It's prolly been suggested already but....

[Chris Johnson]

What we really need is some kind of "Change the name of this Town/ building " project. When the project is complete, that alters the name which evrtybody sees

I like that suggestion it makes a lot of sense and actually makes things easier from a support function as well (One name for a location is so much easier to trace issues than when everyone has a different name for every place)

As to how to stop new spawns , well length of time is one thing but how about it requiring a chisel and hammer (- to obliterate the old name and then carve the new name , IRL you'd use similar tools to carve in wood, stone, marble or even dried mud). Also it should be announced as an event that the project has been begun. "you see xxx changing the name of mud hut 1 to mud hut 2"

(I'd like to see a lotof projects made reversible anyway, so you can undo certain well-known acts of sabotage - and also silly mistakes- without asking the ProgD to intervene)

This is in the development queue

[julie2]

Thanks, Chris .

Actually I can foresee a bit of a problem where buildings (not Towns ) are concernened. You leave Town for a while, you come back to find that some usurper has taken over your building and alterered it's name.
Fair enough, stuff happens, but how do you know which building is yours? Buildings don't have a location as such. The name of the building is the only identifier. I guess this kind of problem can be circumvented by giving each building in each town an unique serial number which remains unalterable, unless you've gota better idea?

There's also the problem of renaming vehicles, which might be said to make it far to easy for thieves if they can alter a vehicle beyond recognition. But your idea of needing specialised tools for the task might come to the rescue there. A nice additional option (though probably too much to ask, in terms of sophistication) would be a project for engraving an indelible serial number on a vehicle, which would only be visible on close inspection

[Pie]

so you mean that (if this is implumentid)i can FINALY rename all of those new places one of my caracters found?

is it me.. or is everything i say i like never implumented?

[grayjaket]

so you mean that (if this is implumentid)i can FINALY rename all of those new places one of my caracters found?

is it me.. or is everything i say i like never implumented?

i dont think anything's ever been "implumented". "Implimented maybe. maybe.

[Sho]

Nor implimented. Implemented, yes.

[grayjaket]

oooh. ouch. imagohideinacornernow.

[T.L.H.E.]

Getting back to the original topic of mass amnesia (I'm late on the draw, I know) I was all for it at the time, but now that I've actually used the dynamic naming a bit (1 town, 2 towns, 3 towns from home, you get the idea) and given up maps with a few of my characters, I wouldn't be all that pleased for a good long while after it happened. In the end I'm sure it would be great of course, but the longer after the change that you put off the amnesia, the more confusion it will cause, et cetera... getting to the point... back when this was first being discussed, I believe someone suggested that there be no amnesia for already spawned characters, but all spawns henceforth won't start with any names for anything. This may seem like an unfair advantage to the older characters, which it is of course (maybe it will make Surly happy), but at this point I think it would be the least painful way to do it. So, given the condition that no old character forgets anything, I’m all for it. And I'll stop blithering now.

[Nick]

So, given the condition that no old character forgets anything, I’m all for it. And I'll stop blithering now.

That's totally unfair. Most characters only know the town they're in, maybe a few towns in their region, but certainly wouldn't know where they were if they were on a new island. It only makes sense, and just because you might have to rename a few towns does not mean you should be exempt from this change.

Stop being such wimps, guys!

[T.L.H.E.]

So, given the condition that no old character forgets anything, I’m all for it. And I'll stop blithering now.

That's totally unfair. Most characters only know the town they're in, maybe a few towns in their region, but certainly wouldn't know where they were if they were on a new island. It only makes sense, and just because you might have to rename a few towns does not mean you should be exempt from this change.

Stop being such wimps, guys!

Maybe most of YOUR characters only know one town, but I have some well traveled ones. And if what you say IS true, I don't see why characters should start traveling just because they know the names of everything and a newspawn doesn't... so it wouldn't be any huge advantage to characters who wouldn't reasonably know the names of several towns anyway. To make these characters who've walked across entire islands suddenly not know more than your average newspawn is just insane. Skills were one thing, "Okay, I broke my arm, I can no longer hunt to save my own life, even though I was the head hunter here for 20 years..." but actually altering the minds of the character is another entirely. Not to mention, there was no clean way to impliment skills. There is a way that wouldn't cause too much uproar in the case of name amnesia.

Anyway, this didn't go through the first time, so what makes you think things will be any different now? Both sides must be prepared for compromise.

[melbi]

Could someone supply a link to any previous thread where this was discussed?

I can't imagine why anyone would think that either amnesia or dynamic town-naming would be a good thing.

