VC: Dark Age village names

[Philippe_at_bay]

Computer age naming conventions aren't very immersive when you stumble on them in a game dealing with the Dark Ages.

In the vanilla version of the game villages are named after the nearest town with a word meaning village tacked on to the begining or end of the name, and with a suffix (north, south, etc.) tacked on to the end of the name if that town happened to have more than one village.

That is not how villages were named in the Dark Ages.

Most people won't have the names of the towns memorized, so a computer-inspired village naming convention won't really help them know where the villages are anyway.

So if you're told to go to a certain village and don't have a clue as to where it is (and most of the time you won't), just look it up in the in-game locator, which will show you exactly where it is.


WHAT THE MOD DOES:


There are 150 village names in the parties text file.

Most of these names come from the Brytenwalda mod.

Many Dark Age villages became towns or even cities later on.

I've tried as best I could to put villages into the general area where they were actually located. That wasn't always possible because of distortions in the map that probably can't be helped. Think of the geography of Viking Conquest as the geograpy perceived by the player character, rather than a Mercator projection.

In the many instances where I had to come up with a village name that wasn't in the Brytenwalda mod, I generally tried to find a place in approximately the right area that had been around in the right century.

Place names in Frisia are generally from the right period or even a bit earlier, but tend to be latinized because no one wrote in the vernacular back then and I am blissfully ignorant of Medieval Frisian. From personal experience I know that modern Frisian sounds a lot like modern English, and an English speaker can understand it more readily than a Dutch speaker.

Danish place names are based on medieval (ask opposed to dark age) district names.

Norwegian place names follow Old Norse naming conventions, and if you happen to know Old Norse you'll notice that the names tend to describe the places in which they're located (mountain pass, forest, etc.).

There are astonishingly detailed records associated with English parish churches that go all the way back, so when I wasn't following Brytenwalda for one reason or another it was usually possible to find a place name that was active in our period.

Scottish and Welsh place names were more difficult. When not following Brytenwalda I often had to settle for medieval names that were in the appropriate form of Gaelic.

The Irish names follow Brytenwalda fairly closely, apart from areas that were under Scandinavian control. I kept one of the 'Bal' village names (Bal Tara), because it doesn't look anything like Tara of the Kings in the Boyne valley, but I wanted to preserve the name and the Bal prefix distinguishes it nicely from the archeological site. In a few cases there simply weren't any Brytenwalda names in the right area so I tried to use Irish Gaelic names from places with long histories of occupation.

I have avoided changing what the game classifies as town or fort names because I didn't want to confuse the game engine. The one time I broke that rule and may be sailing too close to the wind was in the case of the Latin name of one particular Scottish monastery. If it becomes clear that anything I have changed is confusing the game engine the mod will be updated to fix it. I will also update the mod if I ever find the motherlode of 9th century Irish place names, or a de-latinized gazeteer of Pictish place names. There is always room for improvement in a mod like this, especially when it makes linguistic demands on you that are completely over the top.


WARNING:

The mod will only change the place names of villages in games that were started AFTER the mod was installed, so if you're already halfway through a game after you install this mod, none of the place names in that particular game will be changed.


WHERE TO GET THE MOD:

The following two links will take you to Steam and non-Steam versions of the mod that are designed to work with Viking Conquest 2.025 or later.

The Steam version:

https://app.box.com/s/rrvzzr24h4812cbt77grsr7i3dbgkcdw

(The Steam version is easiest to use).



The non-Steam version:


https://app.box.com/s/2hgjacuqt18i4j4yoe392pagfyo0xdns




The following link takes you to an earlier Steam version of the mod which works with versions of Viking Conquest that are older than 2.025:

https://app.box.com/s/v8oo4gv7hf0xofi0kt1som5kq3svkq09




I sometimes run out of bandwidth on my Box account towards the end of the month, so if that should happen, just wait until the next month and try again.



HOW TO INSTALL THE STEAM VERSION:

Unzip the mod to a safe place where you won't lose it.

Copy and paste the mod to wherever you have your Steam folder installed.

When asked if you want to overwrite an existing file, always say yes.

The mod mimics the Steam version's file structure, so the parties text file should drop into the right place.

If you ever need or want to go back to the original names, just go into Steam properties and verify the integrity of your installation. One file will be out of kilter and will get replaced (guess which one).



HOW TO INSTALL THE NON-STEAM VERSION:

This mod doesn't have a non-Steam version as such, but that shouldn't stop you.

