Random Station Names OXP (Development Thread)

[Cholmondely]

Congratulations!

Will you need another name for your naming OXP since it now does rather more than just name stations?

"Random non-ship names" for example.

Or, "The Namer".

[Cholmondely]

Hi,

Sothis is one of the OXPs I'm naming in Random Station names. In terms of keeping things Cannon I’ve handwaved the fact that the Gal Cop translator clearly cannot translate insectoid communications correctly. This is why Thargoid transmissions appear as meaningless English words such as “Eat Parking Meters” on your coms display. Insect languages use wing positions, movement and pheromones as well as sounds which cannot be translated into text. Your onboard translator therefore translates the names of friendly insect members of the Gal Cop Union of Worlds into the nearest Ancient Earthian Latin meaning. Latin is chosen as this is a common known language of all human colonials regardless of local dialect for reasons lost in pre-history.

What the code actually does is combine two Latin words from separate look up table. Each one is an English word translated into Latin (by Google Translate). It is very much dog Latin, but the names have a genuine Latin meaning (kind of) relation to Insects, Hives and other Insect related activities. For Example: Argenti Insecta (Silver Insect), Sophos Alvearium (Wise Hive), Pacificae Domum (Peaceful Home). This generates more than enough unique names to name each Sothis Station generated.

I have enough for 3,200 names and it doesn't matter that there are different versions of Sothis that add different amounts of stations as Random Station names runs a loop to name each station it finds with a different name. But to set it up, I'd need to know the maximum number of Sothis stations that can appear in a single system so I know when to stop my loop.

One thing I have noticed whist doing Random Station Names is that some of the older OXPs (including sothis) only add their stations on Launching or making a jump. This isn't a major issue, but if you are updating it, then it probably would be better to do the adding of the station under this.systemwillpopulate. It just means when you load a game, Sothis doesn't appear on the Almanc Screen as it doesn't exist yet. When you launch and redock then it does. As it is added on a jump this means if you jump to system where a Sothis is then it exists. But if you save your game and reload then it doesn't exist as it's only added when you jump back their.

Umm...

Since when is Sothis insectoid? or even Thargoid?

Is it something to do with the unexplained name Sothis?

And what is an Almanc/Almanac(?) screen?

[Cody]

Is it something to do with the unexplained name Sothis?

I think Sothis is ancient Greek - another name for Isis, perhaps.

[montana05]

Is it something to do with the unexplained name Sothis?

I think Sothis is ancient Greek - another name for Isis, perhaps.

Sothis is the Greek name of the Egyptian goddess Sopdet, who is the personification of the star Sirius.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopdet

[LittleBear]

I'd assumed it was populated by insectoids as the Buoy that appears next to the station is called:-

name = "Wasp Buoy";

So for the naming key I'd gone for insectiod type names as Insects are members of GalCop and the station is operating openly in the space lanes. I'd kinda assumed therefore that it was populated byfriendly insects.

Almanac is an old word for a Reference Book. On the F4 screen you can view the names and distances of all planets, moons, stars and stations in the local system and which worlds the stations orbit. On the F4 Screen is appears as:-

title: "Galactic Almanac: GAL-ID Register for the "+ system.name+" System.",
category: "Almanac",
summary: "Displays the names and distances from your current position of all natural celestial bodies, stars, planets, moons, space stations and orbitals in the "+ system.name+" System. Only stations and orbitals transmitting a GAL-ID identification beacon code will be displayed. All distances are shown in Torans. One Unit is the distance travelled in one second under Torus Dilation.",

[Cody]

Sothis is the Greek name of the Egyptian goddess Sopdet, who is the personification of the star Sirius.

Seeing as we're talking about KW's Isis Interstellar, I reckon some conflation was going on.

[Cholmondely]

1) I'd assumed it was populated by insectoids as the Buoy that appears next to the station is called:-
name = "Wasp Buoy";

2) On the F4 Screen it appears as:-
title: "Galactic Almanac: GAL-ID Register for the "+ system.name+" System.",
category: "Almanac",

Sothis is the Greek name of the Egyptian goddess Sopdet, who is the personification of the star Sirius.

3) Seeing as we're talking about KW's Isis Interstellar, I reckon some conflation was going on.

Thanking you gentlemen! Confusion dispelled. Lucidity now reigns supreme!

[spara]

name = "Wasp Buoy";

KillerWolf made Wasps OXP prior to Sothis OXP. The shipdata.plist of Sothis has traces of Wasps OXP in it, so it was probably used as a base. That said, it's a possibility that the naming of the buoy is simply a mistake.

[Cholmondely]

name = "Wasp Buoy";

KillerWolf made Wasps OXP prior to Sothis OXP. The shipdata.plist of Sothis has traces of Wasps OXP in it, so it was probably used as a base. That said, it's a possibility that the naming of the buoy is simply a mistake.

On the other hand, according to the most excellent galactic registry (not the esteemed Almanac), Riredi is the only insectoid corporate in Galaxy 1 (TL13). And, to my untutored eye, the Sothis bears a certain resemblance to the rather unique orbital station there (see http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Riredi_OXP).

Do we know where Isis Interstellar is based? Might Riredi be one of their bases in Galaxy 1? Or do they just recruit from there? I regret that I have been unable so far to unearth this all-important factoid.

