Splatoon Script Analysis

Trying to make sense of the writing systems in Splatoon.

[splatoon-scripts]

Hi! Your work has been so much help to me in the past year. I'm basically a Splatoon graphic designer at this point, as I design logos and graphics for Splatoon 2 tournaments :) I've recently downloaded your Octarian script but it seems your square and round script links don't work anymore, I was wondering if you could repost them? It would help so much! <3 Thank you for doing all of this research!

Sorry about that. Here are the new links for the fonts. Please let me know if you keep having any issues:

Splatoon Round v0.1

Splatoon Square v0.1

[splatoon-scripts]

hi! I'm not sure if you've seen, but the square script, or at least a variation of it, has been deciphered by @MaidCactus on twitter! sunken scroll 24 is readable. ive been going through various texts in game written in the script, and while a lot of it is still key smashes, ive found some genuine "lorem ipsum" texts like on the posters in the deepsea metro... id send a link but tumblr is not letting me

I’ll have to go give it a look, thanks for telling me! It most likely doesn’t match what I’ve done with the fonts, so maybe I’ll make a revision with this new knowledge.

[splatoon-scripts]

Splatoon 3

So, here it is. Splatoon 3 has been announced and I still haven't finished the next script.

It's been what, like two years already since my last post? And that was a script made by somebody else, so that's kinda cheating.

First, let me say this: procrastination is a hell of a drug. I've been trying to get back to it, but since I also want to chill out and watch YouTube and Twitch, and also other hobbies (I also do programming), I kinda never found time to continue this project.

And also, it was tiring just to make “this blog is not dead!” posts, so I just didn't. But rest assured: this blog is not dead, even if it takes another decade to finish it.

But now, on to Splatoon 3.

Now, I won't do a “react” post or anything like that, but I just want to tell you: you could tell it was a Splatoon announcement before the Inkling appeared on screen:

Notice the yellow tape, right there:

It's written in the Inkling font, it looks like it says “KEEP OUT”.

Since that scene appears like just for a second, I still had my doubts, but when then I saw the yellow Inkling, then I know I wasn't crazy when I identified the font there.

Now, back to the topic of the blog itself. I'm still going to continue with the scripts, mainly focusing on what Splatoon 2 has to offer, before we get Splatoon 3 and a ton of new scripts get released in background art and stuff.

And, just to confirm, this blog is not dead. I hope you continue being patient with me, and as I said in previous posts, if you want to help, or already have a script you want to share, please do send it to me. I'll give credit to everyone.

[splatoon-scripts]

Octarian Script is finally here!

However, this is not a creation of mine. This was made by Twitter user @TK_Subboi, by analyzing Sunken Scroll #8 from the original Splatoon.

You should also check out TK_Subboi’s art while you’re at it. It’s pretty rad.

If anyone else wants to tackle another script, please feel free to do so. My main goal here is to be able to use the scripts for fan works and such 😄.

DOWNLOAD FONT (OTF)

[splatoon-scripts]

aviaryappreciation asks

I formatted it this way because there were many questions.

@aviaryappreciation asks:

a couple of things: (#0: im rly glad i found your blog)

Thanks! I’m glad you like it!

#1: when i was looking around inkopolis square, i found a lot of characters that i didn’t see if you had checked out (for example: the shoal, some stickers, signs on buildings, etc). i have/can get some decent-quality screenshots if you’re interested

Yeah, there’s tons of stuff I haven’t analyzed in the blog. I do have hundreds of pictures taken that I need to organize tho. What I can tell you for sure is that there are several scripts, maybe a dozen or more. We’ll focus on each one at a time.

#2: same with a lot of the stuff from the octo expansion & its UI; i have/can get some pics there too if you’d want 

Yes, I’d really appreciate it! I don’t have a public email, but if you share a Google Drive or Dropbox link with me or whatever, I can take a look.

#3: the interview with pearl from the Octotune cd has some of the odd text from the maritime memory screen (inkipedia has a good scan of that interview), as well as a hair ad (maybe) on the building next to the crust  bucket (i think that’s all i have for now; sorry for dumping all this) 

Yeah, every bit counts, do share everything you find.

i didn’t have time to fully flesh out this idea, but rereading your posts on the Square script made me wonder if it could be mapped onto japanese. there would still be a couple things to work out, and this may be just a dead end, but i think it might be worth some time

That’s a possibility, but I really haven’t given it much thought. People who had spent time on it have concluded that it’s mostly gibberish, but since I don’t know Japanese I can’t verify this myself.

