Mod Request -- Repeated Duplicants' names

[Zarquan]

I was wondering if it were possible to have the game automatically give repeated duplicants something different in their names.  Perhaps a counter, (e.g. Turner, Turner 2).

[SharraShimada]

Never seen that, but there was a mod out there, that let you expand the name list, and it comes with a few dozens of new names already.

[Zarquan]

That would delay the problem, but not solve it.  I think a permanent solution should be possible.  I'm currently doing an "Accept every dupe" challenge, so I hit the duplicants pretty early.

[SharraShimada]

With a list of thousand namens, you will run into hardware bottleneck prior to the end of the list. 

[Zarquan]

9 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

With a list of thousand namens, you will run into hardware bottleneck prior to the end of the list. 

True, but I do like the original names.  I just want to be able to tell the difference between Mi-ma and Mi-ma

[Ferula]

Can you explain how this would be a bottleneck? I have a hard time believing that. You could just have two arrays of 50 first names and 50 last names and then randomize the selection. then just check if the name already exists upon generating the name. This alone would give you a large number of names that you would probably not run out of in a single playthrough

[Zarquan]

18 hours ago, Joshu145 said:

Can you explain how this would be a bottleneck? I have a hard time believing that. You could just have two arrays of 50 first names and 50 last names and then randomize the selection. then just check if the name already exists upon generating the name. This alone would give you a large number of names that you would probably not run out of in a single playthrough

If the selection is randomized, then there will still be duplicates fairly early.  This is known as the Birthday Paradox.  With 50 first and last names, there are 2500 unique names.  This means that by 39 dupes there is over a 25% chance that at least two of them share a name, and at 60 dupes, there is above a 50% chance.  Though this is an improvement upon the current 35, it still isn't really that good on an Accept Every Dupe playthrough (where I keep adding dupes until one of them dies).  My base currently has 55 dupes in it at cycle 157.

But if the second Turner was named Turner 2 or Turner the Second or Turner II, this would make it so that there would never be a duplicant with a repeated name.  I feel like this also shouldn't be that difficult to implement, as it should only take a name search.  (EDIT:  At the very least, implementing Turner 2 should not be too hard.)

Additionally, I also know some of the dupe's stress responses by their names, not their faces.  Once the names are changed unrecognizably, I lose that.

[SharraShimada]

Difficulty is in the eye of the beholder... While it sounds easy to expand a name with 2, 3, 4 and so on, the mod have to somehow keep track. This means there has to be list, either as a file or in memory. The latter would be bad for performance at some point. In case of a file, it would be possible to make an array with "colony name, name list, number". But there is no way to delete old ones when you delete the corresponding save game. What about a new game with the same colony name? It would start with "Meep 500", because you had 499 in prior games.

Its not as easy, as it looks in the first place.

[Zarquan]

1 hour ago, SharraShimada said:

Difficulty is in the eye of the beholder... While it sounds easy to expand a name with 2, 3, 4 and so on, the mod have to somehow keep track. This means there has to be list, either as a file or in memory. The latter would be bad for performance at some point. In case of a file, it would be possible to make an array with "colony name, name list, number". But there is no way to delete old ones when you delete the corresponding save game. What about a new game with the same colony name? It would start with "Meep 500", because you had 499 in prior games.

Its not as easy, as it looks in the first place.

Don't mod creators have access to a list of duplicants from the game?  If they can get such a list, then it's a simple matter of searching for how many of the dupe there are and no file should be necessary.  If there is no such method, then honestly there should be, but there should also be something unique about a colony other than the name.  The seed?  The creation time?  The save file itself?  Some kind of ID number?  If you associate the information with the save file, then perhaps it could be cleaned up when the save file is deleted.  

As for performance, the printing pod runs at most once every 3 cycles.  That is the only time that this would be altered, so I can't see it being that expensive performance-wise.

I don't know anything about the API for modding in ONI, so I don't know what's possible.