If you unzip the mod in a safe place (it's already unzipped), you'll be staring at a folder called 'Steam'.

If you go inside that folder, and keep going inside every folder inside of that one, you will eventually come to a text file named 'parties'.

Copy that text file and paste it inside your installed Viking Conquest game folder.

When your system asks you if you want to overwrite, always say yes.

Steam versions often have slightly different folder names than non-Steam versions, so you'll have to find the place to put this file manually.

Remember to keep a back-up copy of your original parties file somewhere.

[Philippe_at_bay]

There was a minor mixup with the download link. The one that was posted earlier will work with a little jiggling, but the one that's up there now will get you to a better place.

Sorry about that. This wouldn't have happened if I had zipped the folders before creating the link.

[Brytenwalda Studios]

Added:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?topic=323702.msg7638856#msg7638856

[Philippe_at_bay]

[Overtaken by events].

[Philippe_at_bay]

Just to be on the safe side, I've re-inserted the 150 village names from my mod into the parties.txt textfile that comes with Viking Conquest 2.025.

I've also re-written the original post so that it now gives links to the pre-2.025 version as well as the Steam and non-Steam versions that work with 2.025 and later.

[Philippe_at_bay]

I couldn't help myself.

I changed Ad Candidam Casam from the accusative to the nominative case and dropped the preposition.

It now reads Candida Casa.

(And I seriously considered going all the way and re-naming it Whithorn, but that name felt a little too modern).

[Philippe_at_bay]

I've been playing the storyline in Denmark and Norway and have felt the need to tinker with the place names there. These were parts of the mod that I worked on first, so I didn't have the benefit of having sweated through naming English and Irish villages.

So the Dark Age Village Names mod has been updated to version 1.2, and the links in the first post will take you to the new versions of the mod.

The new mod will not take effect on games that were already started, but will show up in games that began after the new parties text file was added (i.e. after you installed the mod).

[Philippe_at_bay]

In case anyone was wondering, steam updates to the base game will replace the textfile with the Dark Age village names with the original. You won't notice if you're in the middle of a game because the game preserves the names that you started a given game with. But you'll find yourself wondering what happened (as I did) if you start a new game: the village names will revert to plain vanilla.

It's no big deal, but when this happens (and it will from time to time) just re-install the mod (which is only one text file). It should have no effect on the game apart from an improvement in the ambience.

The links to get the mod (along with a few notes on how to use it) are in the first post of this thread.

[Hooded Horse]

Hi Philippe!

I'd like to request permision to distribute a version of your village names mod as an optional download for the next version of VC Balance Mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandbladevikingconquest/mods/5

Obviously I would note and provide credit to you and your mod for the use of the names.

Please let me know whether that would be ok or not. Thank you!

[Philippe_at_bay]

Please feel free to use it, just give me credit in the notes (which no one ever reads).

[Philippe_at_bay]

I just noticed this thread isn't in the Viking Conquest forum.

Any chance a moderator could move it to where it belongs?

[Hooded Horse]

Originally posted by Philippe_at_bay:

Please feel free to use it, just give me credit in the notes (which no one ever reads).

Awesome! Thanks so much!

In addition to credit in the notes, if your mod becomes included in the main version, I’ll add you to the mod title (like EvilSquid is currently listed for his bug fix package), or if instead it is distributed as an optional add-on, then that download title and description will include you and your mod’s name.

[Hooded Horse]

An optional add-on download for your mod, slightly modified for compatibility with some changes in latest version of Viking Conquest, is now posted at Balance Mod page here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandbladevikingconquest/mods/5?tab=files

Credit to your mod is given through the download title, download description, “credits” section, and the “special thanks” section.

I asked users to weigh in on whether to include it as part of the default version, or alternate version, in the next release here: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,373658.msg8994576.html#msg8994576

Thanks again Philippe! Wonderful work you did, very much helps immersion!

[Hooded Horse]

Just a final update: response from users was very positive, so your mod is now the default version as of 8.0’s release (a few hours ago). The full mod title is now:

“VC Balance Mod Version 8.0, a saved game compatible modification for the latest release of Viking Conquest (2.036), including Bug Fixes by EvilSquid and Dark Age Village Names by Philippe at Bay”

Thanks again!

[Darth Vader]

I saw for me as a Dutch very well-known names of places in Friesia
these names are still existing places in the Netherlands and not all are in Friesia Deventer for example and Leiden is also a place that is still inhabited I also saw Coevorden in his
place great job.