Hi, ive started using dcg, again, since my belated discovery of the powers of the timetable file in dcg after reading lonestars excellent pdf guide (took me over 10 years, so shame on me). My question is, is there a file in dcg that can be edited to change pilot names say from german to any other nationalities like vietnamese, by using a text editor, not the dcg sqn panel, or is the whole business hardcoded? Thanks.

Cheers

Initially all of the nations had their names embedded in the exe, however, over the years a few have been opened up so players can create their own player lists in a text file.

To work, just create a file called XX_names.dat where "XX" is the nation ID from the game.  For example, German is "de" and Russian is "ru".  Then in the file just drop first and last names in a list.  For example:

Albert Einstein
Jerry Seinfeld
Peter Rabbit

It doesn't matter what first name you attach to a last name as DCG will just randomly select a first name and a second name and join them, but you'll probably need a minimum of 50 to avoid DCG getting in a loop trying to find a unique name for everyone.

The current nationalities you can use are: DE, RU, RO, IT, FR, US, DU.

You can also edit the "cities.dat" file so that the pilots' city of birth matches.

Would this work for mods with added nationalities? Say Asura's Dgen modpack, that adds chinese, yugoslavian and korean, for example. Would I just need to add a CN_names.dat and add a chinese section in cities.dat? Would that be the same for adding squadrons to squadsid.dat file? Just add the generic chinese flight and add below chinese squadrons?

No.  Only the ones I've identified above will work.  So, in your original example, you could create a de_names.dat file full of Vietnamese names, modify the [DE] section in the cities file with Vietnamese city names.  Additionally, you could modify the messages.dcg file to replace "German" with "Vietnamese". 

But you can't add new nationalities.  Those are hard-coded in DCG.

Thank you Paul... I tried it, it worked. 😁 

Cheers

11 hours ago, Lowengrin said:

No.  Only the ones I've identified above will work.  So, in your original example, you could create a de_names.dat file full of Vietnamese names, modify the [DE] section in the cities file with Vietnamese city names.  Additionally, you could modify the messages.dcg file to replace "German" with "Vietnamese". 

But you can't add new nationalities.  Those are hard-coded in DCG.

But if there is, say, a Polish or a New Zealand squadron in a campaign, mnames and birth citeas are generated without issues.

[PZL111FS0]
  004 000 028 Jerzy Konieczny @DGen\PL\17 *51 &1914Krakow
  003 000 010 Jan Wysoczynski @DGen\PL\24 *11 &1924Lubin
  004 000 011 Vassili Szwarc @DGen\PL\12 *21 &1922Lubin
  000 000 000 Leon Chaustowicz @DGen\PL\05 *00 &1924Warsaw
  003 000 008 Yakub Zacharzewski @DGen\PL\02 *41 &1912Radom
  000 000 005 Zygmunt Pantalayev @DGen\PL\02 *10 &1920Lubin
  002 000 014 Ivan Derewinski @DGen\PL\30 *20 &1918Radom
  001 000 013 Vartan Suszek @DGen\PL\28 *10 &1924Radom
  006 000 020 Michal Kotek @DGen\PL\14 *32 &1918Warsaw
  000 000 002 Krzysztof Seriuk @DGen\PL\26 *00 &1926Radom
  002 000 015 Ivan Pantalayev @DGen\PL\22 *20 &1922Krakow
  000 000 000 Nikolay Poruczniczak @DGen\PL\02 *00 &1926Lubin
  004 000 017 Vladimir Gorielov @DGen\PL\30 *31 &1920Lubin
  000 000 000 Grigoriy Gaszyn @DGen\PL\12 *00 &1925Radom
  003 000 012 Stanislaw Baychykov @DGen\PL\07 *11 &1925Radom
  000 000 001 Semen Seriuk @DGen\PL\15 *00 &1922Krakow

So, pilot names and birth cities are created. Maybe the stock Dgen files are used?
BTW, it would be cool to add nationalities, for mod use, or even, stock use. It would be nice having RCAF pilots from Montreal and not from Manchester.

The Poles and New Zealanders are defined by DCG.  Their just still embedded in the DCG exe.  I never created the option for them to be modded. 

RCAF?  Why would anyone care about them? 

Just now, Lowengrin said:

Why would anyone care about them?

☹️