There must be something of the Cantr mindset that I'm missing... maybe I'm too goal oriented, or too much of a planner? When I hear this sort of idea, I think, hell, why not reconnect the roads in different ways? Why not randomly transfer resources between players? Why not take all the numbers away from keys?

I mean, what are you aiming at?

I'm not trying to be funny or ironic or sarcastic here. I'm trying to understand, because it's clear that I haven't grokked what Cantr is, or what Cantr is aiming to be.

[Nick]

When dynamic naming for people was introduced, even those characters that yours knew for 20 years... you forgot them. But hey, you remember the people, so you rewrite their names down.

Same would go for new towns. So you'd have to rename a few towns, does not cause too much chaos. But no character has visited nearly enough towns to constitute allowing them to remember all of them. You will not visit enough towns to make it really that difficult to click "rename" as many towns as you've visited.

And why should Burgeoalip (spelling is wrong, don't bother pointing it out) be called that? Because Jos (or some New Lands Dept member) chose it so? No. Hell, I know of at least two towns that the people call differently than the game defined default for the town name.

I don't like it when people come to my character's town of Adfia and call it Miron Hills (east). If all towns were reverted to "a town" or whatever, then you would have to ASK upon arrival to new towns! It only makes sense.

And you have not really provided a point where you prove the minor inconvenience of having to rename a few towns really warrants letting your character retain knowledge of EVERY town in Cantr. Implementing the change in your fashion would make exploring for a new character and an old character SO different that it would really be varying from the policy of the game mechanics not providing too much of an advantage for some characters over others. New characters would be handicapped. Why should yours be exempt? If everyone forgot, it wouldn't be handicapping. It would just be change.

[melbi]

Thanks -- now I see it.

I'm curious to see how it would all work out. A general amnesia would be necessary, and even fun.

[julie2]

But Dynamic Naming was never a good solution to that problem, and adding mass amnesia to the package still won't make it a good solution.

Nick, what exactly is wrong with having a "rename this Town" project instead? Then everbody will know they're in Adfia without you having to constantly tell them so. ( Didn't that used to be Miron Hills West , btw? Not Miron Hills East? One of my chars comes from MHE, and she hasnt heard about the name-change yet , but she did hear that MHW had got a new name., and the one you quoted sounds familiar)

You think that's unrealistic? Dynamic naming was realistic for people, but not for buildings and towns. The reason? People don't go round with name tags attached to them (unless they work behind a counter) Building and towns do have readable name-tags. (When was the last time you had to ask the locals which City yiou were in? Or which of those buildings was meant to be the drugstore?) The only unrealistic thing about the old system was the programmers not only put in the all the signposts for us (thus saving our characters the effort ) they also choose the name which goes on those signs where towns are concerned, and we don't ever get the chance to change them. A "renaming" project can fix all that, save only te bizzarre (and slightly annoying ) phenomenon that undiscovered locations already have names. That last phenomenon would probably cause a lot more more trouble than it's worth to fix. The character doesn't need to know where he is, granted, but the player sometimes does, if he needs to report some issue to Cantr's staff. So all towns do need to be given an unique identifier for that reason alone, and some curious name chosen by Jos is as good asany, I should say. That could maybe be replaced with sonmething like a grid reference for realism's sake (but that would be less memorable, and more vulnerable to typos)

[kinvoya]

Going to a new island and somehow magically knowing the names of all the empty towns is particularly annoying and, for me, takes away a lot from the neat experience of discovery.

On the other hand if you have a bug that needs to be fixed you can say, "My char just undocked from "Animalville" and then they know how to find your char and help you. I guess if you dynamically name the town they could still find your char but I'm not sure.

EDIT: Julie, the landmarks can accomplish the "rename this town" objective.

[julie2]

Julie, the landmarks can accomplish the "rename this town" objective.

No they can't.


A) You can build any number of landmarks. They can't be alterered or destroyed, and they're used for all kinds of other purposes. How do you tell, from lookingat a bunch of landmarksif the town is called "AnimalVille".
"Sucks to the Emperor" or "RIP Kathy Jones" ? (OK, my examples make it slightly obvious, but you get the picture?)

B) they don't actually alter the name you see on the various "signposts"
(including directions from the next town . If these cease to be programmed -in , then there has to be some way of creating them in-game, instead. It might be unrealistic to find an unexplored continent neatly signposted, but that isn't so bad as no possibility of signpostsat all, not even in highly-developed regions)

C) Even if they worked, that would only solve half the problem. You can't stick a landmark on a building.