[Necro][Urban Dead] The zombie speech project.

[Perfect Organism]

This thread is an attempt to gather together a collection of words and phrases which can be spoken by zombies with the Death Rattle skill in Urban Dead. This means that we can only use the letters A, B, G, H, M, N, R, and Z, plus basic punctuation, like full stops, commas and question marks. Phonetic spelling and letter substitution is probably necessary for all but the most random and nonsensical phrases.

For a start, it's pretty easy to laugh as a zombie. You can say 'Haha!' or 'HAR HAR HAR!' or 'AhaHAhaHAha!'

Then you have words like Bag, Ban, Banana, Bang, Brag, Bran, Gang, Grab, Hag, Ham, Harm, Man, Nag, Rag, Ram, Ran and Rang, which don't require creative spelling, but unfortunately don't suggest too many decent sentances. I guess you could shout 'Grab Man! Harm Man!' before attacking someone or 'Ram, Gang!' to tell your fellow zombies to help you break open a barricaded building.

Next, there are quite a few phonetic expressions you can use, like 'Hmm...', 'Grr!' and 'Argh!' These are mostly covered by the the standard zombie speech choices though, so you aren't getting the full benefit of death rattle with these.

Finally, we have mangled phonetic constructs, like 'Hambarghar'. These are probably going to make up a fair bit of the zombie vocabulary, but I can't seem to think of any good ones off the top of my head.

So, what else can we think of?

[Tardigrade]

I found my zombie's name (Barbara Graham) by searching a wordlist for everything that had only those letters (I didn't know about "Z" at the time). If you've got access to a Linux, BSD or MacOS X system, try the following command:

grep -ie "^[abghmnrz]+$" /usr/share/dict/words

Beyond exact words, try slurring your voice to get approximations. For example, my best attempt for "north, south, east, west" is "nahrhh, zahh, ahzg, hrahzg" (hmm, starts to look like something from Tolkein). "Brng mahb narhh! Hacgh barrarar!"

If anyone's into conlangs, we could invent zombish (or "zambah"). Zombies don't need to communicate many concepts: when and where to attack, who to attack, where to hide if possible, who to hit.

[Wakshaani]

http://wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=+ABGHMNRZ+ABGHMNRZAAAA

I tossed in every letter twixe, then four extra 'A' sounds.

Dig in. :)

(Razz can lead to 'Razzamagazz', for example.)

Fun words!

Gag man!
Hag
Magma (ooo, we need that for something.)
Hangar
Gamma
Hangman
Barbara
Hannah
Manah manah. (Muppet goodness!)
Hanna Barbara (Cartoon goodness!)
Brahma
Abraham

...

Lots of possibilities.

-- Wak, now wants to make Cactus Jack. Bang bang!

[Vrylakos]

You know what I need for Jonni Rotten? A way to say directions so I can guide a mob of zeds to a safehouse I've cracked open.

I tried to tell them "Mereweather"... it was north one square.
I don't know if Marrarazza got through to them...

Vrylakos

[Captain Howdy]

The first person to contribute "gangbang" shall be spanked.


Oh drat, that's me, isn't it?

[Burgonet]

The first person to contribute "gangbang" shall be spanked.


Oh drat, that's me, isn't it?

You win a free toaster!

[Tirapheg]

Here's a couple I came up with while lurching towards Tollyton:

"Mmm...grab bag!" which is good for announcing you've just breached a safe-house with lots of hambargar inside.

But this next one is something which would be amusing to see a horde of zombies using as they massacre ...for I have found a line from a popular song which translates perfectly into zombie-speak:

"Bar Bar Bar, Bar-barbarann!"

If only my zombie's name was Brian Wilson... ;)

Michael.

http://www.urbandead.com/profile.cgi?id=77062

[Fade]

Grab barman!

[the_redstar_swl]

Festering Pete just checked in at the junkyard. That unfamiliar zombie is going to be a bit freaked out when he wakes up and finds a couple of dozen other zombies hiding with him.

I'm still working on zombie phrases.