[splatoon-scripts]

Version 0.1 of the Square Script is finally here!

After literally more than two years, I finally managed to find the power of will to finalize the font. I hope you all enjoy using it!

Here it’s how it works:

Uppercase and lowercase letters are distinct symbols

Numbers and some punctuation are available as well

If you want to flip a letter 180°, you add a comma (,) after a letter

DOWNLOAD FONT (TTF)

[splatoon-scripts]

Resuming work on the blog!

Hi guys! I noticed some people recently started following me and liking my posts, so I wanted to make a post so you know I'm still active and I'm almost ready to publish the next font.

I also want to thank @breadofthewild for his mention and his analysis on the script. I'll include it in a revision for the Round script, that's for sure!

Also, with the Octo Expansion I've seen a lot more fonts to be analysed. I'll include them with my work as well.

Thanks for keeping up with me. Expect the Square script soon!

[splatoon-scripts]

What I’ve been up to

Hi, it’s been a while since I last updated. I hate it that this happens, it seems that with work, spending time with my family, and sometimes just plain lack of motivation, I’ve kind of abandoned this for months, when I made the promise I would be updating the blog regularly.

Last time, the trigger was the earthquake that hit Mexico in September 19, 2017, and while it legitimately kept me from updating (I had to move with my aunt for a week), my home didn’t suffer any damage and we quickly returned to our normal life. However, I found it hard to get back into this.

But here I am again. I just want to let you know that I’m not ditching this project.

I’ve been playing Splatoon 2, and I’m loving the new maps. I recently came across Shellendorf Institute, and I noticed that this stage will actually be really important for the project.

Just look at these:

This place has tons of text. I also find interesting that they’re extensively using this particular font, which was barely used in the first Splatoon.

Also, look, they have a literal Rosetta Stone:

Too bad 1) the texture is too blurry, and 2) the text is just made up anyway.

I’m still working on the Square Script, and I hope to have the font ready in the next update.

Until next time!

[splatoon-scripts]

For extraordinary reasons, I won't be able to update the blog until further notice.

Thanks for your understanding.

[splatoon-scripts]

going through your blog is so cool.. i had no idea there was a whole kind of squid language and you explain it so well!!

Thanks! I’m glad you enjoy reading it. Stay tuned for more, from both the first and second games.

[splatoon-scripts]

Square Script: Mapping to ASCII

After thinking about the letters for a while, I think I have an idea how we’ll make this work.

There are around 50 unique letters, which means the English alphabet is not enough... unless I treat uppercase and lowercase as different letters. So, that’s what I did, and this is the result:

There were a couple blank spaces, but for the most part, I think they fit quite well.

Now, something to note here is that this mapping is arbitrary. There’s no phonetic reason why I picked the symbols I did. I tried to match them to the similar English letters, but even then it wasn't always possible.

You’ll see there’s a ligature, which if I understand correctly it would be “ZJ” from my encoding.

The actual font will include mechanisms for rotating and mirroring each character. I'm thinking of:

X = base symbol

X/ = rotated

X// = mirrored

X/// = rotated, mirrored

There, as simple as that. When I finish the font I’ll include clear instructions just in case.

Thanks for reading!

[splatoon-scripts]

Update on the Square Script

I know, it’s been several months since my last update, but I don't want you guys to think that I’ve abandoned the project. Procrastination is a hell of a drug, and even though I no longer have school as an excuse for the lack of time, I’ve put lees time on this than I would like. But that’s going to change. From now on, I commit myself to updating the blog at least once every two weeks.

And to show you guys that I’m already working on generating the font for the Square Script, have some screenshots:

What you're seeing here is the numbers which I talked about in my last update. To fit all 12 numbers, I've decide to encode the extra numbers in the COLON and SEMICOLON code points. If you have a better idea I’m open to suggestions, but this seems simple enough.

What won't be simple, though, is encoding the letters, which are too many and have many variations. The next post will have the solution I choose for this.

Thanks for reading!

[splatoon-scripts]

hi! i am making a splatoon zine with my friends and a bunch of collaborators, and was wondering if we could use your splatoon round font? we'd be sure to give you credit.

Sure, please do! It's there for everyone to use 😊

[splatoon-scripts]

Inklings may be using a base-12 number system

Last time I published, I promised that I would work on the numbers from the Square script before finally generating a font for this. I based my analysis on this banner from Mahi Mahi Resort, since it’s the only instance where numbers appear to be used:

It doesn’t seem to have much content to it, just a table of numbers, with headers from another script (I can already tell it’s the one used in the Arome logo).

