Making Enough Star Names for Very Large Galaxies

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MatGB
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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#31 Post by MatGB »

Vezzra wrote:The question is, why name empty space systems at all? Players don't ever get to see their names, instead they always get "Deep Space". We could as well set the name for empty systems to "Deep Space" directly and not waste names from our limited pool - or are system names required to be unique?
deep-space.png
Each of those fleets arrived at a different location. Sometimes you can have 10+ fleets arriving at different systems, some of them the same system.

When checking sitreps I go through to see what's happened at each location, jumping back to the same deep space multiple times is hard to avoid, whereas remembering that I've already done all the fleets that arrived at Deneb is easy.

Of course, ideally Sitreps could be sorted by location so everything is grouped in the way combat results are, but regardless it would be nice to name or have names for all locations. For me, anyway.
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Dilvish
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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#32 Post by Dilvish »

Geoff the Medio wrote:I think with greek numbering, there should be sufficient names.
In fact, as a backup extension for humongous galaxies, the group scheme I implemented already checks if the groupsize is greater than the number of greek letters, and if so then it starts augmenting the greek letter prefix with an additional prefix (a random 3 chars) akin to Vezzras auto name approach. So the group naming scheme as currently implemented can cover an essentially limitless number of systems (though with a large enough galaxy any naming scheme is probably almost useless).

On the "Deep Space" issue, I think the group naming scheme could help -- rather than all being "Deep Space", they could be "Deneb Deep Space", "Algol Deep Space", etc. This could be managed by the ApparentName() code that currently masks the actual name in favor of "Deep Space", and then when a nebula coalesces into a star it could automatically get its full name. There could still be multiple "Deneb Deep Space" systems, true, but it would still be a much much more meaningful name than now.
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MatGB
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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#33 Post by MatGB »

I like that idea, knowing that fleets have arrived near Deneb, especially if Deneb is an area with multiple stars, would be quite cool.
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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#34 Post by shawndream »

I have no complaints about starting empty space at the end and/or showing it as X deep space.

I had typed up psuedocode to name the star systems first, then after they were all named in groups assign the empty space to the nearest systems... but it was complicated and sloppy... I figured you guys would do it better if I described the reasons simply instead.

My one warning is that when you go through empty stars assigning them to the nearest named cluster, make sure you don't use systems that used to be empty stars... or you could wind up with "chains" of a name that wind all over the galaxy as each empty system becomes the "nearest neighbor" for the next. (Interesting, but not useful for navigation).
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Vezzra
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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#35 Post by Vezzra »

Dilvish wrote:It looks to me like come moderate code juggling could let star and planet choosings be done before naming, and then more of the visibly named systems could wind up with the solo naming scheme.
Sounds like a good idea to me.
Well, the current (pre-implementation) feedback seemed to be that folks liked the idea of a fair bit of grouping even when the number of stars didn't especially require it, so 400 stars being mostly "Whatever" isn't what I was shooting for. But I can rework it so that the ratio of "Whatever"s to group names is more controllable.
Ok, I've generated several galaxies to get a feeling for the thing, and these are my impressions so far:

First of all, I like the idea that at least some of the systems get these "group names" even in galaxies that aren't big enough to use up the entire starname list. They add a very nice flavor, so far I'm in agreement with the others :)

However I think that the amount of systems with group names should be far less, they should only make up a fraction of all the systems (if possible, very large galaxies can't avoid that of course). Several reasons:
  • If the majority of systems has group names, that actually takes a bit from the special flavor they add, for the very reason that they aren't special, but common it that case. Of course, that's a very subjective impression, others may feel different about that.
  • You get too much system names that are both similar and long. Especially in larger galaxies I'm staring at a wall of Alpha, Beta, Gamma whatsoevers. It's of course far better than a wall of autogenerated catalogue names, but compared to having most systems with "normal" individual names it's still notably worse.
  • Prefixed system names being significantly longer also leads to name clutter on the galaxy map when the majority of the systems has group names. In my couple of tests I got much more overlapping, both of names overlapping other names, and names overlapping system icons, to a degree that was more than just a minor annoyance. You have to zoom in quite close to reduce the overlapping clutter so it becomes sufficiently bearable.
So I'd suggest maybe 10, max 20% of the system names should be group names, unless, as I already mentioned, the galaxy is too large. In that case ramping up the amount of group names accordingly can't be avoided. As it was mentioned elsewhere, with very large galaxies every naming scheme we might come up with can't avoid such drawbacks (unless we provide a name list with 10,000 unique names... ;)).
Dilvish wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:Then maybe start the empty space numbering from the Omega end of the prefixes? Stars get Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, ... and empty space gets Omega, Psi, Chi, Phi, ...
the way I was starting to plan on reworking it, I would simply place the empty systems at the end of a group, so the initially visibly named systems would all have the lower order prefixes. Any systems gaining a star via nebulae might then still wind up creating an apparent gap in the naming, but I think that's a pretty minor issue I wouldn't worry about.
That sounds like a very good solution to the problem. But that approach hasn't been in your 2nd version of the patch, has it? Because I when I tested with that version of your patch, I've seen no such ordering taking place.

