Extended Research List

that research effect should be impacted by the government....

photography should be influenced by the spectrum they saw, with other spectrum discovered later..
if we saw things x-ray we would probably discover them earlier since we would be more concerned with it
if they were blind they need this not and could have things like sound recording and the radar!?

eumesmo wrote:

that research effect should be impacted by the government....

photography should be influenced by the spectrum they saw, with other spectrum discovered later..
if we saw things x-ray we would probably discover them earlier since we would be more concerned with it
if they were blind they need this not and could have things like sound recording and the radar!?

Which research? The ecology one?

I agree with you on the photography, but there is no need for the game to specify that.

And i agree that if blind, this research would be useless. As would Alphabet and Optics. So for all three of those i need alternate researches for species that have their dominant sense as smell, hearing, touch, echolocation... Anything else anyone can think of?

the one affected is the ecology one, and a replacement to writting is quite dficult for humans to imagine... maybe braile?

Hunting should enable clothing (Leather).

Will their be any resource prerequisits? Like riquiring wood-like substance for wood crafting, or will it be taken as read?

Canals are something the player can come up with on his own, I would imagine.

Most Medieval societal thing fall into the stereotyped traps present in our society. For example: Serfs aren't forced to be serfs, they have the ability to come and go as they please. Guilds function as a city government with democratically elected officials, and vassalage is merely a way of appointing officials to govern small areas that are to insignificant and numerous for the king to personally oversee.

Music should be changed to written music. Music itself is present in all societies from the start, and should act as a way of preserving specific cultural aspects that normaly would fluctuate.

Chivalry should act as a code of ideals in warfare. All factions following the chivalric code will limit their military actions and dislike nations who do not. For example: No sneak attacks, no fighting on holy days, no attacking civilians, humane treatment of prisoners, etc.

Aesthetics should exist from the begining. All cultures, no matter how primitive, have art.

Alphabet is prevalent in non-sight critters, just in a different way. Sonar would have carving, Smell would have certain chemicals or a brail-like raised alphabet.

Bonuses given by a certain religion are increased the more prevalent said religion is.

Algebra should require mathamatics.

Most historians think the wheel was invented after potters, when the potters' wheel was turned on it's side.

Agriculture should allow construction of farms.

eumesmo wrote:

the one affected is the ecology one, and a replacement to writting is quite dficult for humans to imagine... maybe braile?

Writing can easily be covered by "Record Keeping". But a feel alphabet is good for a dominant touch. Like, really good. So i think that Braille or Touch Alphabet would be well suited for a touch-sense equivalent. It's really smell i'm worried about getting one for. I mean, how do you store smell onto anything for later... smelling?

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Commander Keen wrote:

What the Belgium? I'm sure I have already posted here today.

Zotobom's idea could be included in Ecology research. And that will be needed, you know. The only problem is that he is suggesting it for pre-industrial age, but at that time there isn't anything to worry about.

So you're just talking about making factories more efficient and less pollutive? That make sense.

Like I said, not if you wanted your planet to warm up, if you use thermosynthesis. Yes, there may be risk of increased radiation, but if done at the right speed, the guys will adapt. It could be beneficial to the population. Later on, they could have an advantage over other space faring species because they have increased radiation resistance. Short term and long term benefit from not researching this tech, now the problem is you can't get the benefit of more efficient factories, because if you do you will get much greater disadvantages...

Now onto the smelly problem... We just need some logical thinking. Writing began for recording and delivering speech. Delivering smells could use a material you rub on your body to make the thing smell of whatever you are stinking, and you then send it to another person and they smell your message. Recording smells would be harder, and would require something that smells itself (Not as in it has a nose and smells itself, it just smells of something). Then you could keep it somewhere and it will continue smelling until someone in the future finds it and sniffs it. They materials could be ordered/mixed to keep more information, and if you find you can't replicate a smell you could always find a substitute smell to represent it in writing.

Ah, smell writing. Smell writing sounds fun and bleurgh at the same time... I like that.

objects wich had smell could contain a int value inside to describe it. let's take the realism approach

imagine the value code was :
12345

if a human smelled it, our weak noses would say it was 12371, but a dog would be more accurate and say it was 12342
the accouracy would depend on the amount of smell, the sensibility and the distance

eumesmo wrote:

if a human smelled it, our weak noses would say it was 12371

Sounds a bit generous to me...