But, let’s see what these numbers are, shall we?

The symbols can be mapped almost 1 to 1 to Arabic numerals. There’s 0, 4, 6, and 9, just as you would expect. The E is a 3. The weird J shape seems to map to 2 and 5 depending on the rotation. The one with 2 squares is an 8. That leaves us with 1 and 7.

But, the thing is, the symbols for 1 and 7 appear in both rotations as well (like 6 and 9).

Here, I have some annotations:

(this 2-in-1 device is amazing, BTW)

In the top part, I have the base symbols I found. They’re eight of them. Some of them (but not all) appear rotated. I also did the mapping I just explained.

In the bottom, I wrote all possible variants, and counted them just to be sure, and yes, we get 12 unique symbols!

What this means is that, if this were to be a real numbering system, it needs to be base-12, or else I don’t know what the rotated 1 and 7 stand for.

I have reasons to think that other number scripts used in the game have 12 symbols as well, but that will be an analysis for another day.

Now, after all this time, I will finally work on generating the font. I still need to think how I’m gonna map the 50+ symbols to ASCII (or maybe go crazy with Unicode), and how to handle rotations and mirrors in an intuitive way.

Until next time!

[splatoon-scripts]

Hi there! First, let me apologize since i'm certain that i won't be eloquent enough here with what i'd like to say. That said, my question would be, whether you'd be interested in me helping you out with this project of yours, granted, if you're still aiming to continue it? I have recorded my gameplay, with the purpose of "extracting" all the textures relating to the scripts, and to check for similarities between them, among other things. If you'd be interested, we could chat somewhere.

Hello, yes, some help would be useful! The truth is I have been a little slow because of school and work and other activities, but I still plan to continue on this project. If you want, we could use the Tumblr chat to organize ourselves.

[splatoon-scripts]

More updates on the Square Script!

OK, after analyzing all of the Inkling Fashion Week posters, I believe I have finished capturing all the letters for the Square Script! Do you want to see them? Here they are:

Now, that’s a fuckton of letters! There’s no way this is meant to be an alphabet. (or maybe there is?)

If you pay attention, you’ll notice there are 56 unique symbols here. But, that’s not the end of the story. After observing the lettering in the posters, I noticed that these letters can indeed be rotated 180° to almost double the amount of letters available, the same way with the Main script.

But what I also observed is that, for each word you write, you can choose to mirror the whole word, flipping the symbols either vertically or horizontally as you please. The important thing here to notice is that all the letters in the same word are either mirrored or not; you can’t have a mirrored letter next to a normal one.

So, for example, you can have this:

or this:

but never this:

It’s quite interesting. I didn’t actually expect to find such a rule in the script, especially considering this was all meant to be gibberish.

Now, I face myself with a problem (kinda). I would like to enforce this rule at the font level, so that you could choose whether any given word is mirrored or normal, but I don’t know if Unicode (or OpenType, or whatever is responsible) actually allows something like this. I’m pretty sure I will come up with a creative solution, though.

Now... this is for the LETTERS, but I believe there’s more to this script than that. If I understand correctly, these banners at Mahi Mahi are actually NUMBERS:

I will get to those in the next update. In the meantime, thanks for reading so far!

[splatoon-scripts]

New content in the Squid Sister amiibos

OK, first of all, I’m sorry that I haven’t updated this blog in a while. Turns out being in vacation is more time consuming than being in school. That and laziness. But don’t think I have forgotten about this project. It’s still going.

I recently bought the Squid Sister amiibos. The figurines themselves are awesome, but the game content is OK I guess.

But this is Splatoon Scripts! So, I will show you Splatoon scripts!

In the concerts unlockable by the amiibo, the screens on the trucks project different logos, presumably the name of each song. So, here they are:

This is from Ink Me Up. This is the script I’m working on right now.

Now or Never! This is weird, because apparently the main script has lowercase? What?

City of Color, with the “Octarian” script (some people have called it that way because it’s prominently featured in the Sunken Scrolls, but they’re also in Inkling advertisements).

Maritime Memory. This is actually a new script that I haven’t seen anywhere else in the game. Interesting.

Calamari Inkantation. If I remember correctly, this script is already featured in some album art.

And now for the solos!

Bomb Rush Blush, by Callie. The main script, already covered.

Tide Goes Out, by Marie. And.. what is this? I haven’t seen this before either!

And that is all for now. I think it’s interesting that almost every song uses a different script. Just imagine if we had that variety in our language!

P.S. I promise I will have the fonts soon. Don’t worry.