Room renames#2106
Conversation
Total's randomizer had a difficult to parse spoiler log for item locations. I thought mm2 rewrote the location names but from what I see SMZ3 doesn't have great names and S4Z4 uses this project's names. VARIA and TOTAL are item locations, but also have weak references to landmarks multiple rooms away when naming things.
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"Post Crocomire Jump Room" seems more descriptive on a basic level, but "Indiana Jones" is more fun and memorable. Kind of similar to "Mission Impossible" in how it relies on a movie reference as well as a trick, but it seems broadly understandable enough and it's what I hear people mostly calling it. I have heard Pantry too but not as much and it seems less descriptive/memorable. Added rename to "Indiana Jones Room".
The connection between "Plasma Spark" and "Pseudo Plasma Spark" was always intuitive for me, but I can see it being confusing and it doesn't roll off the tongue very well anyway. "The Beach" seems good.
Yeah I was thinking of addressing the subareas/subsubareas in a follow-up pull request. I think "Outer Maridia" rename to "West Maridia" sounds good. I agree Inner (or East Maridia) doesn't really need to exist as a subarea; the three subsubareas in it could just be promoted to subareas. Also the quicksand and sand pit rooms should be reassigned to Yellow Maridia.
I had been thinking of leaving it alone, to avoid its name looking too similar to the wave gate. But I guess that's not consistent with how we handle other cases (e.g. Final Missile Bombway and The Final Missile Room), so probably better to rename it to "Wave Gate Energy Tank Room".
How about "Hotarubi Spring Ball Maze"? The idea being to adopt the community usage while also retaining "Spring Ball Maze" as a part that can be understandable to new players. And it should make sense together since the Hotarubi special is about using spring ball to get into the maze.
The issue I see "Worker Robots" is that there are several rooms with worker robots in them so it seems less specific. Assembly Line to me is kind of memorable in creating a picture of the robots in a line on the treadmills. But I get it maybe hasn't caught on, so there could be a better name?
Yeah, I'm not sure how to improve it? The "Green Bubbles" part is fairly descriptive to me in that you're immersed in the bubbles in this room more than any other room. The "Missile Room" part is not too significant so maybe there could be another feature of the room to reference in the name, e.g. the Geruta, the elevator/shutter thing, or the morph/hidden passage?
Yeah I could imagine "Back of Gauntlet" getting confusing if it were applied to the bottom part of the room where you don't have access to the items.
Sounds good, renamed. Also renamed "Glass Tunnel Save Room".
Yeah and I always got confused by "West Sand Hall Tunnel" and "West Glass Tube Tunnel". How about "Crab Gateway" instead of "Crab Tunnel"? "Gateway" to reflect the green gate, and also to reflect a little more vividly how there's just a ton of crabs in there. For "West Sand Hall Tunnel", how about "Lonely Crab Room" to reflect that there's just the one crab (and I think it's the only room with one crab?). These are more experimental/original choices so we'd have to see if they catch on. Just ideas to make them more memorable and interesting. |
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What about I like all the other new suggestions |
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I like Bubble Tunnel with or without Green. And Lonely crab is a good one too. |
I like this. It maintains continuity with the "Assembly Line" name while making it more descriptive by adding the "Robot". In Practice Hack, the Map Completion category has "Robots of Pain". I think the robots are the main feature of the room so it's good to include that in the name.
It seems like people tend to call it "Green Bubbles" so keeping Green is the name is probably good. People probably aren't going to say the end of the room name regardless of what we put there, but "Tunnel" does seem a bit more descriptive than "Missile Room". There are several rooms with "Tunnel" in the name so it's not unique (though we are trimming them down a bit by renaming "Crab Tunnel" and "Glass Tunnel"). With the hidden passage and morph tunnel, the word "Tunnel" seems like as good a fit in this room as any other. |
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A couple more that Kyle and I were thinking about:
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Lava Farm Tunnel
Lava Grapple Tunnel
Are very bland and forgettable. But a better name wasn't suggested.
Agreed. I think that if there are any more we want to change, it would be a great time to do so before the next Map Rando release. |
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This renames several rooms, trying to improve them according to one or more of these criteria:
One other point that has come up before: It is ok for rooms to reference their vanilla area, items in the room, or neighboring rooms. In theory, references to invariant features of the room would be preferable to reduce confusion when areas & maps are randomized, but it's often impractical, e.g., because a lot of the time the most memorable feature of the room is the vanilla item it contains, or the vanilla room that it leads to. Also, since we're trying to maintain consistency with the broader Super Metroid community, it doesn't really make sense for randomizer-specific concerns to weigh too heavily in how the room names are determined.
