Omitting unessential parts of term names in the NPE

[Dev-iL]

TL;DR - the names of some things could be made shorter w/o hurting comprehensibility (see examples in the code blocks at the end)

This is a topic I've raised with various developers, so I figured I should make a post for posterity (outside obscure Crowdin issues and chatroom messages):

In the NPE there's only one type of power pole, one type of turret, etc. Therefore, it might be less overwhelming if the instructional strings say e.g. "construct a power pole" instead of "construct a small power pole", etc. Ask yourself - should players care at this stage of their familiarity with the game that there are other types of turrets and power poles, or is it just TMI for them (again, at that stage)? I'm not saying that the entities themselves should be given different names for the sake of the tutorial, but many instructions could be simplified this way.

Here's the latest comment on the subject:

As it is also a demo, saying "small electric pole" has the added benefit of hinting that big electric poles exist. Additionally, the main way to learn in Factorio Freeplay is to view the wiki, where knowing the correct term will be important for looking up information.

On a related matter, there's a recurring theme of items named using the following pattern: <material> <object name>, which is justified in some cases (stone furnace vs steel furnace), but not so much in others (stone wall, iron gear wheel) - I would guess that this was made for better compatibility with mods (which nowadays can just rename vanilla items to have a consistent naming scheme), or perhaps it was some hint to help players know which resources are needed for a certain item. In this case, I think there are enough other cues now that this is unnecessary.

Terms whose names can be shortened in the scope of NPE:

Code: Select all

small power pole -> power pole
gun turret -> turret

Terms whose names can be shortened in the scope of the entire game, including material omission:

Code: Select all

iron gear wheel -> gear wheel -> gear
electronic circuit -> circuit // this is suggested because "advanced circuits" don't have the "electronic" adjective

I might update these lists as I come across additional fitting terms.

P.S. This post refers specifically to the English locale. In other languages there would likely be other terms that can be shortened (for example, in English we say gun magazine to differentiate it from a journal or a shop, but in other languages magazine might only have the meaning of an ammunition holder). I expect translators to use their heads and not translate non-essential words