The Dink Network

I am just curious...And want now the 1° D-Mod created by anyone(sorry for my bad english!!)

Here is my first.
I know. It sucks

Your english isn't bad at all! Its definitely understandable... so don't berate yourself too much... just practise!

Well Lunacre atleast yours was good enough to be downloadable on the internet. My first one was really really bad. It was called 'getting of the island' and it is exactly wat the title says, Dink must leave a certain island. For this he needs to buy a boat, and for that he must earn some gold. It was quite simple and much more of a way for me to learn DMODing than a playable DMOD. (even though it was playable (I lost it ))

Mine's still on the site... Helpin' the Ol' Duck Farmer.

dang, I gottta go work on my current Dmod some time... XD

My first Dmod, The Evil Pillbug, was, or rather is, absolutely horrendous. V2.0 is now part of the TMOD series, although I may unleash v1.3 upon the world someday, just for fun...

(Does anyone here remember TMOD? Phoenix? Simeon? SabreTrout? Eldron? Dukie perhaps?)

EDIT : When I say it's horrendous, I mean v1.3; not v2.0; which is (or will be) pretty good in my opinion.

I really should go back to working on my first dmod a bit more than a tiny bit a day.

I'm relatively new here, but I remember tmod. When I first came here I tried a lot of things with low ratings because I wanted to make my own decision about everything here. I don't think that way.

I don't 'remember' tmod... in the same way all the ancient monuments here remember... but I know what you're talking about!

Hmm. Strange. I can't remember telling DraconicDink about TMOD. DraconicDink, IceDomina, just to make sure we're talking about the same 'TMOD'... If you do know about it, surely you can tell me what TMOD stands for?

Ducklord... I think I may have misinterpreted what you meant... (all these assumptions). So I shall just quietly retreat. Tell me something though... you're from France aren't you? How did your English get so good? (That wasn't particularly eloquent I know...)

My English got 'so good' (sort of ) because playing English computer games (mainly Dink Smallwood) and reading some English stories really helped.

As for TMOD, I'll clarify things soon... I'll just wait a little to see if anyone remembers it. And I think DraconicDink also misinterpreted my post...

When you are writing in English... do you still think in French? I mean, do you think out each individual word or do you just 'switch' psychologically to English mode... (do you know what I mean?)?

I know this feeling. I know several languages:
1.Romanian is my native language so I everething I say in Romanian, I think in Romanian.
2.While writing this post, I don't have to think of it in English.
3.I speak a bit of French, so I usually have to translate in my mind a phrase I just read.
4.Two years ago I did latin. I had to search in the dictionary for almost every word I had to translate.

I have caught myself a few times thinking in English while actually reading a Dutch text. It was strange. Usually I think in English only when actually dealing with the language.

LATE ADDITION:

What's even worse is that, when speaking Dutch, I sometimes use English sentence constructions or random English words instead of the Dutch ones. Often this is because for one word in English, there are a lot of words to describe it, but with a slightly different meaning. Such a fine gradient doesn't really exist in Dutch.
For example, I could translate "scary" as "eng", but that works for "creepy" just as well, though the sound of the two words are different. I don't know how to describe it. I guess it's some sort of "feel" for the language.

Besides English and Dutch, I can understand the general meaning of French and German texts, though sometimes the exact tone (and exact meaning) escapes me.

We're talking about the Tutorial Dmod that's on this site aren't we? I thought so.

That's what I first assumed... but perhaps there's some sort of 'in-joke' that you and I have yet to hear DD?
EDIT: Unless of course I'm reading way too much into this...

I thought it had more to do with Translation Mod, but that's just a shot in the dark.

