ᎤᏂᎩᏔ/Unikta 🌱

ᎤᏂᎩᏔ/Unikta (/uːniːkʰtʰɑ/ 'seeds') is a Cherokee font and character encoder for Playdate Pulp, a tool that lets users create simple videogames and interactive stories without writing any code which can be played in a web browser, on a computer, or on a Playdate.

Pulp is easy to use because of its limitations, but these limitations also include only being able to use the Latin alphabet. ᎤᏂᎩᏔ/Unikta works around this by replacing the stock glyphs with the Cherokee syllabary, so that while Pulp still sees them as the original letters, numbers, and punctuation, they display as Cherokee syllabary characters instead.

For example, with Unikta loaded into Pulp, typing in -Y|" +@9! gives this result:

ᎣᏏᏲ, ᎡᎶᎯ! 'Hello World!'

A full chart of how each character is mapped is provided below, but you don't need to worry about mapping to use the font; you can use the Unikta character encoder to type in syllabary and generate text to copy and paste directly into Pulp.

Click here to use the character encoder!

Using Unikta

1. Download Unikta.png from this repository
2. After starting a new project in Pulp, go to the 'Font' page from the left-hand menu; then click the 'Import' button on top of the font preview to upload Unikta.png
3. Use the Unikta character encoder to type in anything you want to display in syllabary; it will give you text to copy-paste into Pulp for the correct mapping
4. ᎰᏪᎸᎦ!

A few notes:

• Since there's only space for 95 glyphs in a Pulp font and the Cherokee syllabary takes up 85 of those slots, punctuation is limited to the bare minimum — space, comma, period, exclamation mark, question mark, quotes, and a colon.

• For the same reason, most of the numbers from 0-9 are rendered by visual equivalents in the syllabary: Ꮻ wi for '0', Ꮽ wu for '9', etc. The character encoder takes this into account, so you can type in numbers and get the correct equivalents to paste into Pulp.

Mapping

ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	Ꭰ	Ꭱ	Ꭲ	Ꭳ	Ꭴ	Ꭵ
	a	e	i	o	u	v
Pulp:	＊	+	,	-	.	／
ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	Ꭶ	Ꭷ	Ꭸ	Ꭹ	Ꭺ	Ꭻ	Ꭼ
	ga	ka	ge	gi	go	gu	gv
Pulp:	0	1	2	3	4	5	6
ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	Ꭽ	Ꭾ	Ꭿ	Ꮀ	Ꮁ	Ꮂ
	sa	se	si	so	su	sv
Pulp:	7	8	9	:	;	<
ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	Ꮃ	Ꮄ	Ꮅ	Ꮆ	Ꮇ	Ꮈ
	la	le	li	lo	lu	lv
Pulp:	=	>	?	@	A	B
ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	Ꮉ	Ꮊ	Ꮋ	Ꮌ	Ꮍ
	ma	me	mi	mo	mu
Pulp:	C	D	E	F	G
ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	Ꮎ	Ꮏ	Ꮐ	Ꮑ	Ꮒ	Ꮓ	Ꮔ	Ꮕ
	na	hna	nah	ne	ni	no	nu	nv
Pulp:	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O
ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	Ꮖ	Ꮗ	Ꮘ	Ꮙ	Ꮚ	Ꮛ
	qua	que	qui	quo	quu	quv
Pulp:	P	Q	R	S	T	U
ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	Ꮝ	Ꮜ	Ꮞ	Ꮟ	Ꮠ	Ꮡ	Ꮢ
	s	sa	se	si	so	su	sv
Pulp:	V	W	X	Y	Z	[	/
ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	Ꮣ	Ꮤ	Ꮥ	Ꮦ	Ꮧ	Ꮨ	Ꮩ	Ꮪ	Ꮫ
	da	ta	de	te	di	ti	do	du	dv
Pulp:	]	^	_	`	a	b	c	d	e
ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	Ꮬ	Ꮭ	Ꮮ	Ꮯ	Ꮰ	Ꮱ	Ꮲ
	dla	tla	tle	tli	tlo	tlu	tlv
Pulp:	f	g	h	i	j	k	l
ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	Ꮳ	Ꮴ	Ꮵ	Ꮶ	Ꮷ	Ꮸ
	tsa	tse	tsi	tso	tsu	tsv
Pulp:	m	n	o	p	q	r
ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	Ꮹ	Ꮺ	Ꮻ	Ꮼ	Ꮽ	Ꮾ
	wa	we	wi	wo	wu	wv
Pulp:	s	t	u	v	w	x
ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	Ꮿ	Ᏸ	Ᏹ	Ᏺ	Ᏻ	Ᏼ
	ya	ye	yi	yo	yu	yv
Pulp:	y	z	{	｜	}	~
ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Pulp:	u	'	M	(	X	d	x	)	H	w
ᎤᏂᎩᏔ:	[ ]	!	,	.	"	:	?
Pulp:	[ ]	!	"	#	$	%	&

Screenshots

Acknowledgments & extras

Project inspired by weepjp's Japanese localization test of Pulp and its sample game.

Character encoder modeled on r12a's Pinyin to IPA transcoder.

Playdate is a trademark of Panic.