Anybody Know What CaptainName Is?

[CABAL]

I was poking around the A2 GUI files and saw a commented out bit called captainName in gui_interface.cfg. The line is also in FO in gui_interface_misc.cfg, but not in A1. A2 also has infoSingleCaptainTextArea. Does anybody know what these things are supposed to do? Was A2 going to have randomly assigned captain names in addition to ship names? Was it supposed to denote the owning player? Looking through the .exe hasn't gotten me anywhere so I'm hoping somebody has an idea.

 

[Majestic]

I'm fairly certain if I remember back to 2001 that while in development they were going to have a Captain command where after a ship is lost the Captain would be assigned another and you could follow their career in the Admiral's log after the game. But it was one of the features that never made it into game, probably due to the time restrictions put on them by management.

It would be nice if the FO team decided to finish this feature and include it. But it's really nothing more than eye candy. But I sometimes like eye candy.

 

[Atlantis]

The "infoSingleCaptainTextArea" is still used for something, I believe, but not the originally-intended Captains Name. I think it's now used for defining where the Class Name appears on the UI, or something like that.
It's possible the captainsname bit that's commented out affects the colour of that same thing (whatever it is). Uncomment it. set it to 1,0,0. See what shows up bright red. That's the one.

 

[CABAL]

I've tried activating it and nothing happens. Ship name and class name have their own GUI lines inherited from A1, so that's not it. Examining Armada2.exe with a text editor does not turn up any captain related odf lines.

 

[Atlantis]

Hmm, then I can't remember what it is. It is something, but it's only called captainname in the gui files; in everything else it uses it's proper identification.