The Random name Generator in WoM is the worst of all time in video game history. Not sure if you could have created a lazier, more generic name generator if that was your exact task. Okay, now with the hyperbole insults out of the way, let me explain my hatred.
The names that are produced are nonsense and unpronounceable.
The random name generator is the same for every nation. Making the nations feel even more bland and generic.
The random name generator for city names, male champs and female champs are the same. It would be like saying "Ralph Johnson". Is "Ralph Johnson" My name? My Wife's name? Or is "Ralph" the city I live in, in the nation of "Johnson"? Either way, its fucking lame and stupid.
When you have a system like this, it just emphasises, both how many things in this game were made half-ass, and two, how bland and generic the nations are.
Each nation should have a default list of city names. In games like Civ or FFH2, each Nation has a list of city names that are reflective of the nations culture or history. FFH2 was great at this. I became emotionally attached to cities, just because their names had meaning. The most irritating thing about this, is that the nations DO have cannon names for their capitals at least!!! At least when a Sov creates a Kingdom/Empire's first city, it should have that name as default.
The random name generator for boys and girls should be different. We should be able to recognize that a name is feminine and masculine. Even if they are fantasy names that have no relevance in real cultures, having a difference in names due to both culture and masculinity/femininity would do wonders to make the world feel alive, like a real place.
My polish friend, Polszczyzna, thinks you're crazy. If anything the generated names need more spice... and consonants.
I would not say that is such 'colorful' way, but ... yes it can have been better. Developers should perhaps play others games and compare?
I get the feeling they have played other games, otherwise I doubt they'd be where they are today if they didn't have past experience in playing other games. To really be a game developer you have to have a bit of passion for games to begin with.
No doubt with Derek "Kael" Paxton on board, the guy who created and developed FFH2 we likely won't see this problem with FE... I hope.
Yeah... RNG (no pun intended) should be better. Some civs could have more consonants, others could have more vowels etc. How about that one civ would use only names that both females and males use (the one with egalitarian trait, i mean, lack of gender specific names certainly would be egalitarion. In a way... there's nothing wrong with different names for genders (right?))
They are often ok if you just chop a syllable or two off the end.
I must say that I never encountered that problem because I always give unique names anyway.But, yeah, sure, if the generator sucks, make it better. Someday. In my opinion, that´s one of the less pressing issues...
I agree completely with the OP. My only suggestion is to select randomly from the list of pre-defined names after the capital is founded (or at least start at a random position in the list). I did get kind of tired of having the same city name progression in each game of SMAC and FfH2 (Golden Leane, Balderham, Timberling, etc.) I almost never saw the names at the bottom of the list, which is a waste.
+1 to the OP.
this may be a small issue, but by the same token it must surely also be one of the easiest to fix.
there must be no other easier way of lending a little bit of individuality to the factions than simply giving them each a long list of individually tailored names. for example, elven/welsh/arthurian names for paridien, english/shire type names for tarth, faux latin type names for kraxis, or whatever.
I agree. I haven't read Brad's book or really any history to the lore but a list of faction-specific names would be cool and should be easy to implement. OMG, I agree with Lord Xia! JK.
This is my solution - there's often a decent name buried in there, somewhere, it's just padded with unpronounceable syllables.
I know that much better random name generators are possible, but I prefer FfH2's approach: no random name generator but just fixed lists of city names for each civilization. You really felt a connection to cities like Vallus and Kalocly and Dis after seeing them in several games, they had a history.
I'm generally a fan of procedurally generated content, but I'm not sure it's the answer when it comes to names - a human can come up with names that are more memorable and pronounceable, and more closely tied to a particular civilization's culture and history (city names from the campaign should appear in new games, for example), than any random generator I've seen so far.
Ok, sure, a simple list of names could be pretty easy to implement.But even though that would perhaps be something between 4 and 15+ hours of work, depending on how thoroughly that would be thought through.If you really dug into the matter, did research on citynames in different languages for all of the factions, and if there perhaps also some problem with integrating these schemes would arise, than this could well amount to a day of work for a programmer and an additional two days for the guy who has to come up with the names.
