[Released] Starport Town Names

[Overlord1191]

This .dat file needs to be put into your "Locomotion\ObjData" folder. You will then have the option in the scenario editor to use "Starport Style Names". Very cool with the Mars Tileset and the 21 Century Mod.

One step closer to the perfect Space Colony Train Simulator!!

[green2000chevy]

I am no expert on XML but I disassembled the townnam dats and saw identical values in the structure name and town name sections...

I do not know if this will solve the problem, but I noticed something in the XML...

You have <structure name="part[1]" size="4">
<variable name="num" size="1">88</variable>

and <structure name="part[2]" size="4">
<variable name="num" size="1">15</variable>

but your list only has 42 part[1] and 13 part[2] variables--I suspect the 88 should become 42 and the 15 should be changed to 13...

Another possible problem could be with the "indexof" part--there may need to be different numbers here for it to show up in the list of town name choices when running the game--I made a townname list but could not get it to show up there.

[Overlord1191]

I am no expert on XML but I disassembled the townnam dats and saw identical values in the structure name and town name sections...

I do not know if this will solve the problem, but I noticed something in the XML...

You have <structure name="part[1]" size="4">
<variable name="num" size="1">88</variable>

and <structure name="part[2]" size="4">
<variable name="num" size="1">15</variable>

but your list only has 42 part[1] and 13 part[2] variables--I suspect the 88 should become 42 and the 15 should be changed to 13...

Another possible problem could be with the "indexof" part--there may need to be different numbers here for it to show up in the list of town name choices when running the game--I made a townname list but could not get it to show up there.

That did it!!! Thanks green2000chevy YOU ROCK!

[green2000chevy]

Glad to be of help--I have always enjoyed proofreading...

Since this is a thread on creating new _townnam.dat files, maybe we could continue this with what we find on the _townnam.dat basic XML format.

(We should replace the "_" above with a character of our choosing, of course, when we create the dat file...)

This is not definitive but maybe it could be used to create a standard design...

From what I can see just [at first glance] looking at the files, I found they seem to be set up as:

1)--part[0] prefixes such as North, South, East, West, Fort, etc.
2)--part[1] front half of town name
3)--part[2] back half of town name
4)--part[3] suffixes such as Lake, Springs, Creek, etc.
5)--part[4] ?????

I am still curious about the "indexofs" values as well as what goes in part[4]--I suspect that one of the parts is for full town names rather than the prefix/suffix... Maybe leaving part[2] empty and using full town names in part[1] would work when we want to use real town names such as San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Des Moines, etc.

[Overlord1191]

I was starting to determine the same thing. We should make up some different types just to check. There is also some sort of switch in there that lets you pick on certain names the will not have a suffix or prefix accordingly.

For example the XML uses:

<string id="4" type="0"> City</string>
<string id="5" type="2"> Ridge</string>
<string id="6" type="4"> Springs</string>
and I'm guessing the type resticts later sections to only similar types. This would allow you have certain names that would not have a suffix. Just a guess, I will have to test the theory.

[green2000chevy]

these are links to five other postings regarding town names--perhaps we can glean more info from the authors of those postings as well...

http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=10999
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=10948
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=10840
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=10877

and

http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=10683

indicates that you are probably right about the only time a certain "word" is used can be based on whether it is near water, near/on a mountain, or such.

Guess now we experiment... lol

[Overlord1191]

these are links to five other postings regarding town names--perhaps we can glean more info from the authors of those postings as well...

http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=10999
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=10948
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=10840
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=10877

and

http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=10683

indicates that you are probably right about the only time a certain "word" is used can be based on whether it is near water, near/on a mountain, or such.

Guess now we experiment... lol

Very interesting. I'm digging deep into this. Expect good things soon.. For starters dig into the Version 2 Dutch City Names for some hints on coastline names and the such.

This really gets me excited to mod, God I'm such a geek.

[green2000chevy]

Somehow pulled a muscle in my back two days ago, so did not even get near the computer till now..

I am so fired up about this I must be a geek too...

re: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=11365

I want to make sure I have this right...

numempty="0" could mean 100% - 0%
numempty="20" could mean 100% - 20% = 80% of the time
numempty="30" could mean 100% - 30% = 70% of the time

etcetera...

Also, could the rarer names show up due to town size? If the population is over a certain amount, maybe a "city" would be named differently than a hamlet or village...

by the way, after extracting and looking at the xml to see what names you added, I see a possible typo...

CTOWNNAM.XML shows the following line for line 2:

<object class="0x87" subclass="0x118280" name="YTOWNNAM"><chunk compression="3">

[sadistiko]

Is there any chance to use latin-2 characters like we use in croatian language. I can't use right characters for my croatian towns

[Overlord1191]

I would certainly expect so! I don't have the characters because I don't have the fonts but I think Loco has about 6 or 7 languages in my version. Pop the text into an XML sheet and try it!

[sadistiko]

I tried, but locomotion font dont support latin2 characters. That's the problem.

[sadistiko]

What font is used by Locomotion? Is it some system font or it have some font in his data dir?

[Overlord1191]

I don't know you're in unexplored territory for me.