One wonders if some of the designers possibly moved between the two design projects (for Coluber & for Isis Interstellar), thus bringing a certain mentality of design - or if perchance the similarity in designs is due to an internal microstructure of at least some of the insectoid supraesophageal ganglia leading to a certain psychological prediliction for spatial similarities in structural shapes?

And of course, lacking the appropriate translators for the insectoid languages, we are now naturally thrown into confusion when we try to work out what Sothis (SoThis?) might truly mean! To what extent might this be due to our woeful lack of comprehension of the psychological implications of the microstructures and nanostructures of the supraesophageal ganglia?


Appendix I:
Perusing http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Nuit_Space_Station_OXP leads ineluctibly to a confirmation of the Cody-Montana appellatory hypothesis. It also raises the possibility of Isis having commissioned Coluber to do the design work.

Appendix II:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supraesop ... tBrain.png

[spara]

Love it. So Sothis stations could be supremely run by an insectoid race and there most likely is a queen somewhere calling all the shots. Does that suggest Troomp is an insectoid queen? Now this is a twist. Galactic News Network should dig into this. Then again, as they so often say: "We just don't know".

[Cody]

Does that suggest Troomp is an insectoid queen?

A WASP?

[montana05]

Does that suggest Troomp is an insectoid queen?

More likely belonging to the order of Blattaria.

[LittleBear]

It’s a bit difficult really to show progress with Screen Shots, as the OXP is all words. But apart from playtesting and adding some looping code it is done. It’ll be a couple more months before I release it though as I need to do a bit more playtesting and add the code for the options screen and procedural generator screem. Done now is:-

• Detects the type of station and the nature of the system in terms of government and inhabitants.
• Names up to 80,000 planets and moons and up to 200,000 stations with unique and persistent names. There are only actually about 10,000 planets and moons and 12,000 stations in the current game, but the generator is future proofed because OXPs can spawn more stations than would normally be present. Some OXPs add stations in proportion to the number of planets (and another OXP could increase the number of planets. The OXP is also future proofed to name stations spawned by changes another OXP makes to the game. For example Con Stores only appear at Corporate States. If another OXP changed Lave to a Corporate State, the an extra Con Store would be added and the OXP would name it (up to a maximum of 10,000 extra stations per system).
• Automatically detects if another OXP has already assigned a name to a planet moon or station and if so does not rename the object.
• OXP support. If you don’t want Random Station Names to name your station or planet then you don’t need to do anything. If you do then you can either add a script key to add a name in a particular style or use the random generator to generate names for your station using templets you hand pick.

Couple of Screen Shots:-

A rodent Corporate State, best by deadly civil war.





A dictatorship of green insects

[LittleBear]

Settings Page and in game Random Generator now completed.

Other OXPs are supported either by the author adding a script key in the same way as Random Ship Names or other OXP writers can use the Random Station Names Generator to create custom names for their stations by chosing the Word Lists they want the Generator to combine. 256 names are saved in the latest log file and can be C&Ped into an array in your Script file.

Still to do before release:-

Bracket Off the Naming Code so it only runs when an Option is switch on.
Add Looping Code.
Add Looped Pages for the Almaanc Screens.
Roll of the names for the script keys.

Some Screen Shots:-

The Settings Menu:-







The Home Brew Names Generator Feature

[LittleBear]

Slighty stuck on how to tweak another OXP's code.

As I don't want to over-write anything, when the Name Stars Option is On, this just changes the Display Name on the ASC of the Star but doesn't over-write the actual name. When Distant Suns is installed I can over-write its namining on the F7 screen and slip in a check for whether Random Station names Names Stars option is On or Off. If Off then the F7 text shows the name assigned by Distant Suns. If On then it shows as the name Assigned by Random Station Names. I can do this with the same code as the Compressed F7 Screen:

Code: Select all

	if (worldScripts.Stars) {
		// we're overriding distant Sun's guiScreenChanged so it doesn't add text to the bottom part of the F7 screen
		worldScripts.Stars.$overrideGUI = worldScripts.Stars.guiScreenChanged;
		delete worldScripts.Stars.guiScreenChanged;
		// instead, we'll add a callback to do the update
		sd.addChangeCallback(this.name, "$stars_updateData");
	}

The Compressed F7 Screen does its check with:-

Code: Select all

this.$starInfo = function(sysID) {
	var info = System.infoForSystem(galaxyNumber, sysID);
	if (info.sun_gone_nova) return "";
	
	var name    = info.name;
	var sunName = info.sun_name;
	var colour  = info.sun_color;
	if (colour) var colourText = worldScripts.Stars.$spectroscope(colour);
	var text = "";

	if (colourText && sunName) text += "The planet " + name + " orbits the " + colourText + " " + sunName + ".";
	else if (colourText) text += "The planet " + name + " orbits a " + colourText + ".";
	else if (sunName) text += "The planet " + name + " orbits the star " + sunName + ".";
	
	return text;
}

My (limted) understanding was as this is a $ function I code over-ride it by C&Ping it in and then adding a check for if

(missionVariables.random_station_names_stars === "On") var sunName = ""+starpool[starGrid&2047];

to set the name to the Random Station one if enabled.

But just naming my tweaked function to this.$starInfo doesn't over-right it.

Is there a way to tweak this function from another OXP?