Comic for Monday, April 3rd
I’m going to note that the last two panels are probably mostly artistic licence… 😉 It’s a little more interesting then writing a bunch of database queries or what not 😛
It seems Ila has picked up bad (or at least somewhat hazardous) habits from Mium when it comes to rooftops. Of course, since we’ve seen her more or less fly, it’s probably less dangerous for her then it is for even Mium.
I’ve used the <words> to represent another language. I think that’s what I will try to stick with for now. If I’m going to try to figure out how to represent what language it’s in, I haven’t really decided. Technically speaking, there are quite a lot of languages in play here, but for the most part it’s not that important.
I’ve dropped (or at least put to the side) many of the linguistic differences and idiomatic speech patterns I used for them, but we’ll see if they don’t crop up again if I feel that I can work it in while retaining the characters voice in the dialogue… if any of that make sense 😉
Curiously, I don’t think Tyler has met Mium yet. Their spotty attendance records have not yet overlapped.
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um, where’s the next page?
Just went up! Sorry it was a little late 😉
Heh. We used the < brackets to mark Japanese in the Megatokyo forums (in the rpg threads, if you wonder how and why one would have to do so). Taken from the comic itself, where Piro would use them when he needed text shown as Japanese but understandable for people not capable of the language.
Yeah; I’ve gone through a handful of ways to render different languages, and so far I think <> is the best mostly because it has tradition, most people instantly realize what’s going on. I really like the font concept, but never found good fonts for it were thematic correct while not looking janky.
I actually made a set of ciphers (in python) to translate text to different languages, which was fun, but ultimately too clunky – novel, but not ultimately worth having unreadable text on the page (get’s crowded with it+ the translation somewhere).
I think I will revisit fonts but keeping the <> if more languages come into focus, but I’ve pruned their importance to the plot back as much as possible since it just doesn’t read well imo when it’s just page gimmicks to differentiate them.
I wouldn’t go with fonts unless you have some very special languages or speakers in the comic, like say dragons and dragon tongue. Or you want to make it clear that no one but the speakers understand a thing and use a font not decipherable for the reader.
In general, try to avoid mixing fonts in the comic unless it makes sense dramaturgically.
That’s the conclusion I came to last time I tried (that it just didn’t look good); but I’ve seen some that do it well. I think it’s a matter of getting fonts that are… I don’t know the word, sibling fonts; distinct but thematically similar?
Either way, I probably won’t for now, and certainly won’t until I think I have something that makes sense and looks good. There are times we we may see un-readable langauge when no point-of-view character present understands it, but we’ll see. Only if it makes sense to do it.
You know, now seems like a perfect opportunity to see how knowledgeable Tyler is with IDS world languages. Of course even if he did understand what Peter was saying, he might be better off holding on to that knowledge as a bargaining chip.
If he doesn’t know what Peter was saying I somewhat expect Tyler to try and use this event to further his ‘Let’s be friends’ attitude.
It’s an interesting question how widely the IDS language is known; since the IDS seem to speak the local languages without problem, it’s likely the languages is aren’t entirely alien at least. Would they try to keep it a secret?
And how easy to decode it would the level of technology make it as computers are already getting fairly good a translation.
He also probably at least knows Mium’s name (from being enrolled), though he might not recognize it; but most of what Peter said is fairly vague so far, assuming Tyler doesn’t know more (like who ‘she’ would refer to).
well you already stated that there are multiple different languages present. assuming mailsa and the PACT has a simmaler number of languages as say se aisa, europe or africa there could be as many as 12 different languages in use. maybe more maybe less.
as i hinted earlier -i- think the ids home world might be earth. which peter might be speaking english, but who knows he could be doing german or japanese or any others. but from an intelligence standpoint knowing the language of the ppl your looking at; knowing what they said in their own language (and all the subtext) is highly important. otoh yeah they could have some star treck translation device.
as for tyler… all we know is that hes not from malsia… wether he is from ids world, the pact countries, some other planet… nothing. while a good translation device could maybe get what peter is saying, a lot depends on how much of his language is “known” to that device.
And THAT is how you give orders to an AI. Mium is smart but he can only proccess poorly worded orders so well.
That was an order. But the way you said that, to me, implies the relationship between Peter and Mium is akin to Master and Robot Slave…
My understanding was that Peter, Mium, and Naomi (and possibly Miko) have a sort of partnership thing, with -explicit- rules. We saw one of those rules in action when Naomi used one of her “vetoes” to override Peter’s decision to leave Ila (Mium’s “sister”) to her fate as Avon’s prototype.
From what I gathered, at least one of the goals of their partnership involves “saving the world”. At least, I seem to recall Naomi mentioning this at some point. And while we don’t have much background story yet, I suspect that Peter was somehow involved in freeing Mium from Avon’s control. This, at least, would go a long way towards explaining Mir’s hatred of Peter and why he’s so high on her hit list.
im not so shure mium was “rescued” as much as took off when peter asked. from what i see mium is peter’s upgrade from query.
I’d give my thoughts… but you know… spoilers… 😀
Interesting observations all around though 😛
I’m not using order to imply mium doesnt have a choice, but rather that you have to phrase anything you ask him to do wisely or he could extract unintended information from it.
Peter may be the leader of their partnership. But the others do have a voice. And, apparently, they can veto a decision if they really don’t like it.
That’s one impressive search algorithm Mium is using. ^^
And Peter’s instructions strongly resemble command code. It looks like his mask is coming off as his concern for Kally mounts. This is exactly the response I expected-he’s given out too many “tells” for it to be otherwise. ^^
And it looks like your art is getting back to normal–well done. 🙂
Peter really is going to have to work on his acting skills and control; they tend to slip if he gets either overconfident or the plan slides off the rails. Unfortunately for him, that’s almost most of the time 😛
Good to hear on the art… think it’s got a long way to go though, even if we got back to as good as it’s ever gotten yet 😉 (I hope at least… :D)
waaaaat? its barely monday… if you keep this up ppl will be expecting updates that are acctually on time!
im assuming that is the search for kali.
and poor tyler; even ids (and the [terran?] military) doesn’t know much. and according to your back story its little more than, they can make bridgegates, have some sort of super tecnomagic, and don’t care who gets hurt on their way to whatever their goal is. oh wait thats all cut-your-throat-before-reading classified
😀 Gotta mix it up occasionally, or else it’ll become predictable! 😉
It’s a good guess… the list of candidates is fairly short and I’m assuming Mium knows where most of them are without much searching…
Tyler really didn’t start small with his questions, did he? I wish him luck on getting the answer. 😀
2nd panel: “But i need to HOW they got here.” you left out the word “know”.
fixed, thanks 😉
you’re welcome.