And I think in a very old topic we did talk about this method, it's good.

The Uteen wrote:

Like I said, not if you wanted your planet to warm up, if you use thermosynthesis. Yes, there may be risk of increased radiation, but if done at the right speed, the guys will adapt. It could be beneficial to the population. Later on, they could have an advantage over other space faring species because they have increased radiation resistance. Short term and long term benefit from not researching this tech, now the problem is you can't get the benefit of more efficient factories, because if you do you will get much greater disadvantages...

Ecology should just cover healthier environment. It might not be limiting global warming if it's your species goal, just not dumping all this radioactive waste into the nearest river.

BTW, having your species evolve would take millions of years, a lot more time than researching advanced genetic manipulation that would allow you to just genetically engineer your species as you want.

The Uteen wrote:

Now onto the smelly problem... We just need some logical thinking. Writing began for recording and delivering speech. Delivering smells could use a material you rub on your body to make the thing smell of whatever you are stinking, and you then send it to another person and they smell your message. Recording smells would be harder, and would require something that smells itself (Not as in it has a nose and smells itself, it just smells of something). Then you could keep it somewhere and it will continue smelling until someone in the future finds it and sniffs it. They materials could be ordered/mixed to keep more information, and if you find you can't replicate a smell you could always find a substitute smell to represent it in writing.

The problem is that smell fades with time and weathering. Granted, writing does too, but not to the same extent. The thing is that substituting smell for writing (much like we did with speech) will be impossible for blind organisms. In this case, maybe a touch alphabet would be the best bet for organisms that have bad or no sight...

Has anyone here ever seen Red Dwarf... In it the Sapient Cat Race (long story...) coated smallish squares on a piece paper with a scent that the user had to put right up against their nose and sniff to read. Each smell to a human was pretty much the same, but to the cats they could distinguish between roughly 500 or more smells. This could have been used somewhat like Japanese or Chinese.

Also, speaking of Smelling, have we discussed in another location about disabilities such as Anosmia, Blindness or Hearing Impaired.

GamerXA wrote:

Has anyone here ever seen Red Dwarf... In it the Sapient Cat Race (long story...) coated smallish squares on a piece paper with a scent that the user had to put right up against their nose and sniff to read. Each smell to a human was pretty much the same, but to the cats they could distinguish between roughly 500 or more smells. This could have been used somewhat like Japanese or Chinese.

Also, speaking of Smelling, have we discussed in another location about disabilities such as Anosmia, Blindness or Hearing Impaired.

Okay, so we're going with Alphabet for everything? Just Alphabet, Touch Alphabet and Smellphabet (sorry for the terrible pun...)? Any creature that doesn't have one of those senses fairly advanced is probably not sapient, am i right?

US_of_Alaska wrote:

GamerXA wrote:

Has anyone here ever seen Red Dwarf... In it the Sapient Cat Race (long story...) coated smallish squares on a piece paper with a scent that the user had to put right up against their nose and sniff to read. Each smell to a human was pretty much the same, but to the cats they could distinguish between roughly 500 or more smells. This could have been used somewhat like Japanese or Chinese.

Also, speaking of Smelling, have we discussed in another location about disabilities such as Anosmia, Blindness or Hearing Impaired.

Okay, so we're going with Alphabet for everything? Just Alphabet, Touch Alphabet and Smellphabet (sorry for the terrible pun...)? Any creature that doesn't have one of those senses fairly advanced is probably not sapient, am i right?

You could also have hearing alphabet.

The hearing could work the smae way as a touch alphabet but instead of touching the letters, they send ultrasonic waves that will bounce back to the creature.

BTW, when you say "alphabet", do you mean alphabet as we know it or any kind of righting? like ieroglifs or ideograms. And I can recall that some native american tribes "wrote" mesages with strings of different colors (I'll have to research that more).

GamerXA wrote:

Has anyone here ever seen Red Dwarf....

I was just watching it again because this thread had reminded me of it.


All those alphabets will be included into one research, right?

US_of_Alaska wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

Now onto the smelly problem... We just need some logical thinking. Writing began for recording and delivering speech. Delivering smells could use a material you rub on your body to make the thing smell of whatever you are stinking, and you then send it to another person and they smell your message. Recording smells would be harder, and would require something that smells itself (Not as in it has a nose and smells itself, it just smells of something). Then you could keep it somewhere and it will continue smelling until someone in the future finds it and sniffs it. They materials could be ordered/mixed to keep more information, and if you find you can't replicate a smell you could always find a substitute smell to represent it in writing.

