Custom Naming

[autumn oracle]

After seeing the streaming feature that allows viewers to have a chance to show up in your city, it makes me really want a custom naming feature so that I can include custom last and first names from my own culture or even just shitpost names for shit and giggles. please, I'll buy a second copy if I have to

[opal lance]

absolutely. do something like ravenfield where there's just a text file with names it draws from

[jade glacier]

I'd love to just change names manually. So any reference to the name becomes the name I change. Not sure how hard this would be to implement though.

[gritty radish]

Oh that's cool

[finite ore]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isint there already and excel sheet the game uses in the install folder?

[opal lance]

for ravenfield? or sod?

[finite ore]

Sod, I saw excel files for citizen descriptions like tall, muscular, etc. Didn’t look through every one but it looked like that what how the game handled it

[opal lance]

oh gotcha. we're talking about a simple file that contains a list of names that the game will draw from like a hat pull. i'd be interested to see that file tho, do you remember what it's called?

[finite ore]

Not off the top of my head sadly, at work. Poke around in there, the file directory isint that vast

[opal lance]

i'm looking right now

i found them

this is sick
for anyone wondering it's in [whatever drive you have it on]:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Shadows of Doubt\Shadows of Doubt_Data\StreamingAssets\Strings\English

[finite ore]

Glad you found them

I think there was one for building names too. I wanted to edit it to remove or change buildings/characters with accents as the game didn’t seem to interchange them for standard layout letters on the case form

[opal lance]

yup there's names for everything in here

tob titles, building suffixes for all establishment types

[finite ore]

The dev either gave us this gift, or mistakenly unleashed a wave of future memes

[opal lance]

either way
someone's name is gonna be a dick joke

[finite ore]

Shame it draws randomly for first and last names

[opal lance]

you can even change the random stuff citizens say

1930s slang overhaul might be a solid project

[finite ore]

“There’s the killer! John Casablanca!”

Gonna add a bullet to the knee line when Im off work

[opal lance]

i just found something interesting in here

leftovers from some kind of editor

[alpine nebula]

i need this so bad you have no idea

[finite ore]

Wonder if we can edit the prefabs

[opal lance]

that's something for the fellas at https://discord.com/channels/561162895887695883/1101060341745594418 to worry about

i also found "give all syncdisks" in the ui.interface.csv file implying there's a debug mode that cole must have used for testing somewhere
that or it's some obscure ui element somewhere i've never seen

[gritty radish]

very interested in seeing if these names are just

if you can just slide some in there

[opal lance]

that's a good point

i have no clue

[opal lance]

"add money" and "take money"

[gritty radish]

stuff like the evidence feels like it's tied to a script of some kind

[opal lance]

HOLY SHIT FREE CAMERA MODE

[gritty radish]

👀 how so

[opal lance]

i just see a line in here that says free camera mode

missions.postings.csv is a treasure trove

i see investigations into cheating spouses, missing persons, corporate sabotage, handcuffing and leaving somewhere private, waiting for meetings to take place

[finite ore]

Look at the roadmap, the next major update is called “cheats and liars”. I’m bettings it’s related to that.

[opal lance]

oh absolutely

we also have a name of the series, not sure if we knew it already but whatever. it's "claws of the fathoms"

there's a whole folder for it and it's only on "scene one" so maybe we'll get more with the updates

[finite ore]

A goal of mine is to at least mod in some scenes from Who Framed Roger Rabbit if the modding folks figure out how to get to the sound files

[opal lance]

well we know where the images are at least

maybe if we replace those we can change the ones on the tv

i'll have to test that

[opal lance]

i can confirm that making changes to the files makes changes to the game itself

[finite ore]

You got a diner called ASS ASS and ASS didn’t you

[opal lance]

..maybe

[opal lance]

yeah it works

[finite ore]

Glorious

[opal lance]

but yeah all the businesses are separated by either generic or themed words and then consistently themed suffixes

like the asian food places are consistently drawing both words from their own specific asian food place pools while grey industries or bartender balls are drawing from generic names

