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Closed: Building Names

Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2015 1:48 am
by Interkarma
Another one I haven't had time to research yet. How exactly are the building names inside cities generated? For example, the name of various shops and other buildings that appear on your city map in-game.

The UESP spec for MAPS.BSA lists a UInt16 value in BuildingData called NameSeed, but does not elaborate on its use. This could just be because the value has been observed to change building names, but the actual mechanics are still unknown. Here's a link to the spec.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:MAP ... ildingData

Would anyone be interested in looking into this further? This information will be valuable later, particularly when implementing quests and NPC dialogs.

Re: Open: Building Names

Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 3:34 am
by BitOfAZeldaFan
I can see what I can do. It will give me a new excuse to play Daggerfall again!

Re: Open: Building Names

Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 4:01 am
by Interkarma
BitOfAZeldaFan wrote:I can see what I can do. It will give me a new excuse to play Daggerfall again!
Welcome to the forums BitOfAZeldaFan, and thanks for taking a look at this!

In addition to the NameSeed value described above for each building, there appears to be a table of building name parts towards the end of FALL.EXE starting from offset 0x1a8201. The NameSeed might be a bitfield with direct indices, but more likely is an actual seed to a procedural function of some kind. Likely uses building type as part of name generation.

I sadly haven't had the time to look into this in any detail, so please excuse my ignorance on this subject. The project rapidly getting closer to where this will be useful, so your help is quite timely! :)

Please just let me know if any help is needed to get started. Even if you hit a brick wall, any findings you make will likely still contribute. Thank you. :)

Re: Open: Building Names

Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 4:19 am
by LypyL
Welcome to the forums BitOfAZeldaFan!

I wish I remembered how I managed it, but when I tried looking into this I managed to screw up my Daggerfall in a way so that it would replace my save file names with the name of the last building I found, it was pretty funny :lol:

Re: Open: Building Names

Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 4:36 am
by Interkarma
LypyL wrote:Welcome to the forums Welcome to the forums BitOfAZeldaFan!

I wish I remembered how I managed it, but when I tried looking into this I managed to screw up my Daggerfall in a way so that it would replace my save file names with the name of the last building I found, it was pretty funny :lol:
!!! That's really cool! Daggerfall is weird (which is why we love it).

Closed: Building Names

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2016 6:39 am
by Interkarma
Building name generation is now a solved problem. Some work remains to integrate into code but the correct process is now understood. The below article has more information.

http://www.dfworkshop.net/building-names/

Re: Closed: Building Names

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2016 6:45 am
by LypyL
That is great news! Awesome job :D

Ironically, I was thinking about this last night - I was wondering if maybe the quest system would have given some clues to how it works. oh well! :lol:

Re: Open: Building Names

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2016 7:36 am
by Nystul
great work!