Turning English Words into Symbols and Glyphs

[vasten]

Hi Everyone.

I posted about a year back about Dscript, but have added quite few updates and additions.

Dscript can be thought of as a "form of English cursive writing". It merges Chinese pen strokes and character design principles wit the roman alphabet, allowing English word to come as close as possible to a logographic representation without loosing the actual letters and words(like Chinese characters).

I have put it all online, and reserve no license, royalty, fee rights. Do as you please, just dont claim you invented Dscript itself.

I recently started adding some "Dscript lessons", these are bassicly little sketches where I outline the actual process of the letter combination like in the image below.
Learn Dscript – English / Chinese Hybrid Script

There is also the full manual (available in online version and pdf download)
Dscript - English/Chinese hybrid writting system
This teaches all the basic skills and the letter combinations. It is a guide and index for using Dscript to make symbols and glyphs out of English words.
Learning to write Dscript can produce tons of different styles and looks. Below is a simple example with a basic pen.

Finally there is also a generator, it generates Dscipt text from your input text. There are sooo many possible combinations that I could only put the most common in the generator. It is far from perfect, and much less attractive than human hand written, but it can be fun and shows off the basics of Dscript.
Dscript Generator
Dscript - evolution long overdue


I would love any comments suggestions. I am thinking game designers and game artists may find it fun.

It's like a giant puzzle game, the letters are the pieces and they can put together in many ways while always maintaining alphabetical and sequence integrity.

Anyways, hope you find it fun and useful,

Kindest regards,
Vatsen

 

[erf_beto]

dood! this is AWESOME!!!
I have no idea where to use it, but I love it!
(Well, actually, this would be fun to use as magic writing on some game props...)
Thank you for sharing!

 

[D'karr]

This is a very cool idea. In a previous campaign I had an Ancient Civilization that used an "unknown" language. This would have been perfect for some of the player handouts.

Great job.

 

[vasten]

So Glad you guys like it.

you may also like the new Dscript Base 100 number system I recently finished.

Reduce every two digits to one glyph.

I can't get it up to my site right now cause I'm in China and they blocked dscript in China.

sorry. I forgot to grab the second half of the list portion. I will try to get it soon when I get back to base.

 

[Janx]

the generated output looks pretty good actually.

I definitely could see using this to make a prop handout or encode some secret text.

Have you been able to consistently interpret the text when you read it? Particularly the generated, which would reduce the variability of letter representations?

I've toyed with letter swapping algorthms for encrypting text as puzzles and for foreignizing text (making it look like another fantasy lanquage).

In both cases, players can apply basic decrypting schemes to it to find the e's and so on.

I've also used Futhark runes to similar effect.

Given the complexity of turning words into symbols, I like that you've made a generator to do so. Given that wasn't a simple task, I'm curious what your background with computers is.

Thanks for your excellent contribution to gaming and other stuff

 

[vasten]

Thank you!!!

it is so satisfying to get such a good response. Nearing the end I started worrying i was has wasted years of time hehe

I'm a coder, or I used to be back in Canada when I was younger (credit card, security, statistics, etc..)

There is almost never an ambiguity problem, it is always "there" per se(*as long as it was written correctly)

if you face a combination style you have never seen before, some will be intuitive, some may require manual reference.

the generator uses very simple combos, learning to read its output take little time, many people often remark how "intuitive" it becomes after learning only a few letters.

The hand written, it completely depends the writer. you can make it hard to read, easy to read, shaped funny, beautiful, etc.. your choice of combinations and penmanship styles will have a major effect on its ability to be read easily.

Thank you so much for your kind words.

My biggest concern right now is that it has been blocked over here in China, and its soooo hard to show it to people form here, it requires pictures and explanations etc...

I would really appreciate if you told a friend about it.(or link, tweet, whatever, they are all blocked in China, I don't even really know what you guys are using these days hehe. I just wanna make sure no one steals credit.. yes yes.. self-interest... but i don't want any money at least )

Ill give out the source and pics(generator and all, the full site) to anyone who wants to do something with it. I am busy with work, and with it being blocked I just dont have the time or connectivity to give her the time she needs.