English thread. Why not?

[Ravick]

Hum... but, lets say, if a script ramdomly chooses what key would fit the door, so the mapper is unable to know it? He'd only know that it is a key, but not wich one. (Or a similar situation.) I'm aware it may sound just like I'm being stubborn, but I got more curious with the phrase itself then with the use of it in the mod. I mean, I'd be unsure of how to say that if I was having some daily conversation in English.

Also, how would people call the 'normal keys' in a context just like this one? "Regular key", maybe?

BTW, thanks for the English and game design/texting tips so far, pals.

[Project Shadowcat]

Hum... but, lets say, if a script ramdomly chooses what key would fit the door, so the mapper is unable to know it? He'd only know that it is a key, but not wich one. (Or a similar situation.) I'm aware it may sound just like I'm being stubborn, but I got more curious with the phrase itself then with the use of it in the mod. I mean, I'd be unsure of how to say that if I was having some daily conversation in English.

Also, how would people call the 'normal keys' in a context just like this one? "Regular key", maybe?

BTW, thanks for the English and game design/texting tips so far, pals.

Just "key" is fine. Usually when a specific key is a bit more different, such as an electronic card ("keycard") or the skull keys in Doom, they're referred to as such. Or it could refer to what it may unlock, such as "B.J.'s locker key" unlocking the locker belonging to the poor guy named B.J. who left it in the garage.

[Reactor]

This one caught my attention today,when I collected stuff about shipwrecks and ships lost at sea. What's the difference between a "capsized" ship and a "foundered" ship? The dictionary states both means it turns upside down.

[Gez]

I don't see the upside-down notion in "foundered", merely the notion of hitting the bottom (same word root as in "foundation", "fundament", etc. -- the base, the bottom, that upon which everything else stands).
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/foundered
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... /foundered
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/founder#Etymology_3

Whereas the meaning of being turned over is very clear in capsized, with an etymology coming from the head (same root as capital, captain, decapitation, etc.) through the Spanish and expressing the idea of a boat sinking "head" first:
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/capsized
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... h/capsized
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capsize

Get a better dictionary.

[Reactor]

Welp, that dictionary was bad indeed...for some reason, it gave the definition of "silent" to "profound" and such. Hungarian is a hard language, you see.
Alright, here's a better question now: What's the difference between a ship "sank" or "foundered"?

[Gez]

The ship sinks when it loses buoyancy, and founders when it hits the sea floor. Foundering is usually the consequence of sinking.

If you really want to, there can be situations where a ship founders without sinking, for example if the water disappears:


You can even imagine a situation where a ship would sink without foundering. Suppose two layers of water, one that is very dense through saturation in salt at the bottom, and a upper layer of fresh water coming from a river. It's then theoretically possible for a ship, with some trapped air bubbles or whatever, to lose buoyancy in the layer of fresh water, but keep it in the denser salt water layer, resulting in a ship that sinks but then floats at the boundary between both layers. You can reproduce this situation at home with an egg instead of a ship and a glass instead of a sea, the trick is in making sure that both layers of water do not mix, so the fresh water must be poured very slowly and with as little force at possible over the salt water: the egg will be buoyant over salt water, but not over fresh water, so it'll hover at the boundary between the layers instead of sinking fully to the bottom or floating fully to the surface.

[Ravick]

Just "key" is fine. Usually when a specific key is a bit more different, such as an electronic card ("keycard") or the skull keys in Doom, they're referred to as such. Or it could refer to what it may unlock, such as "B.J.'s locker key" unlocking the locker belonging to the poor guy named B.J. who left it in the garage.

Thanks!

[Enjay]

To add to the above - generally, in a game, I find it far more useful if the key has a name or description of some sort. Sure, "you need a key to open this door" works and is good enough English but it's not as helpful as "you need a blue key to open this door" or "you need the bathroom key to open this door" or whatever. Why? because when you are on the other side of the map and pick up a key and it says "you found a key" you don't know what it relates to. If it says "you picked up a blue key" (etc) then you know that it relates back to that specific door, so you know that's where you need to go back to.

It's especially important if the map has a lot of key doors. Imagine finding 3 or 4 doors in different parts of a map, all of which only said "you need a key to open this door" and then you stumble upon a key that merely tells you it's a key and nothing more. Which door is it for? Where do I have to go now?

Even in real life, in our house we have a front and a back door key (yeah, not unusual, I know) and we all (4 people live here) have our own set of keys, plus spares lying around the house. They are all on their own keyrings. Just by appearance, we know which keys work for the doors of the house because they are quite characteristic in appearance (effectively, you need a blue key to enter this house) - but they are the same type as each other, so not quickly discernable from each other. So, our rule is that the front door key is always made to look different somehow (usually by adding a coloured plastic cover over the round end of the key). So, quite literally, in our house I could say "you need the blue key to enter the front door". It would make sense, actually be informative and useful.

[Gez]

Realistic key hunting simulator: Not only you don't know which key is needed, but you also don't know what each key you pick up does, and when you try to unlock a door you fumble for a while, trying all the keys you have gathered, losing count of which one you've already tried or not and so ending up doing 50 tries when you only have 20 keys. Then you find out that you only have 19 keys now because you must have dropped one during your tries. Did you even have 20 keys to begin with? Who knows anymore. To hell with it, locate nearest phone and call a locksmith.


(A shooting game where you'd just blow doors open with your rocket launcher instead of worrying about keys would make sense IMO.)

[Enjay]

I actually used a mechanism a bit like what you describe on a LARP to simulate one characters ability to pick locks. He was given bunches of keys that represented the difficulty of the locks. An easy lock would be opened by one of the keys on the ring with 5 keys, a hard lock would be one of 40. So, in either case you could get it first time, but the chances of doing so are far less on a hard lock.

Two funny parts to this:
1) Situation: two "thieves" lying on the ground trying to be silent as NPCs patrol for them with the thieves trying to open the treasure chest containing the main quest item for the day in a Scottish wood on the side of a hill at about 3 a.m. with one thief fumbling through the 40 keys. The other thief whispering angrily in their ear "you've f*cked it up havn't you? You've really f*cked it up." He'd actually started at one end of the keyring, got so far and thought, nah, I'm doing this wrong" and went back the other way - must have come close to the maximum 79 attempts to get in - then the chest was trapped with party poppers .

2) The look on the locksmiths face when I said, "can I have one of those padlocks and can you cut 39 extra keys for it, but make sure that none of them work".

[NeuralStunner]

This is why I maintain that all Scotsmen are, at minimum, just a little bit evil. (Or as you would put it, "cheeky".)

[Enjay]

I resent that! Only a little? I was aiming for more than that.

[NeuralStunner]

I resent that! Only a little? I was aiming for more than that.

I did say "at minimum". Who knows what you might do if I don't choose my words carefully?

[Enjay]

Alright NeuralStunner, you win this round.

[Reactor]

This time I'm looking for a word, it's sort of a military slang for "settle down". Phonetically it sounds like [edi:s], you can hear it in Quake 4 when the stroggified Kane approaches the briefing room (Sledge says it), but I haven't the slightest clue what is the exact word.