Writing with an accent?

Writing with an accent?

I watched the Rooster Teeth demo and was impressed. What I like most was the conversation aspect. This got me thinking about accents. Adding an accent to a character adds another level of immersion. The complexity of an accent however means that the programmer has to rewrite text for each accent which could be tedious, time consuming, and complex to manage.

Then another though hit me. Microsoft Word does auto-correcting of typing mistakes, what if we could use that idea on accents?

I know I’m oversimplifying this but my concept is to have an auto-correct for each accent. That way you only have to write in standard English and if the character had a trigger for an accent it would auto correct that text with that accents auto-correct.

What so you think? Can this concept be done?

 

<_<;

Auto-correct features based on texting services for phones make me imagine it would be very awkward to try to type anything coherent with software trying to auto-correct you to match an accent, especially if it tried to spell check at the same time.

This is just a disaster waiting to happen. It'd be funny for a few minutes, and could even become a meme if certain people found it funny enough, but it'd wear on my nerves fairly quickly.

If you want to type with an accent, just do it manually I say, put in the thought to your writing and phrase it right. I wouldn't guarantee npcs always reacting to it, but players should have a laugh at your funny way of speaking if that's what your going for.

 

What I meant was for the in game NPCs. Some could have an accent but instead of coding a parcer tree just for that accent an auto-correct for that accent created.

 

Oh.
Hmmm, for regional flare without having to rewrite the same flavor text?
I dunno, I would still think the writers for those npc's would still care to phrase every word themselves rather than hand it over to an auto-correct.

 

For regional flare and so forth, exactly.

Yes writing it would definitely be better but could you imagine the size and complexity for a parcer tree for five differently accents? I was just trying to think of a way to keep what they are doing but still add that "regional flare" as you say.

 

ach! Oi dinnae t'ink an autocorrect be da right way ta go! Maybe a translat'r 'd be bettar aye? Ye write normal 'n' den it translate's it fer ye afterwards. Den again.. maybe it be a wee bit too complex?

 

Ok, first time i tought its france, because i didn't understand anything and saw oi, but after trying to read it a second time, i tought ok, its something english. Wasn't even surprise to be able to understand it. German speaking here, so not my motherlanguage. But the question, if it will be working aswell with other languages like german, france and spain is still in the room. And aswell, if we can chose predefined sentences aswell, if we feel a bit to lazy to type something. ^^

 

That's a more traditional dwarvish accent.. or more Scottish if you prefer. Different people also have different interpretations of what a particular accent should "look" like and individual speech patterns also play a role. You really have to be able to hear it in your head to type it out and reading it can be trying at times if you're not used to it.

There was a guy in my guild in the UO days who absolutely insisted on typing with a Texas accent. I swear I couldn't understand a word he said most of the time and it took me a long time to get used to it. What really got me though is he wasn't RPing when he did it. He'd do it in out of game chats as well. Drove me bonkers! Particularly because he always wanted to chat.. a lot.

Generally speaking though, typing in accents will normally follow a set of rules.. such as replacing the TH sound with a D or shortening certain words.. so if you were able to select an accent to speak in.. you could type normally and have the game translate the output for you in order to standardize a particular style for the game. This way NPCs would only have to understand normal speech while you still see the accent.

The workload here of course is coding the rules for each accent available. But I think that'd be easier than having the conversation system need to translate the accent into normal speech for it to understand.

 

That is an interesting idea too.

 

It would be great to see some regional language and behavior variations - makes it a believable world. How much is only based on how many story developers and designers that can be thrown at it.

 

I think it has be mentioned that there will be three languages that they are creating for the game. This being the case then maybe they can create four accents: one for each language and gipsy.

I wonder if there are any linguist out there that could help create formats for each.

 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0/posts/462692
Ok, this post says, that german will be the first non english language. So i hope, that the chat with the NPCs work in german aswell. So that they understand, when i write in german. Ok, i am here able to write in english aswell, how i do, but some things could be possible a bit more difficult, if it isn't your language. So think supporting other languages should be a more important point, as some english accents.

 

...I remember translating between Texan and Scots accents. If I hadn't already spent a year in England it wouldn't have been possible. (3 months for Cockney. 6 months for Cornish. 8 months for rural Northumbrian.)

My impression is that this is a harder problem than many might think, because English phonemes are so flexible. Rules alone will not suffice, because relative positioning (what words, i.e. phonemes, precede and follow alter the pronunciation) and content both influence the accent. A database of 'differentiations' is required to handle the non-predictable complexities of idiomatic changes. (Think "Worcestershire" --> "Wooster" sauce. Or "San Francisco" --> "Frisco". Despite what the locals think.)

On the other hand, after any planetary cataclysm and geographic sundering and separation, there should definitely be very strong dialect differences. (I would have said 'dialectical', but that might have been a Marx against me.)

 

You are correct, and it's already been done to great effect. Richard Honeywood, formerly of Square-Enix, wrote a programming script to take lines of dialogue and "accent" them for the game Chrono Cross. And if you've played it, you probably didn't even notice a lot of that flavorful dialogue was automated. Like you said, accents are pretty formulaic. The text naturally needs some human proofreading afterwards, but the code can do most of the work.

As for players "toggling" an accent for their own typing, that could be probably be done, too, but would definitely result in some weirdness from time to time. Perhaps too often to be useful...

 

I don't think software is necessary. The devs can just write a character with a certain accent (which is a great idea). It would definitely be more immersive.

 

If you start thinking about regional accents then that's a lot of NPCs. If it's only a handful then sure maybe.. but what if any of those NPCs have dialogue packs (ie regional text).. then they've have to do an accented version of each pack. It might be easier to write a conversion script for the individual NPCs or groups of NPCs.

 

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It turned out that the sweet-talking, tattoo-sporting pikey was a gypsy bare-knuckle boxing champion. Which makes him harder than a coffin nail. Right now, that's the last thing on Tommy's mind. If Gorgeous doesn't wake up in the next few minutes, Tommy knows he'll be buried with him. Why would the gypsies go through the trouble of explaining why a man died in their campsite when they can bury the pair of them and just move camp? It's not like they got social security numbers, is it? Tommy - the tit - is praying. And if he isn't, he should be.