Finally some nitpicking concerning your patch: Can you name your Python functions according to the xyzXyz scheme instead of xyz_xyz? The latter is the pattern for variable names, that's the scheme I've been trying to follow in that Python script, and I'd prefer if we try to stick to some consistency here - if you don't mind, it's not really that big of an issue for me. And maybe break up your code blocks by throwing in an empty line now and then, IMO that's a bit easier on the eyes.

Gosh, I'm starting to sound like Geoff... :lol:

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Vezzra
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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#36 Post by Vezzra »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
Vezzra wrote:...why name empty space systems at all?
If a star / planet gets created in them, they would appear with a name on the map.
Ok, that's reasonable of course, but in that case I'm with Mat:
MatGB wrote:[...] When checking sitreps I go through to see what's happened at each location, jumping back to the same deep space multiple times is hard to avoid, whereas remembering that I've already done all the fleets that arrived at Deneb is easy.

Of course, ideally Sitreps could be sorted by location so everything is grouped in the way combat results are, but regardless it would be nice to name or have names for all locations. For me, anyway.
If we decide to stick with giving empty space systems names for obvious reasons, why not just display them? I think Mat has a very good point - the additional name clutter would be annoying of course, but the problem Mat points out here is still more annoying I think.

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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#37 Post by Vezzra »

Dilvish wrote:On the "Deep Space" issue, I think the group naming scheme could help -- rather than all being "Deep Space", they could be "Deneb Deep Space", "Algol Deep Space", etc. This could be managed by the ApparentName() code that currently masks the actual name in favor of "Deep Space", and then when a nebula coalesces into a star it could automatically get its full name. There could still be multiple "Deneb Deep Space" systems, true, but it would still be a much much more meaningful name than now.
I like that approach, but again my concern is name clutter here. With that scheme we're likely to get a whole lot of rather long names, and that's not going to look pretty on the galaxy map.

(On a sidenote: You guys are something, do you know that? Of all the things you could have started experimenting with the new scripted universe generation, you decide to go crazy with the star system naming scheme :lol: - not that I'm any better of course ;))

EDIT: I'm starting to wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to move all the posts on the topic of star names into their own thread? They start to clutter this thread, which actually is dedicated to matters of the implementation of scripted universe generation. Probably even to another subforum, Scripting comes to mind?

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eleazar
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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#38 Post by eleazar »

There's a lot of good work begin done in this thread, i wish i had seen it sooner.

Deep space:
Based on the issues discussed above, i recommend deep space locations receive and display names exactly like any other system. Sitreps that tell me something happened in "Deep Space" are annoyingly unhelpful. If we are worried about clutter, the star map name text could be smaller.

Group Names
Vezzra wrote:
  • You get too much system names that are both similar and long. Especially in larger galaxies I'm staring at a wall of Alpha, Beta, Gamma whatsoevers. It's of course far better than a wall of autogenerated catalogue names, but compared to having most systems with "normal" individual names it's still notably worse.
  • Prefixed system names being significantly longer also leads to name clutter on the galaxy map when the majority of the systems has group names. In my couple of tests I got much more overlapping, both of names overlapping other names, and names overlapping system icons, to a degree that was more than just a minor annoyance. You have to zoom in quite close to reduce the overlapping clutter so it becomes sufficiently bearable.
Too many Names like "Beta Ramphora", "Beta Rasalgethi" "Beta Regulus" would indeed tend to blur together, especially when they are long unfamiliar words. Some things we can do about that:
  • A) remove the unusually long names.
  • B) Place the Greek Letter designation last. "Ramphora Beta", "Rasalgethi Beta" "Regulus Beta", emphasize the more unique part of the name, by putting it first. Yeah it is even further from the way astronomers name real stars, but we already aren't tracking reality closely.
  • C) Make a minimum group size of at least 4. That way "alpha" and "beta" aren't as frequently repeated as they would be if smaller groups are common

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MatGB
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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#39 Post by MatGB »

I definitely agree with ideas B and C there. I'm playing with a 500 system galaxy using version 2 of the patch currently, and it is quite nice, but with just 2 or sometimes 3 systems showing with the same name it doesn't help give a feel for a region in the way I sorta hoped. And there are too many Alpha somethings, I think it would be far better if it was Somethign Alpha for memory jobbing, we're already breaking multiple starname conventions so throw them out and go with what works.