I think that 'Ram, gang, ram! Grab bar! Bam, bam, bam!' is a good one to use when you want to tell your fellow zeds to knock down a barricade and 'Grab bang-bang man!' lets you know that there is a survivor with headshot who needs taking down. 'Grab arm, harm man... HAMBARGHAR!' is a good call for a general feeding frenzy.

When we break into the mall, I might try 'Man gang harm zambah! Zambah gang grab hambarghar, harm man gang! Hahaha!'

Posted so this won't get lost.

[Tomahawk]

Here's a couple I came up with while lurching towards Tollyton:

"Mmm...grab bag!" which is good for announcing you've just breached a safe-house with lots of hambargar inside.

But this next one is something which would be amusing to see a horde of zombies using as they massacre ...for I have found a line from a popular song which translates perfectly into zombie-speak:

"Bar Bar Bar, Bar-barbarann!"

If only my zombie's name was Brian Wilson... ;)

Michael.

http://www.urbandead.com/profile.cgi?id=77062

I can wait to see this:

Zombie 1: "Ba Ba Ba Ba-Babarann"

Zombie 2: "Ba Ba Ba Ba-Babarann"

Zombie 3" "Babarann..."

[Throctukes]

There's no reason, given the number of characters available to form wors with, why zombies shouldn't be able to communicate as fully as the human characters. Use a coding scheme like this, for example:

Human -> Zombie
e = HA
t = BG
a = A
o = HR
i = AR
n = N
s = RZ
r = R
h = H
l = MN
d = GB
c = ZZ
u = NM
m = M
f = MZ
p = BZ
g = G
w = MNM
y = RA
b = B
v = BB
k = BG
x = MZ
j = GA
q = GHG
z = Z

In order to delimit human characters in zombie, alternate case, so you always start a word in uppercase. As soon as you've finished typing the zombiecode for the first letter, change case, and so on. An example sentence would be...

HRbzHAn BGhHA RZaMZhaHhrNMrzHA GHGnmARzzBG HnmMaNrz MNMarBGh RZhHRbgGnmNrz ArHA AmnmAra NhrMNM

(Open the safehouse quick humans with shotguns are away now)

Please excuse any typos. Obviously, this is impractical to type manually, but it would be dead easy to create a little script that would translate from Zombie to Human and back again for you.

If you want to switch between phonetic zombie and zombiecode, you could precede all zombiecode speech with zzz. Of course, this would only be useful if the other zombies knew the code.

[Tardigrade]

There's no reason, given the number of characters available to form wors with, why zombies shouldn't be able to communicate as fully as the human characters. Use a coding scheme like this, for example:

You rock on toast.

NhrMNM MNMha ZZaN BGaMNbg BGhr HRnHA AnHRbgHhaR!
(Now we can talk to one another!)

I wrote perl scripts to convert between English (well, the Roman/Latin alphabet) and Zombish. Your example translated to "open khe safehouse quick humans wikh shokguns are away now", so you were mostly accurate. If I can find a free webhost that allows perl CGI scripts I'll create a form that anyone can use.

[jrients]

The first person to contribute "gangbang" shall be spanked.


Oh drat, that's me, isn't it?

There's been at least one safehouse cracked where the first zombie in declared GANG BANG! as the rest of the zeds poured in.

[Throctukes]

You rock on toast.

NhrMNM MNMha ZZaN BGaMNbg BGhr HRnHA AnHRbgHhaR!
(Now we can talk to one another!)

I wrote perl scripts to convert between English (well, the Roman/Latin alphabet) and Zombish. Your example translated to "open khe safehouse quick humans wikh shokguns are away now", so you were mostly accurate. If I can find a free webhost that allows perl CGI scripts I'll create a form that anyone can use.

You rock more - you did something about it!

Actually, I made a mistake when I typed up the codebook - k *should* = BM (t and k have the same code in my original post).

Someone suggested writing the translator in javascript, allowing it to dynamically alter the zombish into human and back in the Urban Dead webpage. I may look into it.

[Throctukes]

Another alternative that wouldn't require a web host would be to write a firefox extension to do the translation. We could stick it on Sourceforge. Or, indeed, write a little executable to do it.

[TrapperQ]

Ah (I) Hahngar (Hunger)!

