The name generator

Current Game
1

I know it’s difficult for auto-evo to know what the key elements of its species are, but seriously, these names are completely unrecognisable. They’d be more readable if they were a numerical code for the organism.

I suggest making auto-evo exercise at least a basic understanding of the organisms it’s making, and creating names for them based on that. Genus names should be relatively consistent and diverge rarely; species names can recur, but within different genuses. Combining those means that the generator doesn’t need to be too big; if we have, say, 200 species, you’d only need perhaps 20-40 genuses, so your generator just needs to be able to generate 20-40 unique genus and species names and combine them to name everything.

For instance, if I look at an organism which is one hex of cytoplasm and one hex of rusticyanin, it could be called Primum ferrophagus or Ferrovorus micron. If additional species names are needed, name them after Thrive contributors or random references. (There’s species IRL named after the Wild Kratts and after Draco Malfoy.)

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2

While pretty important, due to how this isn’t really even a part of the gameplay I doubt that the name generator is getting updated anytime soon.

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3

I know you are exaggerating but that’s too far. It’s way more readable than having species 1, 341, 1221, 1222 and 1223 as the species in a patch.

This would mean that the species names would be the same each game (meaning the fossilisation and museum wouldn’t work as well). And the species names would be less unique and recognizable for the average player who isn’t excited about having names be based on characteristics of the species in Latin.

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4

its will be funny if some of the name that the generator can do its using the Patron members as part of the name generator

(I am self aware I know)

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The species names are already basically the same. They’re gibberish.

If you’re concerned about having the species names be the same each game, then throw more things into the name generator, or apply the proposed change to the generator only to genus names (and have genuses diverge when the auto-evo detects a significant change in the organism, like adding or removing a food source).

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6

Okay well that is a fine enough suggestion. I’ll just point out that someone needs to volunteer to program the change and get it to a good state so that it is better than before. We have a lot of major roadmap items still before we can call microbe stage complete, and on top of that we have over 700 open issues.

So yeah what @aah31415 said is true that the name generator is not getting updated anytime soon unless some programmer is really enthusiastic about it and goes ahead and starts making the changes.

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If I knew how to program it in I might actually try, but I have no idea what language Thrive’s in and don’t know anything in any language, really, so the only thing I could contribute would maybe be some nomenclature bits.

(

legitimately was not exaggerating there, a 3-digit species code would be easier to read and remember as i only have to remember 3 random digits instead of 24 random letters
maybe you could add a species code next to the species name for right now
)

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I guess that two of the letters would be the “genus letters” and the other letter would just be random and different from other such “species letters” letters in the genus? 3 digits seem a bit too few for an entire species naming system…

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I don’t think it’s an actual better method overall, but I do think it would legitimately be better than the current name generator. (I’ve come up with a partial list of components to improve it, but that needs more work and I don’t really have the time right now.)

Since genuses are diverged often and at random in the current version, the 3-digit code doesn’t include genus or species. These codes would be given to species in order of divergence.

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Would this system work across the “evolution stages” in the same way?

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No reason why it couldn’t. If you run out of digits, add more.

I think this is actually already in place in-game, actually, I see numbers attached to species in the cladogram.

I don’t propose this be implemented long-term, I’m just expressing dissatisfaction with the current state of the name generator. I’d post the bits of revision I’ve come up with, but they’re very incomplete.

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Perhaps at some point in the future we could have the lineage tree upgraded to include more things than just genuses and species (so adding the other tiers of life classifications).

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