A17 Brainstorming - How to Name Yearly Quarters?

[O Negative]

Abstract

Decembary, Aprimay, Jugust, Septober have all replaced traditional season names; and, sparked a small debate in the process.

Some, myself included, aren't really too fond of these mashed month names. Not only do they take away from the transparency of the game, and thus inhibiting a player's ability to determine what steps they need to take in order to prepare for the weather coming ahead. They also sound really silly if you say them out loud (IMO). I appreciate the creativity that went into coming up with these names, but I don't see them as the proper fit.

I've created this thread as a way to brainstorm possible solutions/alternatives without flooding the thread Tynan made for feedback about the unstable branch build(s).

Feel free to add your own suggestions and upvote any suggestions you like, and I'll try to keep track of it in this original post.

I'd like to start by making the following suggestions:

0) A17 Original (2)
Format: Decembary, Aprimay, Jugust, Septober | 15 days each

1) "Quarters" (1)
Format: 1st Quarter, 2nd Quarter, 3rd Quarter, 4th Quarter | 15 days each

2) Equinox and Solstice (1)
Format: 1st Equinox, 1st Solstice, 2nd Equinox, 2nd Solstice | 15 days each

3) Standard 12 Month Cycle (Earthly) (1)
Format: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December | 5 days each

Added suggestions:

4) Standard 12 Month Cycle (Alternate) (1)
Format: Janose, Febrose, Marchose, Aprial, Mayal, Junal, Julidor, Augidor, Septidore, Octaire, Novaire, Decaire | 5 days each

5) Latin Ordinal Numbers (3)
Format: Primus, Secundus, Tertius, Quartus | 15 days each

6) Greek (2)
Format: Arche, Deuteros, Mesos, Telos | 15 days each

7) Latin Season Counterparts (1)
Format: Vêr, Aestâs, Mutatio, Hiems | 15 days each

[ArguedPiano]

*Edit* Tynan has addressed my concerns here so please disregard my comments.

I'll summarize in my own words:

The goal should be to easily identify and predict weather patterns based on the 'seasons' or 'months' presented to you. This would obviously change based on your world location as Spring in the Northern hemisphere would be Fall in the Southern.

Thoughts:
If the realism is the target here, then when playing a nomad type game (IE traveling to the friendly AI), when the North is experiencing Winter, the South should be in Summer. Around the equator would remain fairly consistent with the hottest periods being during the equinoxes.

This provides an enormous task in designing clarity for the player. The equator does not have seasons in the typical sense, rather they would have wet/dry seasons instead. So how do you design a system that is as easily understandable as possible with minimal gameplay?

Possible Solution:
The names aren't really an issue here. Sure they sound odd, but that chan be changed easily enough if needed. Perhaps the 'Months' could remain with the 'Seasons' in parentheses and add a note in the Tool Tip or Mouse Hover that seasons would flip once crossing the equator.

This would be intuitive to the player in almost every case except (maybe) if they were travelling in a slight zig zag pattern East to West on the equator. With each new map they entered the seasons would jump from say Spring to Fall. But seeing as the weather should be fairly consistent on the equator it would not affect predictability that much.

Additional Thoughts:
Aside from all this, a quick google search has revealed possible alternative names for the 'Months' I tried searching for alternative season names but could not find anything useful.

Janum  -  Janose
Februm  -  Febrose
Marcha  -  Marchose
Aprilum  -  Aprial
Mayum  -  Mayal
Juna  -  Junal
Julum  -  Julidor
Augustum  -  Augidor
Septa  -  Septidor
Octum  -  Octaire
Novum  -  Novaire
Deca    -  Decaire

What I notice in the second set of suggestions is that Winter months end in OSE, Spring in AL, Summer in IDOR, and Fall in AIRE.

[AllenWL]

Would it really just take 5 days to determine weather trend with standard months? I highly doubt weather will change enough to know the weather trend in just five days, meaning it'll probably take the same amount of time to determine the weather trend regardless of format.

