CIM406 Blog Post 3: Inquiry

For this weeks endeavour, and for the rest of the unit, I have been tasked with formulating a creative inquiry. A question to stretch myself and my abilities in a new direction.
Creative inquiry as a subject is a large part of what it is to be a creative practitioner, so my initial thoughts were; “What makes this assignment different than another day at work?”. Thus, I have tried to delve even further than the standard “That looks cool, how do I do that?”
The question I will be asking is:
What are the basic steps to create a new language, with regards to incorporation into my game design and development?
After a cursive search my findings so far are actually somewhat extensive.
The first? That this project is very possible. This is due to the various extents to which this concept can be applied. As a starting point, getting a simple universal sound down is important, as then you can just make up words for what you want. Gravi. Holstis. Mierka. They could mean anything, but for the language I have been working on for this week, they mean “gravy”, “reduction/less of” and “swamp”
By using individual words separately I can do a concept like can be seen in Skyrim, and the Thu’um. Simple concepts can be combined to form rudimentary phrases. E.g. Fus Ro Da. Force, Balance, Precision.
This can be extended by creating particular syntax rules. From what I can tell, the more syntax, the better the language and the more you can use the language for.
As the language expands, I could begin to use it in a way similar to Final Fantasy VII. In FF7, as the player unlocked words from journals and people, foreigners would become more understandable.
“vien ma guru sta vo gavi”
Would become,
“vien ma guru sta vo beach”.
And after a while you would have a sentence like;
“Where ma guru go to beach”.
As a tool for game creation, this can really highlight previously arbitrary faction boundaries.
I will be releasing another post soon with the results of my findings, in game form of course.
 
Peter