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[shadow_archmagi]

quote:Originally posted by Red Jackard:
<STRONG>Not only extra words, there's other tweaking in it. The alphabetizing I did by hand.

I may have misunderstood your intention; it sounded as though you were grooming the existing vocabulary and deleting oddities, not entire words. Like removing OF_NOUN_PLUR from BILE, because when would the phrase "of Biles" ever sound good? Guess I'll wait to see what you come up with.

[ March 06, 2008: Message edited by: Red Jackard ]</STRONG>

Hey! Don't knock the Land of the Green Biles!

[Red Jackard]

quote:Originally posted by shadow_archmagi:
<STRONG>Hey! Don't knock the Land of the Green Biles!</STRONG>

That name is not possible. Closest DF could come to is "The Green Land of Biles".

[Sykirobme]

Speaking as an English major and someone who's even published a few things...I like the RNG the way it is.  The quirky names are part of DF's color.  At times they're accidentally poetic or they evoke some sort of strange atmosphere.

[Janne Joensuu]

quote:Originally posted by Red Jackard:
<STRONG>I may have misunderstood your intention; it sounded as though you were grooming the existing vocabulary and deleting oddities, not entire words. Like removing OF_NOUN_PLUR from BILE, because when would the phrase "of Biles" ever sound good? Guess I'll wait to see what you come up with.</STRONG>

I mainly added restrictions, just like in your example. Because I started from the original files, either you'd have to re-alphabetize my list or I'd have to re-do all my changes into your alphabetized list. Either would be easy to do, but very boring and very time-consuming. I think I'll release the version without the words added in the last patch in the modding subsection. It's hard to tell if the difference is noticeable.

EDIT: I uploaded the mod, read more in the thread here.

[ March 06, 2008: Message edited by: Janne Joensuu ]

[Janne Joensuu]

I just realized that somewhere between during the last few patches, name generation was changed. Names with multiple adjectives, or adjective and an of compound, seem to be more rare, making all kinds of names (forests and terrain, group names, civilizations and squads, probably artifacts as well). Almost any adjective can be applied to a single non-adjective (the naughty hill, the flowery towers) but two adjectives rarely fit together as well (The Fierce Hill of Romancing, The Laconic Wild Jungle).

I'd also like to know if anyone noticed any difference, if anyone even tried my mod.

[Aloysius]

quote:Originally posted by Janne Joensuu:
<STRONG>As far as the irregular verbs go (e.g. speak, speaks, spoke, spoken, speaking), Spoken-boat is better than Spoke-boat, as are Stolen-boat and Broken-boat. I don't know the correct names for the forms of the verbs, but the examples should give you the idea.</STRONG>

I think what you're getting at here is that participles generally make good adjectives (such as Speaking-boat or Spoken-boat) but other forms of the verb generally do not (such as Speak-boat, Speaks-boat, or Spoke-boat).

If you're still curious, here are the "correct names":

speak = infinitive
speaks = third-person singular present
spoke = past
spoken = past participle
speaking = present participle

Like some of the people who've posted, I really like the randomness of the names in the game, but I agree that many of the current combinations are awful and are nothing like what a translator with any ability would produce.

[DJ]

Your efforts are commendable, but I don't see why would Dwarven have the same word order as English. Different languages have different word orders (German is especially weird).

[Janne Joensuu]

quote:Originally posted by DJ:
<STRONG>Your efforts are commendable, but I don't see why would Dwarven have the same word order as English. Different languages have different word orders (German is especially weird).</STRONG>

I've studied German, and the word-order is quite confusing. However, I have something different in mind:
Ransackedring, Whisperingbust, Whippedheart, Spikewhipped, Guildpacked, Rungtowers - these almost mean something.
Fortifyrusted (verb+verb), Minedbowed (verb+verb), Ringedslap, Ringransacked, Bustwhispering - these don't really work.

Ransacked-something is a good combination and makes sense, because generally you ransack something. Whipped-thing and Thing-whipped both work, because you can whip things and whip with things. Ideally, I'd like to be able to define how verbs are used. If I can't have that, many verbs' part participe (thanks, Aloysius) works as front compound, but not as rear compound, so that's a nice compromise. Also, verbs never work when combined with other verbs.

Here are more actual grammatic suggestions:

Belllabors, Bluenesssword and other names where front compound ends on double-consonant, and the next word starts with the same consonant, don't look good.
Double vocals such as Tundraarmor aren't nearly as common, but they're still worth mentioning. The only word with a triplet-vocal I can think of is Sableeel.

There's also the special case of adjectives that modify the word they affect. There's difference between "old stone house" and "stone old house", because 'stone house' is one, distinct thing, while 'old house' just describes a common house. All materials and colors are modifying adjectives that should be close to the word, relative to other adjectives. Numericals should be far from the noun: three iron daggers, one true hero etc.

It'd be nice to be able to limit various words to just singular or plural form. The One Ring, The Seven Sisters, The Lone Mountain, etc. The adj_dist might do this, because some words seem to work this way, but I've got no idea what it actually does. I think smaller adj_dist means the adjective appears more often, however.

Brooks and rivers often have poor names. Just the name-part or the the-part is enough in most cases, and most often either works better than both. Brooks should have name-part names (Bathechance is the best brook name ever!), while streams and big rivers should be The Something, and having both should be quite rare.

For some reason a brook can get named "A Cyclopean Planet". I had thought words belonging to the NAME_REGION symbol group didn't appear in normal names.

Peaks and Volcanoes should like singular names more than plural names.

[ March 07, 2008: Message edited by: Janne Joensuu ]