Naming Critters

GalvinNerth wrote:

Pezzalis wrote:

Perhaps you could even give it a scientific name and a common name...

This is a great Idea, but I think all that should be assigned is the scientific name. A common name would be something that the player would have to make for the creature when they come into contact with them. Here on Earth there are several species with out a common name, take for instance any ancient fossil or even some deep sea creatures only have a scientific name.

So yeah just have it assign a scientific name base that is used all across the universe.

As nice as that would be, nobody could really write code to give everything a scientific name that makes sense. Scientific names don't always describe the organism in question. For instance, many are named after their discoverers or celebrities.example
Therefore, a scientific name generator is pretty much impossible to implement.
Each creature must have a name, however, so we do need a procedural name.
Therefore, we need a process for naming. Here's one off of the top of my head-
name of template creature or base creature
space
number of mutations since origin

If the species splits into two or more species as a mutation, keep the number of all of the mutations before the split, then give the new species a letter (a, b, c). then each of these gets its own new line of names until it splits again.

So I could have:

Half-fish 12b1a17
The template org was called "Half-fish" it mutated 12 times and then split, mutated again, split again, and mutated 17 times more.

Coders: how difficult would it be to write the "share code" for an org based on this same process? Start with the share code of the template org, then write in what compounded changes have occurred to the base creature? So the total changes to my half-fish might be that the body lengthened x amount, I got 4 more vertebra, I've developed arms instead of fins, etc. That might save a lot of file space.

Seems like a good way to distinguish among different variations of the same species and probably eqsy to implement. However it could get confusing and be a pain to constantly be looking at a series of numbers and letters. For example what if your organism has split 12 times? That's probably too long of a name

2creator wrote:

Seems like a good way to distinguish among different variations of the same species and probably eqsy to implement. However it could get confusing and be a pain to constantly be looking at a series of numbers and letters. For example what if your organism has split 12 times? That's probably too long of a name

Then you can rename it. The org will be saved with that name and evolution will build off of that one.

If the name of the template organism is 'half-fish', then the name will be inappropriate. If we use random names, why not have the random name generator? And if we have 'critter name' 'letters and numbers', it's not exactly a scientific name, 'critter name' -a or -us or something is scientific. The scientific name for humans is homo sapiens, not homo 5b17a7d1.
We could just do a random word from the dictionary, most of the words in there have no meanings anyway. Random words from the dictionary, the second with an added 'a': scoria induratea. Scoria induratea, sounds latin enough, why not? Who's gonna know I got the name from words meaning 'volcanic rocks with holes in' and 'harden'? The experts! And who's gonna play this game? Everyone, the experts, who knows!

Example names from the dictionary (well, thesaurus, same thing really) some with 'latinisation' (which is a word, somehow):

• Scoria Induratea
  (Meaning of the base words used: volcanic rock with holes, harden)
  
• Aviate Shoatus
  (The meanings make very little sense: flying, young pig)
  
• Gormandi Loessi
  (But still, who cares?: gorge, rock formed by dust)
  
• Preeminenta Pinion
  (You can't even tell a TV show is involved: top, gear)

It works! You couldn't tell it isn't latin! (Unless you stick in in google translate)

EDIT: You may have made a post while I wrote this, but the point still stands. I think.
DOUBLEDIT: Did I really take that long?

The Uteen wrote:

If the name of the template organism is 'half-fish', then the name will be inappropriate. If we use random names, why not have the random name generator? And if we have 'critter name' 'letters and numbers', it's not exactly a scientific name, 'critter name' -a or -us or something is scientific. The scientific name for humans is homo sapiens, not homo 5b17a7d1.
We could just do a random word from the dictionary, most of the words in there have no meanings anyway. Random words from the dictionary, the second with an added 'a': scoria induratea. Scoria induratea, sounds latin enough, why not? Who's gonna know I got the name from words meaning 'volcanic rocks with holes in' and 'harden'? The experts! And who's gonna play this game? Everyone, the experts, who knows!

Example names from the dictionary (well, thesaurus, same thing really) some with 'latinisation' (which is a word, somehow):

• Scoria Induratea
  (Meaning of the base words used: volcanic rock with holes, harden)
  
• Aviate Shoatus
  (The meanings make very little sense: flying, young pig)
  
• Gormandi Loessi
  (But still, who cares?: gorge, rock formed by dust)
  
• Preeminenta Pinion
  (You can't even tell a TV show is involved: top, gear)

It works! You couldn't tell it isn't latin! (Unless you stick in in google translate)

EDIT: You may have made a post while I wrote this, but the point still stands. I think.
DOUBLEDIT: Did I really take that long?

