FreeOrion

This question has been raised before about multiple names, so each player can name them themselves. It is technically possible, but not going to happen:
1. Will add confusion
2. It's not how real politics work
If you want to name a planet, you must control it.

Well, not really

after all we don't control Alpha Centauri, but we can rename it as much as we like. (Now the name the natives have for their own land is often the one that gets accepted...but not necessarily.. after all we don't talk about Nippon we talk about Japan, and America is called 'the States' in some parts of the world, a term we almost never use here.) And if you were dealing with a species with a nonauditory means of communication, then their name for it would really be irrelevant.

The point is that would allow several things
1. Names that make sense (ie I can rename things according to some system of mine to organize not only my empire, but the stars I'm planning on making part of my empire)
2. Names for stars that haven't been colonized yet... or haven't been colonized by anyone you know (very important for chatting with a friend you haven't contacted yet)
3. A possibility of Turing testing


The idea is it shouldn't add confusion because you wouldn't Know when someone else has renamed a planet, unless you have contact with the owner AND you bother to check.

It might add confusion when you are discussing the game afterwards with a fellow human player, ie outside of chat

In any case one of the 'renaming' options at any time should be 'standard' in which case it defaults to the 'standard' name.

Good point. Using the Japan example, anyone who deals with Japan probably knows that it is called 'Japan' by most of the outside world, but 'Nippon' by it's inhabitants. It would be easy enough to show both the name the race calls it and then the names that the other races use in a
YourRaceName(OtherRaceName,OtherRaceName,OtherRaceName)
sort of format. The 'OtherRaceName' segments would probably only be shown when showing a Planet Information screen to cut down on text on the starmap, and could be colored (assuming that each race will have a identifying color) the color of the race that uses it.

Negative points to Tyreth for referencing 'how real politics work.' Tsk!

but he's right. this is a faux immersion thing. If we were actually doing a world map ala EU2 or HoI, there might be some value to it, but the investment isn't worth the return...

-Aq

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

My request in the area of names is to have more then one list from which things will be named. I could have a variety of lists with differnt theams and some means of selecting which ones get used (the selectiong could be as crude as just putting the txt documents into a "Planet Names" folder" and the game simply reads everthing it can find in the folder to make its Master list each time I generate a Galaxy). This alows me to shuffle and play with the lists without laboriously scrolling through a mess of names thats 10 pages. Say for example I dont want real Star Names to be used, I go in take out the "Real Famous Stars" List but leave the "Corny Gag Names" and "Alien Giberish Names with M sounds".

Another cool name feature was SEIVShip Design Names that you could select or just get randomly, again alowing me to fiddle with the List and use a special list for each race would be very nice.

On the same note getting random names for individual ships, Task Force and Fleets would be much more flavorfull then plain old "Fleet 0001".

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Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

Systematic names help me to remember what the hell is going on. Not so much for fleets, but definitely for ship designs.

Hi all ! My first post here.

Just my two cents: I like Impaler's idea and a couple more:

How about keep it simple for both the programmers and the users, and in order to prevent confusion:

1- The game can come with a default list of names in a text file that the game reads in.

2- Let the user enter his own list in a text file to place in the same directory to replace the default list, if desired.

3- When a colony is created on a world for the "first" owner he/she should be able to type in a new name if they do not like the pre-selected name. This allows the owner to name a world something familiar to their own language, or their life's frames of reference.

4- To prevent confusion, the name applied at the time of colonization cannot change throughout the rest of the game.

Chow

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"Political interest can never be separated from moral right". (Thomas Jefferson)

I would say that that's a good renaming model, but I would say that for #4, if an enemy takes over the colony, they can rename it (a "conquest" privilige). Other that that, the first name sticks.

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kthxbye.
Also known as "Hadrian", administrator ofThe Hideout Forums.
TheForce.net

Renaming sounds like it should be a server setting. For public games where you don't know / trust the other players, you would disallow renaming, so you don't end up with people putting vulgarities or illegible or indistinct names in. For private games where you trust people, renaming would be allowed at any time on planets / systems you control exclusively, but all players would be notified of any name change of any system or planet they previously knew the name of... or perhaps just ones that they have relevant diplomatic contact with or spy information about at the time, with belated updates whenever they gain such information at a later time.