Oh my... Looks like I really need to clarify things, though I wish an old timer would have replied. I wrote a funny scene for TMOD Chapter 0 : a fairy and a dragon are wondering what TMOD stands for, and the fairy says it obviously means Tutorial D-MOD, while the dragon says it means The Mushroom Of Doom (unlike some epic d-mods, TMOD isn't very 'serious', and there's lots of silly humor in it).
And TMOD stands for The Minions Of Darkness.
So what is TMOD, you ask?
Well, basically, I've been working on this D-Mod for a very long time, although I haven't been working on it much recently (*cough*walkthroughs*cough*Planewalker*cough*). I told some people about it in 2003; that's why I said old timers might remember it. TMOD has several chapters, and at first I intended to release each Chapter as a Dmod, but now I've decided to simply use that 'change map' script in Dink Smallwood v1.08 and TMOD will just be one huge Dmod. And yes, Christiaan, it's likely to be bigger that Scenia.
I'd rather not say much about TMOD yet, but I can however, tell you that it's not going to be released any time soon, especially since I intend to release the TMOD prolog first. So here's a list of my not-yet-released Dmods :

-The Minions of Darkness prolog:
Part 1 - Seth's Dragon (Quest or Epic)
Part 2 - A Green Knight's Tale (Quest)
Part 3 - Fairyland (Quest)
Part 4 - The Evil Pillbug (Quest)
Part 5 - Crystals : Isles of the Ancients (Quest, although it might become an Epic)
Part 6 - Crystals 2 : Isles of the Demons (Quest or Romp)
Part 7 - Crystals 3 : Through the Vortex (Epic)

-The Minions of Darkness (Epic. Very, very big epic)

Non TMOD-related Dmods :
-Planewalker (full version)
-Beyond the Firewall (I made this Dmod to see how good I was when creating special effects. Not sure if it will ever be released, although I may use some of its scripts for another Dmod)
-Going to Hell (There is trouble in Hell, and Dink has to help Death)
And a few other Dmods which I don't want to talk about yet. So yeah, I doubt TMOD will be released before 2020.

And by the way, IceDomina, I mostly think in English (even in my dreams, at times). I don't much like the French language anyway.

You dream in English? Fascinating... (and for Draconic Dink's sake... that wasn't sarcasm). Why don't you like French? Admittedly, I'm not a huge fan of the Romantic languages... but perhaps that's got more to do with my incompetence, rather than personal taste!

I don't like (change "don't like" to "hate") French, and you can blame all my French teachers for that. Either they didn't know at all how to teach, leaving us to "read the book about that", or they made too much a problem of whether an é should be an è, in proportion to other, more serious, errors.

I think French is way too complicated and I also think its rules really don't make sense at times.

Heh, I never thought I'd hear/see a native French speaker say/write that.

I kind of like French, but I don't get to speak it much ever since I graduated. I need to come visit you and Beuc more

My first dmod was 'Elves of Rathor'.

And here I was thinking that English had the useless rules... (well, not that they're useless exactly... but there's so many exceptions!) That was the appeal of Latin... undoubtedly there are loads of rules, but if you could ever get a handle of them all, the rest would come easily.... its all patterns. Also, it allows such subtle differences in expression, with so many words for each English one... (especially when it comes to killing and slaughtering and butchering and any other synonyms you can come up with...)
EDIT: And out of interest, is there anyone at the DN who speaks Elvish? (Tolkien)

English is officially considered to be the hardest language to learn as a second language, becauseit's the most advanced language.

And the pronounciation is very difficult. For many words I can't predict how to pronounce them, I need to hear them once before I know how to pronounce them. This is one thing I like about French, you might not like its pronounciation, but it's fully logical.

Having said this, the Dutch ponounciation is considered one of the hardest to learn.

French pronunciation, logical? Whoa. I always thought it was sometimes hard to know how you should pronounce a word... Sometimes there are several ways to pronounce it.

EDIT : And by the way, Dukie, did you ever visit Beuc in real life or was it some kind of joke?

Draconic Dink... you certainly like the word 'advanced' don't you? I don't know whether I'd call English the most 'advanced' language... the most complex maybe... or the least logical perhaps. But I don't know about 'advanced'. It just screams white superiority.