Getting something straight in my head (my ability to read Python is improving but from a position of "huh?" it's now "hmm, does that mean?").

All starlane intersections are assigned a name. If that intersection gets a star, then the name is displayed to the player, otherwise it remains hidden as "deep space" unless a nebula collapses there. Is that correct?

In which case, if it's possible, empty systems could have "space" appended instead of Alpha, etc, so you'd end up with Deneb Alpha, Deneb Space, Deneb Omega, Deneb Space, and then if a nebula collapses or something else happens the slightly hidden star suffix (assuming we go with that) is fully revealed, would I think work best, OTOH just giving every system a full name is probably going to be easier and wouldn't be bad, just not quite as, well, interesting?
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em3
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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#40 Post by em3 »

Maybe ditch greek letters altogether and use roman letters?
Sol A, Sol B,... planets would be Sol A 1, Sol A 2, Sol B 1, ...
Less clutter that way, and just as memorable.
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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#41 Post by Geoff the Medio »

To save map space / reduce clutter, greek letters could be used instead of latin text for the pre or postfixes. α β γ δ etc.

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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#42 Post by em3 »

Geoff the Medio wrote:To save map space / reduce clutter, greek letters could be used instead of latin text for the pre or postfixes. α β γ δ etc.
Like.
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MatGB
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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#43 Post by MatGB »

Dislike, nice for people that can read/remember them, but for those that can't (I was taught them but they never, ever, sank in) they'll just be confusing symbols.
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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#44 Post by Dilvish »

Vezzra wrote:
Dilvish wrote:the way I was starting to plan on reworking it...
That sounds like a very good solution to the problem. But that approach hasn't been in your 2nd version of the patch, has it?
right, that's still just a plan, I decided to let some more discussion pass before recoding again, but I'll probably go ahead and put together another version now or at least soon so we can give some of the new ideas a try.
Finally some nitpicking concerning your patch: Can you name your Python functions according to the xyzXyz scheme instead of xyz_xyz? The latter is the pattern for variable names, that's the scheme I've been trying to follow in that Python script, and I'd prefer if we try to stick to some consistency here - if you don't mind, it's not really that big of an issue for me. And maybe break up your code blocks by throwing in an empty line now and then, IMO that's a bit easier on the eyes.
I'll be glad to put in the extra line returns. On the naming thing, I was trying to have any new coding I do adhere to the current recommended python naming guidelines that adrian_broher had directed me to, and which python checking tools like lint will by default want to enforce. The guidelines do acknowledge that the python naming standards have changed over the years, and that internal consistency can be preferred over adherence to current standards, but I was trying to update things. I realize my incremental approach to changing the naming standards may for a while leave the code with inconsistent standards, but I was accepting that as a temporary thing, trying to move towards current standards. For a while adrian was also helping go through and consistently rework scripts according to current standards. On this code however I should have previously brought up the discussion with you rather than just throwing in some code with an inconsistent standard. I'd recommend we change the function names in the universe generation code to adhere to the lower_case_with_underscores standard.
Geoff the Medio wrote:To save map space / reduce clutter, greek letters could be used instead of latin text for the pre or postfixes. α β γ δ etc.
That idea had crossed my mind, and I do kind of like it, but Matt's concern had also come to mind. On that point, Matt, it is a pretty limited set of the greek letters that would normally be used, and I think when presented with them so often people would learn them quickly. That is, if they care to; remembering the pronunciation wouldn't be strictly required though it does improve readability. To facilitate that we could have an extra pedia entry on starnames that would provide the romanized spelling of the letters. The space savings would be quite nice, it's probably worth coding up to at least try out.
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Re: Scripted Universe Generation!

#45 Post by eleazar »

revision 6775
"more starnames, and limiting length to 10 characters."
Up to ~1300 from ~800.
Tried to make sure none of the names were too weird, or too similar, but probably missed some.
Also got rid of a few remaining greek letters in star names.
MatGB wrote:Dislike, nice for people that can read/remember them, but for those that can't (I was taught them but they never, ever, sank in) they'll just be confusing symbols.
I think a lot of players will be in the same boat.
I'm not a fan of adding options with abandon, but displaying either "Alpha" or "α" could be an option.

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