Since many people may have opinions on the proposed room name changes, before merging it will probably be good to invite feedback from more people in the community. In the v119 release of Map Rando, we will be showing the current room name in the pause menu, and the main logic page also shows a vanilla map where you can click on a room to go to its logic page; so this should help mitigate any difficulty that players have as a result of the names changing. We can also list all the name changes in the release notes.
Rationale for each of the changes (edited/updated to incorporate feedback from the discussion in this PR and in the Map Rando Discord: https://discord.com/channels/1053421401354285129/1390059046429790319):
Pink Brinstar Power Bomb Room → Mission Impossible Room
"Mission Impossible" seems to be what people are calling this room now. On the surface, "Pink Brinstar Power Bomb Room" is more descriptive, but for new players the fact that there was a Power Bomb here is not very memorable, so the name is not really too helpful. "Mission Impossible" is a well-known trick, so although it may not be immediately meaningful to new players, once they have seen the trick it will be easy to remember.
Pink Brinstar Hopper Room → Pink Brinstar Wave Gate Room
I think this room is most often called "Wave Gate Room" now. Retaining "Pink Brinstar" in the name helps make it more understandable to new players and to disambiguate it from other gates that can be opened with Wave. The name "Pink Brinstar Hopper Room" was confusing because it could easily be misunderstood as referring to "Pink Brinstar Power Bomb Room" which also has Hoppers.
Bat Room → Skree Boost Room
This seems to be the name that people are currently using for this room. "Skree Boost Room" is already used in the Practice Hack and is also the canonical name on the Wiki. "Bat Room" was a confusing name because it was too similar to "Bat Cave". The phrase "Skree Boost" might not be great for disambiguating them since you also boost off Skrees in "Bat Cave", but it is still an improvement to make the two room names less similar to each other.
Crateria Super Room → Climb Supers Room
"Climb Supers" seems to be what people are calling this room now. I think this is also a little more clear, by drawing the connection with the (vanilla) neighboring room "Climb".
Bowling Alley Path → Puddles Room
"Bowling Alley Path" creates some problems when searching for "Bowling Alley" (e.g. in the main logic page or on the video site) since these two rooms are in different areas so they don't show up next to each other. The Practice Hack currently calls this room "Bowling Alley Path" in the door portal tool; in the Map Completion category it was called "Puddles", a preset that used to exist between "West Ocean" and "Bowling Area" (not sure what happened but I notice the presets have been restructured and it's not there anymore). I remember mm2 explained that this came from a joke on someone's stream. I don't know that "Puddles" has caught on in the larger community, but since this room is a relatively "boring" one, I think that leaves more space to be a little playful with the name like this. "Puddles" is also reasonably descriptive and memorable.
Lower Norfair Escape Power Bomb Room → Lower Norfair Jail
The name "Lower Norfair Escape Power Bomb Room" is overly long/cumbersome. The reference to the "Escape" also seems out of place since none of the other rooms along the path of escaping Lower Norfair have "Escape" in their name. I usually hear this room referred to either as "Jail" or "PBs in Jail". I think that keeping "Lower Norfair" in the name helps make it more understandable. The Practice Hack currently refers to this as "LN Jail Power Bombs" in the door portal. Again, the fact that vanilla has a Power Bomb here is not overly memorable (and less meaningful in a randomizer context) so I think it's ok to drop that from the name, in order to help highlight the "Jail" part which is the unique thing about the room.
Lower Norfair Spring Ball Maze Room → Hotarubi Spring Ball Maze
This was the longest remaining room name after shortening "Lower Norfair Escape Power Bomb Room". The word "Room" is mostly redundant since "Maze" already describes the main feature of the room. People commonly refer to this as the "Hotarubi" room in reference to the "Hotarubi special" speedrun trick for breaking the bomb blocks at the entrance of the maze. Keeping "Spring Ball Maze" as part of the name helps maintain some broader understandability for players who aren't aware of the trick.
East Sand Hole → East Sand Pit
The name "East Sand Hole" sounds very similar to "East Sand Hall", which is confusing. And I think most people already call it "East Sand Pit".
West Sand Hole → West Sand Pit
Same idea.
Northwest Maridia Bug Room → Maridia Swiss Cheese Room
"Northwest Maridia Bug Room" is a bit cumbersome and generic sounding: it is descriptive of where the room is located in vanilla, though there is an even more north-west room (Watering Hole) which also has bugs in it, so it's not very specific. I think "Swiss Cheese Room" is already a more common name for the room, and this is more appealing in how it identifies an intrinsic feature of the room (granted, it's mainly a cosmetic thing that's not necessarily preserved across tile themes). It also has the advantage of being more fun sounding. In the Practice Hack, the Map Completion category has a "Swiss Cheese Room" preset for this room. Retaining "Maridia" in the name helps keep it more understandable for new players.