You realise you typed "white superiority", right? You a racist?

Languages like Russian and Estonian have over 10 cases (classic Greek has only 4, Latin 5, German 4, and Dutch 2 or 3 or something, but these are only seen with pronouns). I'd say these über-case languages are the most advanced AND complex.

I realised I typed 'white superiority'. No, I'm not racist. What I meant was... saying that English is the most 'advanced' language of all... using that sort of expression, screams 'white superiority'. As in, the same sort of attitude that accompanied those who believed in white superiority and the oppression and/or assimilation of everyone else. The 'Speak English, be a Christian, live in a real house, follow the orders of the upperclass white man' attitude. Me, racist? Quite the opposite dearie. I'm sorry it came across that way. Nor was I saying D.d. was being racist, its just that was he said was reminiscent of the sort of pompous attitude that is so apparent throughout history.

Oh... and Latin has 7 cases... in terms of nouns.... (nominative, accusative, vocative, genitive, dative, ablative and locative)
Why does the complexity of a language necessarily correspond with its advance-ness?
(I know, advance-ness isn't a word... but I couldn't find one that fitted properly. Difficulty just wouldn't do... but perhaps I misinterpreted what DD meant by 'advanced')

I think your choice of words is pretty poor in this case. I imagine you mean that it bears a strong similarity to white superiority, rather than actually "screaming white superiority". English != white people. Predominantly white, maybe; exclusively, no.

(edited, whoopsy)

My apologies if I offended anyone... and for my apparently poor choice of words. My only excuse is the usual... exhaustion. You imagine quite correctly Tal, but I maintain that a comment like 'English is the most advanced language' screams (figuratively, obviously) an attitude along the lines of white superiority. And I never intended to suggest that all English speakers were white. Having lived in more than one English-speaking country I would be completely ignorant to have thought as much. I was just trying to point out how pompous, self-righteous etc DD was sounding... And his 'one right, one reality' also sounds rather the same. My attempts to draw a historical parallel were less eloquent than perhaps I could have managed if better rested. Alas, and again my apologies.
EDIT: Having re-read that it still doesn't quite say what I intended it too... but I'm off to bed.

Ducklord: I haven't visited Beuc yet (or anyone else in the DN, except for brief encounters with our now-missing Kyle) but I really want to! I'm so lonely

Time for the European Dinker Meeting

English is officially considered to be the hardest language

I don't want to she dog, but who officially considers this?
Personally, I've found it to be the easiest languages to learn. But then again, I only know French, German, English and Dutch.

For example, take the simplicity of the article "the". Dutch makes a distinction between "de" and "het". French has "le" (masculine/singular) or "la" (feminine/sing) or "les" (plural) and German has der/die/das (mas./fem./neutral/singular) or "die" for plural. You have to memorise this for almost each single new word you learn and usually this gender affects the rest of the sentence. With "the", you know where you stand.

I wish someone would decide on the easiest-language-to-learn-if-it's-not-your-native-tongue. Then I wouldn't have posted this crap

Dukie : I completely agree with you about English being easier to learn than say, French or German. The English pronunciation can be a bit tricky, however.

Ducklord: Yeah, I guess you're right. (That reminds me of Officer Crabtree in the english series "'Allo 'Allo". He had some problems with pronouning words in French. But he spoke never actually spoke French, the whole series was in english. Still confuses me.)

Btw, where are you from exactly? I see you haven't added yourself to the DN Frappr.

I'll add myself to the DN Frappr soon (if I don't forget... ). I have to check exactly where I live first... I think I live in the western part of France.

I meant as a second language not a first. And this is not just an official opinion. Many who have tried to learn it as a second language have found it so. To quote a author I quite like, "The English language is the richest language that exists. This is because it has pillaged from other languages more than any other language. All languages have pillages from other languages at some stage, but English has done this way more than any other language." This author (David Eddings has the university study to back up his claim to know what he is talking about. And with richness often comes extra complexity. This is due to the fact that a rich language tends to have more words of a similar sound or meaning, which makes things harder. Also a rich language also has words that sound the same but are spelt different and more words that sound the same (and are spelt the same or different) but mean different things. When these sorts of thimngs occur there needs to be more rules on what words to use and on things like grammer, punctuation and style. This is all true for English.