Given that this really is a minor issue and that there are several other minor issues still unsolved, I wouldn´t expect this one to be resolved anytime soon.Patch 1.3 perhaps?
unpronounceable names don't bother me a lot, some of those names are even charming, but I can't get over a group of three heroes with the same name, looks and strenghts
Ah but it's easier than that! They just need to present the forums with a "City Name Contest"
I mean I agree it's a minor issue, but hey, while we're waiting for more news on Fallen Enchantress we might as well bring up the minor changes we'd like to see in it - memorable names you can pronounce may not be game changing, but it's a nice touch that adds to the overall "polish" WoM was so sorely lacking.
I doubt that it would me less work to manage such a contest than it would be to do it themselves.
But, sure, it´s totally ok to bring up such topics, why not.
Here I'd like to disagree.
Imo it's not a minor issue at all. It's one of the big factors making Elemental having almost no atmosphere. The enemies capital is called Blruglxyr... yeah... who cares? And I just recruited a hero called Blurglxyr. Yay for me?
Let's attack Blruglxyr... hm... was that this city or that one? Oh, dunno, from now on I remember it as city near the lake and city in the down-left corner.
How.... exciting.
And the fix for this kind of an issue should be able to be implemented in less than an hour by a single programmer.
Edit: Aaaand I'm out. Can't replace the system used to generate names, and since it sucks from the get-go I can only make it stink slightly less instead of making it awesome.
My plan was to bring over the name generator from Dwarf Fortress, but... another time maybe.
PS: In Paradox´es "Victoria 2" they got a very small but very cool feature. The world map features the names of the countries and the size and font of those names changes corresponding to the form and the size of this country. So if you play, say, Burma and colonize Africa, a big bold "Burmese Africa" could be read there on the map. This really furthers immersion immensely even though it could be considered a minor detail.So if whe consider random names in Elemental to be a similar detail, Stardock should take their time to make a really good random name generator instead of just improving it to average quality.Else I would consider development-ressources to be wasted, as well as a chance to shine with a little detail that enhances immersion and thus fun of playing the game.
So all in good time I would say...
And:
What, you say it hasn't been released allready? Vapourware! (Yeah, I'm ashamed now for linking to that. )
Getting a sizable numbers of names for each city most likely would take less time then producing a decent random name generator. Just set up a list on a blackboard in the office and over the time of some months ('till FE gets released) it will surely have filled up with enough names.
Not perfect, but still an improvement.
May I dare to suggest that this may be because the current names just aren't enticing to read at all? (Since random letter combinations just don't lead themselves to be neither read or memorized very well.)
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Still, an excellent post you've made.
You've described some great ways to make semi-random name generators. Especially a city name generator combined with the ability to read map features would be great for atmosphere imo.
But I'd also be happy with a generator that would have some consistency for races, or for the genders for childrens.
Zyglek sounds like a fine name to me. Iyyiioieex not so much.
Names representative of factions would add more depth. I bought the version with the map, and I always change my city names to those on the map or name them after characters in the book. After Procipinee father's name for example---Amaria.
Here's my modded namegenerator using words from Dwarf fortress: https://forums.elementalgame.com/408124
Cool thing, thought it didn´t work?Care to elaborate what is hardcoded and what can be altered and what you actually did now to alter the generator?I just had a look at named XML file but I only get a very rough overview, cause my XML skills are.. well... nonexistent.
PS: Do I get it correctly that there is (yet) no possibility to create different name-generation rules for different factions?
Basically, the current namegen is just random letters piled on each other. I inserted a vast library of words, taken from Dwarf Fortress, that aren't nearly as random. There are 8000 nonsensical words like noloc, suku, tikbo. There are also 4000 words like three, necro, gate, order. And then there are rules that decide how these words are combined.
Did you follow the installation notes?
Yeah, can't make different rules for different factions.
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