Or use a ! for an i.

You could use morse code with a ! for a dash. Or 'g' for dot and 'GRR' for dash.

Is there enough punctuation for leet speak or smilies?

[drnuncheon]

Does anyone else think it is dreadfully ironic that you can't even say the most classic zombie line ever? Instead, it sounds like you're suffering from acute constipation.

J
BRANZ!

[wcil]

This is based on the ideas presented above; a 20 mins hackjob made close to bed time. Very poor programming (I know so -.- )

Just play around with it and see how everything turns out.

The English to Zombie Translator (http://siddhant.name/games/english2zombie.html)

Note: Case (upper / lower) is very important in zombie talk, and you get back everything in lower case.

Oh, and first post :p Also, Zombies rawk. I have 3 alts. 2 are corpses & one's a Necrotech corpse (Want that skill which shows HP).

If something's wrong, I'll fix it and stuff.

Edit: HRBZHAn HGhHA RZaZRHAhHRNMRZHA GHNMARZZBG hNMmanRZ ZMARHGh RZhHRHGgNMnRZ aMZHA aZMaRA nHRZM!

BGARMNMN aMNMN HGhHA ARGBARHRHGARZZ hNMmanRZ ARnRZARGBHA HGhHA hHRRZBZARHGaMN nHRZM!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.siddhant.name/games/zombiechurch.gif

[Tardigrade]

Eh, you beat me to it. I'd written a similar script, but was looking for a place to host it. The important thing is that it's available, though. Now I just need to get Death Rattle and I'll actually be able to use it.

EDIT: Looking at your source code, it looks like your system works differently from the one Throctukes originally proposed. It'll also break in many cases:

temp = temp.replace(/ZZ/g,"c");
temp = temp.replace(/ZR/g,"f");
temp = temp.replace(/MZ/g,"r");

"rf" becomes "MZZR", which becomes "McR". Thructukes' scheme uses case to differentiate each group of characters, avoiding this problem.

I've attached my script, which is written in perl using CGI.pm. If someone hosts this somewhere, please let the rest of us know.

Nevermind, I can't attach. If someone wants the script, let me know and I'll PM or email it.

[sys64738]

RZHAnGB mHRMZHA BZaMZamHAGBARZZRZ

[Tardigrade]

Visit <a href="http://zombietalk.oldeenglish.org">zombietalk.oldeenglish.org</a> for a working translator, using Throctukes' system. If you have any suggestions or find any bugs, please let me know.

Edit: for more fun, here's a <a href="http://zombietalk.oldeenglish.org/zombish-wordlist.txt">list of English words and names that zombies can say.

Edit 2: fixed URL.

[Throctukes]

Wow. Nice one. Thanks for the namecheck on your translator, Tardigrade. I guess our work here is done :) Now I just have to get my zombie levelled up enough to actually speak. It'll be interesting to see if this actually gets used in-game.... Post sightings of Zombish here, perhaps?

Next plan... build a DAIM-style ( http://pages.infinit.net/jugement/alleyway/updatedaim.html ) wrapper app around Urban Dead. I think an app which opens the website and integrates various tools into the interface (a full map, zombie tracker, zombish translator, etc) may be useful.... unless it's already been done? If not do people want it? And what do you want in it? Maybe time to start another thread with this.

[Throctukes]

One thing I noticed, punctuation in Zombish mucks up the translation to english ( Brains! -> BrAarNrz! -> brain` ). If I remove the exclamation mark, BrAarNrz translates correctly, so I would guess that you need to strip punctuation before doing the zombish->english translation.

[Throctukes]

The only downer is having two different coding schemes running - people need to know in advance which to use. I'm not saying the system I proposed is definitively the one to use, but we should agree on *the* zombie->human translator. I'm still planning to build a firefox extension to do automatic translation when you're at the Urban Dead page, but to do that we (a) need to decide which coding scheme we're using, (b) put the codebook up here, and (c) decide on what escape sequence we're going to use to signal that a line is in zombish and so should be translated. Also, as far as I know, Zombies can't actually say digital numbers (1, 2, etc) can they? If not, we can add those to the codebook, using the same case delimiting. I can only add them to my codebook 'cos I haven't seen yours, wcil.

