“Qapla’!” Linguistics for Game Designers; Making Your Own Tools

This week, Martha has so much to talk about that she runs out of time, Stephen espouses the virtues of building your own gamedev tools, and Mark names the episode after a Star Trek thing because it's his birthday today so he gets to.

Speaking of Star Trek, Mark’s IGDA-TC presentation, How to build a Holodeck: A Star Trek VR postmortem, is tomorrow night (September 13th, 6pm, at The Nerdery in Bloomington, MN). Join us!

Discuss this episode on Reddit using this thread in r/gamedev.

[0:03:31] Intro to Linguistics for game developers

The Legend of Zelda’s Hylian Language.
The Language Creation Society
A list of constructed languages in video games.
Myst’s created language, D’ni.
“UK Professors Go Primal With 'Far Cry'” - Gail Hairston, University of Kentucky
SIL’s Glossary of Linguistics article on sonority scale.
“Skyrim’s Dragon Shouts” - Matt Miller, Game Informer
Omniglot is an encyclopedia of writing systems and languages.
The Conlangers Library game list.
“No Man’s Sky guide: alien races, languages and Monolith puzzles” - Jeffrey Parkin, Polygon
The Rosetta Stone in Fez (Pretty obvious clue in hindsight.)
“Twitter Blowup Leads to Sudden Cancellation of Fez II” - Owen Good, Kotaku
“Playing the Birth and Death of Language in 'Dialect'” - Alex Roberts, Waypoint
“Scientology’s enturbulating lingo” - Britt Peterson, The Boston Globe
Kathryn Hymes on Twitter.
The Language Construction Kit, a book Martha recommended, is available for free online.
Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide For Field Linguists is the other book Martha recommended (get it used, it’s cheaper!).
“Speaking ‘Star Trek’: Meet the Man Who Made Up the Klingon Language” - Matt Blitz, Popular Mechanics
The Klingon Language Institute is a thing that exists.
International Phonetic Alphabet, Wikipedia
“Mass Effect: Meeting the Elcor Ambassador” - YouTube
“Gaming’s favorite VR mouse uses sign language in the cutest way” - Allegra Frank, Polygon
“Cantonese vs. Mandarin” - Off the Great Wall, YouTube
“Feast Your Eyes on This Beautiful Linguistic Family Tree” - Arika Okrent, Mental Floss
The Conlangery Podcast is a neat podcast about linguistics and conlang.

[0:44:57] Making your own tools

We referenced a few of our episodes during the show: “75% Sure”, “The Stevechievement”, GDC Special Part 1 and Part 2.
Stephen’s tool he recently made for Fingeance.
Tech Toolbox microtalks at GDC 2017.
Our friends at Howling Moon made Super Fast Soft Shadows.

This week, Martha has so much to talk about that she runs out of time, Stephen espouses the virtues of building your own gamedev tools, and Mark names the episode after a Star Trek thing because it’s his birthday today so he gets to.

Speaking of Star Trek, Mark’s IGDA-TC presentation, How to build a Holodeck: A Star Trek VR postmortem, is tomorrow night (September 13th, 6pm, at The Nerdery in Bloomington, MN). Join us!

Discuss this episode on Reddit using this thread in r/gamedev.

[0:03:31] Intro to Linguistics for game developers

The Legend of Zelda’s Hylian Language.
The Language Creation Society
A list of constructed languages in video games.
Myst’s created language, D’ni.
“UK Professors Go Primal With ‘Far Cry’” – Gail Hairston, University of Kentucky
SIL’s Glossary of Linguistics article on sonority scale.
“Skyrim’s Dragon Shouts” – Matt Miller, Game Informer
Omniglot is an encyclopedia of writing systems and languages.
The Conlangers Library game list.
“No Man’s Sky guide: alien races, languages and Monolith puzzles” – Jeffrey Parkin, Polygon
The Rosetta Stone in Fez (Pretty obvious clue in hindsight.)
“Twitter Blowup Leads to Sudden Cancellation of Fez II” – Owen Good, Kotaku
“Playing the Birth and Death of Language in ‘Dialect’” – Alex Roberts, Waypoint
“Scientology’s enturbulating lingo” – Britt Peterson, The Boston Globe
Kathryn Hymes on Twitter.
The Language Construction Kit, a book Martha recommended, is available for free online.
Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide For Field Linguists is the other book Martha recommended (get it used, it’s cheaper!).
“Speaking ‘Star Trek’: Meet the Man Who Made Up the Klingon Language” – Matt Blitz, Popular Mechanics
The Klingon Language Institute is a thing that exists.
International Phonetic Alphabet, Wikipedia
“Mass Effect: Meeting the Elcor Ambassador” – YouTube
“Gaming’s favorite VR mouse uses sign language in the cutest way” – Allegra Frank, Polygon
“Cantonese vs. Mandarin” – Off the Great Wall, YouTube
“Feast Your Eyes on This Beautiful Linguistic Family Tree” – Arika Okrent, Mental Floss
The Conlangery Podcast is a neat podcast about linguistics and conlang.

[0:44:57] Making your own tools

We referenced a few of our episodes during the show: “75% Sure”, “The Stevechievement”, GDC Special Part 1 and Part 2.
Stephen’s tool he recently made for Fingeance.
Tech Toolbox microtalks at GDC 2017.
Our friends at Howling Moon made Super Fast Soft Shadows.