[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Is the city names patch good?

[Takacs Gabor <tg330@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello!

On Tue, 11 Dec 2001, Jason Short wrote:
> Upon further thought, I have come to the conclusion that the natural
> city names sytem _is_ fatally flawed, and should be replaced (preferably
> by a better natural city name system, perhaps one like I describe above).
>
> The flaw is this: it discards the city order from the ruleset.  This
> will mean that it is impossible to convert the ruleset back to on
> ordered system.  (By "impossible", I mean it would be just as much work
> as building the ruleset from scratch.  It would still be possible to
> revert to a previous CVS version, but all additions to the ruleset would
> be lost.)

I agree.

Before Jason's mails I was thinking about a solution
for the city naming problem.
Then I read his mails and his great ideas.
The principal of my idea was similar to Jason's idea
(one ordered list of cities + attributes for each city)
but he was thinking further and his idea is more refined than mine.

So I copy his idea here and write why do I think his idea is
so good.

> Here is a more complicated system:
> cities = "Washington" (capital, river, coastal), "New York" (river,
> coastal), "Boston" (river, coastal), "Philadelphia" (river), "Los
> Angeles" (coastal), etc...
>
> Note I have made "capital" description.  It is also possible for more
> than one descriptions to apply.
>
> When you want to name a new city you go through all cities and give
> them a value - say exponentially decreasing based on how low they
> are in the list. Then you multiply that value by whatever terrain
> features match ...

I think the main advantages are:

- It's fully customizable.
  It makes possible to turn off the infuence of terrain, or to
  set a level of terrain influence.

  With the current city naming method it's impossible because
  the city list is not ordered.

- It's easier to avoid duplicated city names in the ruleset file.
  (When a city name exists in more than one city list)

- The unknown and unimportant city names won't dominate in the game
  (Like Riverside as American capital!)

I still say that the current natural city naming method is bad
but now I think Jason's solution would be the best for the problem.
What's the opinion of others?

Gabor