1 AA
2 AB
3 AG
4 AH
5 AM
6 AN
7 AZ
8 BA
9 BN
0 BM

I've eyeballed the codebook to find available zombish letter combinations rather than checking it properly, so if there are any mistakes, please correct them.

My other thought - back along the lines of a DAIM style interface - is if there is a need for it (or at least the desire for it) in the Urban Dead community, I'll happily contribute time & code as soon as I have a little free time - in fact, I may do it on my own if no one else is interested in collaborating - but whoever does it let's keep it open source & free? For something as simple as that, it really annoys me when people try and charge for it. And I'd rather people paid Kevan for all the hard work making & maintaining Urban Dead.

[Tardigrade]

One thing I noticed, punctuation in Zombish mucks up the translation to english ( Brains! -> BrAarNrz! -> brain` ). If I remove the exclamation mark, BrAarNrz translates correctly, so I would guess that you need to strip punctuation before doing the zombish->english translation.

That's a bug, as punctuation should be untouched in either direction. I'll fix it shortly.

Edit: Fixed it. Punctuation should now be left alone when translating in either direction. Also, this translator is linked from the front page of the Urban Dead wiki, courtesy the person who set up the site to host it.

[Throctukes]

I've been having far too much fun translating stuff into zombish and trying to say the result :) AR'm GnmNnA HAaBG RAhaR BrAarNrz

[wcil]

Latest Edit: Please visit http://www.siddhant.name/games/english2zombie.html . I've overhauled the code completely, and it should be very handy, easy to use and to integrate with firefox / mozilla. I'm using the encoding scheme mentioned below. As always, comments + discussions are welcome.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The main problem with Throctukes' system was

t = BG
k = BG
f = MZ
x = MZ

And the three letter'ed abbv.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The system I'm using goes as such

A = a
B = b
C = ZZ
D = GB
E = HA
F = ZR
G = g
H = h
I = AR
J = GA
K = BG
L = MN
M = m
N = n
O = HR
P = BZ
Q = GH
R = MZ
S = RZ
T = HG
U = NM
V = BB
W = ZM
X = ZB
Y = RA
Z = z

The (to be implemented) parsing mechanism will go as such:

1.0) Go through the Zombish string from left to right.
2.1) If the character enountered is lowercase, copy it as is to the English string. Move on to the next character.
2.2) If the character is uppercase, take this and the next character as a token, find the english equivalent, and then copy it to the English string. Move on to the next to next character.
2.3) If the character is none of the two above, just copy it as-is to the English string. Move on to the next character.
3) Repeat till we consume the string.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On another note, there seems to be yet another Z2E translator here : http://zombies.alexsaintcroix.com/ ; with

var e = new Array(" ", "!", "\"", "#", "$", "%", "&", "'", "(", ")", "*", "+", ",", "-", ".", "/", "0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", ":", ";", "<", "=", ">>", "?", "@", "A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F", "G", "H", "I", "J", "K", "L", "M", "N", "O", "P", "Q", "R", "S", "T", "U", "V", "W", "X", "Y", "Z", "[", "\", "]", "^", "_", "`", "a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "i", "j", "k", "l", "m", "n", "o", "p", "q", "r", "s", "t", "u", "v", "w", "x", "y", "z", "{", "|", "}", "~");

var z = new Array("aa", "ab", "ag", "ah", "am", "an", "az", "a-", "a,", "a.", "a!", "a?", "ba", "bb", "bg", "bh", "bm", "bn", "bz", "b-", "b,", "b.", "b!", "b?", "ga", "gb", "gg", "gh", "gm", "gn", "gz", "g-", "g,", "g.", "g!", "g?", "ha", "hb", "hg", "hh", "hm", "hn", "hz", "h-", "h,", "h.", "h!", "h?", "ma", "mb", "mg", "mh", "mm", "mn", "mz", "m-", "m,", "m.", "m!", "m?", "na", "nb", "ng", "nh", "nm", "nn", "nz", "n-", "n,", "n.", "n!", "n?", "za", "zb", "zg", "zh", "zm", "zn", "zz", "z-", "z,", "z.", "z!", "z?", "-a", "-b", "-g", "-h", "-m", "-n", "-z", "--", "-,", "-.", "-!");

