Megathread: Writing and Reading Languages

An area to facilitate free-form feedback on systems (in-game or out) related to Arelith.

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triaddraykin
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Megathread: Writing and Reading Languages

Post by triaddraykin » Thu Apr 14, 2022 12:19 am

Just creating a place for feedback to be centralized. It sounds really neat to me.
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Skarain
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Re: Megathread: Writing and Reading Languages

Post by Skarain » Thu Apr 14, 2022 4:55 am

How will the system treat Thieves' Cant?

... is this the rogue's dream come true? In where we can hide messages in, say, a baking recipe, reading to the initiated "The Guild is recruiting aspiring footpads"?

I swoon over the roleplaying potential.

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KT28
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Re: Megathread: Writing and Reading Languages

Post by KT28 » Thu Apr 14, 2022 5:02 am

Written languages is a totally new dynamic so I'm very open to constructive feedback once players have had some time to get a feel for how it works. In particular the aesthetics, ease of use, and reading comprehension bonuses are topics of interest where I'd like feedback from players since there's only so much anticipation of how these things will play out on a large scale I can do as a single developer. Constructive feedback on other aspects is also welcome though.

I am also open to suggestions on future expansions of this system though of course there are no guarantees about what will and won't get built. Currently I have on my list to look into expanding this system for item/fixture descriptions and books.
Last edited by KT28 on Thu Apr 14, 2022 5:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Megathread: Writing and Reading Languages

Post by KT28 » Thu Apr 14, 2022 5:07 am

Skarain wrote:
Thu Apr 14, 2022 4:55 am
How will the system treat Thieves' Cant?

... is this the rogue's dream come true? In where we can hide messages in, say, a baking recipe, reading to the initiated "The Guild is recruiting aspiring footpads"?

I swoon over the roleplaying potential.
Thieves Cant, Sign Language, Animal Language, and Gnoll are not written languages and cannot be written in. Thieves' Cant in particular is due for a rework or total overhaul/removal based on this approved suggestion, so until I have a better idea of what Irongron intends to do with Thieves' Cant I won't add any features designed specifically for it. You can still encode secret messages in notes the old fashioned way, though ;)

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KT28
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Re: Megathread: Writing and Reading Languages

Post by KT28 » Sun Apr 17, 2022 8:21 pm

The following is a discussion related to this bug report. I am looking for feedback on the following.

There is a known issue with written languages which only affects people who have "Game Log Chat Text" enabled in their settings: when this setting is enabled, color codes are visible in log files. Written languages uses prolific use of color codes wrapping individual words to achieve its effect, effectively making logs very difficult to parse for those individuals who are using this setting. Color codes do not show up at all for the "Game Log Chat All" setting however.

I have done some more research into the topic of the "Game Log Chat Text" and "Game Log Chat All" settings. It appears that "Game Log Chat All" is a newer option that was added by NWNEE that does strip color codes (it also strips players' log-in names from appearing in front of their dialogue in the logs). There may be some other differences between the two settings but these were the main ones that I noticed ("Game Log Chat All" still logs combat rolls/combat information). It is also worth noting that you can have both of these options checked at the same time and you will see everything logged twice: once with color codes, once without.

So with that in mind, as of right now I would encourage anyone who is bothered by the presence of the color codes in their logs to try the "Game Log Chat All" setting and see if it serves your needs. If there is something missing from this setting that you absolutely can't live without and you absolutely can't deal with the color codes let me know and I'll try to work something out.

However I will explain why this is not such a simple thing to find a perfect solution for. The written languages feature wraps every single word inside of its own color code for two reasons: the first is that when reading, character comprehension is rolled once for every single word in the note, which is a large change compared to the spoken comprehension system which operates on larger chunks of sentences all at once. The color of the word changes depending on whether your character comprehended the word or not, as shown in this example:

Image

The other advantage of wrapping every word in its own color tag relates to an aesthetic quirk with the NWN game. You have probably noticed this before but never thought much about it, as this is a bug that has always existed and only becomes noticeable when viewing large chunks of text that are wrapped in a single color code (such as say, a note!). If you drag your dialogue view bar down such that you cannot view the start of the color token, the entire chunk of text turns white. Here is an example I created to show this effect:

Image

With the current implementation of written languages, this does not happen. You can drag the chat window wherever you want and the text will never turn white because the start of the color tags are always in view of the chat window:

Image

If the goal was to cut down on color codes in "Game Log Chat Text" logs as much as possible, I could wrap whole paragraphs in a single color code and this would make these logs more legible. However, this ugly turning-white phenomenon would still happen and would look something like this:

Image

So there is unfortunately no perfect solution for everyone, as when deciding how to proceed here I need to weigh the legibility of logs for people who use "Game Log Chat Text" (and I have no idea how many people use this setting) versus the aesthetic experience of everyone, as this white-text phenomenon is both very prevalent and visually distracting. I would like to choose the implementation that makes the most number of people happy but I will need feedback from the community to make that decision - so all that said, if anyone has thoughts or feedback on this, please let me know.

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Re: Megathread: Writing and Reading Languages

Post by Curve » Sat Apr 23, 2022 11:58 pm

This is a very cool feature and makes me excited to create cool enchants and fixtures.

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Re: Megathread: Writing and Reading Languages

Post by Mattamue » Wed Apr 27, 2022 11:37 pm

KT28 wrote:
Sun Apr 17, 2022 8:21 pm
So there is unfortunately no perfect solution for everyone, as when deciding how to proceed here I need to weigh the legibility of logs for people who use "Game Log Chat Text" (and I have no idea how many people use this setting) versus the aesthetic experience of everyone, as this white-text phenomenon is both very prevalent and visually distracting. I would like to choose the implementation that makes the most number of people happy but I will need feedback from the community to make that decision - so all that said, if anyone has thoughts or feedback on this, please let me know.
I like that the additional color codes stop colors from breaking when the initial tag flows out of the viewport.

I have both logging types turned on. If I need to get a copy of something from a log for a report or whatever, its easy enough to see which text is the color tagged and which is the tag-less. Especially since letters come in blocks.

Who is the audience for this post?


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