As much as I admire your cynicism. I don't think that much bullshit is going to get past our players, and we shouldn't insult their intelligence. Procedural names are easier and the player can always rename them. In fact, in game, there's no reason to show the procedural names. If you examine a creature that you haven't yet named, you will see it as "unnamed" once you name it, it gets saved to your hard drive.
I just solved two problems at once- storing creatures and naming. The game should only store the creatures that you bother to name. Once an org goes extinct or evolves, it is lost forever, except in its own lineage. The "lineage" could simply be a bunch of small pictures showing how the org evolved over time.
The game could also choose to randomly save some species by "fossilizing" them.

~sciocont wrote:

If you examine a creature that you haven't yet named, you will see it as "unnamed" once you name it, it gets saved to your hard drive.
I just solved two problems at once- storing creatures and naming. The game should only store the creatures that you bother to name. Once an org goes extinct or evolves, it is lost forever, except in its own lineage. The "lineage" could simply be a bunch of small pictures showing how the org evolved over time.
The game could also choose to randomly save some species by "fossilizing" them.

I like this idea. And I assume certain creatures have a better chance of fossilizing, ie you are less likely to discover a fossil of mold than you are a beetle or a cat, correct? Maybe the game could look for things that woulc be considered 'hard' in the org's body, and have a chance based on that.

Wait a second, are fossils going to have any use?

Poisson wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

If you examine a creature that you haven't yet named, you will see it as "unnamed" once you name it, it gets saved to your hard drive.
I just solved two problems at once- storing creatures and naming. The game should only store the creatures that you bother to name. Once an org goes extinct or evolves, it is lost forever, except in its own lineage. The "lineage" could simply be a bunch of small pictures showing how the org evolved over time.
The game could also choose to randomly save some species by "fossilizing" them.

I like this idea. And I assume certain creatures have a better chance of fossilizing, ie you are less likely to discover a fossil of mold than you are a beetle or a cat, correct? Maybe the game could look for things that woulc be considered 'hard' in the org's body, and have a chance based on that.

Wait a second, are fossils going to have any use?

Fossils are just for the player to take interest in. They're not part of the game, per se, but they increase the chances of the player finding a cool organism and then sharing it with others. They would be part of the Thrive Content Library

~sciocont wrote:

Poisson wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

If you examine a creature that you haven't yet named, you will see it as "unnamed" once you name it, it gets saved to your hard drive.
I just solved two problems at once- storing creatures and naming. The game should only store the creatures that you bother to name. Once an org goes extinct or evolves, it is lost forever, except in its own lineage. The "lineage" could simply be a bunch of small pictures showing how the org evolved over time.
The game could also choose to randomly save some species by "fossilizing" them.

I like this idea. And I assume certain creatures have a better chance of fossilizing, ie you are less likely to discover a fossil of mold than you are a beetle or a cat, correct? Maybe the game could look for things that woulc be considered 'hard' in the org's body, and have a chance based on that.

Wait a second, are fossils going to have any use?

Fossils are just for the player to take interest in. They're not part of the game, per se, but they increase the chances of the player finding a cool organism and then sharing it with others. They would be part of the Thrive Content Library

Wait you mean if my species found a fossil it would only be a collectable I could share with others through a library system similar to spores? Surely we could find a better use for them? like in society stage and onward their would be museums increasing your species research and understanding of evolution(contributing later to evolution god mode abilitys)?

SciFiGamer wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Poisson wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

If you examine a creature that you haven't yet named, you will see it as "unnamed" once you name it, it gets saved to your hard drive.
I just solved two problems at once- storing creatures and naming. The game should only store the creatures that you bother to name. Once an org goes extinct or evolves, it is lost forever, except in its own lineage. The "lineage" could simply be a bunch of small pictures showing how the org evolved over time.
The game could also choose to randomly save some species by "fossilizing" them.

I like this idea. And I assume certain creatures have a better chance of fossilizing, ie you are less likely to discover a fossil of mold than you are a beetle or a cat, correct? Maybe the game could look for things that woulc be considered 'hard' in the org's body, and have a chance based on that.

