Character Names

[OutlawIII]

I started working on editing the Character name file and I've come up with 2 suggestions for improvements.

 

1) Adding the ability to search by "ethnicity" of the names. For example, I'm going through and adding female versions of Russian surnames (Ex: Petrov becoming Petrova), but to do this I have to literally look through the entire list of surnames in the game. If I could search by the "Eurasian" category, this would simplify and streamline the process significantly. This extends to other edits, like separating the Portuguese-based names from the Spanish-based names for South America and Brazil.

 

2) Breaking down the "Caribbean" category a little further. As it stands, it lumps together countries with English-based, Spanish-based, French-based, and even Dutch-based naming traditions. Right now you're as likely to get a Jamaican or Aruban named Victor Diaz as you would a Cuban with that name.

 

Obviously this change is mostly cosmetic and probably not a pressing matter in the grand scheme of things, but as someone who regularly utilizes the "Populate Fighters" function, it would be appreciated to have the generated names correspond to the fighters' homes.

 

Just to help out on this second category, here are how the naming in the countries listed under the "Caribbean" label break down:

 

Spanish: Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico

French: Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique

English: Jamaica, Bahamas, Barbados, Virgin Islands, St. Kitts, Nevis, Cayman Islands, Anguilla, Antigua, Montserrat, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Tobago

Dutch: Aruba

French and Spanish: Trinidad

French and Dutch: St. Martin

 

French and English: Grenada

 

Feel free to use this information as you wish. Thank you for your time.

[Fezoman]

<p>Several people have proposed a feature for the Names to be searchable by ethnicity, including myself, but unfortunately it looks like it's not a viable option for some reason.</p><p> </p><p>

I must've spent about 100-200 hours (yes, that's several weeks!) building an entire Names database from scratch, so trust me I feel your pain. The above fix would have reduced that time by probably around three quarters, I would estimate. But at least my database is done now.</p><p> </p><p>

There are always going to be issues regarding fighters from certain regions having inappropriate names, (e.g. South East Asia, former USSR, Africa), but I don't see a solution to this without getting bogged down in minutiae. Maybe certain regions like the Caribbean should have been scrapped and the names taken from the original countries, but I guess it all adds up to excessive research for one small feature of the game.</p><p> </p><p>

My advice for anyone wanting to rebuild the names folder to make it more realistic is: Don't. It's seriously not worth it. Just take the names already there with a pinch of salt, and perhaps add or amend a few that really bother you. Don't do what I did; I'm an idiot and I almost drove myself insane.</p>

[KholDrum]

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.

[OutlawIII]

<p>Well if you look at it, a lot of areas are listed as options which could just be grouped under a single umbrella, like putting Mexican, Central American, South American, and some of those aforementioned Caribbean countries under a single listing of "Spanish." Have it so that a country like Canada just takes its names from the "Anglo" and "French" pools of names. </p><p> </p><p>

Obviously these are oversimplifications as I know there are American, Canadian, British, etc. people who have for example Indian or Chinese names, but as you said that's just getting into the minutiae. It would still be more accurate though and would make it more immersive.</p>

[weidt]

Being able to filter Names by the existing categories would be beneficial.

[weidt]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="OutlawIII" data-cite="OutlawIII" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="45078" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Well if you look at it, a lot of areas are listed as options which could just be grouped under a single umbrella, like putting Mexican, Central American, South American, and some of those aforementioned Caribbean countries under a single listing of "Spanish." Have it so that a country like Canada just takes its names from the "Anglo" and "French" pools of names. <p> </p><p> Obviously these are oversimplifications as I know there are American, Canadian, British, etc. people who have for example Indian or Chinese names, but as you said that's just getting into the minutiae. It would still be more accurate though and would make it more immersive.</p></div></blockquote><p> I agree having separate categories for Mexican, Central and South American is redundant as they typically have the same common names across countries. Brazil rightly being separate since it is Portuguese. Caribbean varies with Spanish, English and French dominance.</p><p> </p><p> The Asian and African categories make no sense given they comprise cultures with widely different languages and naming conventions. East Asia has Korean, Taiwanese and Vietnamese. Africa is lumped altogether (at least break it up by North, South, East and West) despite significant differences (Arabic names would be most popular in North for example). Some Middle Eastern and Eurasian nationalities could be split too.</p>

[MFP40]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="weidt" data-cite="weidt" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="45078" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Being able to filter Names by the existing categories would be beneficial.</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> I just noticed that this filter exists in TEW2016, so it should not (note: I'm not a programmer) be much work to include it in WMMA5. Right now, it's basically impossible to create and maintain a names mod without using Access.</p>

[scuz]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="MFP40" data-cite="MFP40" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="45078" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>I just noticed that this filter exists in TEW2016, so it should not (note: I'm not a programmer) be much work to include it in WMMA5. Right now, it's basically impossible to create and maintain a names mod without using Access.</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Yeah, I'd really appreciate this being added in a patch. I haven't played TEW2016 in a while, but I do remember this option being within the editor.</p>