Ubisoft Pledges to Make Their Incredible Algorithm Open Source
Translating Hieroglyphs is really hard. Ubisoft discovered this last year while they were developing Assassin’s Creed: Origins. All they wanted to do was feature some accurate Hieroglyphs in their game. Instead they ended up developing an algorithm for Hieroglyph translation. They’ve just released a progress report.
The first step was to get as many of these Hieroglyphs traced and uploaded as possible, to create a proper-sized archive. Thankfully, players were more than happy to help out. Something like 80,000 images were uploaded to their website on the first night it was active. The next step is perfecting the algorithm.
The goal is to bring the algorithm into open access by the end of the year. This way various academics and professionals can work together to turn this from a drawing tool to a teaching tool. With enough hard work, perhaps Ubisoft can help streamline the translation process. You can track their progress on this website here. Whatever you might think of Ubisoft and their games, there’s something incredibly noble about a project like this. Maybe one day we’ll have learned an entirely new chapter in ancient Egypt’s history, all thanks to this badass translation software.