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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Alien Numbering System


Guest Azrael Strife

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Can you translate numbers?

 

 

Havent figured out numbers at all, should I?

 

*GASP*

 

Stewart DOESN'T do something completely irrelevant and ecsessive about the alien language at first chance?!

 

Hey! Stop the presses! Now fronline cover! Stewart's gone sane again!

Edited by mikker
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Can you translate numbers?

 

 

Havent figured out numbers at all, should I?

 

*GASP*

 

Stewart DOESN'T do something completely irrelevant and ecsessive about the alien language at first chance?!

 

Hey! Stop the presses! Now fronline cover! Stewart's gone sane again!

I don't see how it is irrelevant, we are all working on Xenocide for fun, and making an Alien Language will help make the game more immersive and complete, I don't understand you, aren't your models detailed? why don't you make them 2d? why not make sprites like in the old x-com? I seriously don't see how this is excessive.

 

Stewart: If you want/can, it'd be good, after all, they most definitely need numbers, for dates/supplies, etc, but it's ok if you don't, we'll work out a text without them :)

Edited by Azrael
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yeah, you're right Az. Was just dramticizing my point to make it look better :P

 

Yeah, numbers might indeed prove usefull. Else it could juse be 'One' 'Two' 'Tenth' 'Second' and such.

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yeah, you're right Az. Was just dramticizing my point to make it look better :P

I know, but I agree that Stewart was very very thorough with his language :)

 

Yeah, numbers might indeed prove usefull. Else it could juse be 'One' 'Two' 'Tenth' 'Second' and such.

Hmmm... maybe binary? or base 10 numeric system too?

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quite possibly the dating system could be based around the solar year of the founding/dominant member of the accepted galactic authority.
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Dates; now that's gonna be a b1tch!  How would dates work for a multistellar society?  As for numbers.  Lets see hmmmm!

The dates wouldn't necessarily have to be special for them. I mean, they are 'working' on our planet doing observation and stuff, it's not precisely useful to be using a different time and date setting, they would have to employ our system (maybe not with months, but with a 365 day calendar and 24 hour days).

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They could be like I think the mayans, they dont count years just days. On the other hand its still the same problem one step removed so never mind.

 

The aliens are from earth right? Do the have 5 fingers per hand?

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They could be like I think the mayans, they dont count years just days.  On the other hand its still the same problem one step removed so never mind.

 

The aliens are from earth right?  Do the have 5 fingers per hand?

The Aliens...from... earth? :huh:

No Alien species is from Earth.

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How many fingers per hand on the aliens?

Silabrates don't have hands, neither do Ventriculants, Artopods or Terror-Discs. Morlocks, Cloaks, Vipers, Greys would probably vary (I suppose that's up to Artwork, it's too specific to have been included on any text). The Overmind is... a thing... doesn't have hands.

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In speed reading courses there is a lot of emphasis on "not hearing the words in your head". By arranging "letters" into glyphs there is the possiblity of simply learning the glyphs themselves (I suspect in english there are several hundred but less than 1000). Compare this with chinese where there are litterally thousands of characters (each representing a syllable) to learn. Anyway if one learns all the sylables there /may/ be an increase in reading speed. This idea could be expressed in the Xnet article about the language. It may not actually be true but sounds pretty good dont you think?

 

As for the numbers I've come up with something.

- it's a place-value system

- it's inspired by the mayan and cuneiform number systems

- it's base 64.

- zero in alien is written exactly like we write zero.

 

I'll post an image shortly.

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Base 64.

 

Base 10 has 0 to 9.

 

Base X is 0 to (X-1)

 

64-1=63.

 

These numeral are for 1 place in a place value system. I guess I should make an example hang on.

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Dont worry about the resolution. I usually design these things in the smallest bitfield that I can stand, then scaling up after that is a snap.

 

I'm honored that you folks like the numbers, but it should be discussed. After all I've more or less taken it upon myself to declare unilaterally that the aliens use base 64. If you're all okay with that then fine, but maybe it should be discussed a bit; I'm not married to these numbers.

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Hey! 60 looks pretty nice. It's a very versatile number, if you know what I mean. That's one of the reasons we have 60 seconds and 60 minutes.

 

But then again, 60 is a human number.

 

Thinking about the language. We only write 2D. How about adding some intelligence (as aliens are far more developed) and moving it 3D ;)

 

4x4x4 = 64 That means it's very doable to create a 3D script.

 

You can even project it isometricly to 2D.

Edited by Thomas Torfs
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exactly, that's why I was thinking about 3D: 64 is 4^3 which means you can divide a 3d cube into 64 pieces very easily. 4 on X, 4 on Y and 4 on Z. And if you'd like to convert it into 2D without losing the 3D look you can go isometric.

 

I'll try to make a model in 3dsmax to explain it some more.

 

 

 

Ever seen the movie Contact?

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64 Jives with computers better.  It can suggest I more cybernetic quality to the aliens.  Plus the base is large which is "alien".

Hm... It works better with human computers. Not even with all. There were Computers which were using the decimal system for calculations. So why should the Aliens work with a binary code?

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I think not, for small calulators (and old computers) there is something like Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) in short, it's used becouse it's very easy to convert it to decimal system (in fact you don't have evan to convert it). You can still find asm instructions for modern processors wich are supporting this :)
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That's one of the reasons we have 60 seconds and 60 minutes.

 

We are using 60 seconds 'cause ancient british had 12 fingers.

 

Edit:

That was offtopic, yeah, just don't try to put a number from one system as a base to another just because it has some qualities in that first system :)

Edited by UnFleshed One
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Do you mean 6 have some properties that makes it useful for that kind of calculations?

 

Edit:

Besides that it is five (one hand) dosens?

 

Why did they use dozen btw?

 

Edit2:

360 degrees is because there is 60 seconds and so on.

 

So why 12?

 

Edit3:

From wiki:

In another hypothesis, twelve is the sum of ten fingers on hands and two feet.
:D

 

Edit4:

As to the aliens, 64 is perfect, since it makes nice cube, but they will have more numbers than sounds, which makes one think...

Edited by UnFleshed One
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Just my opinion, all this discussion was WEIRD (first time I notice it); but very interesting and motivating indeed. So keep up the excelent work you are doing with it. As a side not, after reading it backwards ;) I noticed that the numbers do not blend clearly with the rest of the script, I would try to create a concatenation rule so that each number glyph is a single glyph in itself (so no number is equal to any other number ;) but it has a way to be constructed). And maybe use something less Computationally inclined base like 64 = 2^6 and use a more mathematically inclined one like a prime base ;) lets say 13 or any other prime number higher than 2.

 

I leave you with that design constrain to see what you can do with it. From what I have saw I clearly expect to have a very cool number generation system in no time :)

 

Greetings

Red Knight

Edited by red knight
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Do you mean analogue computers?

Hm, didn't think of it, but that could be a possibility. I don't know exactly how these computers were designed, but I remember it clearly from my computer architecture lectures, that there were designs in the 60s or 70s that were (truely, not BCD) decimal, and not binary.

 

And maybe use something less Computationally inclined base like 64 = 2^6 and use a more mathematically inclined one like a prime base Wink.gif lets say 13 or any other prime number higher than 2.

Hey, why don't we use base 7? Veeery mysterious number... or base 23? That would be kind of conspiracy theory-worth... :)

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Prime number? Nah. I think a power of two (two is prime BTW :naughty: ) makes more sense. It can suggested a cybernetic nature to the aliens. I've been thinking that the numbers 1, 2, 3 should somehow be internally connected for clarity. I'll work on that.
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