The ‘Dodekatheon’ Naming Convention System and an NMS Mind map (links provided). – November 1, 2022 at 05:56PM

Hi,

If you’d consider naming your Star Systems something like this

Star System name generation.

or your Planets like,

Planet name generation.

then you need access to the ‘Dodekatheon’ (12 Gods) Naming Convention System!

I devised this naming convention for Star Systems and Planets in order to make the Discoveries tab a bit (a lot!) more descriptive, minimizing the need to go back and forth in order to collect all necessary information about where I am and what I can do there. My goal was to produce meaningful names while retaining the ‘aura’ of sci-fi NMS-ish jargon (my original influence was the ‘Odin’ naming convention (https://www.odingaming.com/2018/01/15/no-mans-sky-naming-convention/) which apparently seems to be offline these days).

I borrowed the names of famous (and not so famous) mythological Greek deities while trying to create logical correlations between their ‘actual’ nature or properties and the concept they’d represent. Also, I tried to build a ‘greek-like’ morphology and phonetics, for more realism.

The visual result is very obscure at first but quite attractive at the same time, especially within the various in-game menus and definitely much more descriptive. I left Fauna and Flora out since they already have a quite convincing pseudo-scientific terminology.

I will not go through the syntax of the names since I believe it will be quite evident as you’ll be progressing through the various form fields. With each choice, a meaningful abbreviation is added to the “name generation’ field at the bottom, so by switching on and off each option you can easily understand the mechanics and the general concept behind it.

The ‘Dodekatheon’ app is written in Google Sheets. By clicking the link below, you’ll get a personal unlocked copy in your Google Drive. Do as you please with it. You may need to give permissions to Apps Sheet tool with which I wrote the ‘Reset Form’ script that clears the contents of the cells while retaining the underlying formulae. Here is the script:

function clearContentsOnly() {const ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();const ws = ss.getSheetByName(“Star System”)const range = ws.getRange(“e3:e25”);const formulas = range.getFormulas();range.setFormulas(formulas);}

Of course, you can deny the permissions and reset (delete) all fields by hand whenever needed.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sai6aJnJBpD0-eia6MH60kvSxAxeTQqbM7Uu7j2A74g/copy

Additionally, one more project that I recently concluded (as far as I can tell), is an NMS Mind Map/Ontology, here:

the NMS Ontology

This app helps me understand various NMS concepts within their context through a graphical tree-like structure. So when I come across, e.g. an “Ashen” planet, I can quickly look it up in the app and understand that we’re talking about the ‘Volcanic’ biome, etc.

You can visit and use the ontology here.

Have fun and please don’t hesitate to contact me with suggestions and ideas.

o7.