Celestial Body Names

Here we can discuss how randomly generated stars, galaxies and planets’ names would generate. For example, will they be an assortment of letters and numbers? They could also be named using a data bank of random names of real stars. I personally don’t wan’t the names to be made up of random sequences of letters and numbers like Spore’s black holes, because it makes it hard to identify and differentiate them.

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Well, I think it will be like the names of species, right? Species names are generated, correct me if I’m wrong. But the difference is that Celestial Body names can have letters, numbers, some common words that come before or after the name (like “Prime”), I think. These words can be in a data bank and the letters and numbers randomly.
Ex.: Magrathea IV

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Not all stars or planets will have living species though, so how would we go about naming those?

What do you mean? If the player can put names in the species or the planets? Of course, right! How I didn’t think of that before? I was very Spory now. Sorry for the failure. :sweat_smile:
But in my opinion, when the player meets a new planet, species, star, or something, he could put an aleatory name like in Spore, or choose a name the player can put.
Summing up: A dice or yourself

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I’ll try to make a program to explain my idea.

EDIT: Nevermind, I wasted two hours for this. Two hours I could’ve used for my homework.
Star name: [Greek letter]-[Constellation name]-[(optional) number]

Planet name: [Star name][small Latin letter]
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Could the stars and planets also have an “own” name? Not just letter, the constellation/system it is and a number? similar to the species generator name? Im not asking you to do so, just an idea :sweat_smile:

Personally I hope that Stars (and other celestial bodies, of course) won’t have a name until the player names them. I think it will feel more realistic.

And that’s how I imagine naming will work lol: (You are free to discuss my amazing art skills)

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First of all, absolutely AMAZING artwork.
Second, I think it would get tedious naming everything you come across.

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That’s a fair point.

I guess you can have option (something like “Name everything automatically”) in the settings, that way everyone would be satisfied (except the poor devs who will have more work XD).

I would expect a more scientific and methodical approach to be used.

so i tried what you wanted to do with this, but for what i understood i got this

I don't know how to put code in here without it looking bad so i made it live inside this

import random

listlet = [“a”,“b”,“c,”,“d”,“e”,“f”,“g”,“h”,“i”,“j”,“k”,“l”,“m”,“n”,“o”,“p”,“q”,“r”,“s”,“t”,“u”,“v”,“w”,“x”,“y”,“z”]
letter = random.choice(listlet)

liststar = [“Poker”, “Nova”, “Eris”, “Rover”, “Proton”, “Granat”, “Barn”, “Gemini”, “Scorpio”, “Reference”, “Creepy”, “Revolugam”, “Placeholder”, “Noideas”, “Thriva”]
star = random.choice(liststar)

print(star, letter)

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Actually, the star name is put like this: [Small Greek Letter] [Constellation name (genitive form)]

Oh, haha, i read it like that was the star, not the planet


Ok now it names the stars (I used existing constellations because i won't make new ones, at least not now)

import random

listlet = [“a”,“b”,“c,”,“d”,“e”,“f”,“g”,“h”,“i”,“j”,“k”,“l”,“m”,“n”,“o”,“p”,“q”,“r”,“s”,“t”,“u”,“v”,“w”,“x”,“y”,“z”]
letter = random.choice(listlet)

listglet = [“α”, “β”, “γ”, “δ”, “ε”, “ζ”, “η”, “θ”, “ι”, “κ”, “λ”, “μ”, “ν”, “ξ”, “ο”, “π”, “ρ”, “σ”, “τ”, “υ”, “φ”, “χ”, “ψ”, “ω”]
listconst = [“Orion”, “Scorpius”, “Lyra”, “Cygnus”, “Capricornus”, “Boötes”, “Leo”, “Aquila”, “Gemini”, “Cassiopeia”, “Draco”, “Ophiuchus”, “Auriga”, “Centaurus”, “Aquarius”, “Sagittarius”, “Virgo”, “Aries”, “Delphinus”, “Crux”, “Triangulum”, “Serpens”, “Eridanus”, “Pisces”, “Sagitta”, “Equuleus”, “Scutum”, “Corvus”, “Camelopardalis”, “Puppis”, “Cetus”, “Lupus”, “Pictor”, “Sextans”, “Lepus”, “Monoceros”, “Vulpecula”, “Ara”, “Antlia”, “Vela”, “Perseus”]
listnum = ["-1 ", "-2 ", "-3 ", "-4 ", "-5 ", "-6 ", "-7 ", "-8 ", "-9 ", " "]
star = random.choice(listglet) + “-” + random.choice(listconst) + random.choice(listnum)

print(star + letter)

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You know I personally like the idea of players being able to give celestial bodies some personalized nicknames. It would give them a means of personalizing their own little slice of space and, or organization for better navigation.
It would certainly be a nice little feature on top of randomly generated names.

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Here’s a thought: Maybe the player could identify and name constellations, and then star names could be generated from them in the scientific fashion. A few stars could be given special names as well, like “Sirius” or “Aldebaran”.

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Sorry for necro, but would the culture/beliefs of the species affect the random names? Would a highly spiritual species name a celestial body compared to a scientific one?

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Maybe, i didn’t understand you right, but even ancient greeks named stats and constellations. Even our galaxy was named by them. So, i think, creatures with any speech can name stars (if they can see, of course)

I think Scyobi meant that different cultures would name the stars in a different way

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What about dont name anything at all? Just colour code them to show what they represent and then have the player name them once sentient?

Hmmm, wouldn’t that make thrive the first naming simulator? Imagine in the space stage needing to come up with like 200 names for solar systems and then naming all the planets in them.

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