UFO:Alien Invasion
Technical support => FAQ => Topic started by: Woreczko on February 04, 2008, 12:22:06 pm
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Hi all!
While browsing SVN I noticed, that in the process of upgrading from 2.1 to 2.2, you left out numerous character names for non-anglosaxon cultures. What was the reason for this? Is it safe and ok to copy for myself the script from 2.1 "team_humans.ufo" and paste into my 2.2 installation?
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no, that would be not safe - because some team ids changed, too
but of course you can add new names for yourself - and also send patches if the names are reasonable
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no, that would be not safe - because some team ids changed, too
but of course you can add new names for yourself - and also send patches if the names are reasonable
How many names can it handle? The current 32 per gender isn't really enough to avoid frequent repetition.
Would it be useful if we compiled a list of a few hundred names for each gender and each super-nation? That way the names of the recruits could match the relative support of the various super-nations.
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it can handle as much names as your ram can hold - the names are a linked list - feel free to add as many as you wish
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Ok, heres about 1000 North American surnames, with about 250 first names for each gender.
I tried to avoid alternate spellings of the same name, and first names of ambiguous gender to help keep thing clear for the player.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Maybe it's a good idea to expand on the names system a little. Right now we have male and female names as well as surnames for various classes, but I think it'd be a good idea to divide the names by nation instead. The names eleazar provided would be good for United America.
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... but I think it'd be a good idea to divide the names by nation instead. The names eleazar provided would be good for United America.
Yeah exactly what i was thinking.
Unless we want to make the naming system pretty complicated, we'll have to accept a certain amount of mixing I.e. in Oceania if we just make a list we could have a Swahili first name with an Indian surname, which isn't common now, but could come to pass with only a generation of mixing.
Also each head model might also be assigned to certain of the super-nations with varying chances of occurrence. I.E. red-heads might be common in europe, less common in North American and Oceania, and pretty rare in the other 5.
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My humble donation from Russia: 60 male and 60 female names, and 152x2 (M & F forms) surnames.
If opendoc (OOO 2.3.1) attached is inconvenient to import/use, I can export it into plain text.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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My humble donation from Russia: 60 male and 60 female names, and 152x2 (M & F forms) surnames.
If opendoc (OOO 2.3.1) attached is inconvenient to import/use, I can export it into plain text.
Cool.
Some of the names have apostrophes > ' < after them. Is that a typo or significant?
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Some of the names have apostrophes
It is significant. Such apostrophes stands for "soft sign" - unpronounceable symbol for softening the last "meaning" letter.
I'm not a linguist, but I'll try to explain.
Let us look to two Chinese names: Lao and Lyao.
First "L" is pronounced "hard" as in "help", and second one - as in "million" - "miljən"
Similar thing we can see in some Russian words, including proper names. For example, two very similar names: `Igor' and Eg`or. The latter pronounced "hard", as it written. But first ends with "softened r", like "Igoree", but without ending "ee".
Do not try to read transliterated Russian names according the rules of English alphabet, they could be read much correctly according Germanic, "harder" rules: not "aigour" and "eyegour", but "igor' " and "yegor". Exception is for some specific sounds like "sh" as in "shoes" and "ch" as in "chapter".
The "y" in the middle of the word replaces sound of "ы", closed and dull variation of "ee". Nearest example is "Chernobyl' " or "i" in "thick". At the end of the word the same character replaces a digraphic suffix of "ый" - "yj", like in surname of Roman Polansky.
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I've mostly seen Russian names and surnames with omitted apostophes when written in English. Though that could be handy if names are to be transliterated to other languages.
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I've mostly seen Russian names and surnames with omitted apostophes
Agree, but in some cases the "soft sign" is the necessity. Let's take a "Talakan' " surname. Without ending "soft sign" it must be pronounced very close to "Tarakan" ("a roach"), but with the "soft sign" it sounds different - ending "n" will be pronounced exactly as in "new", not as in "next".
