had been transpiring on New Britannia and the island of Novia with the shattering of the moons and the terrible upheavals that followed with the shardfalls and such...  

The main thing to remember is that many of the absolute specifics of ancient history were lost during the Cataclysm (which plunged the world into a sort of a centuries-long “dark Age”), so that much of what happened before has fallen into obscurity… The people of Novia today see those “Before Cataclysm” times in terms that are very mythic and legendary (as opposed to specific and well-documented)... You’ll note, for instance, that even the actual name of the Avatar that wielded the Sword of Midras in the book was essentially forgotten, and legends spoke of “battles with the gods” as being the reason for the Cataclysm itself...

Some of this is due to otherworldly aspects that manifested on New Britannia during those tumultuous times (which accounts for the many new and strange elements that were never a part of any other of Richard's games). It’s almost as if pieces of the shattered shards of other worlds (and their histories) found their way here during the chaos of the Cataclysm (which may have affected many different worlds simultaneously), and have taken root since those times. Examples of that would be the arrival of the Titans themselves, interesting new races and technologies, differences in languages and lore, and even locations such as Pax Lair…

Only the Titans seemed to truly understand this fact, at least as it applied to them...

 

So! Having spoken briefly with Richard, he's totally cool with the idea that we expand the existing Runic Fonts to include more Runic representations of needed punctuation (. , ? !), for which he had some recommendations based on past sources he's used (which I'll share later), as well as the standard word-separating dot and the basic set of numbers 0123456789... Richard suggested I check out an interesting concept called "Angled Numbers" wherein it is conceived that our Arabic visual number representations come from the number of concave angles that were originally used to represent each number, like this...
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xwxZllNGn...20441_100001941231600_449528_1590677634_n.jpg
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/graphics/numberhistory.jpg
Though the actual validity of this is apparently a matter of dubious debate online, Richard thinks it might be cool to create a more "Runic" variety of these for ourselves (as long as they don't look like some of our already existing runes)...

He also mentioned that he'd rather not substitute the space-bar key for the word-separating dot, though,..and would prefer using something else (like the "dash" symbol), since he wants to reserve the space-bar for actual single empty spaces that may still be needed in some cases for formatting... We can let him and Lum battle that out, if necessary, since part of the issue is auto-translating standard text files into Runic without creating visual errors, and without having to type a dash between every word that can be seen as a dash in the English document version...

As for me, I'll try to play with some of these myself, as soon as I have a bit more free time, and see what I come up with...and I'll share it with you guys... Feel free to do the same, and perhaps we can come up with some elegant figures that Richard would be willing to adopt to round out our useful Runic for New Britannia!

Scottie ^_^

 

@Scottie

You could also always do the Greek/Hebrew method of using letters to signify numbers. But if you do a web search there are also plenty of ideas for runic numbers, https://www.google.com/search?q=runic+numbers . Including one on the forums here suggested by @selbie, https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/forum-feature-request-runic-fonts.9619/

I still wish you guys would have kept the runic characters for combined letters like EE, EA, NG, TH, etc. It looks more elegant in runic than repeating a rune twice. I know one of your goals is to be able to change the font of something in Latin to runic, but modern fonts and OSes can do ligatures, so two characters are automatically replaced by one while you're typing.

 

Would it be reasonable to create font where space bar is the dot and the spacing is created by unused character such as backslash (or anything else that does not have runic translation, even that dash maybe)?

Yeah me too, though I understand it is nightmare for quick direct translations. I really like the anglo-saxon runes used in Hobbit for the map...was the first runic I learned.

 

I like this idea. move the 'space' character to an unused key, and let the dot work with the spacebar. That should make everyone happy.

Also, for Tolkien runic, I like the use of combined letters too.. and the triple dot, and double triple dots, for ends of sentences/ends of paragraphs.

 

Sorry, @Dame Lori ... I knew that, my brain just failed me (as it often does). The fonts are awesome... what font creation program do you use, btw?

 

Thank you!

This is why I started this discussion... not to ruffle feathers or anything, but to start a discussion and hopefully come with a solution. There were a lot of assumptions being made, but nobody asking questions or searching for confirmations. It's nice to finally have a direction!

And I agree with @Miracle Dragon ... I like the triple dot usage at the end of sentences, as well as the combined letter/double letter runes.

 

Interesting show of runic experts in the 1800-1900 discussing an artifact's authenticity, with explanations of many marking's origins.

Spoiler

~TL~

 

Whoa! Just ten minutes or so into the program, but I am so glad you shared this. I grew up about 45 minutes from the location where it was dsicovered and have visited it many times, including school field trips. Every time I see runic text, it reminds me of the excitement of learning the story and everything about it. Looking forward to sharing with family and friends after I finish watching it. But first, work stuffs.