Loving the game so far, but one thing that really stands out is the horrible names that the name generator spits out. It seems like the coding of the generator is such that it says "throw a bunch of alternating vowels and consonants into a word that's between 4 and 16 letters long". Needless to say, it takes hitting the button a good 10-15 times before a name that is even usable (though still not good) will pop up. At least for the city names, it would be nice if there were some pre-programmed names for each nation (maybe 6 for each?). If I had to think of a new name every time I founded a new city in Civilization, I would have given up long ago.
Why would all the nations used the same "language" for names? To me, at least the name generator should use different "parts" for names of the factions, or at least Kingdom/Empire.
I don't think names should be pre-determined in that in you make a city, the game names it for you and you can't change it. However, I think names that are different by faction (or at least different by Kingdom/Empire) would add more flavor to the world both for cities and character/children names.
i think there should be a predefined, long list of good names for each faction. establish a linguistic theme for each: this is a really easy way of giving each faction a bit of individuality. by trying to make a random generator sound good you end up applying so many extra rules that you might as well just write out all the permutations.
give one faction a romanesque theme (places ending is -us and -ium), one a more refined elfish lilt, etc.
Yeah a tweak on the name generator would be nice. World, city, children names look like a garbled mess of letters.
But somewhere down the line I'd rather just have the original factions have premade citynames. And have the names custom made to fit in with their lore. It'd give each race a bit of depth and make them more believable. When I go out to conquer another faction I haven't the slightest clue what their capital is since every city they plop down has a randomly generated name.
I agree that the name generator needs to be changed radically. The names it produces right now are complete gibberish. Out of 30 names it suggested for a town, only 3 of them were ok, not great but recognisable, memorable and easy enough to pronounce. 5 more were usable with a little work, but the rest were trash.
The predefined lists are a decent solution, faction-specific ones would add a nice touch of flavor. Perhaps you could pick from several lists, not only from your own faction, but also from a general list for your race/allegiance.
To the guys that are saying 'why cant you think of your own names?' or 'you can easily modify the ones that are given into something you like', I'm playing a tbs, not the ****sims. The things you get to name are usually not that important that they all need an awesome personalised name, just an ok one will do most of the time. I really hate it when I get pulled out of a game because I have to name something and can't think of anything on the spot, thus having to refresh fifty times until something remotely usable comes along. This makes it feel like work and kills fun. If I happen to think of something fitting I'll use it. If not, I want to be only a few clicks away from a decent name. Doesn't have to be great, just good enough.
Fact is, that at the moment you can't create specific files fo rname generation. There's only one file for world names and one file for unit/city names. It is easily moddable (it would be really easy to change the generation to a pick in a list) but there's not condition like "if you're faction A then use ruleset A. Faction B ? Ruleset B."
The random names don't really bother me. I do find a couple of them completely unpronounceable (if thats a word). Kind of a small thing, but I would like the name of the world to default to Elemental and let me change it if I like.
How hard is it to click the little button to generate another one, if you don't like it.
That said it would be cool if you could do some kind of customization of the random name generator, like choosing which consonants or vowels exist in your kingdom's "language".
Still there are a zillion other things I'd like to see improved or fixed, first.
Hmm...I think that I might look at the name generation files and come up with something to help with this. For example for the Faction Generator, I have a large list of names that are randomly chosen, and can be added to. I could come up with something like that for this as well. Or alternatively, I may implement the Markov Name generator and populate this file. Just a thought.
How many random names do you think need to be available for any particular game (2000, 5000, more?)
Note: if anyone is interested in the markov Name generator you can look at it here: http://www.siliconcommandergames.com/MarkovNameGenerator.htm
Wjatever happened to originality in the gaming community these days? I always use personally significant names, usually from book series I have read/am reading, so I always have a list of cool sounding fantasy names for my cities. If all else fails, I name them after the municipalities surrounding my city, or after myself.
The random name generator has its ups and downs, but it think it is okay, and a lot of times it will be close to a pronounceable name but I'll just need to add or delete a letter. I wouldn't want to see us lose that. And of course we don't want to lose the ability to name the city whatever we want, although, when multiplayer rolls around, who knows I may end up going back on that.
But I like the faction names ideas above too, though I'm not sure I'd want to keep seeing the same or similar city names over and over in game after game.
Perhaps a compromise would be an additional button on the city naming box which says "Faction City" and then has 40 (or so) names for each faction it can randomly choose from. Whenever someone mods a new race, there would be a field of city names for that particular race. That could go a long way toward giving each faction its own characteristic style, which we don't have with the random generator.
well perhaps we want to play in the game world of elemental that has been created for elemental rather than just throwing it all to the wall and starting again for ourselves?
and to all of those saying "just roll again until you get something you like" : you may be able to do this for the 1/4 of cities in the game you found yourself, but you cannot do it for the rest of them.
You know it can be modified right look in the StardockGames\Elemental\data\English folder for WorldNameRuleset.xml.
Although it's possible these rules only apply to the actual world naming they might also cover characters. Seems mostly probablistic.
Aylkiouyiskiaia
I pronounce it Bob...
Hmm... I've been playing around with creating random names that come out more like this "Uruk the Bonebiter, and Gre'old of Greenleaf" however, even when I create a modded file of the CoreNameRulset.xml file and put it in the mods directory. It still uses the old name generator. Same thing with WorldNameRuleset.xml.
I don't know why it won't pick up these mod files when it grabs the others just fine. I'll keep working on it. If anyone wants to see the modded files to try it on there own. Let me know.
A little tweak to make it less like someone vomiting up a scrabblehand would be nice, but such a thing would probably (and quite rightly) be a low priority now.
With a little pointer here or there on how the names are generated and I'm sure there are skilled modders who'd look into it, if they aren't already.
Well, taking names from places in the real world or in book series isn't very original
But my "issues" with the name generator isn't that I can't or won't think of names myself but that the names generated don't seem to convey any feeling or difference between the cultures and peoples of Elemental. Even if one race used the names as they are, it's the same across the whole world. If it varied so that Altar used one kind of names and Urxen used another, then that would be better because it's a difference across cultures and gives more flavor.
As it is, every culture and nation has names like Ungamarbeckastan and it loses some flavor, imo.
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