Contrary English and other Germanic languages, Russian heavily uses suffixes and endings to designate gender, quantity and time. And we have no need in articles to say what we want to say.
But some common fossils from ancient Indic language are exists. For example, we have present time forms for "to be" verb, and it is possible to say exactly "I am a programmer" - "Ya est' programmist", but during last 1000 years these forms are gone from the language. Often they used to depict "foreign accent": "I'm the PHALANX officer" - "Ya est' oficer FALANKS", but correct form is "Ya - oficer FALANKS"
(note on apostrophe in "est' " - without it the word changes meaning to "(someone) eats (something)")
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Speaking of suffixes and endings, I wonder if names are going to be translated to each language? In this case either rules for name declension should be applied, or all sentences should be built in such a manner that all names are used in nominative case. E.g. "Brain augmentation is implanted to Vasiliy Pupkin" would rather be translated "Vasiliy Pupkin proshel vzhivleniye mozgovykh implantantov" rather then "Mozgovye implantanty vzhivleny Vasiliyu Pupkinu". Otherwise either grammaic rules should be coded, or we'll end up with grammatically incorrect sentences like "Mozgovye implantanty vzhivleny Vasiliy Pupkin".
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To be short.
Differences in languages' organization makes some difficulties for translators. But, as I explained in PM to Zorlen, there always exists a possibility to re-make a phrase into gender-neutral form. For example, in English the phrases like:
Brain segmentation fault is implanted to (head owner's name)
The (name) craft's pilots are low on vodka, returning to base for new bottles
The building of the comfortable WC for aliens is finished on (base name) base.
will sound good enough regardless or soldier's, craft's and base's names.
But in Russian in equal phrases the names must undergo the declension because of change of grammar case - from nominative to dative and so on. But simple exchange the parts of sentence and usage of punctuation can make magic:
(soldier's name and surname): self-destruction A-bomb implanting finished.
(сraft's name): vodka tanks are almost empty, returning to base
(base's name): comfortable alien-accommodated WC has been built.
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ignoring the detour into the problems of translation, we still can use lists of names suitable for:
* South America + the Caribbean
* Europe
* The Islamic Mid East
* Africa (minus south africa and the muslim parts)
* South Africa + India + Oceania
* The Orient
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Check the "team_humans.ufo" file in the 2.1 branch - couple of african, arabian, european and chineese names there. What it badly lacks are the hindi names and maybe the turkish ones. (Let`s face it - we can`t have names for every language).
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(Let`s face it - we can`t have names for every language).
Maybe not, but with players all over the world, we can come reasonably close.
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Check the "team_humans.ufo" file in the 2.1 branch - couple of african, arabian, european and chineese names there. What it badly lacks are the hindi names and maybe the turkish ones....
Huh, looking back at the "team_humans" and "nations" files in 2.1 it seems that we had a more robust system. Individual nation blocs could use multiple name lists, i.e. Oceania could use Indian, African, and Australian names without mixing them.
Anybody know why this was dropped in 2.2?
I tried swapping out the files, but something was wrong, and UFOAI didn't start.
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Ok, sorry for the triple post.
Looking over what's been gathered in this thread, combined with what was in 2.1 i see these lacks:
Eastern European: none
India: none
Portugese South American: none
Oriental (other than Chinese & Japanese): none
African: a few but not specific
Middle Eastern: a few but arabic only
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Ok, heres about 1000 North American surnames, with about 250 first names for each gender.
I tried to avoid alternate spellings of the same name, and first names of ambiguous gender to help keep thing clear for the player.
argh can you please remove these __MAC OS stuff and zip the names in a single folder? Ayway thank you very much, I'm using this list! :)
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If you want, I can submit a list of italian names and lastnames. I extracted those from a 130k users DB, I have 3 lists, one for lastnames, 2 for male/female names.
You could use some in europe, but in N.America and S.America also.
