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Name for a RPG
Author
Greetings!
I have a simple rpg project going on (I've been working on it for over 3 months). I've got the "engine" part ready and now I should create a game. The first problem is that I can't think of a good name for my game! Sigh :)
How do you get ideas for names? My game is a traditional ultima/roguelike-stylish fantasy hack'n'slash. I was looking at some Celtic and Gallic deity names etc. but couldn't find anything interesting.
Umm well, since the name might have something to do with what the game's about, it might be helpful if you'd post that info if you know it yet. I mean, you can't just call it "Bob's Quest" if there's no one named Bob in it... :P Personally I think names are something you should worry about in a later stage, as evidenced by all these games with "working titles". It doesn't matter what you call it now if you're just gonna change it when it's done anyway, heh.
Create a world and the call the game Legend of WORLD, or create a hero and call your game HERO's Quest
You could use the approach of having a special artifact or somthing important to the game and name the game about that special thing,
Author
Well one problem is I can't think of a name for the world! I have a few villages and a city in the game/story at the moment but they're a bit too generic to be in the title.
My current working title is "rpg" (it was "simplerpg" before). I am looking for a decent project/engine name as I was thinking of open sourcing my game and hosting it on sourceforge.
Maybe I should just finish the story (fetch artifact, save the world, kill the bad guy etc. ;) I must say figuring out good names for people and places is hard. I thank the gods for random name generators! ;)
My current working title is "rpg" (it was "simplerpg" before). I am looking for a decent project/engine name as I was thinking of open sourcing my game and hosting it on sourceforge.
Maybe I should just finish the story (fetch artifact, save the world, kill the bad guy etc. ;) I must say figuring out good names for people and places is hard. I thank the gods for random name generators! ;)
Names can be tricky sometimes. I find that I have to give each character a particular name, and once I've found the right name, it couldn't have been anything else. I have a couple characters in my as-yet-unfinished novella named Dupri (his first name is a mystery) and Andrew Lord Byron. It wouldn't work if they were renamed Gormeaux and Fredriech von Bruseldt ;)
But for a fantasy world, I'd go with a language sketch and a word generator. You can whip one up in Perl in a couple of minutes; the language sketch should only take about an hour. Together, they can give you a whole lot of names very quickly, and if you do a little bit more than a sketch for the language, it'll keep a small portion of your players more interested.
Just choose a bunch of sounds you like from http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/ and decide how to represent them in ASCII; then feed those into the word generator, which should be something like this:
If you don't want to go through that much work, look at languages you like, pick one or two, and get a dictionary. Then just browse for cool-looking words. Go for the less-well-known languages, though, like Lakhotan, or Tongan, or Warlbiri. There's nothing that ruins immersion more than a poorly constructed world, and if you have a character named Gato Pantalones, it doesn't help.
But for a fantasy world, I'd go with a language sketch and a word generator. You can whip one up in Perl in a couple of minutes; the language sketch should only take about an hour. Together, they can give you a whole lot of names very quickly, and if you do a little bit more than a sketch for the language, it'll keep a small portion of your players more interested.
Just choose a bunch of sounds you like from http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/ and decide how to represent them in ASCII; then feed those into the word generator, which should be something like this:
my @vowels = ("a", "e", "i", "u", "o", "y")@plosives = ("p", "t", "k", "q", "b", "d", "g")@approximants = ("r", "l", "ll")@nasals = ("m", "n")@fricatives = ("v", "s", "z", "sh", "zh", "kh", "h")$index = rand @plosives$name .= @plosives[index]# And so on...you'll want conditional execution for all but the vowel; you'll want one# approximant position before the vowel and one after, and after the vowel you'll# want approximant, fricative or nasal (not both, in most languages), plosive, and# maybe fricative again. Then just print out $name.If you don't want to go through that much work, look at languages you like, pick one or two, and get a dictionary. Then just browse for cool-looking words. Go for the less-well-known languages, though, like Lakhotan, or Tongan, or Warlbiri. There's nothing that ruins immersion more than a poorly constructed world, and if you have a character named Gato Pantalones, it doesn't help.
Cat Pants? Is that what that means? [lol]
I used to use a much simpler version way back in the QBasic days. I had a list of single letters and syllables (ther, vi, lec, etc.) which were weighted depending on how often I wanted them to appear, and then picked randomly. After a semi-random amount of letters/syllables, it'd put in a space, although I did that part wrong because I ended up with some words going across the whole screen heh. I created a lot of my coolest names by running this thing, either picking smaller words, or a cool part out of a way too long word. You get a lot of gibberish that doesn't work (ptheailougtzik), but a surprising amount of it can produce nifty names.
I used to use a much simpler version way back in the QBasic days. I had a list of single letters and syllables (ther, vi, lec, etc.) which were weighted depending on how often I wanted them to appear, and then picked randomly. After a semi-random amount of letters/syllables, it'd put in a space, although I did that part wrong because I ended up with some words going across the whole screen heh. I created a lot of my coolest names by running this thing, either picking smaller words, or a cool part out of a way too long word. You get a lot of gibberish that doesn't work (ptheailougtzik), but a surprising amount of it can produce nifty names.
Sorry--couldn't resist the urge to proselytize for conlanging. You could raid the lexicon at http://gareis.free.fr/slex.html for names.</shameless plug>
Author
Quote: Original post by dhasenan
But for a fantasy world, I'd go with a language sketch and a word generator. You can whip one up in Perl in a couple of minutes; the language sketch should only take about an hour. Together, they can give you a whole lot of names very quickly, and if you do a little bit more than a sketch for the language, it'll keep a small portion of your players more interested.Snip.
Well, I had created a random word/name generator a while back similiar to yours I think. I guess I'll do a new better one, thanks for the "sound" tip!
Quote:
If you don't want to go through that much work, look at languages you like, pick one or two, and get a dictionary. Then just browse for cool-looking words. Go for the less-well-known languages, though, like Lakhotan, or Tongan, or Warlbiri. There's nothing that ruins immersion more than a poorly constructed world, and if you have a character named Gato Pantalones, it doesn't help.
Are there any dictionaries for those languages on the web? I found a tongan dictionary but nothing for the other two. Are they african languages?
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