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Originally posted by NNNormal: Not sound alien enough? Cha'Lair. Bingo.
Grrr. I hate that, where people think, Oooh, add an apostrophe and it automatically makes it look alien!
It was clever and interesting the first time an SF writer thought that up. Now it's just annoying.
Now, if you want really interesting, add symbols for sounds that don't occur in many human languages. For example, the language of the african "bushmen" contains a lot of clicks, which are represented as !, such as in that ethnic group's proper name, !Kung. See Harry Harrison's West of Eden trilogy for another example: the Yilanč, a race of sapient dinosaur-like reptiles, have various sounds represented by *, >, etc. It's interesting. See Klingon for an even more developed example.
------------------ "She said, 'Honey, you know I gave up cigarrettes for my new-year's resolution... but I didn't give up SMOKIN'!" -- The Blues Brothers, "I Don't Know" Bounty Plus, Final Battle and the Annotated Bibles idisk: andyg
Making names isn't hard but making names that sound right and are cohesive for an entire race is annoying. Not to mention some people like me would like to have a somewhat accurate universe.
------------------ "Veni, Vidi, Vici" "I came, I saw, I conqeured." Julius Caeser
Originally posted by zhouj: **Making names isn't hard but making names that sound right and are cohesive for an entire race is annoying. Not to mention some people like me would like to have a somewhat accurate universe.
**
An HR diagram of the nearest 100 stars to our sun gives perhaps 10% main sequence stars of sufficient lifespan and sufficiently wide habitable zone to harbor a proper world. Binary and trinary systems lack the gravitational stability to hold planets even if they form in the first place. Oh, and the search for dark matter leads some astronomers to believe the number of red and brown dwarves to be drastically undercounted.
I should not need to mention that most of the well-known stars (Aldeberran, Betelgeuss, etc.) are distant, giant, and not good candidates for worlds with biospheres anyway. Much of what is near to us has such attractive names as " +36'2147 " and are dim or invisible to the naked-eye observer. In general, astronomers are concerned with cosmological questions and representative populations, not listing nearby stars, and namers of stars go by bright attractive ones that make neat patterns in the sky (and are spread out all over the map).
The Drake Equation gives odds on the order of 1/10,000 for a "take your helmet off outside" kind of world. Panspermia and aggressive terraformation (I've used both of these in works) can even the odds. Perhaps radically -- in my novel "Shirato" the alien Okiimono used their technology to model durn near everything into their own idea of a garden world. (Many of those biospheres are now breaking down for lack of maintenance.)
The best strategy for us gamers is probably to use the popular close stars (Tau Ceti, Alpha Centauri), in a flattened representation of their 3d location, rename a few (and explain that the locals/colonists did so), and fill up the gaps with made-up catalog numbers (BD 33'1202, Ross 448, ˇ Cygni, etc.)
------------------ "Ame" Arashi
Originally posted by zhouj: **Making names isn't hard but making names that sound right and are cohesive for an entire race is annoying.
Creating names (for systs, spobs, pers, etc.) that are meant to belong to the same culture or race is really much easier than you might think. I've gotten good results with the Coldstone Name Generator (available for free at (url="http://"http://www.beenox.com)")www.beenox.com)(/url) and a little planning. You can also use EV-Names with somewhat different results.
The first step is to select a set of letters and consonents that give the language the proper sound. For instance, for a reptilian alien race in Mille Terrae, I chose consonants that are formed only by the tongue. Specifically, I chose the following eight consonant sounds: s, th, l, z, sh, d, t, n. For a further snake-y flair, I doubled up the "s". I then matched them with four vowel sounds: a, i, e, u. To make sure that the "a" sound was pronounced "ah" instead of "ay", I doubled up the "a".
So the list of consonants and vowels was ultimately: ss, th, l, z, sh, d, t, n and aa, i, e, u.
Obviously, if your aliens have tusks or no tongues or whatever, your consonant and vowel choices will be different. A little experimentation goes a long way.
With that set in hand, open up one of the NameGenerator Files in ColdstoneNameGenerator's AddOns folder. Do a Save As... renaming the file and saving it back into the AddOns folder. Now edit the file, replacing characters between the (start) and (middle) with your chosen consonants, one per line. Place the vowels between (middle) and (end) and the consonants again between (end) and (stop). For added variety, you can include some blank lines in addition to your consonants. Close the file.
Now run ColdstoneNameGenerator, selecting your file in the pop-up. Generate as many syllables as you think you'll need. Save and Quit.
Now open the file you just made and create another NameGenerator File using the syllables you just made. Save As.. and run ColdstoneNameGenerator again, this time selecting your syllable File and start making alien names.
The generated names will all have a consistant sound and appearance in the mission texts, providing you with the illusion of an actual alien vocabulary. You can create multiple "languages" like this by just using different sets of consonants and vowels. That way, a player will be able to quickly intuit that a planet named Tessnaash is likely owned by a different race than one named Pulgok.
------------------ Jon Potter Thank you for your cooperation. Good night.
I get what you're saying. I think it was also in a dictionary for the Histakki that came in a update for that race for Mille Terrae. ANyway, if I can;t find a sufficient amount of real stars, doing things your way would be my next step.
Originally posted by Commander Arashi: Binary and trinary systems lack the gravitational stability to hold planets even if they form in the first place.
