Plural Unit Names

from Elemental Forums

Currently the game automatically adds an "s" to the end of the unit name whenever you make a group larger than one. However, this doesn't work for a lot of names. I'd like to suggest making it so that the game checks to see if the last three letters of the unit name are "man". If so, have it change it to "men" instead of adding an "s". This will allow names like Spearman, Maceman, Swordsman, etc. and the game would then change them to Spearmen, Macemen, and Swordsmen. In addition, it would also work for Spearwoman, etc. becoming Spearwomen.

elemental
8,297 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

You know you can type that in, should you find it necessary! I end up renaming my troops anyway!

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

A far more solid solution would be if the unit XML would not just have one field for Display_Name but instead have
Display_Name  and  Display_Name_Plural.

During unit creation, the game would attach the matching one to the unit.  Simple.

Rules like in the first post can not work.  You're probably assuming that english will be the only language WOM is ever going to be available in...

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gazz_, reply 2
A far more solid solution would be if the unit XML would not just have one field for Display_Name but instead have
Display_Name  and  Display_Name_Plural.

During unit creation, the game would attach the matching one to the unit.  Simple.

Rules like in the first post can not work.  You're probably assuming that english will be the only language WOM is ever going to be available in...

 

No I was assuming that they would edit the rule to match the language. I agree your idea of two fields is better. I was just trying to work with what they already had in place.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gazz_, reply 2
A far more solid solution would be if the unit XML would not just have one field for Display_Name but instead have
Display_Name  and  Display_Name_Plural.

During unit creation, the game would attach the matching one to the unit.  Simple.

Rules like in the first post can not work.  You're probably assuming that english will be the only language WOM is ever going to be available in...

 

The problem with this plan is that the user names units they design, and entering singular and plural names is bad UI.  For a mostly-sufficient solution, you could check Ruby on Rails.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

It might be poor design for a web form, but it's the only completely accurate solution.

The alternative would involve hooking the game up to a dictionary with plurals in any of the number of languages that players would use to name their units -- and that wouldn't even cover player-invented names.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting zigzag, reply 5
It might be poor design for a web form, but it's the only completely accurate solution.

The alternative would involve hooking the game up to a dictionary with plurals in any of the number of languages that players would use to name their units -- and that wouldn't even cover player-invented names.

I agree with zigzag, but won't hold my breath to see a change like this. So far, the devs have seemed very focused on keeping the UI simple, to a fault.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Couldn't they use for example "a Spearman group" rather than "a group of Spearmans"?  I think using the name of the soldier, prefixing it with "a" (or "an" for names starting with a vowel) and putting "group" (or whatever the name is for that group size) at the end, would work for all cases, because it talks about the individual which makes up all the members of that group, and doesn't need to know any of the ways of making a plural.

What do you think of this as a possible solution?

Best regards,
Steven.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting StevenAus, reply 7
Couldn't they use for example "a Spearman group" rather than "a group of Spearmans"?  I think using the name of the soldier, prefixing it with "a" (or "an" for names starting with a vowel) and putting "group" (or whatever the name is for that group size) at the end, would work for all cases, because it talks about the individual which makes up all the members of that group, and doesn't need to know any of the ways of making a plural.

What do you think of this as a possible solution?

Best regards,
Steven.

 

I think this is an interesting idea. They could take the singular unit name and add the name of the number of soldiers. Thus "Spearman Party", "Spearman Squad", and "Spearman Company".

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

I would like to see the game keep the name singular and simply add "Party", "Squad", etc. after the name. This way all names would work and if we have multiple units of the same design but with different sizes we'll be able to tell them apart.

I guess this should be moved to the Elemental Ideas forum.