So spaces become aa in zombish. The advantage of this encoding is, of course, that there's no problem with upper and lower cases. However, the negative point would be that "m" translates to "zn" even though just "m" would've sufficed, and that the UD speechbox has a max size of 255 characters.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I guess we should agree on a final translation scheme for Z2E.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once again, visit http://www.siddhant.name/games/english2zombie.html for the latest update on our zombie "babelfish" effort.

[Throctukes]

Good point on the f/x error - though it only takes changing the code for f to MB to make my codebook work again (the other error you pointed out was fixed a while ago). My aim when writing the code was to make the zombiecode for a given letter as close as possible (phonetically) to it's English equivalent, with priority given to keeping letters the same (so a is always a, for example), and trying to get best fit for the letters at the top of the table (my slightly odd letter order is decreasing frequency of use in English). I use caps delimiting as, while it looks odd, I thought it more important that the phonetics came through as well as possible, so sometimes you can hazard a guess at what a zombie is saying without translating it, by trying to say it out loud yourself.

Anyway, that was the rationale behind it. If we're going with your scheme, wcil, I'd suggest at least representing an r with an r in zombie, if not trying to tailor the phonetics. I don't think I did a particularly good job with the phonetics, by the way, but it seemed like a good thing to strive for.

There's much good work going on here - maybe we should decide which are the most important features of the schemes proposed and consolidate to one final scheme. Until we create one common flavour of zombish, it's going to be a bit useless.

[wcil]

Heh, you're right... I just restored "r" :p

I was basically following your scheme and the only changes that I made were for the duplicates and the 3 lettered replacements.

I think the current code does a good job of converting between the two, and is robust enough to take more changes. Furthermore, it'll be easy to use in it's current form (which is why I'm showcasing it)... Test it and see.

As for the scheme, I guess you could draft a finalised version soon ....

[Throctukes]

I've been chatting to a friend of mine about this.... he reckons it should be possible to do the translation in a firefox extension (I know I mentioned this earlier, but I was guessing then), so when you're at the Urban Dead site any Zombish turns into English automatically, and anything a zombie types into the speech edit box gets zombified automatically. That way, it wouldn't be an effort to use it - I think we may need to add a standard "translate this" code to the beginning of anything that should be translated. I've never written any extensions for firefox, any of you got any experience? An automatic translator would be too sweet. I'd have to diet before using it :) I'm going on holiday for a couple of weeks from tomorrow, so I won't be able to help any more until I get back (sorry), but it's not like I'm doing any of the hard work here! I look forward to getting back to the all singing all dancing Zombish Translator o'Doom....

[Influence D]

uh - I have a (possibly dumb) question:

according to the wiki, when speaking with deathrattle: 'Ending Rs get changed into an "rh"' - won't that cause the translation to break on words that end with a R-terminated code? or is the wiki inaccurate - I noticed that the example phrase has words ending in r...

if the wiki's right (and I'm still 30XP away from getting death rattle to find out) then the four codes (f,i,o,r) that end in R should be changed (possibly by adding an H to the end, if that's not already taken).

[Influence D]

uh - I have a (possibly dumb) question:

according to the wiki, when speaking with deathrattle: 'Ending Rs get changed into an "rh"' - won't that cause the translation to break on words that end with a R-terminated code? or is the wiki inaccurate - I noticed that the example phrase has words ending in r...

if the wiki's right (and I'm still 30XP away from getting death rattle to find out) then the four codes (f,i,o,r) that end in R should be changed (possibly by adding an H to the end, if that's not already taken).

sorry, you were saying F will become MB (though it still appears to be MZ on the site), which, um, does not end in R. I was reading the wrong chart.

[Influence D]

right, so I've finally saved up enough XP (thanks headshotters!) to get Death Rattle - and a trailing lowercase r always seems to get an h appended... which means the codes for I, O, and R are either broken or need to recognise an alternate version with an additional H at the end.

or so it seems to me.

