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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

PRG-Soldier Name Generation


ShadowHawk

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I don't know if this has been said or suggested before, but wouldn't it be better to work out promotions on the number of kills, so those with the highest kill count get promoted first. Would stop people sitting back at the base not doing anything getting continually promoted.

 

And why not give a bonus to the max stats of those with a higher rank, giving them a higher possible TU, stam, accuracy total than normal soldiers. Would mean they are more likely to be used on the front line, as opposed to sitting back watching the others do the work.

 

There could also be stat bonus's for those with high kill counts but not a high rank, say a bonus after 25, 50, 75, 100 etc kills.

 

This would allow the soldiers who do really well to continue getting better, but at a much slower rate, but also make them more valuable in combat.

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nope that wouldn't be better cause it is not how it works in the real world. Also players would use that to create super soldiers ;) or well promote the soldier named after themselves. Often times the people in the army who are the generals have more experience behind the desk than on the field.
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In the real world the high ranking guys are more often highly educated (which doesn't necessarily make them smart). Just because you have a degree doesn't necessarily mean you will be a great soldier. I think that rank should have very little to do with stats in Xenocide. I think that it should be OK to have a squaddie that has better accuracy and health than a commander because he just never made it around to promotion. (think about it, in real battle Sergeants are the guys that really have to get things done, every other rank becomes more and more "coordinator", experience on the field should get you the most bonus to your stats with no contingence on your rank)
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi everyone!!

 

Well, If you can play as alien (i mean alien faction), it will be great the random name generator... It's better than "Alien #2" :LOL:

 

 

I think that the best idea for the random generator it's that one that it can depend on the base's location where u are recruiting for. I mean, if your base is in china, let's take chinese chars, chinese photos, etc... I don't think that it can be very difficult to do.

 

And I think that the player could always have the posibility of changing names manually if he wish... ;)

 

Greetings, :LOL:

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I think that the best idea for the random generator it's that one that it can depend on the base's location where u are recruiting for. I mean, if your base is in china, let's take chinese chars, chinese photos, etc... I don't think that it can be very difficult to do.

 

And I think that the player could always have the posibility of changing names manually if he wish... ;)

We are already constructing a database of localized names.

 

Greetings

Red Knight

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  • 2 months later...

Hi, just a couple quick comments.

 

1) It might be cool to have some random background generated for the soldiers. Like, if the soldier is American, they may have served with the Army, Marines, FBI, CIA...(MIB ;) ) I have a book which lists covert operations organizations from around the world, which might be useful. :) You could also have a "random fact" generator to add some quirkiness; stuff like "Has a black belt in karate" or "Collects and restores antique guns as a hobby" or even "Holds world record for number of pickled eggs eaten in one minute". The cool thing about that is that it'll be easy to improve with open source stuff.

 

2) It's easy to generate alien names. There are all sorts of algorithms you can use. Here's a simple one:

 

a ) Choose a random number of letters for the name. Something like 6-14, maybe.

b ) Choose a random starting letter (perhaps from a certain set of starting letters).

c ) Look up a table which has a probability of which letter can follow the current letter. Choose one of the letters randomly. Repeat this step until you reach the desired length.

 

Obviously the hardest part is creating the table. But anyone can fool with that, they don't even have to be a programmer. :D

 

Another way would be a context-free grammar. (I love randomly generating stuff. :D )

 

Anyone interested in random names and such should definitely check out this link.

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  • 2 months later...
a ) Choose a random number of letters for the name. Something like 6-14, maybe.

b ) Choose a random starting letter (perhaps from a certain set of starting letters).

 

Ooo! Ooo! I have a great eight letter name for a sectoid leader!!! "Arsehair!"

:wacko:

 

If we do totally random names we have to check that they don't form "amusing" coincidenses(sp?) like that!

 

c ) Look up a table which has a probability of which letter can follow the current letter.

 

Well, that - if I understand you correctly - could solve the problem?

 

It's easy to generate alien names.

 

By the way, do you mean alien unit names, or alien specie names?

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  • 2 months later...

huoh, i do not have the names anymore and you took old database down :)

 

could oyu put up the old database for a while again or something?:)

 

anyway, Estonia is a small country, 30*15 different combinations should be more than enough.

 

edit:

 

btw, that random "notes/details" thingie sound good, but it should be done right. I think, that you would ned alot (like 100+?) details, so that each soldiers bio looks different :) you could, like, pick randomly 3 from the details list (Worked for FBI 199X-2001 etc)

Edited by hull
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huoh, i do not have the names anymore and you took old database down :)

 

could oyu put up the old database for a while again or something?:)

oh, its there :)

I just replaced the file you see if you just visit the database directory. Go directly to http://xenocide.ru/temp/names/index.php and it'll be there.

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Saudi Arabia isn't in Africa?! Is it? :huh: Someone should put middle east in the selection for countries.
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Anyone think someone doesn't know that you have to add one name at a time -_-

You can, but it has enter/return as the delimiter, not a space :/ (as it says right beside the input-field)

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i wanted to add some portuguese names, but found that language already already exists, but as brazilian portuguese, not portuguese portuguese (from portugal) :P

so, could someone rename the language to Brazilian? or Brazilian Portuguese? or something that allows me to add truly portuguese names without mixing with the brazilian ones?

 

for those that don't know, the difference between brazilian portuguese and true portuguese is like the difference between american english and british english. brazil was a colony of portugal, developed it's own variation of the language, became independent, etc. so they're different. quite different, actually.