Not proven. Some experts think this is so, some do not, but we don't understand planet formation well enough yet to have a definitive answer. And recall that Nature reserves her right to ignore any theoretical reasons we can think up why something cannot be so.
That at least partlyu depends on the distance of between the binary or trinary stars. If they're sufficiently far apart, a planet could form around oe of those suns.
Originally posted by WickedDyno: **Not proven. Some experts think this is so, some do not, but we don't understand planet formation well enough yet to have a definitive answer. And recall that Nature reserves her right to ignore any theoretical reasons we can think up why something cannot be so.
True, 'Dyno, true. I simplified to keep my post under ten-thousand words! ^_^;; And there is a great difference between a world just fine for a EVO docking and a naturally formed complex biosphere, of course. As for breaking the rules, I once set a colony around a contact binary (a pair of red giants with a co-orbit period of about eight hours).
And, yeah, the Drake Equations have been questioned, modified, questioned again so many times...but it makes a starting point for some sort of rationalization, neh?
Indeed. Besides, having two or more suns in a system can be fun! Just look at Issac Asimov's Nightfall...
OK, I've put the star maps up on my idisk. You can get them at (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/andyg/starpix/")http://homepage.mac.com/andyg/starpix/(/url)
I got these from (url="http://"http://www.projectrho.com/smap07.html")This site(/url), which has lots of other stuff you might find useful.
(This message has been edited by WickedDyno (edited 10-11-2001).)
Thanks for the starmaps. This will help me a lot.
De nada.
Originally posted by WickedDyno: **OK, I've put the star maps up on my idisk. You can get them athttp://homepage.mac.com/andyg/starpix/
I got these from This site, which has lots of other stuff you might find useful.
Very nice programs there! For years I've been borrowing from a few samples out of the accretion program (printed in an appendix of Dole's "Habitable Planets for Man." Even nicer is the catalog out to 50 LY and several software options to sort and display it.
Originally posted by Commander Arashi: The Drake Equation gives odds on the order of 1/10,000 for a "take your helmet off outside" kind of world.
The Drake Equation helps scientists give ordinary people an understanding of how many intelligent communicable worlds there are at any given time. But it doesn't prove any one number is accurate. Anyone can plug in whatever they wish for their own interpretation. Besides the Drake Equation only mentions the fraction of worlds that are habitable for the development of life. This does not necessarily mean that they are habitable for our type of life or even for human-level intelligent life in general. As well there may be many habitable worlds that have do not contain life at this point in time and/or may never.
The moral: Don't justify arbitrary numbers by citing equations like this without telling your audience what you are basing it on.
------------------ "DOS Computers, manufactured by millions of companies, are by far the most popular, with about 70 million machines in use worldwide. Macintosh fans, on the other hand, may note that cockroaches are far more numerous than humans, and that numbers alone do not denote a higher life form." --The New York Times, November 26, 1991 (also quoted in MacAddict 4)
Originally posted by Ellmist: **The Drake Equation helps scientists give ordinary people an understanding of how many intelligent communicable worlds there are at any given time. But it doesn't prove any one number is accurate. Anyone can plug in whatever they wish for their own interpretation. Besides the Drake Equation only mentions the fraction of worlds that are habitable for the development of life. This does not necessarily mean that they are habitable for our type of life or even for human-level intelligent life in general. As well there may be many habitable worlds that have do not contain life at this point in time and/or may never.
True; I should have mentioned earlier just how questionable the Drake Equation is. I had assumed that anyone here with the need for that kind and level of information was already familiar with the origin and status of the simplified numbers I provided. All I was attempting to do is to throw out an argument in favor of a sparsely populated EVO map, with few of the listed stars having much of interest on them (that is, of interest to a merchant captain with a load of perishable goods).
Oh; and the version of the equation (one of many, many, many) I was quoting from actually runs from a pessimistic "one civilization per galaxy" to an optimistic "the aliens are as close as Tau Ceti." So I faked it when I quoted any number at all...mea culpa.
Hmm. I don't think I've encountered, in any plug I've played so far, many of the more exotic metabolisms. (The contact binary colony I mentioned earlier had been started by beings with a chlorine/fluorine cycle biology. Luckily, they don't go up in flames in an oxygen atmosphere!) It could add an interesting wrinkle if all the "Godelian" worlds came up as "You can't land on Sextup 4; surface conditions are too hostile." And you never see them in bars, and you can't board their ships without protective equipment...
I should leave off here. It's been a few years since I studied astrophysics with any intensity, and I realize I've gotten just a tad rusty.
Arashi, that's more than pretty much anyone else here has studied astrophysics.
Originally posted by WickedDyno: **Arashi, that's more than pretty much anyone else here has studied astrophysics.
All the more reason for me to check my facts and quote my sources before I post anything ^_^;;
All honesty, I took a couple of college courses, and some upper-division stuff in Soc and Anth, but mostly I just read a bunch. Science Major I'm not.
If you go to (url="http://"http://www.solstation.com")http://www.solstation.com(/url), you'll find a cool Java-based 3D map of the stars to a certain number of ly out (I don't remember exactly how many). There's also a place to download a Windows version if you have a PC.
This is a place to look for real names and placements, but I'm not sure if it'll be all that useful to you.
------------------ Mike Lee (Firebird)