Suggestions

Considering the age of this website, I'd figured that mayhaps upon my return to the website, there'd finally be better naming systems in place...and boy was I disappointed. It's a shame that after some seven or eight years of keeping this website running, we're still not allowed to use accented letters in dragon names. Or hyphens. Or spaces. Or apostrophes. Or non-Latin characters.

While I can understand forbidding punctuation (left unchecked, access to punctuation makes it easier to execute limited code if you learn the text shorthand provided the developers haven't sanitized inputs), it's these extended Latin characters and non-Latin scripts that genuinely disappoint me. Yes, the automatic name censors would have to be updated again. Yes, it's something of a long process. You cannot, however, argue that Verdana (the font this website is coded to display in) does not support extended Latin. Because it does, along with Cyrillic and Greek. Likewise, so does the font that Apple devices default to. (I play on iOS when I'm too far from my laptop or just checking in for Baldwin/feedings. I was attempting to download the font to my computer to generate an image that would better prove my point, but it did nothing but disappoint me. Edit: I have found a deposit from GitHub (thanks to my animation teacher!) that has these fonts in a Windows-friendly file format. Stay tuned while I generate an example image!) This change would be more than worth it, considering that there is a sizable playerbase who don't use English as their first language, and most languages that use these accented letters have names/words with different meanings depending on whether or not the accent is there or not. The way I see it, if you're going to support a non-English speaking populous, you should do it right.

And while this is less likely to happen, I'd also like to propose the following: very limited punctuation in dragon names. Things like spaces, hyphens, and apostrophes, at the very least. A fair amount of Romanized Korean names can't be used as they contain hyphens. Lovecraftian-style names are a pain and a half to use because we're not allowed to use apostrophes. And giving dragons surnames? Can't do that either (at least not in a way that looks very nice) because we don't have spaces.

tl;dr: I'd love to see extended Latin characters (as well of those in Hebrew, Cyrillic, and other non-Latin scripts) + spaces + hyphens + apostrophes in dragon names, and while it may take a while to update the censor, it would open up a lot more name options and make the non-English speaking/English-second-language communities feel more welcome. These changes are not limited by the website's font or those that computers lacking Verdana default to, and would not require the developers to sit down and fork over a bunch of money to license a new font, as the font the website already uses supports the characters in question.

Times New Roman (the Windows OS's "when-all-else-fails" font) also supports these extended Latin characters. Couldn't quite fit it in up there though.

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Edit: Added a link to an example for code execution via unsanitized input fields + correct the statement about arbitrary code so as to not spread misinfo. Arbitrary code execution is usually something like this (in games) or this (in other programs; scroll down to the Demo header for a video of it in action).

Edit 2: Adding script types that do not use Latin characters to the list of things to request. Realized it was kind of dumb to say "let's do this and do it right" and then proceed to forget about other languages that use other scripts. Y'all exist too, and I'm going to make sure the devs are aware.

Edit 3: Made edit 1 more comprehensive :D

Let's extend that to all non-English characters please, like Russian, Chinese, Hindu etc, so all non-English/ESOL players can feel welcomed and included.

Support. People can already use disallowed words as names by just using another language's equivalent word, so not allowing punctuation, non-English letters, or other scripts really isn't as helpful as one may think.

lots of support! i don't really get why we can't even have spaces; it's something i'd really like to understand. adding more name possibilities would be a super neat QOL change :)

Support! Flight rising Already supports more than just Latin characters in dragon bios (see here) as well as profile pages.
It has been a frustrating limitation to adhere to a smaller alphabet when naming dragons (as well as using the forums, naming skins and accents), as a non-English speaker, and just as someone who wants to name their dragons cool things.

I definitely see the reasons why they wouldn't allow special characters for names, but people still will find ways to put in expletives on the site, because the filter will not pick up on the filtered words if they're put together with other letters like Cool[expletive] would be considered a valid name, or just spelling the words backwards (have seen those when buying fodder lol). I'm not saying it's a bad system, since if it were to filter for any instance of a possible swear word it would catch many positives, like the Scunthorpe problem.

If the concern is that people would be able to get away with unsavoury names in their own language if given the free rein, I can assure you that I can think of swears off the top of my head that wouldn't need any unique characters. (have seen some, but those are probably from the randomizer)

edit. Full support for other scripts than just extended Latin!

Will be adding notes about Cyrillic/Greek/Hindu/etc to the top post!

I'm also hoping that despite how technical my explanation gets regarding fonts and all that it's still easy to understand? If there's any way to actually simplify that a little, feel free to tag me and ask, or if I said something that you don't fully understand.

Y'all have been heard, and now your scripts are listed in the top post!

Heck, I'd love to see even just spaces added so I can have surnames without it looking like fantasy elf names.

[quote name="Vendrus" date="2020-09-29 14:26:58" ] Heck, I'd love to see even just spaces added so I can have surnames without it looking like fantasy elf names. [/quote] YES SAME. Support for extended Latin characters, but would it be so hard to include names with spaces? (obviously disabling space-only names and names beginning/ending with spaces)

I was just testing out to see if the boardcast for dragons can use non-English characters or not. At least it can't use Chinese to be sure... :( What I wanted to say is, if the names themselves are non-negotiable, maybe we can at the very least have the freedom on the boardcast messages. That way it doesn't affect the offspring list as such (because who knows there might be people getting annoyed with their dragon's offspring list containing a dozen different languages that they can't read), but it can also serve as a secondary field to display the name properly. Just a thought. [quote name="Zikitty" date="2020-09-29 14:32:33" ] [quote name="Vendrus" date="2020-09-29 14:26:58" ] Heck, I'd love to see even just spaces added so I can have surnames without it looking like fantasy elf names. [/quote] YES SAME. Support for extended Latin characters, but would it be so hard to include names with spaces? (obviously disabling space-only names and names beginning/ending with spaces) [/quote] And I agree with this. Even if we can't get non-English characters, including spaces, hyphens and ' (never remember what this called ><) would open up a lot more creativeness, as well as giving many romanised words more sense.

Support!! A change like this would only really benefit me superficially, but I'm sure it would make a lot of other people happy and recognized.