Let's Talk About the Names.XML File

[Thundercrack]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I'm sorry, man, but XML files are roughly the same level of difficulty - either way, you're going into Excel or Google Sheets and converting to that particular format - and there are a number of things that XML has going for it from an ease of work standpoint. Comma-separated files are notorious for getting line items messed up by missing a comma or not enclosing text that's supposed to have a comma in the right kind of quotes or whatever. And for all this talk of "ease of use", XML is *far* easier to look at and tell what the heck it's doing from an end user standpoint; you may not notice this because you're opening the file in Excel but this remains the case.

The true mark of the devs taking over is if they changed all these files to use JSON instead.

One thing I would love is something to edit the english.xml file. I have half a mind of working on one myself...

Never touched excel or any spreadsheet program with the old txt files. Just edited and saved. Just looking at the problems others are having in this thread is giving me a headache. Boo to whoever made this change. I actually may have stuck with 22 if I knew beforehand

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by SilentFox

Thanks for all the help everyone, I'm so embarrassed, that worked. I never worked with...excel or XML before not going to lie to anyone.

No problems! Glad everything worked out.

[RMc]

One thing I've always done with the Names file is add an apostrophe at the end of every last name (Smith becomes Smith', for example); that way I can instantly tell if a player is a "fictional".

Now? Sheesh!

[pilight]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

You're using Excel to open xml files? I didn't know that was possible.

It's been possible starting in Excel 2007. It is, however, an enormous pain in the neck. You're much better off using an actual xml editor.

In Excel you'll need to create an xml schema, map every element from the xml file onto it, and hope like hell you don't run into any abstract elements, substitution groups, mixed content, recursive structures more than one level deep, or any other complications Excel can't deal with. Excel can infer the schema from the xml file structure but it doesn't do so very well. I've rarely had an inferred schema turn out right.

[darkcloud4579]

Just download Visual Studio Code or Sublime Text if you want to do a lot of xml editing, also.

[Tiger Fan]

Thanks to Joe in Chicago's template I have managed to create a names file to suit my needs. I will share it here but understand it may not be perfect but looks stable enough under my test.

I wanted 1900-50 sounding names for my solo fictional historical leagues and I think this does the trick. To make the file easier to work with I deleted all ethnicities from it except for 0,1,32,33 and 39 which are American modern, spanish, french Canadian, Canadian and US african american. So I expect if you use any other ethnicities than those you will get Joe Unknowns showing up.

I took the first names files I had from this board for early 20th century names and replaced all of the American modern and African American first names with them. I also removed some last names as well. I did not really touch the nicknames but in hindsight I would likely just delete them all (although I am not sure if that would create a problem.

Anyway, feel free to try it if you like and if you notice issues let me know. It goes in your OOTP23/database folder and replaces the names.xml file. Remember to back your original one up and to keep a backup copy of this one if you are going to use it because any new patch will overwrite that file.

I attached a screenshot of the HR and W leaders from a quick test league I ran with it to give you an idea of the names it generates.


Thanks again to joefromchicago for the template. Made it easy enough even for me to catch on (after a couple of minor mistakes on my part).

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by pilight

In Excel you'll need to create an xml schema, map every element from the xml file onto it, and hope like hell you don't run into any abstract elements, substitution groups, mixed content, recursive structures more than one level deep, or any other complications Excel can't deal with. Excel can infer the schema from the xml file structure but it doesn't do so very well. I've rarely had an inferred schema turn out right.

You sound like you know way more about Excel than I do

I still have the second part of the tutorial left to do. I may have to reach out to you for advice.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Tiger Fan

Thanks again to joefromchicago for the template. Made it easy enough even for me to catch on (after a couple of minor mistakes on my part).

Thank you for posting that so quickly. I'm delighted it worked!

And if Sylvester Attebery didn't get the nickname "Attaboy" Attebery, I would be sorely disappointed.

[pilight]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

You sound like you know way more about Excel than I do

I still have the second part of the tutorial left to do. I may have to reach out to you for advice.

If it's about editing xml files in Excel my advice is don't. Get an xml editor.

[LloydLungs]

Out of a sense of boredom/desperation/desire to play OOTP23, I tried to load up the names file in the recommended OpenOffice program. It won't even load for me, I just get the spinning circle. I guess it's a very large XML file but it shouldn't take this long, so I'm hung up on that step. Ah well.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by pilight

If it's about editing xml files in Excel my advice is don't. Get an xml editor.

