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The Language Overhaul

Say goodbye to Astesh Clasptreaties and all the other randomness of vanilla Dwarf Fortress naming schemes! This mod aims to make names less gibberish, more memorable and more distinct and epic-sounding. It does this through a complete rework of the game’s vocabulary and symbols as well as adding more distinct languages for the dwarves, elves and goblins (humans are still WIP).

This mod completely revamps the vocabulary of the game, meaning that it adds new words that are aimed to fit the fantasy setting and specific context in which they appear. This means that names will be more memorable and sound less like gibberish than in vanilla dwarf fortress. Instead of dwarves and settlements having random names like Clasptreaties, Girdergrove and Faceearths, they will now have names such as Goldenmark, Castlecrown and Magmabury.

I have also changed how words are used in epithets. Instead of vanilla’s ”the X of X” naming scheme, where most words could appear in both positions making for very random outcomes, this mod uses a ”X of Y” approach, where X tends to be an object or symbol, and Y tends to be a more abstract concept. This makes for more meaningful names. With this mod, you will encounter forgotten beasts with menacing epithets such as ”the Child of Night” or ”the Venom of Reckoning” and your dwarves will create great artifacts with names such as ”the March of Heroes” or ”the Defender of Creation”.

I have gone to great lengths to make names fit the context they appear in. Civilizations will have names that sound like states and kingdoms, taverns will have more typical tavern names and you will be able to easily determine whether you are looking at an Elven or Goblin entity just by looking at the name. For instance, an Elven kingdom will tend to have a poetic name such as Burniel Loril ”the Pact of Songs” while a Goblin civilization will have a menacing one such as Sultozh ”the Gruesome Empire”.

The mod also revamps the game’s languages (or ”translations”) to make them more unique and recognizable. The new dwarven language is inspired by Old Norse, the language of Elves by Tolkien’s Elvish languages and goblin language by Tolkien’s black speech. Human language is a WIP and currently they are using dwarven language as a placeholder. This change aims to make the different cultures feel much more distinct. Below are some examples from a world I generated:


This mod should be loaded before any mod that makes changes to entities.

The mod replaces the vocabulary of vanilla, so any mods that add new translations based on vanilla vocabulary (such as new races) will cause problems. Creating a language based on this mod is not difficult, but if you need help, feel free to throw me a message at the forum.

Yes.

1. Go to steam/common/Dwarf Fortress/mods or if you already have the race mod used and installed go to steam/common/Dwarf Fortress/data/installed_mods and locate the mod you want to make compatible

2. inside the mod's object folder, delete any files called "language_XXX"

3. open the file(s) called "entity_XXX"

4. find the places where it says [TRANSLATION:XXX] and replace with a translation provided by the language overhaul such as [TRANSLATION:DWARF], [TRANSLATION:ELF] or [TRANSLATION:GOBLIN] (I plan to add more of these so you have something to choose from)

5. if you want proper civilization names, find the part where it says SELECT_SYMBOL and add a new line if it doesn't already say: [SELECT_SYMBOL:CIV:NAME_ENTITY_KINGDOM]

7. if you want proper group names, also add a new line if it doesn't already say: [SELECT_SYMBOL:SITE:NAME_ENTITY_TOWN_FOUNDER]

8. Save your changes and load up the game. Create a new world. Load language overhaul before the other mod.

Please leave any suggestions or bug reports in the comments or on the Bay12Forums Topic[www.bay12forums.com]!

If any of you encounter an awesome name in-game, feel free to send me a screenshot here or on the forums. Then I will add it to the screenshot section above!

0.1 - first release - Dwarven personal and site names
0.2 - Human personal and site names
0.3 - Elven and Goblin personal and site names
0.4 - Civ and government names + more of the above
0.5 - Fixed bug with bad group names
0.6 - Bugfixes, added forgotten beast names and more
1.0 - First release for Steam! Vanilla vocabulary now completely replaced. Dwarven, Goblin and Elven languages are pretty much finished, Human is still WIP.