Also, tynan said :We can't use seasons as a calendar because they're different per-region. Tropical and polar regions don't have the four seasons, they have wet/dry or no seasons at all. And of course other planets may have no seasons. Etc

Meaning the system isn't supposed to just work with the standard 4-season system, but anything from 1 season and up.

For example, what if it's a planet with spring-like weather year long? What if it's a planet that's half-spring, half-summer? What if it's 3/5th spring and 2/5th winter? Or 1/5th spring, 2/5th summer, 2/5th winter? You'll need to run the entire season to determine the weather trend, no way around it.

Hmm, now that I think about it through, this makes the 'standard month' format the best since each month is 1/12th a year, which means you can separate months into seasons better like 'Sept~oct is fall' rather than 'the first 2/3rd of the 3rd quarter is fall'

Personally, I think it'll be best if there was something like a 'galactic calendar' to show how long it's been since we landed here, and a 'season' marker below that.
The season marker would have something like

Before you mouse over it)

Current season: Mild, rainy

After you mouse over it)
Current season:
Mild, rainy
X days since the start of the season/X days till the next season
Next season:
Cold, dry

[Mihsan]

1) Quarters (0)
Format: 1st Quarter, 2nd Quarter, 3rd Quarter, 4th Quarter | 15 days each

I would not like to see numbers in names of quarters.  "4th day of 4th quarter" is kind of difficult to perceive. I would prefer something like "primus/secundus/tertius/quartus" because of that.

1st Equinox, 1st Solstice, 2nd Equinox, 2nd Solstice | 15 days each

This one might be problematic because of equinox/soltice is bound to place on planet. Also numbers in name.

But I like that this one because it is bound to astronomy, which looks suitable for this game.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

My thinking for naming the quarters boils to these:

1. Forget who's idea, but latin (or latin sounding) names: Primus, Secondus, etc.

2. Random gibberish names, but have them in alphabetical order starting with A, B, C, and D so it becomes somewhat intrinsic quickly.
for instance:
Quarter1: Aberscombe
Quarter2: Beliwax
Quarter3: Clattle
etc...

[O Negative]

I'm enjoying all of the thoughts and feedback you guys have given so far. Thank you for offering up your ideas!

I went ahead and updated the original post to include some of the new suggestions, and deleted the pros/cons lists because of a few reasons. One being that I felt like I was showing my biases in them, and I'd like to avoid that entirely if I can. Haha.

This is one of those subjects that I feel has so many potential solutions, and it might just be left to the modding community to explore them upon release, given how close it feels we are to the A17 release. I mean, people were upset enough about megatherium being turned into megasloth...

At the end of the day, as long as players (new and old) have a reliable way of determining some kind of weather trend, I'm content

[Rimrue]

My concern is not so much with the names of the seasons (though I really like the latin suggestions!) but that seasons are now called quadrums. Many ancient earth calendars recognized there were 4 seasons. Even for civilizations living close to the equator. And in modern times we refer to the holiday season and peak season and shoulder season which are not necessarily tied to weather. So I don't think it is confusing to stick to calling each 15 day period a season.

[christianmc1101]

How do you think about the greek numbers (alpha, beta, gamma, delta)?
But the Latin Ordinal Numbers are also good.

[ArguedPiano]

*Edit* Tynan has addressed my concerns here so please disregard my comments.

The names of the seasons are irrelevant imo. What is really needed is an intuitive way to predict the current and future weather, regardless of your position on the world.

I cannot think of an easy solution for this. The previous system worked fine as you knew when Fall started in colder biomes, that your crops would soon die and temperatures would drop. As in when summer started in warmer biomes you could expect the temperature to rise to dangerous levels. But this system did not work in the way that Northern and Southern hemispheres would be reversed.

I understand Tynan wanting to have one 'Month' or 'Quadrant' name that will be the same everywhere. But in this you loose the predictability that came easily with the seasons system.

Rather than attempting to rename the quadrants, maybe first we should work on a system to inform the player what to expect for temperature and weather in the days ahead. In this, I am at a loss.