Italian people moved out to other nations looking for a job and better opportunities last decades of 1800 to first decades of 1900.
Major flow, at least what I know, where to Northern Europe (Germany, Netherland, Belgium), North America (USA but also Canada I think), and South America (Argetina has the largest Italian community in the world, many of the lastnames have italian roots).
I will clean up the lists and post them as patch on SF, they will be longer than needed so you can use how many names you need, most frequent at top.
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I have code to read in the scripts in the form
name {
nation {
female...
male...
lastname...
}
nation2...
where nation is in the list
"neutral
latin
states
etc."
currently, when characters are generated their employee->nation is the key to which category of names to use.
having no nation or some other one defaults to neutral
unfortunately, soldiers fit into team human, scientists to human_scientist, workers...etc.
This means each type has its own name list.
therefore, I'd like comments on:
-keeping a region list for other characters (makes for bigger script)
-making other characters non-regional (neutral)
-some other design (restructuring and basically redoing my approach [potentially a lot of rework])
on a technical note, between campaign start and april 06, I had no missions appear so I'm not sure if my civilian/alien name change work/won't CTD. I will try a skirmish tonight.
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therefore, I'd like comments on:
-keeping a region list for other characters (makes for bigger script)
-making other characters non-regional (neutral)
-some other design (restructuring and basically redoing my approach [potentially a lot of rework])
I really don't see a reason why there should be different name lists for soldiers, scientists, etc. However, since at least in multiplayer, aliens have names, we at least need to distinguish between human names and alien names.
Ideally i'd like to see each "nation" pull from a variety of ethnic lists, if applicable. For instance a list of Spanish names could be used by North & South America & Europe. This would prevent for instance a soldier from Oceania from getting a Swahili first name and an Indian last name, or someone having a half Japanese/Chinese name.
Also please note that in some languages, some scandinavian & russian, for instance, there is a different form of the last name depending on gender.
EDIT:
also there should be a way to associate certain face skins with each ethnic list.
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I will clean up the lists and post them as patch on SF, they will be longer than needed so you can use how many names you need, most frequent at top.
Please do.
I've been compiling lists of names, and have been going for 100-500 name each... which should be sufficient to make duplicate names seem about equally common as they are in real life.
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I'd like to add some names to team_* in 2.2, just so we can have a bit more randomisation in 2.2.1. Shall I just compile a new list, or do we have a list in progress? To be clear, I am not talking about a smarter system which determines sex, race, originating country etc, but just more names so we don't have the same surname appearing twice in the starting squad :P
As to differentiating Ortnok, Tamaan, and other multiplayer alien names -- can't we just stick them into "nation: Tamaan" etc? Same method as human names.
Thanks,
nemchenk
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...or do we have a list in progress?
i've compiled this from this thread and other sources (see attached).
There are probably inaccuracies, but there is plenty to choose from.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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That looks just the thing, eleazar! :)
Quick question -- what is the difference between columns D, E, and F? Being Russian I understand the need for male and female surnames, but I'm not sure what is happening when "surname", "male sur", and "fem sur" are present?
Thanks!
nemchenk
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I added a bunch of names to both 2.2 and trunk -- at least they will padd out the random factor for now :) I used your spreadsheet as a base, then pulled out between 5 and 20 random names and surnames from each group. Should be good for now.
Also, I had to remove a couple non-ASCII characters as the game didn't like them -- you may want to do the same if/when you use these with the new and improved name system :)
Cheers,
nemchenk
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Quick question -- what is the difference between columns D, E, and F? Being Russian I understand the need for male and female surnames, but I'm not sure what is happening when "surname", "male sur", and "fem sur" are present?
Scandinavian languages don't necessarily use a gender-specific surnames, but they do sometimes.
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If it would help at all, I have an enormous set of valid names for multiple ethnicities. Unfortunately, as they were all used for a baseball game, they're all male. But it's a huge list of surnames and first names, separated by ethnicity, including frequencies, in simple text format.