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Actually in my experience they are very simular. I added names of footballers, basically the Brazillian real names ( for instance, Ronaldiniho is NOT his real name -_- ) are no different from the Portuguese names ( who are also shortened ). Certainly not different enough to look strange in any way IMO, American names are identical to English names.
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  • 2 weeks later...

Here are some statistics for US:

Ethnic groups: non-Hispanic White 75%; non-Hispanic Black 12%; Hispanic 10%; Asian/Pacific islanders 3.3% American Indian and Eskimo 0.7%

 

So don't go saying 20% of names are chinese or 5% are British or anything like

that.

 

EDIT: Better statistics

Race

One race 274,595,678 97.6%

White 211,460,626 75.1%

Black or African American 34,658,190 12.3%

American Indian and Alaska Native 2,475,956 0.9%

Asian 10,242,998 3.6%

Asian Indian 1,678,765 0.6%

Chinese 2,432,585 0.9%

Filipino 1,850,314 0.7%

Japanese 796,700 0.3%

Korean 1,076,872 0.4%

Vietnamese 1,122,528 0.4%

Other Asian1 1,285,234 0.5%

Mexican 20,640,711 7.3%

Puerto Rican 3,406,178 1.2%

Cuban 1,241,685 0.4%

Other Hispanic or Latino 10,017,244 3.6%

Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander 398,835 0.1%

Native Hawaiian 140,652 —

Guamanian or Chamorro 58,240 —

Samoan 91,029 —

Other Pacific Islander2 108,914 —

Some other race 15,359,073 5.5%

Two or more races 6,826,228 2.4%

 

I admit that it's overkill. And I coldn't find any info on how European countries break down, although at a guess I'd say Great Britain has the largest group here in the US.

Edited by Ancalagon
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to the statistics:

 

1) 0,4% chinese? I thuogh it would be at least 20%.

 

2) 13% black? AFAIK, there are more black then white in total.

 

EDIT: OH! US STATS! I thought it was world-wide!

Edited by mikker
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Yeah, and I also thought there would be more than 300,000,000 people in the world! :blink:

 

Edit: You can get this and more info from the US Census Bureau if you want to (I didn't get my info from there, but my info did come from the census), although I don't know why you would want to in particular.

Edited by Ancalagon
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  • 7 months later...

Ok, FabGuy has done a first schema and I had corrected it. So LordT you should be modifing the XML database output to validate against this schema, I made it a little more strict to handle invalid cases that I found in the current data entered.

 

Greetings

Red Knight

namesdatabase.xsd

Edited by red knight
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Just another question. What about different Chinese romanization schemes? For example, Mainland China uses Pinyin and Taiwan uses Giles-Wade, so you'd have different spellings for the same names in the Roman alphabet. Also, you'll have the difference in pronounciation (and so spelling) between say Mandarin and Cantonese (if they're from Hong Kong). Are China and Taiwan counted as different countries in the Geoscape to make this matter? :)

 

I can simply put all possibilities under the same language entry in the database for now if you want.

Edited by Hymie the Control Robot
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Mikker it wouldnt harm, can you handle it? They have to be able to be used in a texture map, so a straight quad with the colors is what we need.

 

Greetings

Red Knight

Yes, ok. What size should it be? I guess some cuntries which flags have symbols in them (lik the USA stars, and China, etc.) would need a bigger resolution. But ill see what i can scrap off the internet.

 

edit: wait, isn't Holland and the Neatherlands the same? Then why is it in there twice? :D

 

edit2: and whats the diffrence between ukraine and ukraina? Arn't it just a mis-spelled word? Or is it another cuntry?

Edited by mikker
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just noticed that the database contains a language, "Portugese", which is simply a mispelling of "Portuguese" and doesn't contain any words, so it should be removed.

 

edit:

i also found the following entries that are wrong thus should be deleted:

Carla male forename Portugese

Cláudia male forename Portugese

Diana male forename Portugese

Marina male forename Portugese

Daniela male forename Portugese

Carla female forename Portugese

Cláudia female forename Portugese

Diana female forename Portugese

Marina female forename Portugese

Daniela female forename Portugese

i've already added fixed versions of them.

Edited by SupSuper
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On the subject of errors, in the Chinese language section, there's an entry with a blank name. Also there's an entry with male first name being "Liew Zhicao", which has an entire full name in one entry. (besides having incompatible romanization systems together) I think those two should be deleted.

 

Also, currently the name types are called "Forename" and "Lastname". Would it be better to have them say "Given Name" and "Family Name"? That way I think it can be less confusing.

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It seems to me that a common error people make when adding names is that they press enter after the last name in the name input field. This leaves a blank line which is added into the database as an empty entry. So there's quite a few blank entries in the name list that I can see. Is there a way to change the database UI to simply ignore that last blank line and not enter it as a blank entry?
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It seems to me that a common error people make when adding names is that they press enter after the last name in the name input field.  This leaves a blank line which is added into the database as an empty entry.  So there's quite a few blank entries in the name list that I can see.  Is there a way to change the database UI to simply ignore that last blank line and not enter it as a blank entry?

or just plain remove blank entries, since they're pointless :P

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Very common problem in original XCOM was, that generator often gave to men female russian surnames (ending on "-ova" or just "-a"). Just a thought. Same for slovak, czech, polish, serbian, bulgarian or any other slavonic names.
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Then good. I'm a slovak also, so if you would need a database of slovak or hungarian names, just say...
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ah ok, so about 5000 new combos are available now :D Edited by Caid
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