The problem is that smell fades with time and weathering.

Some materials can produce smells and so keep their smell for a very long time for smells. The smell rag that you rub on yourself would be the easy method for sending smells, but not for recording smells for a long time...

I like the name, smell rag.
"Hello, care to sniff my smell rag? It's smells particularly like croissant today."

Quote :

The problem is that smell fades with time and weathering.

So does ink.

but the rate is different,

there could be species without a alphabet....

eumesmo wrote:

but the rate is different,

there could be species without a alphabet....

Of course there will be. Until they discover it. It's a research. And the logical progression of written langauge from spoken is to have thousands of symbols that relate directly to objects or actions (cuneiform, hieroglyphs), then to have symbols that relate to the sounds words are made up of (alphabet). An alphabet is simply more efficient and flexible. It makes sense, basically.

Of course, species that have different dominant senses will be different. Which is why i want everyone to really think about how their record keeping would evolve.

There are four primary kinds of writing systems:
* Syllabary - Where syllables are represented by a symbol, such as Hiragana in Japanese.
* Abjads - Where the vowels are excluded and taken from context, such as Hebrew.
* Alphabets - Where each symbol represents a single sound, such as English, or better, Esperanto.
* Logograms - Where each symbol represents an Idea or Concept, such as Chinese and Kanji in Japanese.

Species that have different dominant senses would be best suited to one of these. Smell being Logograms, possibly Abjads or a Syllabary; Hearing most likely not having one that relates to hearing at all; Taste (being probably unlikely) would be like smell; Touch being anything but Logograms; and Sight of course would be any of them.

Other senses such as Electrical Sensing would be unlikely to have any possible writing system that would relate to it, though might have.

The methods of writing the System would most likely start with Engraving, this suits Touch and Sight perfectly but does not have any use for taste or smell. Using fruits, rocks and all sorts of other smells that would not fade over at least a short period of time; to create smells or tastes that could be used.


I think I might have strayed a bit off topic here.

GamerXA wrote:

There are four primary kinds of writing systems:
* Syllabary - Where syllables are represented by a symbol, such as Hiragana in Japanese.
* Abjads - Where the vowels are excluded and taken from context, such as Hebrew.
* Alphabets - Where each symbol represents a single sound, such as English, or better, Esperanto.
* Logograms - Where each symbol represents an Idea or Concept, such as Chinese and Kanji in Japanese.

Species that have different dominant senses would be best suited to one of these. Smell being Logograms, possibly Abjads or a Syllabary; Hearing most likely not having one that relates to hearing at all; Taste (being probably unlikely) would be like smell; Touch being anything but Logograms; and Sight of course would be any of them.

Other senses such as Electrical Sensing would be unlikely to have any possible writing system that would relate to it, though might have.

The methods of writing the System would most likely start with Engraving, this suits Touch and Sight perfectly but does not have any use for taste or smell. Using fruits, rocks and all sorts of other smells that would not fade over at least a short period of time; to create smells or tastes that could be used.


I think I might have strayed a bit off topic here.

No. I think that was helpful. Could you maybe turn these ideas and concepts into researches that are similar to alphabet?

Also, humans have dominant sight and sound. Other species might have a similar two-sense deal happening.

While we are on the topic of written languages, how would Braille fit into all this?

InvaderZim wrote:

While we are on the topic of written languages, how would Braille fit into all this?

Braille is a written language, it's just that it's touch read. So after Record-Keeping, a blind species would be able to research Alphabet like any species with sight. This is all if they have sound/hearing as a dominant sense and communication of course, or else it will be called something else. Which, really is all i'm looking for. A broader term of "Alphabet" that isn't as basic as "Advanced Writing" or "Efficient Writing".

I personelly think IMHO that braille must be a research. But it has to be an ''dead end'' research. Cause i dont really see a research that requires Braille. But you could research it ifninite times. The first time it adds a little happiness,second time more etc etc. WHy are they happy? Cause the blind can read now to.

Braille is an alphabet, so it does not need any additional researches.

Perhaps it might also need the research of 'Impairment Support', with maybe another name for that research.