Wait a second, are fossils going to have any use?

Fossils are just for the player to take interest in. They're not part of the game, per se, but they increase the chances of the player finding a cool organism and then sharing it with others. They would be part of the Thrive Content Library

Wait you mean if my species found a fossil it would only be a collectable I could share with others through a library system similar to spores? Surely we could find a better use for them? like in society stage and onward their would be museums increasing your species research and understanding of evolution(contributing later to evolution god mode abilitys)?

You wouldn't actually find a fossil. The game would just save a random species to your content library. Research is covered by researchers in strat mode, which you can read up on because the strat. mode guys have made a really polished concept.

Quote :

I just solved two problems at once- storing creatures and naming. The game should only store the creatures that you bother to name. Once an org goes extinct or evolves, it is lost forever, except in its own lineage.

Sounds great. Just don't forget to tell the player how it works.

Commander Keen wrote:

Quote :

I just solved two problems at once- storing creatures and naming. The game should only store the creatures that you bother to name. Once an org goes extinct or evolves, it is lost forever, except in its own lineage.

Sounds great. Just don't forget to tell the player how it works.

Brilliant!

-going back to the name generation topic-

Why not just randomly generate words in a phantasie language? When you find a new creature and it generates a name like this:

50/50 a vokal (a,e,i,o,u) or one of the other 21 (b-z excluding the vokals (a,e,i,o,u)) Letters. And after that it randomly chooses one of those letters and adds a random letter from the oppsite group or the same The thing The whole process between 5-12 times. Sometimes randomly a double letter like "ee" or "tt" come out every..... 12,5% or mixed like "nk" or "io" with a 30% chance.

in the example where it starts with a vokal it would look something like this: a+z+ee+nk+i = New creature is named azeenki

if the name already exsists the game just trys the process again. All i can say is that i forgot the spaces but who cares xd`?

Somebody will probably have alot of luck and find a orange catlike creature called "monday hater"

BastianKraft wrote:

-going back to the name generation topic-

Why not just randomly generate words in a phantasie language? When you find a new creature and it generates a name like this:

50/50 a vokal (a,e,i,o,u) or one of the other 21 (b-z excluding the vokals (a,e,i,o,u)) Letters. And after that it randomly chooses one of those letters and adds a random letter from the oppsite group or the same The thing The whole process between 5-12 times. Sometimes randomly a double letter like "ee" or "tt" come out every..... 12,5% or mixed like "nk" or "io" with a 30% chance.

in the example where it starts with a vokal it would look something like this: a+z+ee+nk+i = New creature is named azeenki

if the name already exsists the game just trys the process again. All i can say is that i forgot the spaces but who cares xd`?

Somebody will probably have alot of luck and find a orange catlike creature called "monday hater"

It won't work.
The English language is a complicated, stupid thing. It doesn't work randomly, but it works without any semblance of control. Letters don't just join together to make words. there are many combinations of letters that don't have a phonetic pronunciation, but lets say we eliminate those pairings. You could still have words that don't make any sense to say, with all of the vowels on one side and a string of consonants after them. There's no way to keep saying those consonants. Try to pronounce bltrmr. It's possible, but it's just ugly to pronounce. We can keep working to eliminate glitches, but does it really matter if we have names anyway? It doesn't make sense to give them names if there is no sentient race around to name them, and if there is, who says that that race can pronounce anything in English. It's simply more trouble than it's worth to create a name generator.

~sciocont wrote:

BastianKraft wrote:

-going back to the name generation topic-

Why not just randomly generate words in a phantasie language? When you find a new creature and it generates a name like this:

50/50 a vokal (a,e,i,o,u) or one of the other 21 (b-z excluding the vokals (a,e,i,o,u)) Letters. And after that it randomly chooses one of those letters and adds a random letter from the oppsite group or the same The thing The whole process between 5-12 times. Sometimes randomly a double letter like "ee" or "tt" come out every..... 12,5% or mixed like "nk" or "io" with a 30% chance.

in the example where it starts with a vokal it would look something like this: a+z+ee+nk+i = New creature is named azeenki

if the name already exsists the game just trys the process again. All i can say is that i forgot the spaces but who cares xd`?

