User talk:Winterson

About the Parasitic Xen Fungi‎ article

You recently created the Parasitic Xen Fungi‎ article which covers a red linked topic that was inevitably going to be made at some point. However, there was one big roadblock that prevented me from making the article myself: I have yet to find an actual proper name for this subject matter. There are numerous linked models, particle effects, sounds, and animations that make up the phenomena in the game, most of which are inconsistent in their naming, and I've yet to find a simple title within the closed captions, comments in the code, or elsewhere that would offer us a single concrete name. Additionally, it's even unclear if the focus of the article should cover the "fungus" organism itself or the "spores" that it produces, and these two terms happen to be used interchangeably within the files.

But I digress, my question for you is where you derived the name "Parasitic Xen Fungi" from for the article. Ultimately, we might not be able to find a conclusive name for this subject matter and may have to resort to an unofficial fan name, as has been done before in other articles. Nonetheless, we should still be reasonably accurate with the unofficial moniker we must come up with. As I mentioned, one of the most common names attached to this organism in the files is "Fungus", but we unfortunately already have a pre-established Xen organism called a "Fungus" which itself is also referred to as a "Spore", hence why I held off on deciding on the article name for this new Half-Life: Alyx topic until now. Marphy (talk) 07:43, 21 June 2020 (MSK)

I did not exactly derive the name from any specific source, as you stated there appears to be no official name for this. I named the article as such based on observation alone. If there is a naming conflict, I am not entirely sure what it should be renamed to. Maybe emailing a Valve employee who worked/works on the Alyx team could help? If not, maybe we could instead name it something like “Xen Plague”?

Winterson (talk) 08:33, 21 June 2020 (MSK)Winterson

The actual organism that is attached to the walls and on Jeff's body is called a "fungus", as defined by the individual model name and the material name which is also used on Jeff. Based on the particle names, the actual emitted cloud is called a "spore". There are also map, entity, and particle names related to this that refer to a "cougher", seemingly another name for the fungus as well. We can at least identify that the terms "infectious", "parasitic", and "plague" do not appear in this context.

For the time being, based on the map, entity, and several particle names, I'm going to move this article to "Xen Cougher". This is not advocating it as the best title for the topic, nor does it address the conflicting alternate names, but it's official and sidesteps said conflicts for the moment. Marphy (talk) 21:32, 21 June 2020 (MSK)