[finite ore]

Interesting

[opal lance]

i found a big list of parameters somewhere i need to find it again
we could theoretically have the game literally point us to the perp by putting the perms name in the objectives

[autumn oracle]

What the fuck did I open this thread to, this is amazing lads

These are gold, I wonder if the game really pulls from these

Imma test a few things, see if I can find anything

[opal lance]

it 100% pulls from them

you can change the name of just about anything in the game

to recap our findings:
there was/is a debug mode AND building editor in the files
all the procedurally generated names, things characters say, and ui text can be customized
there will be cheating spouse jobs in a future update

[drifting bloom]

Is it really an excel file? I'm surprised it's not a .csv or something formatted in JSON

[opal lance]

no it's a .csv it just launches in excel and i know nothing about anything

[drifting bloom]

Had my eyebrow raising there for a minute lol

[autumn oracle]

Dont quite understand how this works yet, but I deleted everything but japanese, gonna see if only japanese names gets generated now

Alright, I tested it, only works on new generation (duh, should have checked that) but it might have left 80% of the citizens no name due to not having any name to give them lol

the city directory is fucked lol, this is all of it

[drifting bloom]

Right, since every citizen must have a unique name? That could also be something interesting to do. I want 25 Sharons in my game and at least 3 Dan Smith's

[autumn oracle]

this guys name is:

[autumn oracle]

Unfortunately its percentage based Im guessing

[drifting bloom]

Are there weights included with the names?

[autumn oracle]

they might be equally distributed to all

[drifting bloom]

Well what I'm saying is that NPCs might have unique names, so if you have 270 NPCs but only 30 names, 240 of them have no name to take

[autumn oracle]

Being able to check that would be nice

Well, replacing the entry works as expected since they do pull from the csv

[opal lance]

you fellas are really doing the legwork

thank you

[gritty radish]

oh heck yeah

[gritty radish]

my name is: none
please do not perceive me

[soft gulch]

The name lists do have a section called "Frequency". In North American surnames: Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, all have Frequency set to 10. I assume that that's the most common, since those are all extremely common names. (or at the very least, stereotypically common names) Other names have values ranging from 1-10 as well.

If I had to guess, I'd say that removing the non-Japanese name lists means that, whenever the game decides an NPC is anything other than Japanese, it can't get a name for them and gives them a blank one instead of crashing or looping. That's just an educated guess though, so don't put too much weight into it. :)

Semi-related, there's also "Alternate Text" used for nicknames. I've seen it in the Address Books before. To pick one out of the file at random, an NPC named Brooklyn might be written as Brook.

[vital void]

That's the remains of this tool. https://colepowered.com/shadows-of-doubt-devblog-13-creating-procedural-interiors/

[opal lance]

that makes perfect sense

[autumn oracle]

I first assumed the frequency means that the number is linked to some sort of percentage maybe, but after turning some names to 100, it doesnt seem to affect anything, not even that names literal frequency in the game, so yeah, so far, only replacing existing entries seems to yield any result

[autumn oracle]

Okay, thats cool, the sign also pulls from the csv

[soft gulch]

I think it's a weight, meaning it's relative to the other values in the file. 10 is the highest I've seen normally. I'll mess around with it a bit myself as well.

[granite moon]

@autumn oracle Any idea if the shop name generators just mash a couple words together or if they're all complete names?

[soft gulch]

They're made of parts. There are a bunch of different lists that it pulls words from, depending on what the shop is.

There's some logic to it as well to make sure the name makes some sense.

Let me find an example

Okay, taking the "greasy spoon" names, which I assume is diners, as an example:

[frail geode]

For what it's worth, all words in the game come from those CSV and json files, they define everything

[soft gulch]

A few names in names.greasy.csv are "Greasy", "Foodbowl", and "Chomp". "Foodbowl" doesn't require a suffix, so it can be the last word in a diner's name. "Greasy" and "Chomp" do; they have to have something after them.

