Standardize summoning school naming convention


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Halls Hopper

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Post Wednesday, 5th July 2017, 14:39

Standardize summoning school naming convention

Why do you call Imps and Canine Familiars, but summon demons and ice beasts? The answer couldn't be "they are in the book of Callings," because Summon Small Mammal is in there. New players are going to be confused that Summon and Call are two different words for the same thing.

Rename Call Imp and Call Canine Familiar to Summon Imp and Summon Canine Familiar.

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Post Wednesday, 5th July 2017, 14:52

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

I agree that we should standardize summoning spell names. Probably it is a good idea to use "Foo Call" or something because it takes much time to read books and spells.
I mean it is easier to read

  Code:
Ice Beast Call
Blink
Butterflies Call
Spider Form
Small Mammal Call
Fireball
Guardian Golem Call
Deflect Missiles
Forest Call
Magic Dar
Lightning Spire Call
Hydra Call

than
  Code:
Summon Ice Beast
Blink
Summon Butterflies
Spider Form
Summon Small Mammal
Fireball
Summon Guardian Golem
Deflect Missiles
Summon Forest
Magic Dar
Summon Lightning Spire
Summon Hydra
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Post Wednesday, 5th July 2017, 15:25

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

It sounds awful but it is much easier to read
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Post Wednesday, 5th July 2017, 15:47

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

How is it easier to read? I feel like it takes longer to parse "X Call" than "Summon X". More syllables doesn't mean it takes longer to read, just to say, and "X Call" doesn't naturally connect to the idea of summoning something in my mind. There's an idea created by years of video games(and to some extent fantasy literature) of what 'summon' means that call as a verb doesn't really match.

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Post Wednesday, 5th July 2017, 16:24

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

It is hard for me to estimate how bad it is for native English readers, my point is that if we had most fire spells called like fire ball, fire storm, fire explosion, fire bolt, fire ring, fire dart, fire flame, it would be harder to distinguish spells in you spell list or book of fire. Ok, alternative proposal: make all fire spells red, ice spells white, necro black etc.
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Post Wednesday, 5th July 2017, 16:40

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

VeryAngryFelid wrote:It is hard for me to estimate how bad it is for native English readers, my point is that if we had most fire spells called like fire ball, fire storm, fire explosion, fire bolt, fire ring, fire dart, fire flame, it would be harder to distinguish spells in you spell list or book of fire. Ok, alternative proposal: make all fire spells red, ice spells white, necro black etc.

It's really, really awkward-looking for native English readers.

Your alternative proposal of color-coding, I like, but I also love color-coding in general.

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Post Wednesday, 5th July 2017, 17:00

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

Shard1697 wrote:How is it easier to read? I feel like it takes longer to parse "X Call" than "Summon X". More syllables doesn't mean it takes longer to read, just to say, and "X Call" doesn't naturally connect to the idea of summoning something in my mind. There's an idea created by years of video games(and to some extent fantasy literature) of what 'summon' means that call as a verb doesn't really match.


It's easier to skim a long list, if the relevant information is all in the first ordered words of each line, instead of somewhere scrambled around of that line.

    important text foo
    important text foo
    important text foo

it's better than:

    important text foo
    foo important text
    foo important text
    important text foo foo
    important text foo foo
    foo important text

Anyway probably this is a problem only for summoning school as it's probably the only with almost all spell having same prefix
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Post Wednesday, 5th July 2017, 17:03

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

It's clunky enough to read in that order that I would prefer it to not be that way.
I can't say I have any problems skimming lists of spells currently.

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Post Wednesday, 5th July 2017, 20:29

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

i think the second is much easier to read at a glance (at least as long as you know what you're looking for), since there is more redundancy distinguishing the names from each other. it gets more taxing if there are only a few letters that differ.

Blades Runner

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Post Wednesday, 5th July 2017, 20:51

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

VeryAngryFelid wrote:It is hard for me to estimate how bad it is for native English readers, my point is that if we had most fire spells called like fire ball, fire storm, fire explosion, fire bolt, fire ring, fire dart, fire flame, it would be harder to distinguish spells in you spell list or book of fire. Ok, alternative proposal: make all fire spells red, ice spells white, necro black etc.


It is very bad for me as a native English speaker. "Summon X" is a firmly established convention, and it is an active phrase that describes what the spell does. Some spell names look like someone read the spell lists and thought they were too repetitive... But after all they are just spell lists and not poems, so every spell that summons something should start with "Summon". When I first started playing Crawl I thought "Call Canine Familiar" must mean that it would call a unique permanent creature (a 'familiar'). But really the spell is just "Summon Dog" that scales with spellpower.

Spells color-coded by school might be cool and convenient though.

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Post Wednesday, 5th July 2017, 21:36

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

FWIW the subtext for a native English speaker, "call" is usually the act of speaking aloud possibly to elicit a response (there's no specific indicator that the response is desired in person) "summon" is explicitly demanding the presence of someone or something, and not specifically verbal, typically with authority.

