#123573 - tepples - Thu Mar 29, 2007 6:00 am
Many RPGs let the player name the main character. But what do they do if the player's chosen name conflicts with that of an important NPC?
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#123574 - Firon - Thu Mar 29, 2007 6:02 am
If the player name can even be as long as the NPC's, I've never seen it actually do anything.
#123579 - sgeos - Thu Mar 29, 2007 7:20 am
Some games prevent you from giving PCs the same name as other PCs. In general, if you choose a silly name, things are silly. Games should bug test for names like a single space, etc.
-Brendan
#123642 - Lick - Thu Mar 29, 2007 9:19 pm
You could go with the Animal Crossing approach, by renaming every character randomly. This way, the NPCs don't have a default name, and you can change them if the players name resembles it too much.
Another idea is to add a name-change option somewhere further in the game.
I don't think it matters THAT much anyway. The chance is small that this occurs, if you carefully choose fantasy names like in most RPGs (Vivi, Steiner). And if it occurs, the player will find it funny.
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#123672 - MrD - Fri Mar 30, 2007 2:38 am
| tepples wrote: |
| Many RPGs let the player name the main character. But what do they do if the player's chosen name conflicts with that of an important NPC? |
You end up with very strange conversations at Cosmo Canyon.
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#124606 - thegamefreak0134 - Sat Apr 07, 2007 6:23 am
Actually "Alex," a friend of mine, named his character "Alex" (quite appropriately) in Golden Sun, which proved ineffective when "Alex" turned out to be a character not too far into the game. This is a good example of a non-fantasy name I guess, although Golden Sun I think wanted to stress that the characters were normal people with extraordinary circumstances. The names were exactly the same, and the game couldn't have cared less.
-gamefreak
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#124611 - Ant6n - Sat Apr 07, 2007 7:14 am
how about every time an ingame character conflicts with the players name, just write "the other" in front of it. then instead of "alex went to kill bunny" it would "the other alex went to kill bunny"... maybe something like that.
#124617 - keldon - Sat Apr 07, 2007 8:46 am
Alex of Damascus; Alex, son of Marcus and Mary; Alex Witherfield!
#124628 - Edelnutte - Sat Apr 07, 2007 11:16 am
How about that: My Name is Martin and I now some people who have exactly the same name.
Why is it strange that a name exists more than once in a RPG WORLD
#124629 - Touchstone - Sat Apr 07, 2007 11:36 am
| Edelnutte wrote: |
How about that: My Name is Martin and I now some people who have exactly the same name.
Why is it strange that a name exists more than once in a RPG WORLD |
I've never seen a film or read a book where two characters have the exact same name unless it's for comedy value. It happens all the time in real life but never in a fictional world.
It does pose a problem if the name is mentioned somewhere and you don't know if it refer to you or the NPC.
Personally I wouldn't care if it happened, but if I had to prevent identical names then I would probably ask the script writer to come up with a primary and a secondary name for each character and in the event of a collision I'd pick the secondary name, and only let the player name his character and none if the characters joining his band, if that's an issue.
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#124655 - tepples - Sat Apr 07, 2007 5:08 pm
| Edelnutte wrote: |
| Why is it strange that a name exists more than once in a RPG WORLD |
Because most RPGs don't bother to include proper handling of surnames.
Final Fantasy VII's solution
Party members have an editable given name and a fixed surname (e.g. $(CLOUD) Strife, $(BARRET) Wallace, $(TIFA) Lockhart, $(AERIS) Gainsborough, $(CID) Highwind). But the surnames are not displayed where they would matter in the game. (Hence MrD's Cosmo Canyon issue.)
Animal Crossing Wild World's solution
in Animal Crossing Wild World save files appear to have a provision for a randomly chosen surname out of 65,536 for each new human character. (For example, my character is named Chester 0xF2D6.) But the conversation engine doesn't manage to display these in any human-readable form. Was this feature cut at the last minute?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#124680 - sgeos - Sat Apr 07, 2007 6:56 pm
| Touchstone wrote: |
| I would probably ask the script writer to come up with a primary and a secondary name for each character and in the event of a collision I'd pick the secondary name, and only let the player name his character and none if the characters joining his band, if that's an issue. |
Fantastic idea, but I think a NPC name collision test would be simpler. All you have to do is make a list of important NPC's names. "An NPC has this name, please choose another." You could even intentionally give an NPC the players name for comic effect; the information has to be stored somewhere.
-Brendan
#129225 - Karatorian - Sun May 20, 2007 7:12 pm
With just a little thought on the subject, I think I've managed to come up with a pretty nifty solution to this problem. You simply give the NPC who's had his name used by a PC the PC's default name. So if the default PC name is Jack, you have an NPC named Joe, and the player names thier PC Joe, then Joe gets the unused PC name of Jack instead. I'm not sure how easy this would be to program, but it could work.