[Rimrue]

Alpha, Beta, etc. are actually Greek letters.

I also thought of using Greek. How about:

Arche
Deuteros
Mesos
Telos

[Rimrue]

The names of the seasons are irrelevant imo. What is really needed is an intuitive way to predict the current and future weather, regardless of your position on the world.

I cannot think of an easy solution for this. The previous system worked fine as you knew when Fall started in colder biomes, that your crops would soon die and temperatures would drop. As in when summer started in warmer biomes you could expect the temperature to rise to dangerous levels. But this system did not work in the way that Northern and Southern hemispheres would be reversed.

I understand Tynan wanting to have one 'Month' or 'Quadrant' name that will be the same everywhere. But in this you loose the predictability that came easily with the seasons system.

Rather than attempting to rename the quadrants, maybe first we should work on a system to inform the player what to expect for temperature and weather in the days ahead. In this, I am at a loss.

Warning letters like those already in the game would work fine for alerting players to the changing seasons. Can't remember now if I got one in the A17 game I started or not. But I think a letter at the start of each season would help players figure out what climate they've settled in. Ditto the "need warm clothing" alert. Or even a "need cool clothing" (not sure if that one exists yet).

[ArguedPiano]

Equatorial climates typically have two seasons - wet and dry.

Currently the game only outputs the 4 temperate seasons, but I'd like for it to actually name the local seasons more accurately. There would be 3 basic regimes:
--4 seasons
--Wet and dry season
--No seasons (desert, high polar regions)

There are probably others as well. I'd have to do some research.

Anyway the upshot is that you really cannot use this sort of local climactic pattern as a global calendar.

But you do need a global calendar. The main options I see are:
-Quadrum names as now
-Use real month names and skip 2/3
-Some other quadrum names (maybe latinized numbers - unumber, duember, etc or something better).
-1st quarter, 2nd quarter
-No month or quadrums, just use "1st day of year", "23rd day of year", etc.

I'm happy for suggestions but just asking to have seasons without any dating system will leave quite a few unsolvable problems.

Looks like Tynan has been considering the issues I have mentioned in this thread. So I will retract my previous statements and concerns and help brainstorm quartum names.

I really like Rimrue's idea of using Greek names: Arche, Deuteros, Mesos, Telos.
Google translates them to: Top (or beginning), Second, Average, End

They sound interesting and fit well in what they represent.

[ja7833]

For weather I still believe a rotating stacked bar chart is a viable solution - you can model any basic climate by temperature and precipitation (without giving it a name) and it is completely hemisphere independent.

For time - an adjusted Julian date calendar (day one is when you crash land).

[Tynan]

Nice to see this thread

I originally thought that the problem would be much simpler, but when I dug into it I found it's actually quite difficult and complicated. I get the sense that this complexity is coming through in these discussions as well. "Quadrums" and names like "Aprimay" seem really dumb - but it's damn hard to come up with anything decisively better!

I may still rename the quadrums, but my sense of it is that it's going to end up being 4 quadrums (with whatever names).

The key advantage of the month-mashed names is that you can tell what they correspond to in real life. Names like "Teritus" are totally abstract and don't leverage any pre-existing knowledge the player may have. When is Jugust? North-hemisphere summer, obviously. When is Secundus? Heck if I know.

That said I think the Latin names sound cooler in a way. They're nicer aesthetically but worse informationally IMO.

Regarding seasons, I think that communicating the date is a different problem from communicating the season. These things can't both be solved in one system. So the latest update of the game communicates season more prominently on the date tooltip, and I'll be checking to ensure the "season X has begun" messages are firing correctly. But the real takeaway is that there isn't a way to make one system that communicates both date and season.

[Rimrue]

Personally, I think the change from Spring, Sunmer, Fall, and Winter to Primus, Secundus, Tertius, and Quartus is more intuitive than the mashed up month names. But I could be in the minority (I usually am. Lol)

Also, how is Secundus any less informational than Quadrum? Lol