Also I give you a challenge: try to come up with words from the English language that originated in other languages or sound like they did. I'll bet few of you can come up with less than half a dozen each in a whole 24 hours. I'll even start you off: cafe, which is a perfect example.

As for who officially says it: most universities in the world and most importantly, Oxford University, which by many is considered the official source of the English language because it knows more about English than any other collection of people and because it some of the most knowledgeable (about English) professors of English. In fact did you know that a word isn't considered to be a real word until it appears in the Oxford dictionary and that once it has appeared in there it is considered a real word? Point of case: Homer Simpons "d'oh" appeared in the Oxford Dictionary for the first time 2 years ago. Before then it was considered to be a word that was a Simpon's thing and that was it. Now it's consired to be a real part of English even though it wasn't less recently than 2 years ago. Did you also know that almost all other English dictionaries are based on the Oxford Dictionary? What does that tell you about their credentials?

White superiority? Not neccessarily. Advanced does not neccessarily mean better. In the case of English it certainly isn't. In fact the English language is actually too advanced for it's own good. If anything that'd be "white inferiority". In fact I think I'd prefer it be less advanced, so far from being pompous I'm in fact quite the reverse in a way.

"so far from beinf pompous I'm in fact qwuite the reverse in a way."

Nice paradox! Good work

For your language challenge, try these:

Dutch:

Ahoy, blossom, booze, boss, brandy, to cackle, cookie, deck, dock, drug, dike/dyke, to gallop, guild, landscape, luck, maelstrom (personal favourite), to pamper, rant, sketch, sledge/sleigh, snack, spooky.

Let's try French, yes?

Ballet, biscuit, bribe, courier, denim, dentist, etiquette, to maroon, menu, picnic, to portrait, resevoir, to resign (chuckle...), routine, sabotage, sauce, somersault, soup, sport, torture, traffic, unique, velocity.

I encourage everyone to post some of this page: English words originating in other languages (or at least, of the subpages).

My first D-Mod was untitled. It's one of the well-known "first D-Mod" kind of D-Mods. It had a tree (the tut1.txt tree), a healer and a deliver-the-letter quest (no actual items added, though).

Then came "Some Stupid Story", which was stupid. Though I liked the part where, in order to enter the cave in the forest, you had to chase away GreenPeace people. It had also a neat telephone that didn't quite work.

Next up: the Goblin Wars (might sound familiar to some). It wasn't really about a war at all, merely just a poor excuse to go out adventuring again. The events were badly scripted and bug-tracking was an almost impossible task.

---- (Magical line that separates the un-released D-Mods from the released ones)

Dink Racer. An attempt to create an arcade racegame. It worked pretty well, though it's not the kind of thing you keep playing. More of a gimmick that might be better when included as a minigame.

Beginning of Evil. It sounds like an eternal work-in-progress, but it's my best one this far. I've got a not-fully-tested version of 2.0 on my PC, which I might release if I ever feel like it.

I have also released CoolText, a handy set of scripts that replaces the default talk and magic texts, though this feature will be in the new version of Dink, so CoolText will be useless.

There. I corrected my typing errors that somehow escaped me until I read your post.

The development of my dmod (my first) has stalled a bit since I've been too busy sorting out going to University and doing other things more important than working on dmods. I will hopefully restart work on it soon. It'll be a long way off, though, since I have quite a few new systems to implement and test. I also have a few early side missions and quests to decide and make. I plan to have a early demo before too long. It'll cover about 30% of the game (or about 30 minutes worth.