For instance, you can "call" someone on the telephone, possibly just to chat, but you can "summon" someone with a piece of paper (for example a written demand for your presence in court is a "summons")
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Halls Hopper

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Post Wednesday, 5th July 2017, 22:07

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

Not native English speaker's perspective:

1. Most summon spells starting with "summon" makes looking through the memorise list easier, not harder. It lets me limit my attention to those entries starting with "summon" (or exclude them from my attention when skimming over) and clearly indicates the unity of function.
2. Switching the order so that the keyword is at the end rather than in the beginning makes the list less readable, not more. It makes it so, instead of looking at the first word of the spell to recognise whether it might be the one i seek or not, i have to look at the first AND last word - which is barely better than having to read the enire name each time. Especially since, unlike the first word, the last isn't always in the same position. And i can no longer skim by by only paying attention to the first two or three letters. AND i'm fluent enough in English to cringe from seeing an abomination like "Ice beast call" outside of the sentai genre or a scientific study on ice beast ecology.
3. Yes, it WOULD make memorisation easier for me if all blasty spells' names started with one of "Magic _", "Fire _", " Lightning _", "Air_", " Freeze _", "Blast _", " Poison _". Assuming, of course, that no non-blasty spells would use any of those. Whether my current character is a blaster caster or not, it would let me easily and at a single glance distinguish blasty, summoning and utility spell categories based on a simple, easily memorisable list of keywords.
4. Call Imp and Call Canine Familiar are, indeed, confusing. And having "Familiar" in Canine did, indeed, make me believe that i'm about to learn a single-use permanent companion spell back when i was a noob.

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Post Thursday, 6th July 2017, 03:08

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

I see we really need color coding
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Post Thursday, 6th July 2017, 04:04

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

Summon imp and canine sounds good. Dragon's Call is strange enough that it can probably stay as it is. Malign Gateway is the odd one out, because it's not really a summon.

Speaking for myself, I have never had any problems with the spell names.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Thursday, 6th July 2017, 04:34

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

  Code:
Ice Beast Call
Blink
Butterflies Call
Spider Form
Small Mammal Call
Fireball
Guardian Golem Call
Deflect Missiles
Forest Call
Magic Dart
Lightning Spire Call
Hydra Call


I don't like this. If the intent is to optimise left-to-right reading, then it'd be better to drop the verb entirely:
  Code:
Ice Beast
Blink
Butterflies
Spider Form
Small Mammal
Fireball
Guardian Golem
Deflect Missiles
Summon Forest
Magic Dart
Lightning Spire
Hydra


Magic Dart and Fireball don't need a verb ("Conjure Fireball" isn't a thing), so maybe summoning spells don't need it either?

I'd keep "Summon" on a few spells because they'd be clunky in noun-only form: "Summon Forest", "Summon Horrible Things", and maybe "Summon Hydra" (because "Hydra" and "Hydra Form" could be confusing).

For the record, I don't personally have any problem with the current spell names. I'd also be fine renaming all "Call" verbs to "Summon", because Summon is such a fun word. (Dragon's Call is a noun so it shouldn't be changed.)

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Post Thursday, 6th July 2017, 05:03

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

I'm all in favor of color-coding, but there's a problem with multi-school spells. You could argue that spells have a dominant school (conjurations for Bolt of Foo, Transmutations for Spider Form) and make the whole spell that color, but it doesn't work with all spells imo (Petrify, Necromutation) and it would leave some spell schools with almost nothing (Fire Magic for example, as most spells would be labeled as Conjurations). Also, mixing colors or giving spells 2 or 3 colors would only make the spell list more confusing, not less
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Post Thursday, 6th July 2017, 05:32

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

Fingolfin wrote:I'm all in favor of color-coding, but there's a problem with multi-school spells. You could argue that spells have a dominant school (conjurations for Bolt of Foo, Transmutations for Spider Form) and make the whole spell that color, but it doesn't work with all spells imo (Petrify, Necromutation) and it would leave some spell schools with almost nothing (Fire Magic for example, as most spells would be labeled as Conjurations). Also, mixing colors or giving spells 2 or 3 colors would only make the spell list more confusing, not less

I would simply prioritize the list, with multi school spells getting the color of the first school, like so:

Fire, earth, transmutation, poison, ice, air, conjuration, translation, summoning, necromancy, hexes, charms.

That (to me) seems to put most of the multi school spells in the "dominant" flavor (at least for my experience on dominant)
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Post Thursday, 6th July 2017, 06:19

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

Also as far as I remember we already use color-coding for spell success chance so we would need to add a switch to the menus like we have for skills training menu.
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Post Friday, 7th July 2017, 00:58

Re: Standardize summoning school naming convention

It could also be a chance to add some information. For example, some spells allow to only have one ally of their kind at a time. Some spells allow to have more. Some spells summon a group, others a single one.

Like, call = just one total, summon = one at a time, can hold many depending on spell power, gather = multiple summons each time, dragon call is one of a kind (muster?).
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