[Influence D]

wow, thanks for the lack of feedback guys.

at this point, since I don't think it actually works in all circumstances, I'm removing Zombish autotranslation and speech translation from the UDTranslate extension, because I don't want to release it with a broken code-system. a pity, since it basically works bar this one problem:

http://tinypic.com/e84o78.jpg

most likely I will be replacing it with a similar language of my own future-devising (i.e. I haven't made it up yet.)

later,
influence.

[Tardigrade]

I like Throctukes' method of differentiating characters by case, for its quirky output, but wcil's method is simpler. Given the problem with terminating R's, I changed the I and O characters to the following:

I = AH (was AR)
O = RH (was HR)

I rewrote my translators to use this system. If everyone agrees to this change, I'll update the UD wiki section for this (and alphabetize it by English letter).

I appreciate the thought behind the second system, but the 100-character limit on speech means every single character that becomes a double cuts down on the maximum zombish speech length. Hmm, I'll add a note to my translator that warns if the output is over the limit.

[Influence D]

please don't do that (change the codes, that is).

a simple change to recognise RH, ORH and ARH as alternates works better, and is the system that I implemented for UDTranslate (which I'm releasing as soon as I find a host)... and I don't want to change it again.

... so, uh, who wants to host a firefox extension?

[Erstwhile]

This means that we can only use the letters A, B, G, H, M, N, R, and Z, plus basic punctuation, like full stops, commas and question marks.


I was quite disappointed when I created a new zombie alt, Undead Lawyer (http://www.urbandead.com/profile.cgi?id=151198), and realized that first, during character creation, "Undead Caveman Lawyer" had too many letters...and then, second, that since zombies can't say "S" or "T" he couldn't say "barrastahr". :(

BARRAZGAHR!

[Throctukes]

'lo.

I may be able to convince www.OpenIllusionist.org.uk to host your extension...

OK, just noticed you have a host already. Never mind. Have you included number translation in UDTranslate yet?

[Influence D]

'lo.

I may be able to convince www.OpenIllusionist.org.uk to host your extension...

OK, just noticed you have a host already. Never mind.

thanks anyway!

Have you included number translation in UDTranslate yet?

indeed I have*, and I've fixed a bunch of bugs too.
go to Tools/Extensions/UDTranslate and Update, and you should get 0.0.7

type the text you want to say, right-click and Translate to Zombish, and hit Speak.

(*I used 'RG' for 0 instead of 'BM', which was already taken)

[Throctukes]

Nice one. I'm curious about the automatic translation back from zombish - how can it tell what should and what shouldn't be translated?
(also, sorry about the numerous repetitions and errors in every code I propose. I really should take more care over these things)

[Influence D]

Nice one. I'm curious about the automatic translation back from zombish - how can it tell what should and what shouldn't be translated?
(also, sorry about the numerous repetitions and errors in every code I propose. I really should take more care over these things)

it's kind of dumb - if the text is 100% valid AlTeRnAtInG CaSe zombish it adds the translation.
that's all there is to it.

(the same deal for the text boxes - it'll automatically switch the context menu to 'Translate FROM Zombish' if the text is valid zombish.)

and as for the zombish code - I just copped out and asked Kevan how zombie speech mangling worked - there's a summary on the wiki page if you're interested.
the only fundamental differences from zombish (aside from the numerals and a couple of minor corrections) are the 'alternate' codes HRA for A and ARH, HRH and RH for I, O and R respectively (which compensate for changes made to the text by UD itself)

I'm much too lazy to have come up with the code itself...

[Corsair]

Finally got death rattle a couple of days ago, although I installed UDTranslate when I first heard about it, mostly because it seemed cool.

Works great, and my compliments.

I seem to recall reading either earlier in this thread or the UD Ttranslate site that the translate tool is only enabled for the Urban Dead server. Is it possible to add other sites, say for example the forums where hep zombies sometimes spout something in Zombese or Zombish? Options for UDTranslate in Firefox Extensions just allows autotranslate to be turned on and off, and I don't see any obvious config file lurking in the Firefox directory.