Well... I didn't actually mean that, but yeah, it was pretty bad

DD: That's a long post there, kind of makes me wish I hadn't said anything. It doesn't really matter though, it's a silly discussion, you have better things to do with your time. I apparently don't.

Anyway, I'm stil not convinced though, The Oxford University isn't the official source of the English language. And I see you David Eddings quote and raise you a Wikipedia one:

"Although in many ways English is not particularly difficult to learn, there are a few features of English which are relatively complex and therefore create difficulties for the majority of additional language learners."

That is a little bit more nuanced, but I guess you'll still agree. It can be really hard and complex sometimes though.

Admittedly I think I may have misinterpreted quite what you meant DD.... but I still don't think its the most complex or advanced language... but then that comes down to subtle differences in how one defines 'complex' and 'advanced'.

English words derived from Latin: (off the top of my head) architect, dictator, laudare (became 'laud')... oh I'm tired, there's hundreds of them!

It had a tree (the tut1.txt tree)

The Evil Pillbug v1.3 also has that tree.
And, ironically, I believe As Good As Eternity also has the tut.txt tree.

Yeah, I remember TMOD. Brings back good memories. Well... sort of.

My first d-mod was called Scarab, and it was freakin' awful. Or it may have been one with Dink waking up on the side of a river after a drinking binge... that was pretty awful too.

In fact, most of my early d-mods were pretty awful. And my more recent ones aren't much better either.

Yeah, I remember TMOD
No, really? TMOD as in The Minions Of Darkness? Whoa!
I think I only told you about it once or twice, on the Dink Chat... You have a very good memory.
And my more recent ones aren't much better either.
I think all of the D-mods you made were great, SabreTrout!
Well, maybe not Bloop the Fish 2, but it doesn't count.

Every D-Mod should have the tut1.txt tree, it rocks!

I made 3 D-Mods before releasing Secret of Parizaya, which is the first being released here.
My first D-Mod was a quest-sized disaster, quite originally named "Quest". Then a small romp sized D-Mod followed, it was bug free, but quite uninteresting. Then I released a non-linear Zelda D-Mod, which was fun. I deleted them all at a time, which I truly am sorry for. Secret of Parizaya is now being updated to work on 1.08 and have some minor changes as well, as is Secret of Amehoela. Legend of TerraEarth was canceled because it just didn't work (the battle system really did suck, what was I thinking at that time?).

Now, after numerous tries to make a half-decent D-Mod, I'm working for over 3 years on Scenia: Shadows of the New Order, with the assistance of Magicman. It goes slow, but well.

Erm, yes, sorry about that, I've been slacking since the exam week to be honest.

Actually I'm quite looking forward to Once a Hero. That looks like it has a lot of potential.

Well my opinion also comes in part from my knowledge of some of the more advanced areas of English that most people don't even know exists. In a a way there is actually 2 English languages. The first is Common English (what most people know and use) and Advanced English (whis is way more advnaced than most people think the English language is). Of course I don't mean it literally when I say "there is 2 English languages".

Well before I think about arguing with you DD... what makes you the expert on the English language? (Not challenging you, just curious)... why do you supposedly know so much?

For starters I've studied it a bit. Also I've done a lot of writing (getting experience through hit and miss and other improvement techniques of course). Thirdly the source of some of these opnions of mine come from the fact that I have read and heard statements to that effect from experts who at least should know what they are talking about.

Right... well. 'Studied it a bit'?

With a dictionary, thesaurus and stuff.

In fact, most of my early d-mods were pretty awful. And my more recent ones aren't much better either.
I know he's saying this just to make us say: "Sabre's DMODs are great". In fact, they really are... at least some of them.

Wasn't sure if you meant formally studied them...

I'll be doing that at university soon.

Ever the cynic, cypry. How could you possibly insinuate I posted that in an attempt to gain compliments?

Many of my d-mods are very poor. Only CC2 and OaH are up to much really.

As Draconic says, my d-mods often have potential.... but I rarely turn that potential into any kind of end product.