No, I don't even want to think about that. I'm happy with Notepad++. I'm thinking more about getting the spreadsheet to work the way I want it to work. I'll send you a PM if that's OK.

[Ty Cobb]

Mac users: BBEdit is your friend for editing XML. Free program with limits or pro grade for a few bucks.

https://www.barebones.com

Joe, do you have any recommended XML editor for Windows? I've heard Notepad++ is good (and free), but I'm not yet up to speed in the wintel world. Whoops...got distacted a moment and didn't see your latest post.

[darkcloud4579]

Originally Posted by khucke

Joe from Chicago, has any of Your Name mods become Part of the Vanilla name Files in 23?

I looked at the stock name file and it appears they've added 40 different ethnicities, but not all of the custom ones. They've also fixed the Punjab province issue, but if you play with a more expansive worlddefault file, you'll still be missing lots in a new league.

I was going to attempt to append the new code into the old file but I don't have time yet, so in the meantime going through the slog of setting up leagues in 22 that still use the old namesets and the importing them into 23 as a workaround for the time being.

[Thundercrack]

Tiger Fan, thank you for posting that

[Thundercrack]

Originally Posted by darkcloud4579

I looked at the stock name file and it appears they've added 40 different ethnicities, but not all of the custom ones. They've also fixed the Punjab province issue, but if you play with a more expansive worlddefault file, you'll still be missing lots in a new league.

I was going to attempt to append the new code into the old file but I don't have time yet, so in the meantime going through the slog of setting up leagues in 22 that still use the old namesets and the importing them into 23 as a workaround for the time being.

Does it continue using the old name file or does it pull from the new one going forward?

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by khucke

Joe from Chicago, has any of Your Name mods become Part of the Vanilla name Files in 23?

I took a look at the xml file, but the way it's set up makes it difficult to tell which names are assigned to which namesets. My guess is that none of my namesets made it into the game - which is understandable and perfectly fine with me. Most of my namesets are really intended to be used with North American leagues prior to 1970. Only my Canadian, French Canadian, and Dominican namesets are appropriate for modern usage.

[erik.ootp]

I collected all those names we have in our database to create this names.xml file. The main reason for this was the rebuilding of our localization system. As you can see in this file the translation of a name will be stored in the same record rather than in separate files. Another improvement this brought was reducing redundancy,

1. not having to change multiple files to update/add names no more and
2. not having multiple records with the same name, but different language ids no more.

If there are any questions on this file I'll be happy to answer as good as I can. I don't know anything about modding OOTP though, so don't ask me about that

[darkcloud4579]

Originally Posted by Thundercrack

Does it continue using the old name file or does it pull from the new one going forward?

It uses the old name file, not the new one. I still have all 90+ name/ethnicities that I had before.

[darkcloud4579]

Originally Posted by erik.ootp

I collected all those names we have in our database to create this names.xml file. The main reason for this was the rebuilding of our localization system. As you can see in this file the translation of a name will be stored in the same record rather than in separate files. Another improvement this brought was reducing redundancy,

1. not having to change multiple files to update/add names no more and
2. not having multiple records with the same name, but different language ids no more.

If there are any questions on this file I'll be happy to answer as good as I can. I don't know anything about modding OOTP though, so don't ask me about that

The localisation makes sense and I get why you all had to do that given how the game's audience has expanded It's just going to be a slog to manually regenerate a name file for anyone who uses custom names, which I realize is a very small % of your audience.

I'm sure there's a way to automate this on our end to append the xml tags to the existing name files so we can continue to use more expansive namesets if we prefer, but I just hadn't ever done that before. (Save for my "create league in 22 and import into 23" workaround in the meantime)

[erik.ootp]

Okay I have created an ods file from the names.xml so you can open it in open office or excel. This ods file is pretty much build like the names txt files used to be. You got the name with langueage id and distribution. If there are multiple language ids for this name you will have multiple lines with this name.

Additionally you have a column for the namesid this needs to be unique.
I also added a column that builds the corresponding XML element.



If you want to change a name, language id or its distribution you can do it in the ods file and copy the XML element column text and replace it in the names.xml. This can also be directly done by some text editors like notepad++ or ultra edit via search and replace functions.
Adding names to this ods file manually, from a CSV or TXT file should be no problem. Keep in mind that the namesid needs to be unique. Also the combination of name and language id should be unique.


For now this seems to be the best solution to think of. I am sure we can adjust the names.xml some time after release to also fit the modders needs.

Updated ods download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aKy...ew?usp=sharing