Standard Galactic Alphabet
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The Standard Galactic Alphabet, also known as SGA, is the writing system used to depict Omnispeak, the alien language of choice in the galaxy in the Commander Keen fictional universe.
The player usually first discovers the alphabet in the first Commander Keen game, Marooned on Mars, where Keen telepathically hears an alien inside a shrine say: "It is too bad you cannot understand the Standard Galactic Alphabet, human". In reality, it is a simple substitution cipher created by Tom Hall for his Commander Keen series of computer games. Originally for Keen 1 he drew some graphics for Exit signs which he made look a bit more alien by changing the ordinary Latin letters a bit.[citation needed] After that he added other signs saying "hi" and "this is neat" (near rayguns), and he ended up creating conversions for the other letters of the Latin alphabet in order for the signs to resemble writings in an alien language. Because the texts are still in English however, it is not an artificial script.
Besides the 26 letters, SGA uses spaces for its interword separation, and in some occasions a ._. symbol as a full stop. In the Keen 1 level in which most players obtain the pogo stick, a short horizontal dash above a long one appears on either side of the word "POGO", perhaps as quotation marks. No other known punctuation exists. There is also no capitalization, and numbers are also absent.
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[edit] Deciphering
Players of the Keen series that spent the necessary time could figure out SGA by looking at the many signs throughout the games. While the original Keen only has 15 letters displayed anywhere (A, B, C, D, E, H, I, K, L, N, O, S, T, X, and Y), later games have more. Keen 3 is particularly helpful, since it has a relatively large number of signs with both SGA and Roman letters. Also in Keen 3 a sign with the complete SGA can be found in the secret level, similar to the Rosetta Stone. Another alphabet sign can be found in Keen 6 in the Blooglab Space Station level. Knowing the complete alphabet is necessary for the player to decipher a letter which explains part of the storyline at the end of Keen 5.
[edit] Other uses
In addition to printed signs within levels, the SGA was found in level design features. There is a curse word hidden at the beginning of Keen 2's "Paris" level, spelled in SGA. The misspelled word "FUCL" is made of yellow platforms inside a field of red platforms. [1]
Joe Siegler later wrote a secret message that said "Dopefish lives" in the walls of a Rise of the Triad level. The story goes that during Rise of the Triad development, one of Tom Hall's instructions to the level editors was not to "write words in the levels with the walls". Joe asked about SGA, and that idea was approved, hence the "Dopefish Lives" message in SGA in one of his Rise of the Triad levels.
SGA has not had much other official use after that, but Tom Hall invented a syllabary to create a more complex "alien" language used in Ion Storm's Anachronox. After that, id Software, developer of the Commander Keen series, created a simple substitution cipher very similar to SGA for the Strogg race in Quake 4.
[edit] References
- ^ "There is actually a filthy word somewhere in Keen 1-3, spelled in the Standard Galactic Alphabet, made of yellow platforms inside a field of red platforms." http://www.3drealms.com/keenhistory/keenhistory3.html
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Omniglot, a guide to writing systems A table of all the characters in the SGA
- 20 Questions For Joe Seigler (sic) Joe Siegler mentions SGA use in Rise of the Triad
- SGA entry in the KeenWiki - includes TrueType fonts of the Standard Galactic Alphabet