There are some complications, but I think a solution could be worked out. The first hurdle is what to do if there are no default names. This one is pretty simple to handle, you simply assign each PC a hidden "default" that only gets used by NPCs that have thier name absconded.
A more complicated issue arises when one can name more than one character. What do you do if a player names his first character the name of an NPC and then gives a later character the name that NPC fell back on? The solution that appears at first glance is to give that NPC the default name of the second character. But, what if the second character joined the party later in the game and the NPC had already appeared? Should the NPC get a name change? Of course, at this point the character has either intentionally chosen the same name as an NPC or doesn't remember the NPC. If they don't remember the NPC, then perhaps it's not a big deal, but it's still rather irksome. I'm not entirely sure how to handle this.
Anothe issue with this solution would be that a name might end up being innapropriate for the NPC that ends up with it. For instance, it might be the wrong gender, or it might be a cute pet's name that ends up on the BBEG, which could wreak havock with the seriousness of the story.
One similar solution would be to make name categories and make a list of backup names for each. For instance, you could have lists for "male", "female", "pet", and "monster". Then each list could have as many names on it there are things the PC can name. That way, even if a player somehow manages to name all his characters, pets, etc. after names that are used by NPCs, there will be enough backup names availible. If they use one of the backup names, it doesn't matter, because that's one name that won't collide with an NPC, so even if the rest of the names collide, the remainder of the backup list will suffice.
However, while these are interesting theoretical solutions, I wonder if it's worth it. I haven't done much GBA coding, but it seems to me that any such solution might be rather cumbersome to impliment. All the NPC names would have to be stored in some sort of table and then checked for conflicts whenever a player names something. Then, if a conflict is found, a new name for the NPC has to be selected and stored somehow. Finally, during dialog, a system would be needed to check which name each NPC is actually using.
On the other tentacle, a system that allows for players to name thier PCs would already have some sort of escape code for displaying a name anyway, so perhaps that aspect wouldn't be that cumbersome. In fact, a well designed game would have a way to store dialog text seperate from the main code for ease of translation and other editing tasks, so perhaps it wouldn't be that difficult to integrate. I still wonder if it's worth the hassle though.
#130556 - sgeos - Tue Jun 05, 2007 8:29 am
I think the effort would be better put into another feature. Name conflicts do come up in real life.
-Brendan
#130560 - keldon - Tue Jun 05, 2007 8:52 am
| sgeos wrote: |
I think the effort would be better put into another feature. Name conflicts do come up in real life.
-Brendan |
But in real life we still find ways to differentiate between the possible reference.
#130561 - sgeos - Tue Jun 05, 2007 8:54 am
Give all NPCs last names? Not only could you tell who is related to who, it solves PC/NPC naming collisions.
-Brendan
#130564 - keldon - Tue Jun 05, 2007 9:08 am
Yes, I think that FF VII did that (although I don't think it mentioned them during play). I wonder how much confusion would be caused by having two people named Paul in a game!
#130566 - sgeos - Tue Jun 05, 2007 9:13 am
In Tactics Ogre there were two NPCs named Lancelot. That was intentional, and they did have different last names.
-Brendan
#130613 - tepples - Tue Jun 05, 2007 8:37 pm
| keldon wrote: |
| sgeos wrote: | | I think the effort would be better put into another feature. Name conflicts do come up in real life. |
But in real life we still find ways to differentiate between the possible reference. |
And a video game must be coded in advance to anticipate all clashes that are likely to materially interfere with enjoyment of the product.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#130619 - keldon - Tue Jun 05, 2007 8:57 pm
| tepples wrote: |
| And a video game must be coded in advance to anticipate all clashes that are likely to materially interfere with enjoyment of the product. |
Ohh yes good point. In the end it all boils down to enjoyment!
#141248 - RegalSin - Sun Sep 23, 2007 3:44 pm
Well to be honest it does not really matter you could name them head hurt and flower can for anyones sakes and nobody could care any less.
Like when ''Tales Of Syphony" was released on the GCN people was asking me did you name yourself RegalSin the fact there is a character in the game that has that same name and carries the weapons that I was using. diffrent people kept on asking the same question over and over for awhile.
In fact you could allow the characters name to collide on with the NPC action and then maybe that opens an entirely new action.
Like if I name a character "ASS" and then a character in the game says "My butt Stinks" and they you would make the NPC you name towards that remark "Shut it" but then when you name the same NPC "Flower" and somebody says "I love the smell of flower" and your character would reply
"you like my scent"
I don't know about now but to be honest the idea of limiting people to name there characters is wrong you should just let them name the characters whatever you want but that is your chioce.
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#145507 - HyperHacker - Fri Nov 16, 2007 10:40 pm
A simple solution comes to mind: highlight the player's name in colour or something to that effect when used. There, now the difference is obvious.
See also: A "Super Nerd" trainer in Pok?mon having the same name as me (V_____v) or the "Hyper Kabob" in Chrono Trigger, which had me wondering the first time when my character was named "Hyper"... >_>
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