It's certainly not an esential feature, but it would be rather handy I suspect.

[Influence D]

Finally got death rattle a couple of days ago, although I installed UDTranslate when I first heard about it, mostly because it seemed cool.

Works great, and my compliments.
thank you!

I seem to recall reading either earlier in this thread or the UD Ttranslate site that the translate tool is only enabled for the Urban Dead server. Is it possible to add other sites, say for example the forums where hep zombies sometimes spout something in Zombese or Zombish? Options for UDTranslate in Firefox Extensions just allows autotranslate to be turned on and off, and I don't see any obvious config file lurking in the Firefox directory.

It's certainly not an esential feature, but it would be rather handy I suspect.
not easily - it's looking for specific regular expressions within the html - (someone) says "(something)", etc.

I may add a small translation dialog you could pop up from the Tools menu at some point... that's probably the best I could do.
but it won't be soon.

[Corsair]

not easily - it's looking for specific regular expressions within the html - (someone) says "(something)", etc.

I may add a small translation dialog you could pop up from the Tools menu at some point... that's probably the best I could do.
but it won't be soon.
Fair enough.

Were there plans to implement a counter to warn when you were near the 100 character limit?

I am really getting a kick out of using your UDTranslate tool, though. It certainly makes it a lot easier to use Death Rattle, and more fun to wander around speaking at harmans.

[Influence D]

Fair enough.

Were there plans to implement a counter to warn when you were near the 100 character limit?
There were, but I keep forgetting...
ps: 100 chars? I thought it was 128, but to be honest I've never actually checked.

I am really getting a kick out of using your UDTranslate tool, though. It certainly makes it a lot easier to use Death Rattle, and more fun to wander around speaking at harmans.
it makes it even easier to coordinate a zombie mob.


not that I eat delicious brains or anything.

[Erstwhile]

not that I eat delicious brains or anything.

I did not eat that woman's delicious brains. I simply scooped them out and gnawed on them, but did not swallow. That does not constitute culinary relations - Zombie Bill Clinton.

[Corsair]

ps: 100 chars? I thought it was 128, but to be honest I've never actually checked.

Not sure myself. I can't remember where I got that figure from. Ther is a distinct possibility that I'm way off base.

[wcil]

Okay, I've finally got death rattle and I've detected a few fallacies in my script. (At the Caiger Mall party) So, I'll try to fix it up asap. I'll also try to standardise it to one of the other encoding types perhaps.

Edit: Btw, it's 100 chars; confirmed.

[Corsair]

Okay, I've finally got death rattle and I've detected a few fallacies in my script. (At the Caiger Mall party) So, I'll try to fix it up asap. I'll also try to standardise it to one of the other encoding types perhaps.
Edit: Btw, it's 100 chars; confirmed.
I've tried out your bookmarklets system, wcil, and I rather like it.

You said in your web-page for it that you thought you could get the bookmarklets to work under IE (and maybe other browsers)? This, along with standardizing on one of the pre-existing speech codes would be most useful.

Great work though.

[Throctukes]

Finally.... Finally.... I have Death Rattle (Headshot is not a good thing). And the latest incarnation of UDTranslate works as far as I can see! Influence, you're a legend. I've stumbled across only one other user in my travels that spoke, but I assume that people will look in my description and get UDTranslate if they want to know what I'm saying. It still amuses me to "speak" the zombish in my own head... it works surprisingly well! If we standardise the codes, and *really* push the translators on the forums, we may have a chance of making the zombies a force to be reckoned with again. I've started by putting "UDTranslate Users" as my group affiliation, and also started shouting about it in the forums. I think wcils non-firefox translator is an essential part of the push, as otherwise we're locking out the IE folks. Sterling job, folks. Special kudos to wcil, Influence Device and Tardigrade for actually writing translators for general consumption. Double plus gold stars are in order.

[kowaiyoukai]

Is there a reason the zombish translator doesn't work in Internet Explorer?

[wcil]

Update :: http://siddhant.name/games/ud/english2zombie.html

This should work flawlessly now.

This version takes care of the " a " --> " hra " mangling; the "ghghghghr" ---> "ghghghghrh" mangling; and the Capitalisation Of The First Word Of The Sentence Mangling.