I'm reminded of name changing in Alpha Centrauri... In that game, if an AI player captured one of your bases, they sometimes renamed the base to a name from their faction's list of names. This didn't happen, as far as I know, if they were just recapturing a base. The distinction between capturing and recapturing was, I also think, based on the "culture" of the base at the time of capture. If you captured a base, then waited long enough, it would assimilate into your culture, after which if it was captured back by the original owner faction, it wouldn't be offically considered a recapture anymore.

This lead to one humorous instance in a game, where I captured a University base, say "Library of Planet" or somesuch, and held it for many turns so it became cultrually a Gaian base (my faction). The University recaptured it, and proceeded to rename it to another University base name, despite it still having its original University base name.

My thoughts exactly.

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The COW Project : You have a spy in your midst.

I like the idea of breaking up your names list into categories, as suggested above, then allowing players to choose their prefered name "type" from a list/menu. When that player conquers a new system / planet, the game will "suggest" a name from the appropriate category a la MOO2. So if the player likes mythological names, for example, the game could suggest naming his new star Horus. He could always decide to choose a different name. This system makes the addition of new names/categories easy for modders and campaign creators (just add a new category of names to the .txt list, or have the generator take names from a specific category).

Modders could also break up "names from mythology" into "names from Egyptian / Norse / Greek / etc. Mythology", giving them more flexibility. Breaking up names into categories will also allow computer-controlled races to "re-name" stars, choosing randomly from a specific category of names.

Here's to Sol, soon to be renamed "Corveille Noire" .

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Professor Hernandez, Human ambassador to Silica:
"Hey, rocks are people too!"
Black Dawn

I've just experimented a bit with freeOrion, I'm impressed it's very snazzy and elegant. Though it crashed when I colonized the last planet in my home system for some reason.. Anyway, I was thinking that the ability to rename every planet of a system might get confusing.

I mean, it's fun and all, but for multiplayer (if there is to be one) it'll be confusing for conquerors to figure out what's going on when planet names do not correspond to star names. I think it might be better, if only for practicality, to have stars be renameable (if your the only colonizer of a star system?) but not planets. Planets I think should always be "Star Name" + Alpha/Prime/I/One etc..

At least in multiplayer.

Yes, there is multiplayer support. At the moment we name planets like you suggested. Renaming planets/system in multiplayer games is an issue. But it's simple to disallow things.

About crashes, i guess you tried 0.2? If so, some issues are known and already solved. 0.3 isn't far away. So looking for bug based on 0.2 is a waste of time, but when 0.3 hits, it's very welcomed and needed

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Can COWs fly?

I just had an interesting thought. I know it's not a brainstorming thread but the thought isn't off topic so...

What happens when say I, an English speaking person, plays with Chinese speaking person? I know there would most likely be chinese servers and english servers in that case but I'm thinking that everything should still work as long as all the diplomatic options get translated correctly. I'm sure the chat option won't but you don't have to use chat if you don't want to anyway. The game shouldn't be dependent on it IMO.

I'm thinking that I wouldn't like being forced to see chinese where english should be and he/she wouldn't like seeing english where chinese should be either!

I think that each player should have a list of star and planet names for each star and planet in the game and when you refer to one you have to select it from a list of planets. That way it would get translated and there wouldn't be any confusion.

Renaming a star or planet would just change your name for it just like in single player.

Argus

Hmm... I'd have to check with a Chinese native (which would be very difficult considering the language barrier), but as far as I know, the entire world's pretty much used to roman characters (I know the Japanese have no qualms). In a game with multilingual players, I think it's safer just to use Roman characters (with accents).

Sure they won't understand the English names, but I don't understand "Corveille Noire" either, so it's all going to be pretty much the same.


I would like the ability to play with people from other language backgrounds -- but you'll have to put some real work into the diplomacy screens so that you can say anything you'll need to without having to use the chat.