Post Crocomire Missile Room → Cosine Room
"Cosine Room" is what I usually hear this room being called now. The fact that it has a Missile is not so memorable or important. Retaining the "Post Crocomire" would also be an option to help make it more understandable for new players, but "Post Crocomire Cosine Room" is kind of cumbersome and feels redundant since there is no other Cosine Room.
Spiky Acid Snakes Tunnel → Lava Grapple Tunnel
This room has lava in it, not acid. For newer players, it's easy to confuse the two types of damaging liquids, so it's better not to be misleading about it. The Grapple blocks are a significant feature of the room, which is highlighted by the new name. "Spiky Snakes Tunnel" was another proposal, and this would be less of a deviation from the existing name but possibly a bit less descriptive.
Acid Snakes Tunnel → Lava Farm Tunnel
"Lava Farm Tunnel" is a suggestion by @kjbranch, referring to the Gamet farm on the left side of the room, where in some situations it may be useful to jump into the lava to farm (the only such farm in the game?). This naming reflects the connection between "Lava Farm Tunnel" and "Lava Grapple Tunnel" since vanilla players may associate these two rooms with each other (and the existing names are variations of each other: "Spiky Acid Snakes Tunnel" vs. "Acid Snakes Tunnel").
An alternative suggestion was "No Snakes Tunnel" by NobodyNada (if "Spiky Acid Snakes Tunnel" were instead renamed to "Spiky Snakes Tunnel"); this would maintain more continuity with the existing names, but with the drawback of being less descriptive/clear (e.g. players may wonder why a room is named after something that doesn't exist in the room).
Ice Beam Acid Room → Ice Beam Trippers Room
Again this room has lava in it, not acid. The Trippers are really the more memorable feature of the room, and I think I've heard people calling it "Ice Beam Trippers" before.
Blue Hopper Room → Tourian Hopper Room
The name "Blue Hopper Room" is confusing, as it's easily misunderstood as referring to the Blue Brinstar room with Hoppers (Morph Ball Room). I think the name "Tourian Hopper Room" is also pretty commonly used already.
The Final Missile → 230 Missile Room
"230 Missiles" seems to be what the community mostly calls this room. Including "Room" at the end aligns with the convention (followed through the sm-json-data) that the room name should be a phrase describing the room as a whole, not just an item or other thing in the room. For new players, "230 Missile Room" may be a bit less clear than "The Final Missile" but neither really would make sense anyway outside the context of speedrunning, and since this is a "boring" room anyway, there's no real harm.
West Sand Hall Tunnel → Lonely Crab Room
The existing name wasn't memorable and didn't seem to be used much. It was also kind of easy to confuse with several other rooms. "Lonely Crab Room" is an attempt at a memorable name based on a unique feature of the room.
East Cactus Alley Room → East Cactus Alley
The "Room" was redundant since "Alley" already describes the room.
West Cactus Alley Room → West Cactus Alley
Same idea.
Pseudo Plasma Spark Room → The Beach
The room does have a resemblance to "Plasma Spark Room" (and the two are connected by an inaccessible tunnel) but the connection isn't too intuitive, and the name is cumbersome to say. "The Beach" is simpler, still fairly descriptive, and is probably the name that's most commonly used in the community now.
Crab Tunnel → Crab Gateway
The name "Crab Tunnel" can easily be confused as referring to "West Sand Hall Tunnel" (now "Lonely Crab Room"). Crab Gateway is an attempt to make it a little more clear and descriptive, by referencing the green gate in the room which is a main feature.
Glass Tunnel -> Maridia Tube
There's nothing necessarily wrong with the name "Glass Tunnel", but "Maridia Tube" seems to be the more commonly used name in the community, and it seems at least as descriptive, so best to align with that.
Glass Tunnel Save Room -> Maridia Tube Save Room
For consistency.
West Glass Tube Tunnel → West Maridia Tube Tunnel
For consistency. This room name isn't very descriptive, so there could maybe be a better name. Though the room is empty so there's really not much to describe.
Post Crocomire Jump Room → Indiana Jones Room
"Indiana Jones Room" seems to be the most common name that this room is known by in the community. At a basic level it's a bit less descriptive than "Post Crocomire Jump Room". But it is more memorable, referencing a well-known trick in the room. Overall probably a good trade-off.
Bug Sand Hole → Yoink Room
"Yoink Room" seems to be what people are commonly calling this, and it is significantly more descriptive of the main feature of the room ("yoink" referring to the act of Samus getting grabbed into the transition by a Yapping Maw).