Nordic Runes, they're not just for breakfast anymore.

av01d · Post by **av01d** » Sun May 16, 2004 2:13 pm

not being rude. but some fonts just are not practical to engrave as runes. plus a few are too complicated to be used as an ordinary letter.

if anyone notices, most alphabets in RL or not are all simple and easy to write.

some of the ones require 5 strokes to write. that will be impractical. further more mere dents in the stone (the runes with a dot here and there) will be suspecible to erosion and they are not usually used for engraving.
and the one with the small square will be easier deformed when the center erodes off or falls off due to careless carving.

just some comments.

Zombies · Post by **Zombies** » Sun May 16, 2004 9:17 pm

hmm...back to the drawing board...

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Sun May 16, 2004 9:25 pm

They could be painted on to stones.

Asylum · Post by **Asylum** » Sun May 16, 2004 10:28 pm

nah nords just love carving, painting wouldn't be there style. they are know for there carvings in stones and wood, they just wouldn't paint especially there runes

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Sun May 16, 2004 10:29 pm

Hey, what about your stones?

Hermit · Post by **Hermit** » Sun May 16, 2004 10:42 pm

avo1d ... ever wondered about the language your avatar, and about one-and-a-half billion fellow chinese and japanese and coreans write? Five strokes?!

As for nordic runes, they kinda were a ritual font, so they were not to be used in everyday things. Such as the egyptian hieroglyphs were - egypt had a much mroe practical font for everyday writing (contracts, accounting, such stuff) and the hieroglyphs we all know for religious purposes. Thus, they can be as impractical as they want, because as soon as you mention their gods, humans do all kinds of very stupid things.

akbliu · Post by **akbliu** » Sun May 16, 2004 11:21 pm

Well, modern Chinese now written on paper and such, so is able to support much more complex characters...

For stone-carving etc, you really need much simpler straight strokes... (Also, in caveman times Oriental culture carved in bone which is much different and 'easier' to carve - and stored indoors to avoid weathering).

However, you do have a very good point about religion and 'culture', I can easily imagine these runes having religious significance/background

Also, looking at the runes, I wouldn't think they were TOO complex anyway... it just depends how small these guys want to carve it on the piece of rock :p

Asylum · Post by **Asylum** » Mon May 17, 2004 7:01 am

Bladmand wrote:Hey, what about your stones?

they are first carved and then painted over, then they are heated over a fire for three days so the pain stays

Vernon · Post by **Vernon** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 2:40 pm

*BUMP* I'd say this could be revived. I was about to boot it into the archives. Quite an interesting discussion. :)

Savant · Post by **Savant** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 5:36 pm

Bladmand wrote:They could be painted on to stones.

If they were painted, they wouldn't be runes. The very definition of a rune is a letter carved in wood or stone. Or, as the Imperial Lybrary says:

"Real runes were designed by nations who had no knowledge of paper. They were meant to be carved on stone or wood, not written. As a result, the runes:

* had to contain only straight lines - no curves, no loops
* contained no horizontal lines, so that the wood is not split accidentally while carving
* had small number of strokes."

Here's the address to check for yourself:
[url]http://til.gamingsource.net/daedric/[/url]

That also answers another question here about runes being carved vertically to prevent splitting the material, and being simple with a small number of strokes. I'd say after you've got these requirements down, you'll be good to go at making them into a font (If you're still working on it, that is). Just in time for skyrim, too.

Morgoth · Post by **Morgoth** » Thu Sep 29, 2005 5:25 pm

Vernon wrote:*BUMP* I'd say this could be revived. I was about to boot it into the archives. Quite an interesting discussion.

Indeed. And with Skyrim coming ever closer, this is also vital.

Savant · Post by **Savant** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 6:40 pm

Welp, I've PMed Zombies just this weekend. His hiatus is indefinite and its likely he wont return. The good news, though, is that I've got the perfect font making program for this, and Zombies gave me permission to get it down into a font as I see fit. So, here's the runes in their full glory. Hope you like.

I have tried to be fairly conservative in making changes, but I feel the ones I have done are for the best. Most of what I had manipulated are in the interest of fulfilling a shorter stroke number, seen in such letters as SH (originally in zombies' pic, the butterfly-like symbol with 7 strokes), and ST (Originally the five stroke one just over on the bottom left). I also deleted two symbols from the system: the short version of U on the bottom right for its similarity to another symbol, and the tiny square for having horozontal lines. Lastly, since the rune's coinciding letters where not figured out in Zombies' earlier concepts, I figured which letter represents what so that more common sounds would have fewer strokes (e.g. E or A would be represented by only one stroke, while something like CH would be represented by 4. Only one symbol goes up to 5, and that's the rare symbol for "&").

Also, do note that there are now 34 symbols in the font. English, of course, has only 26, so I had no choice but to have some runes representing letter combinations, such as "ng," "sk," or "aa" found in the names of locations in bloodmoon. I've drawn a picture inside the zip file which lists, respectively, the symbol, the sound, and the key you use to type it in. This should make it pretty straight-forward for typing out nordic names, but you'll have to remember to spell things phonetically whenever you want to, say, put in an ester egg.

And PLEASE! Send some feedback on the font! There's no doubt going to be a lot of fine-tuning that needs to be done to the letters, and I think it would be nice to have a discussion on what letters should coincide with what sounds, so lets get to it!