Somebody will probably have alot of luck and find a orange catlike creature called "monday hater"

It won't work.
The English language is a complicated, stupid thing. It doesn't work randomly, but it works without any semblance of control. Letters don't just join together to make words. there are many combinations of letters that don't have a phonetic pronunciation, but lets say we eliminate those pairings. You could still have words that don't make any sense to say, with all of the vowels on one side and a string of consonants after them. There's no way to keep saying those consonants. Try to pronounce bltrmr. It's possible, but it's just ugly to pronounce. We can keep working to eliminate glitches, but does it really matter if we have names anyway? It doesn't make sense to give them names if there is no sentient race around to name them, and if there is, who says that that race can pronounce anything in English. It's simply more trouble than it's worth to create a name generator.

GamerXA created a very decent name generator. I used it back in Svenolutions era to name a few concept aliens i drew up. I know he haswn't been around for years, but i still have the program somewhere, i think.

However, i agree with having the player name things if they wish. But Sapience shouldn't be a requirement of this.

I'm not saying sapience is a requirement to name things, I'm just saying it's silly to be playing as a centipede and have someone tell you "this, good sir, is a camel". It doesn't make any sense. Everything should be unnamed when you find it, unless it's already named and part of your content library. Do to the game what Europeans did to the Western hemisphere.

~sciocont wrote:

Try to pronounce bltrmr. It's possible, but it's just ugly to pronounce.

Funny you chose a word with l's and r's, because that makes it a perfectly legible word in Czech.

I agree with you, though. Both naming and saving works well this way.

Deal. But we should implement a random name generator for people who want to name things but do not have the ideas to come up with their own.

I dont think you understand how my system works, if you always have a programm switching between vokals and the other lettes you always get a word that is prenoncable in all western languages. Its a simple code but it works pefectly. For example "bltrmr" woulndt be possible because in the script it always switches between vokals and the other letters. After a letter like "b" one of the five vokals "a,e,i,o,u" has to come out. It just randomly chooses which one of the two kind of letters it has to start out with.Afteer that it always has to swich between the two. Ill just ranomly follow this princable 3 times here to prove it:

t+a+z+i+l+o+r+u = taziloru
g+i+l+a+h = gilah
j+o+g+o+c+e = jogoce

The words arent always very nice but always prenouncable. That what i just showed was me randomly switching between the letters (a,e,i,o,u) and the other 21 exsisting letters in the english langauge. The same is possible in all other languages if you sort the letters into ones that start a sound and others that just modify them.

Im expierienced in this kind of problem, sometimes things seem way to complex to implement into a code. But if you just simplfy the problem often enough it mostly gets solvable. Im new here and my word isnt probably worth much yet but if you read my solutions carefully "i have to practice writing them more understandable" you might soon accept me as helping hand.

This will work. Vowel, consonant, vowel, consonant, it should always make a pronounceable word.

Then, just add in the series of two consonants and two vowels, and maybe series of three, that can be pronounced, to be added in the place of just one. It works.
Special cases will occur, of course, and can be added in after. Y can be thrown in to both vowel and consonant, it can be used as either, but not both one after the other. Q must always be followed by U, and not be at the end of a word. And so on, as the other things like that are found, there aren't that many. It can be done.

And I take it we are not naming organisms before sapience, then? In that case, it only has to work after sapience. That shouldn't be too hard. When you get the chance to name a new species, in awakening, I assume, a 'random' option could be provided.

Yeah, i already made me a few notes to the special cases.

I already have a buddy porgramming a test version of how it would work for testing and checking for special cases (its worth 5 min of scripting instead of 2 hours of finding all special cases). The basic rules are:

-50/50 vowel or constant as first letter. After that it always switches to the counterpart. The most common mixed vowels (like "ee" in speed) and constants (like "sp" in speed) also
count directly to vowel or constant. (but they are less likely then a single letter)

-For every language there will be a source document so this will also be easily modifyable and available for every langauge to get a better game feel for non english speaking ppl. and so on.

-As mentionend by the Uteen the letter Q as a single wont exsist in the source document and will only exsist as "qu". To the letter Y and some other special cases it will need some thinking.

-50% chance that its one word, 40% two words and 10% chance that its even three

-All words will be between 5-12 letters long

- If the name already exsists it will retry


Maybe we will find another solution but this is a pretty good one. Until then ill try to get this to work. Please feel free to critisize me.