I'm pretty sure that's how it works anyway

[autumn oracle]

They works under a complicated randomizing system with suffix and adjectives and nouns

For like a burger joint for example, the place is called "Express", prob stored under diner.csv or fastfood.csv and it takes the "Porcupine" from names.animal.csv as well as the adjectives of "Grizzly" under prob names.adjective.csv or any other kind of suffix .csv file

I tried to replace a generic chicken fastfood brand with something else I like yeah, and still it doesnt quite gets generated smoothly, it still picks like a random adjective or suffix to go before it, Im guessing to add to the procedural-ly generated nature so there will never be two store of the same name

Some of them are acceptable

[soft gulch]

Express is a suffix for Fast food. Grizzly is "requires suffix". So Grizzly Porcupine Express is names.greasy.csv names.animals.csv names.company.suffix.fastfood.csv

[autumn oracle]

I do see Express being listed under fastfood names though, but youre prob right, I replaced Express already anyway

[soft gulch]

Yeah, it's in fast food

Since it's a suffix, that's why it's at the end :)

If you want to give them a list of full names to pull from, rather than generating one from multiple lists, I've thought of something that might work. Since the game seems to handle it well when a name list is missing, you could probably just delete certain name lists.

Just back them up first, of course, in case it goes wrong

But in this case, if names.animals.csv were to go missing, it seems like the game would just stop inserting animal names.

[opal lance]

diners have a totally different list. I don't think greasy spoons are implemented yet

[soft gulch]

Huh, I'm sure I've seen most of those names on Diners.

I guess maybe they share?

Oh yeah, I missed the diner list entirely 😄

[opal lance]

could be. I just know I edited the names in diner and got results

lmfaoo

[autumn oracle]

I actually tried this and the game couldnt generate upon deletion of too many files

I deleted animals, greek alphabet and adjectives and game just fails to load

or at least generate a new city

[soft gulch]

Hmm, looks like the Diner list is different. I think it might be like the apartment buildings having 5 different name lists based on how fancy they are.

I've definitely seen the greasy spoon names used.

[soft gulch]

Can you change the amount of things in the list?

[autumn oracle]

I havent tried that, I have only replaced entries on the list

[soft gulch]

I'll give it a try

[autumn oracle]

But I bet if I just replace them with blank, itll work

i dont know about adding to them though

[soft gulch]

Alright, I've deleted part of the flowers file, which seems to be used for the hospital wards in city hall. I only left Iris, Orchid, and Juniper (because they were at the top :P)

I've generated two cities so far. Both have worked and used those three flowers for the hospital wards, but it will sometimes reuse those flowers even before it's run out of names.

[opal lance]

do one this time :)

[soft gulch]

Just one flower?

[opal lance]

yes

[soft gulch]

City hall now has three Lily Wards!

Let me try one more thing

[soft gulch]

Alright, replacing all the flowers' "displayed text" with nothing or spaces sometimes makes the Wards generate as just "Ward", and sometimes makes the game freeze at "Finalizing" when generating a new city. Or the freeze is something else, not sure which.

[opal lance]

that's very odd but good info

[soft gulch]

I honestly did not expect this at all, but adding new names does work.

City hall now has a Cabbage Ward

Oh, those frequency does seem to work. I set a bunch of mine to 10 and got two Clover Wards. Maybe just a weird coincidence though.

[opal lance]

definitely needs more testing

and when you say adding new ones, does that mean you added a new line? or just swapped one out

[soft gulch]

Yeah, a new line

[opal lance]

oh that's sick

[soft gulch]

A few of them. I copy pasted the other lines and changed the name.

Like copying Lily and changing Lily to Cabbage in the new line

[drifting bloom]

You guys should definitely take this over to #⚙modding-general-chat as I'm sure they'd have a field day with it and it'd also be more on topic. The others there might be able to help do testing too!

[soft gulch]

Yeah, my names are showing up more. There are so many Broccoli Wards 😄

[opal lance]

there's a ton of spam though

[opal lance]

so the weight works?

[soft gulch]

It seems like it!

