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What names my ships, planets and leaders have doesn't influence gameplay at all so I don't get why it's included in the checksum. I don't want to have to ask my friends to install a namelist mod just so I can play my favourite civilisation, it's an unnecessary hassle!
Edit: I also would like to be able to get achievements with a namelist active.
I am very interested to know why name lists are taken into account in the checksum and not even localized (except in simplified Chinese), indeed!
Heck, even random names (stars, event encounters, war/rebellion/faction names, empire names, etc) are taken into account and not localized...
I mean, except if I missed anything, that's a sizeable part of the UI that is deliberately not properly localized.
there are some, however, that are achievement compatible
try searching around on the workshop to find achievement compatible mods; now I can't guarantee you'll find a name list that is close to what you are using that will fit the bill, but even then your friends might still need to download the mod
I am very interested to know why name lists are taken into account in the checksum and not even localized (except in simplified Chinese), indeed!
Heck, even random names (stars, event encounters, war/rebellion/faction names, empire names, etc) are taken into account and not localized...
I mean, except if I missed anything, that's a sizeable part of the UI that is deliberately not properly localized.
Probably because name lists determine the actual names of objects in game. So if an event calls for a colony or leader, it's using their name as the flag. Since Stellaris MP is basically everyone simulating the same game at the same time, a difference in names wouldn't work.
I think this is something that would require a whole ton of code work to make run properly, so I don't see this happening.
If you really care about names, you can either 1) deal with no achievements and run a mod or 2) just rename all your leaders/ships/planets yourself.
Probably because name lists determine the actual names of objects in game. So if an event calls for a colony or leader, it's using their name as the flag. Since Stellaris MP is basically everyone simulating the same game at the same time, a difference in names wouldn't work.
I think this is something that would require a whole ton of code work to make run properly, so I don't see this happening.
If you really care about names, you can either 1) deal with no achievements and run a mod or 2) just rename all your leaders/ships/planets yourself.
Why can we change names of provinces and leaders in other games like EU4 and CK3?
Could the game not have a system in which is has a default name and allows a 'special name' to write over it when selecting a new name list or modded one?
Yes, that could be, and I can only see this explanation. Actually, there are name lists (ships, fleets, armies, colonies, leaders) in simplified Chinese, and I remember people complaining about their game displaying such names in Chinese characters, in MP.
I think this is something that would require a whole ton of code work to make run properly, so I don't see this happening.
I don't know. I believe that most of these names are accessed through scoped "loc retrievers" (e.g. This.GetName) anyways, and if some event names do have an internal name, they are in this case localized in the /Stellaris/localisation_synced/ folder, I'f I'm not wrong. A folder that is neither localized, by the way, or only in English (internal name is associated to an English string), but that can easily be by modders because it supports language flags (to be added in the text file, so that the game picks it instead of the default, English file).
Of course I care! The game looks so unpolished without them, and this is actually the only real grief I have with it (allow me to speak about a poor design decision, in case the game was deemed to be localized from the start).
I actually have not only localized (translated) all the name lists (ships, fleets, armies, colonies, leaders) in the game, but also all the random name lists (empires/federations/wars/factions/stars/nebulae names, first contact names (e.g. Alpha Menace)). Alas, if name lists function perfectly, because they accept a language flag (thanks to the Chinese audience ?!), random names lists are dependent on the file replacement mechanics (I've used only renamed files so far, to not overwrite vanilla files). Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't (especially with first contact names that take elements from both English and modded files...). The issue with these random lists (e.g. empire names) is that they depend on the peculiar syntax of the language to form full names (e.g. Stellar Union of the Vloors). They are not only just name lists, they hold string elements that are weighted to be randomly chosen, then concatenated together. German modders paved the road (Heil!), and I could follow their example. Like they did, I had to split all the random lists into sublists (based on gender, then number, then initial letter) to obtain correct full names.
'There's is one last problem for all of us, though, it's that the game hardly considers grammatical gender and number in localized text (it does for biological gender, thankfully!), because it's a no-issue in English (e.g. "the States", "the Empire", "the ..."). To solve the issue, I think we need to associate a coded loc key to each empire core name (e.g. Nation, States, Assembly, Council, ...yes, in French, all these names would require a separate coded loc key, a bit less in German) so that we can use a loc retriever later in localized texts (just like we can retrieve a leader's gender). I couldn't so far, perhaps because I couldn't find the proper scope (country?), or the empire is not even created yet when it's name is being processed. I can also try with the new variable system introduced lately, but this will work only if a scope is defined, and it's perhaps less efficient in terms of optimization (?).
When I'm done, I'll propose my name lists (and why not, my random name lists) to the devs, and we'll see (again, Chinese players can play in Chinese unmodded, if they want, except for random names).
Probably because name lists determine the actual names of objects in game. So if an event calls for a colony or leader, it's using their name as the flag. Since Stellaris MP is basically everyone simulating the same game at the same time, a difference in names wouldn't work.
I think this is something that would require a whole ton of code work to make run properly, so I don't see this happening.
For planets it doesn't work like this. When you found a colony and choose a random name from your namelist the game puts it in the input field. You can edit it (or type something else entirely) before confirming it. Having different namelists for planets would definitely work in a multiplayer game.
For ships and leaders, you are assuming that the names are randomly picked from the same namelist by each player's system at the same time (which would require each player to not only have the same namelist but also the same random number generator with the same seed and which is always called the exact same number of times, which sounds very unlikely). I suspect that the names are picked randomly by the system of the relevant player and then sent to other players. If this is not the case, it should not be that hard to implement. The game can even just pretend that I'm 'renaming' all my ships and leaders when really they are being generated from the namelist.