The Uteen wrote:

And I take it we are not naming organisms before sapience, then? In that case, it only has to work after sapience. That shouldn't be too hard. When you get the chance to name a new species, in awakening, I assume, a 'random' option could be provided.

Nope, we are naming organisms before sapience. However, only the player will be able to name any species, the game will not do so.

BK's random generator looks simple enough to be worth including.

@BK: Add a chance of generating two words instead of only one.

@CK If you didnt notice... i already included that there is a chance for two words:

"-50% chance that its one word, 40% two words and 10% chance that its even three"

BastianKraft wrote:

Yeah, i already made me a few notes to the special cases.

I already have a buddy porgramming a test version of how it would work for testing and checking for special cases (its worth 5 min of scripting instead of 2 hours of finding all special cases). The basic rules are:

-50/50 vowel or constant as first letter. After that it always switches to the counterpart. The most common mixed vowels (like "ee" in speed) and constants (like "sp" in speed) also
count directly to vowel or constant. (but they are less likely then a single letter)

-For every language there will be a source document so this will also be easily modifyable and available for every langauge to get a better game feel for non english speaking ppl. and so on.

-As mentionend by the Uteen the letter Q as a single wont exsist in the source document and will only exsist as "qu". To the letter Y and some other special cases it will need some thinking.

-50% chance that its one word, 40% two words and 10% chance that its even three

-All words will be between 5-12 letters long

- If the name already exsists it will retry


Maybe we will find another solution but this is a pretty good one. Until then ill try to get this to work. Please feel free to critisize me.

Now I understand this, and I'm on board. However, I still don't want the computer naming things itself, unless they are part of a different nation.

You can name things whenever you want, it's just that until language evolves for some species, the computer giving things names doesn't really make sense.

After a certian time in the game a name Generator of some type will just make the game better from my point of view. When the first contacts with a other civlisation are made it would just be annoying if everything had no name. I mean the player could just name everything himself, but i cant imagine that most of the players are happy with that solution. And if there are just alot of nameless creatures, vehicles or whatever runnning around it would just seem less interesting.

The perfect mix would be if you could just have the options:

-letting things be named randomly with the possibility to change the name how the player likes it

or

-No names will be generated randomly and everything will be nameless but with the possibility to change the name how the player likes it.

giving the player these options adds more playability while staying simple. You could even extend the option so you can specifically choose what kind of ingame object (Species, Vehicle, and so on) shall get names generated automatically and which ones not. Its a little more additional work but not that much. It has the advantage that you can make the game give names to things that should have names like parts of a civilisation but also leave other things like plants where the name is less important stay unnamed. And maybe some players like to give animals they discover names but would like all plants to have a randomly generated one or no name.

And if the random name generation gets added as a gameplay option it would be best that the names only get generated when you "look up" the species or whenever the name gets displayed the first time to save the ~0,01% percent of the memory/processor resources the script uses.

Its just a concept but im just trying to combine playabilty and simplicity as good as possible.

BastianKraft wrote:

After a certian time in the game a name Generator of some type will just make the game better from my point of view. When the first contacts with a other civlisation are made it would just be annoying if everything had no name. I mean the player could just name everything himself, but i cant imagine that most of the players are happy with that solution. And if there are just alot of nameless creatures, vehicles or whatever runnning around it would just seem less interesting.

The perfect mix would be if you could just have the options:

-letting things be named randomly with the possibility to change the name how the player likes it

or

-No names will be generated randomly and everything will be nameless but with the possibility to change the name how the player likes it.

giving the player these options adds more playability while staying simple. You could even extend the option so you can specifically choose what kind of ingame object (Species, Vehicle, and so on) shall get names generated automatically and which ones not. Its a little more additional work but not that much. It has the advantage that you can make the game give names to things that should have names like parts of a civilisation but also leave other things like plants where the name is less important stay unnamed. And maybe some players like to give animals they discover names but would like all plants to have a randomly generated one or no name.

And if the random name generation gets added as a gameplay option it would be best that the names only get generated when you "look up" the species or whenever the name gets displayed the first time to save the ~0,01% percent of the memory/processor resources the script uses.

Its just a concept but im just trying to combine playabilty and simplicity as good as possible.

I like this. However, I still want the option of nothing having names unless it belongs to another nation. It just makes sense.