[opal lance]

hell yes

[drifting bloom]

Ah, well then yeah that'd make things harder. Could always make a chat thread in there but I see you've already been in there for a while so you'd know best

[opal lance]

i think this thread is good for now yeah

[soft gulch]

I do think it would be good to have it somewhere else so that other people can find it without digging for a specific forum thread. Eventually, at least.

[opal lance]

yeah i'm making an entire discord for modding rn

[soft gulch]

Oh neat

For blanking out names, I think I had a bit more luck by using a zero-width space rather than a normal space or nothing at all.

[opal lance]

here wait i'm gonna send you an inv it's about done

[autumn oracle]

Def want to look more into this, my test didnt seem to work out

[soft gulch]

I think you said you set it to 100, right? By default it isn't set above 10 from what I've seen, so that may be the limit. The other names will also still appear even with a lower weight.

[autumn oracle]

Hm, you might have a point, I dont know what the frequency number is based on though, its def not binary, idk if its percentage based too

Since a lot of csv has like more than 50-ish entries and lots of the frequencies are still like 1 or 4 or 6

Dont really add up

[soft gulch]

It's weighted, so entirely relative to the other options. I don't know how exactly it works on a technical level, but the basics of it is that an option with a higher weight is more likely to be chosen than one with a lower weight.

I think it might be similar to putting five of something in a list vs one, but again I'm not sure of the behind-the-scenes details.

[timid sonnet]

Originally came here to say "Yes, please, let us import a file for names". Read through this thread and I can see some interesting things. I just think that in a perfect world they'd add the ability to import a list of FULL names, use those first when generating NPCs, then move on to their default list. Would be amazing to be able to just fill a city with all my friends/family/coworkers and see how the story unfolds lol

[opal lance]

oh absolutely agreed

[timid sonnet]

My wife and I adore this game already, been playing it non stop for 2 days lmfao. But to be able to have a ton of characters with names we recognize would make it next level.

[soft gulch]

I wonder if, theoretically, you could delete the first/last names file and put full names in the other?

[soft gulch]

Yeah, it pretty much works!

I disabled the North American last names & changed both male & female North American names to one full name each. The only issue was that sometimes NPCs would have a full name from that list + a last name, or a first name with no last name, since the African American name list seems to mix with the North American one, so bear that in mind if you're editing either of those lists, and that other lists may also mix that way.

So you can remove surnames and change the first names if you want them gendered, or you can use last names if you want the names given to anyone. Nonbinary NPCs are unconstrained by gender and will use whatever list they like for first names.

[frail geode]

does this break the times when the game only gives you a last or first name for a clue?

[soft gulch]

Ooh, good point.

I haven't tested that, but probably.

Oh, come to think of it there were people in a database called "J. " with no last name, because their last name was part of their first name.

So it would probably give you "Last name starts with "

[low pike]

Yes I really would like this

[low pike]

I suggested this from Day 1, I think the dev took notice and said it was a good idea, Hoping this suggestion was not forgotten. 🙂

[violet sparrow]

was going to make a post about this because I still dont think it exists

but Id just like to customize npcs so I can arrest my friends for murder

[deep tundra]

little did you know this would come in less than a year lmao

[opal lance]

🫡

i'm just too good

[deep tundra]

hey you know that name file you found

that excel doc of like every single possible name

well i found another excel of jobs

in there is "HIRED KILLER"

possible new update feature in the future?

[opal lance]

ooh that's definitely new

i think, idk i didn't play the new update lol

[deep tundra]

also under interests in "descriptors" there is interest-guns????

and interest-meatlover

[opal lance]

MEAT LOVER LOL

[deep tundra]

its very interesting to dive into the files lmao

[opal lance]

oh for sure

[deep tundra]

INTEREST-VODKA IM DYING

[deep tundra]

there is stuff like autowalk and credit stuff etc

if you want the credit stuff there is a fancy document here:#❓new-player-questions message

its under "credit perks"

its not completed and only goes to 9 but there you go