The language I use::
"a","b","c","d","e","f","g","h","i","j","k","l","m","n","o","p","q","r","s","t","u","v","w","x","y","z"
"a","b","ZZ","GB","HA","ZR","g","h","AR","GA","BG","MN","m","n","HR","BZ","GH","r","RZ","HG","NM","BB","ZM","ZB","RA","z"

Sorry for procrastinating so much; but now it's almost complete! All I need to do is port it to IE and it'll be done with.

[Tuxedo Mask]

Question for you guys: Isn't what you are doing going against the spirit of the game?

Death Rattle is supposed to give very limited speech - It's supposed to be used for fun, to allow grunts and growls. By doing all this to allow it to be used for total communication, you are essentially breaking the skill.

If I was the game developer, and I found everyone was using Death Rattle in that way, then I would remove it or change it to make it not possible.

TM

[wcil]

If that was the case, the game designer wouldnt have explained how it works in this page :: http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Zombie_Speech_Translators :: would he? Of all the classes, zombies have the greatest need to horde, (and till the new skill :: Feeding Groan :: was released a week or so ago) , had no means to do so. This was an intiative to help that. While he cant change a rather fun, implemented skill (GRAB MAH HANGAN MANBAGZ HARMANZ! BANANA GANGBANG!), this initiative will atleast make it sorta useful as well.

Is there a reason the zombish translator doesn't work in Internet Explorer?
Hrm, turns out that IE cant handle nested loops in bookmarklets.... for i = 1 to 20 { for j = 1 to 20 {} } ... That's probably the main reason why. It works well on the page, but not as a bookmarklet. I'm sorta stumped as how to proceed at this moment in time, but then again, what're you doing using IE? ;)

[BigFatSlob]

Question for you guys: Isn't what you are doing going against the spirit of the game?

Death Rattle is supposed to give very limited speech - It's supposed to be used for fun, to allow grunts and growls. By doing all this to allow it to be used for total communication, you are essentially breaking the skill.

If I was the game developer, and I found everyone was using Death Rattle in that way, then I would remove it or change it to make it not possible.

TM
Well, communication is still limited by the 100-character limit, especially as most of the letters in zombish code take up two spaces. So it's limited to pretty much the most basic of messages, unless you want to burn all your actions standing around stammering out some massively detailed plan six words at a time.

Besides, they're players. It's the sacred duty of players to find and exploit as many loopholes and broken rules as possible, just as it's the GM's duty to try to kill the players at every opportunity.

[Corsair]

Question for you guys: Isn't what you are doing going against the spirit of the game?

Death Rattle is supposed to give very limited speech - It's supposed to be used for fun, to allow grunts and growls. By doing all this to allow it to be used for total communication, you are essentially breaking the skill.

One could also argue that this is within the spirit of zombie fiction. Use of translators could represents the evolution of zombies (such as in Land of the Dead), with the more evolved zombies represented by use of a translator of some sort.

I mostly use death rattle for your typical "Rah, rah, rah, gah zambahz!" sort of thing, on account of most organization taking place through the various forums (go RRF! (http://www.ridleybank.org/)), email, and IRC/IM. The utility of giving detailed info in game is also diluted by the need to have your recipients use the *same* translator. Hence the discussion earlier in the thread about standardization around one translation code. The death rattle skill therefore does not add significantly to the zombie ability to co-ordinate ATM.

WCIL's observation about IE's handling of bookmarklets is troubling, however. At least it appears to work on the website.

Good job, WCIL!

[Bulya]

Only thing Rottweiler says with Deathrattle is 'Barg! Barg!', 'Barg! Barg! Barg!' or GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!'. But then again he's a dog so what do you expect.:D

[Kevindubrow]

My favorite phrase would be "MANBARHGHAR!"

[TrapperQ]

Hello Kevin, welcome to RPGnet, you might find the tail end of THIS THREAD (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?p=9440477#post9440477) useful, which was the last time Urban Dead came up on the forums.

[Tardigrade]

Is this the most appropriate use of the [Necro] tag ever?