Language Development + Competition (concept)

Future Game
1

So this is less of a hardcore suggestion but more of a concept, but basically:

How it works

  • Once achieving Awakening, your species can attach certain words to objects, environments and animals in your game world. How it could work is that you point your camera to an ingame object and if the object hasn’t been named yet, it glows green. If you click “N” on it, you get to enter text which could be its name. You can also name individual objects if it has already been named.
  • This ability can be unlocked by modifying neurons into being used for language (more on this later) instead of general intelligence.
  • Once the game switches to societal stage, different tribes/empires may have their own languages which descended from your proto-language. In the early-societal period, they will be similar enough with only very minor tweaks. However, as the game progresses their languages will slowly change over time. Obviously, how fast their languages will change depends on their environment. If you started off in a desert, and the population over is only a couple kilometres across then it’s unlikely their language will change much at all as they won’t have any new words for new phenomena for the time being. If some population managed to get to a jungle biome, then their language(s) would change immensely to name the new objects in that patch (and the patch itself to an extent). If they were to stay in that place long enough, they would at some point forget what sand may be, the fauna etc.
  • You will have access to a language editor at all times from Mid-Awakening all the way to Late-Space, language will be crucial to the player in Awakening and Society but will slowly fissile into an asethetic by the time of Mid-Industrial. How the language editor will work is that it will be a “Node connector” of sorts, you will be able to connect and edit words for certain objects and phenomena, it will be the most simple editor in the game as you will basically just typing stuff into boxes and connecting them to objects.
  • Players may let the game name things for them in the settings if they simply don’t wish to go through the effort using the auto-generation, so as soon as the player discovers something new the game will use the same auto-gen for non-player languages.
  • After Awakening stage, the player will have the option to translate the languages of others. It will essentially just be a new option in the research tab. However, how long that language has changed from the original one will determine how long it’ll take to translate. If the language is fairly new and descended from the player’s, then it will take a significantly shorter amount of time. If the language is very different from the player’s, it will take much longer. If the player encounters other species and their languages, it may take even longer or may even be impossible. Translation will also be sped up depending on how far along into the civilization stages the player is.

How does this affect gameplay?

  • You can give your packmates orders, such as searching for “X” and running away from “Y” if they see it.
  • You can call for specific packmates easier, thus allowing for proper cooperation.
  • It will be required if you wish to progress past early awakening stage, as cooperation is necessary for civilization to evolve.
  • It will give the player an extra challenge as they may feel the strategy part of the game may be too samey compared to the other 4X games out there.
  • It will give the player another thing to do during Awakening rather than just constantly create tools and look for resources.

Extra features needed to make my concept work

  • Just like how you can modify certain organelles into behaving differently, you’ll be able to modify what certain neurons do for the creature. In this concept, they only do two things. Which is make the creature smarter or make it have the capability for language. Although you will need a sufficient amount of Pyramedial neurons to be able to unlock Interneural neurons, so a pre-awakening creature will only be able to gain Pyramedial neurons.
  • Language Editor
  • “Translation” tab in Research options

Upcoming concept propositions by yours truly

  • How different ethnicities may evolve(?) in the player species
  • How domestication might work

What do you guys think of this concept I built? Is it well made? Would it be a cool/good idea to add to the game?

6 Likes
2

Would Players be able to save the generated languages, in case they want to use it as an option for future playthroughs, or to simply share what the game came up with?

1 Like
3

I am not sure it’s worth to make languages so complicated for what they would do in-game, but I suppose Hhyyrylainen knows the best how complex should language system be.

3 Likes
4

The player could add it to the museum where they can look at it, but they won’t be able to use it in future play throughs.

2 Likes
5

Well it’s not like players can use their stored fossils ingame either…

2 Likes
6

Anyways, is there anything in this concept board you particularity liked or disliked?

2 Likes
7

I am not sure we need this to progress in awakening. Imagine playing as a species whose main sense is smell and trying to make a language with that.

3 Likes
8

Well their language system would be based in smell, no? They could have specific scents to pinpoint objects in their environments.

Obviously these objects would be represented by words in game (just like all other species) for the sake of simplicity.

2 Likes
9

Hm. How many words do you think the player should name during an average playthrough then?

2 Likes
10

I’d say anywhere between 15-150 depending on how much phenomena is on their planet. Language in game will mainly be used for naming things, so stuff like adjectives and verbs will be based on what language the game is set to. Example:

“(Insert tribe name) has moved into your territory!”
“Your tribe mate (insert their name) has found a herd of (insert species name)”

I think there’ll be more names for things based on how far ahead your species is in discovery.

3 Likes
11

Remember that each naming might take a few seconds, so it adds up quickly if it’s a large count.

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12

Which is why players will have the option to let the game generate it for them. So it’ll just be a point and click thing.

2 Likes
13

If we allow that, why not go a step further and make the feature optional?

2 Likes
14

Yes, you could also do that.

There could be a slider in the settings of the beginning of the game. At one end of the slider there could be “extreme difficulty”, where you can’t switch to a new species after death, AI mutates faster and is smarter and of course; having to make language.

Then you could have the middle where it’s just regular Thrive and the language can be autogenerated, then the far left side of the slider could just have it disabled completely.

2 Likes
15

And in advanced we could manage that manually?

2 Likes
16

I do believe switching to a new species is only on by default in easy mode; plus, the ability to change species can be turn on and off in custom settings.

3 Likes
17

Of course, like all settings.

1 Like
18

Also it’s not intended that harder = realisticer.

2 Likes
19

Like how passive reproduction used to be able to be turned off in previous versions of the game, or passive reproduction simply did not exist yet.

1 Like
20

I suppose, although having to manually make languages would technically make it more “realistic” though?

2 Likes