Walking Corpses keeping names

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TeaIntoxicated
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Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by TeaIntoxicated »

My proposal is for walking corpses created by killing enemy units with a weapon that has Plague special to keep names they had before dying.
It's a purely cosmetic change, but it would make undead feel to be "unit-stealing" faction to a greater extent.
Note that recruited Walking Corpses should still be nameless, due to being awakened en-masse by the leader or even his minions with no care about who they used to be due to lack of care or of origin clearness of the bodies.
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Straff
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Re: Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by Straff »

I like that idea.
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beetlenaut
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Re: Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by beetlenaut »

It's a good idea, but I would have the name change a little. If the unit was named Eronak, I would have the corpse named "Eronak's Corpse." (I did this in The Founding of Borstep, though not with plague exactly.)
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TeaIntoxicated
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Re: Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by TeaIntoxicated »

beetlenaut wrote: November 8th, 2020, 10:05 am It's a good idea, but I would have the name change a little. If the unit was named Eronak, I would have the corpse named "Eronak's Corpse." (I did this in The Founding of Borstep, though not with plague exactly.)
The problem with this solution is variety of languages - different conjugation and word for "corpse" - should the Eronak I killed and raised be named "Eronak's Corpse" or "Trup Eronaka"? What with multiplayer, where one name is seen the same by all players, where they might be from different nations with English to be found only in chat? What with games, where everyone is of the same nationality and they use native language instead of English?
If we implemented it plainly, we would avoid this issue.
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beetlenaut
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Re: Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by beetlenaut »

TeaIntoxicated wrote: November 8th, 2020, 1:01 pm should the Eronak I killed and raised be named "Eronak's Corpse" or "Trup Eronaka"?
Both of course. Unit names are already translated, and each player sees the correct name for their own language. The translators would just have another phrase to translate. This is a known, common issue, and it can be handled in the code just fine.
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TeaIntoxicated
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Re: Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by TeaIntoxicated »

beetlenaut wrote: November 8th, 2020, 11:46 pm Both of course. Unit names are already translated, and each player sees the correct name for their own language. The translators would just have another phrase to translate. This is a known, common issue, and it can be handled in the code just fine.
:shock:
Good to know.
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TeaIntoxicated
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Re: Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by TeaIntoxicated »

Though...
Conjugation is still going to cause problems when it comes to languages other than English.
For example, we, Poles, will conjugate the ones that end with "a", and it may be changed to "y" or "i", depending on the name, but we won't conjugate ones ending with things ending on other letters than "a" (typically foreign ones). And I guess other Slavic languages might be similar cases. Either Polish(or in general Slavic) programmers did a big job with code that processes our complex grammar correctly, or we might still have a problem.
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WhiteWolf
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Re: Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by WhiteWolf »

Languages that add stuff at the end of the name are not a problem, the indeed tricky to solve cases are languages that change phonetics at the end of the word depending on what they add at the end. (Hungarian example: name: Mária, but "with Mária" is "Máriával". I expect that there are languages that do this when attaching the 's in "Xy's corpse".
These languages could try to rephrase if possible (like in English, the 's can be avoided by saying "Corpse of Xy" instead"), maybe this is possible. If not, then a last resort: "Xy (corpse)". This gets rid of the genitive form altogether. And an even beyond that last resort could be just keeping the name for that very specific language - I don't think that it would be a game-breaking discrepancy either.
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lhybrideur
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Re: Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by lhybrideur »

Well, for example how would the Corpse of Arius automatically be named ? Arius's corpse ? Arius' corpse ?
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Re: Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by Helmet »

WhiteWolf wrote: November 9th, 2020, 8:14 am ...then a last resort: "Xy (corpse)". This gets rid of the genitive form altogether.
I like that idea: e.g., "Lisar (corpse)."

Or even the other way around: "Corpse (Lisar)."
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beetlenaut
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Re: Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by beetlenaut »

lhybrideur wrote: November 9th, 2020, 2:28 pm Well, for example how would the Corpse of Arius automatically be named ? Arius's corpse ? Arius' corpse ?
Arius's Corpse is the correct English. Using Arius' means that there is more than one Ariu, and the corpse belongs to both of them.
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TeaIntoxicated
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Re: Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by TeaIntoxicated »

I still don't really understand why to point out in the name that it's a corpse.
I mean, it's pretty obvious when the unit type is Walking Corpse or Soulless.
We may also add "undead" as adjective in front of the name, and in case of Polish at least the only change is going to be "nieumarły" for males and "nieumarła" for females. That seems to be simpler to code.
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lhybrideur
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Re: Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by lhybrideur »

Or maybe something like "The late Lisar" ?
Is this correct English ?
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TeaIntoxicated
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Re: Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by TeaIntoxicated »

lhybrideur wrote: November 10th, 2020, 2:46 pm Or maybe something like "The late Lisar" ?
Is this correct English ?
I'm not native speaker, so I'm not sure, but I can tell you that I wouldn't remotely understand it as you meant it if it wasn't in this thread.
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Re: Walking Corpses keeping names

Post by beetlenaut »

lhybrideur wrote: November 10th, 2020, 2:46 pm Or maybe something like "The late Lisar" ?
Is this correct English ?
Yes, that's correct. It's a respectful and gentle way to say that a person is dead, and is often used in a situation where the listener might not know about the death yet. That makes it a little humorous in this context.
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