[Muzamba]

Originally Posted by davwms

Currently it allows for 500 entries in each file. I can easily allow for more, it was just a number I

used when I started creating it... ... I increased the number of entries allowed by quite a bit..

Fantastic!

However, for what I'm looking to accomplish, the number would have to be pretty big... probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000. (I'll explain in a little more detail in a moment, but basically I want to add all the American names from the names.txt db file.)

Originally Posted by davwms

.. In my next version, I will have another modifier for each entry to allow for how common that entry will be used.. (I hope you can understand that last sentence LOL)

Understood perfectly! And this was actually going to be my second suggestion. That's why I was originally asking about duplicates, but using a frequency interger would definitely be much more efficient.

Originally Posted by davwms

Also, please.. if you make changes/additions to the data files, please, pass them back to me so I can add them in for the next version..

Before sending you my additions, I'd like to propose a few ideas I have.

Unfortunately, many of the names that are being generated still sound rather contrived and unrealistic. I think that's just a fundamental drawback to trying to conjoin parts of words into new ones.

So here are my suggestions that I think will give us even better, more realistic-sounding place names. (Note: If there are any English teachers reading this, I confess that I don't remember the correct terms for the grammatical elements I'm using here, so I'm just gonna wing it. )

1. Reorganize the dat files as follows:

city1 = Title prefix (Fort, Mount, New, Port, etc.)
city2 = Descriptive prefix (Big, Cold, Green, Running, etc.)
city3 = Subject (proper names)
city4 = Subject (nouns)
city5 = Conjunctive suffix (burg, field, ton, ville, etc.)
city6 = Title suffix (City, Lake, Park, Village, etc.)
city7 = Secondary title suffix (see "Title suffix")
(optional) city8 = States/provinces

(Quick sidenote here: Although the spacing format could justifiably be hard-coded, it might be better to allow spaces to be defined within the datasets instead.)

2. Control the number of dataset combinations that are generated.

For example:

3 - ("Smith") - 1000
3+5 ("Smithville") - 1000
3+6 ("Smith Falls") - 1000
3+5+6 ("Smithville Falls") - 50
3+6+7 ("Smith Falls City") - 50
3+5+6+7 ("Smithville Falls City") - 1
1+3 ("New Smith") - 250
1+3+5 ("New Smithville") - 250
1+3+5+6 ("New Smithville Falls") - 10
1+6 ("New Falls") - 5
2+4 ("Big Oak") - 250
4+5 ("Oakville") - 1000
4+6 ("Oak Falls") - 500
4+6+7 ("Oak Falls City") - 50
2+4+6 ("Big Oak Falls") - 50
2+6 ("Big Falls") - 100

Ideally, the user would be able to enter the frequency interger themselves, although hard-coding them roughly according to the examples listed above would probably be okay.

3. Use tags to group certain values together. Tags could be numbers, letters, or words... whatever the user wants to use to identify conceptually-similar values.

For instance, say you want to add "Saint" as a title prefix. You wouldn't want a place name of "Saint Smith" to be generated, as that would be unrealistic. Therefore, you might add the value "saints" next to the line for "Saint" in the city1 file. You would then add the tag "saints" to entries like Andrew, Michael, and Paul in the city3 file.

I'd also like to expand upon ry1220's ideas...

Originally Posted by ry1220

...I'll be modding to allow for some Spanish-sounding city names...

Spanish names could be effectively utilized by implementing the tag function I mentioned in suggestion #3 above. Using the same logic as with "Saint" above, one could include "San" in city1 and match it up with names like Andreas, Miguel, and Pablo in city3. You could also add descriptive prefixes like "La", "Las", "El", and "Los".

On the other hand, because Spanish has a different structure, it might be better to have a completely separate Spanish names file. That would allow the descriptive prefix and subject to be juxtaposed (e.g. "Rio Loco", instead of "Loco Rio")

Originally Posted by ry1220

EDIT: To be honest, the export to file should have a directory listing, at least, if not an option as to where to save to.

Agreed. This would make it easier to have separate export files.

Originally Posted by ry1220

EDIT2: Also, it would be nice if populations could be entered or randomized and added to the export in the same format as cities.txt.

This is a great point. Perhaps an arbitrary population and latitude/longitude coordinates could be generated. (Or the lat/long could be based on the states the cities are assigned to.)

I have several other ideas regarding the use of this program to generate other fictional entities for use in OOTP, especially if some of my ideas for future versions are implemented. These include company names, local and national broadcast media, and local print media (which could already be useful with our new storyline engine. )

But I'll save these for another post, so as to not overwhelm you with too many ideas just yet. LOL

Anyway, let me know what you think of these ideas and whether you think they're feasible. (FWIW, I'll be happy to help with the content if you'd be able to handle the coding.)

And thanks again for developing this. I'm looking forward to seeing what all we can eventually accomplish with it!