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There are a frigging lot of words in a dictionary

Writing for Games Game Design

Started by sunandshadow January 29, 2010 11:44 PM

3 comments, last by Pete Michaud 14 years, 5 months ago

sunandshadow

7,435

Author

January 29, 2010 11:44 PM

My current game development task is making a dictionary of names which can be randomly assigned to the creatures in my anthro breeding game. I wanted to avoid real names (like Bob and Joe), thus the dictionary approach. I also wanted to trim out words which would make poor names (nasty diseases, chemicals no one's ever heard of...) and words which were too similar to other words (ran, run, running...). Just thought I'd share, since I'm finding the task amusing yet unexpectedly brain-melting. [grin]

I want to help design a "sandpark" MMO. Optional interactive story with quests and deeply characterized NPCs, plus sandbox elements like player-craftable housing and lots of other crafting. If you are starting a design of this type, please PM me. I also love pet-breeding games.

KulSeran

3,272

January 29, 2010 11:50 PM

What about a Phonetic approach? like this: Generating Names Phonetically

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sunandshadow

7,435

Author

January 30, 2010 12:43 AM

I wanted to use actual words to help with the humor/cuteness side of the game. Although phonetically generating names would be great for names that were supposed to be in a non-existent language, like Elvish or something.

E M

100

January 31, 2010 10:22 AM

I am not into programming but I have an idea. You will log a huge number of well known names into a program and instruct the program to perform an increase by letter in the Vowels AEIOUWY. If the name is Mark it will be Merk. Mike should be Moke. Michael should be Mocheil. If you put names like man, then it should be men. But the word "men" is already a name. If the word is matched with an existed one in the dictionary then increase the vowel another time. Therefore Man would be Min.
You can add another rule or you can make the increasing in the first letter or the last letter. Any way you should have a look at the result of that program and see how it goes. I hope I got your meaning right. Best of luck in your task.