This program allows you to custom-design a DF language with ease. It strives to stay as realistic as possible.
To install, simply extract anywhere you wish. Your generated language file will be in the Bin folder once it's done.
That said, this program takes a bit of explanation.
First, it'll ask you for a language name. Simple, right? DO NOT name it "DWARF", "ELF", "HUMAN", "SYM", or "GOBLIN". Caps or otherwise. Or any other language that you already have in a mod. This will end badly, as it will overwrite anything you already have.
Second is the tough part. It'll ask you for a few fake words to "grow" your language from. What you should do is exactly what it tells you, and READ THE INSTRUCTIONS. If you're reading this, I assume you already have... If it wasn't clear enough, here you go.
AT LEAST one word must start with a vowel, and AT LEAST one word must end with a vowel. The same goes for consonants. Therefore, if you put in APPLE (two vowels) and CAR (two consonants), you're good to go. But don't use those unless you're trying for a language like that.
Here's an example of a good word list:
Abacus,kalamazoo,mosquito,ridiculous,hello,talvieno,braincells,toady,avatar,bay,twelve
This would actually be enough to grow a whole language from. There are a few things to note.
- Word lists with more consonants than vowels are likely to gen languages with more consonants than vowels, and vice versa.
- Word lists with mostly words that start with consonants and end with vowels will gen languages like that.
- Word lists with abnormally long words (supercalifredulisticexpialidocious) will gen languages with annoyingly long words.
- Words that are longer in english will also be longer in your language. For example, "AWE_INSPIRING" will ALWAYS be a long word. This is to simulate how often-used words are shorter than rarely-used ones, in any given real-life language.
To sum it up... your language will be as close to what you put in as possible, and still resemble a real-world language.
ONLY USE STANDARD ENGLISH LETTERS! I can't stress this enough. Using non-standard english letters, like letters with dipthongs or accents, will either A. Crash the program, or B. spit out some really weird stuff. When I finally save up enough for a new computer, I'll rewrite the whole thing in C++ Java, for maximum compatibility, and you won't have these issues.
Three other characters are permitted, these being spaces, apostrophes, and dash lines (-). Be aware that languages with these may not generate exactly how you expect them to. I've been careful to make it as accurate as possible, however.
********SYMBOLS********
DFLangCreate will generate "word roots" for each symbol, and words with that symbol will gain a special prefix or suffix. If "anu-" is the root for "DOMESTIC", then many domestic words will start with anu-, allowing you (if you know your language well enough) to tell what symbol a word (probably) is just by looking at it. It simulates a real-life language to an extent. I say "many" and "probably" because "anu" can also be artificially generated at random, and many words have more than one symbol. If a word has more than one symbol, it chooses the root at random from a list. You can't assign your own roots. DFLangCreate does it on its own.
********WHY YOU CAN'T OMIT ALL VOWEL/CONSONANT BEGINNINGS/ENDINGS********
DFLangCreate tries to keep the genned words looking like, well... words. The letter combinations are split up into three categories: beginnings, middle portions, and ends. If a beginning ends with a consonant, it tries to choose a middle portion that starts with a vowel, so you don't end up with something like this: "schwchsklchthaiaoourtchsch". No, instead, you end up with something like this: "tamagong". To be sure that you can ALWAYS end up with something like this, DFLangCreate is very careful to tell you that you need vowel/consonant beginnings/endings.
It would also be wise of you to make sure your words are as distinct as possible. Making a list like this:
mola,marto,manatee,mailbox,ail,malpractice,martyr,mario,marina,mattress
Would ensure that almost every word would start with an "m", and DFLangCreate might run out of unique words, which would force it to make the words LONGER.
********LANGUAGE EXAMPLES********
All of the following are perfectly fine.
Abacus,kalamazoo,mosquito,ridiculous,hello,talvieno,braincells,toady,avatar,bay,twelve
[T_WORD:ABBEY:anciebo]
[T_WORD:ACE:rames]
[T_WORD:ACT:hair]
[T_WORD:AFTER:hecamo]
[T_WORD:AGE:azidy]
[T_WORD:AGELESS:hasqezidy]
[T_WORD:ALE:kator]
[T_WORD:ANCIENT:ricocetidy]
[T_WORD:ANGEL:toadady]
[T_WORD:ANGER:raluto]
moka,toka,ibika,stola,cloda,tiki,matoka,sabonura,obunachi,kalatanafon,roboto,alkaseltzer
[T_WORD:ABBEY:olakora]
[T_WORD:ACE:cluba]
[T_WORD:ACT:mar]
[T_WORD:AFTER:otika]
[T_WORD:AGE:rucha]
[T_WORD:AGELESS:salukecha]
[T_WORD:ALE:idota]
[T_WORD:ANCIENT:sabiricha]
[T_WORD:ANGEL:molori]
[T_WORD:ANGER:clekala]
schaffendar,veluuren,hausen,einer,rabulstein,scroder,scruff,jahol,scheider,scheina,robscach,mascharae,luffscharocharen,scacslarkoken
[T_WORD:ABBEY:scekobun]
[T_WORD:ACE:heran]
[T_WORD:ACT:scar]
[T_WORD:AFTER:ranorodae]
[T_WORD:AGE:leson]
[T_WORD:AGELESS:hokabscehadul]
[T_WORD:ALE:rera]
[T_WORD:ANCIENT:schebscekoson]
[T_WORD:ANGEL:herosebun]
[T_WORD:ANGER:markerora]
And, now that I've provided examples and (hopefully) explained everything... Enjoy!
- Talvieno
This program randomly generates anywhere from 10 to 1000 new creature types for your world, and occasionally adds randomly-generated civs.
Everything in this folder should go directly into (DF Folder)/Raw/Objects/
Even the bin folder. That goes into /Raw/Objects/ too.
IF YOU HAVE A PREVOUS VERSION INSTALLED, UNINSTALL IT FIRST. (In other words, delete all related files. Even the genned raws.)
The program is pretty hands-off. You choose how many creatures you want to gen, and it gens them for you. Seems pretty simple to me. You know when it's done because it stops.
Entity_random may or may not include computer-controlled civ data. If it doesn't, that's fine. It just means that none of the creatures you genned were deemed civ-worthy. Sometimes that happens, usually when you only gen a few creatures.
Sometimes your creatures MAY have odd descriptions. This is because a computer can only go so far towards describing a randomly-generated creature. If you don't like it, think about how much time it would take you to go through 1000 creatures, read their raws, and custom-add a description to each of them that fits. I think that for 30 seconds of genning tops, DFRandCreature is doing pretty good. If it says something especially non-descript, this is something to warn me of. It means I need to be more creative.
On occasion it MAY start popping out messages in the error logs, probably related to Toady's old "XFingers_RQ_ANON" code, where fingers were toes and toes were fingers. If this happens, let me know.
Careful with thousands of creatures in Adv mode, by the way. Visiting the random civs can be awesome fun, but DF doesn't scale the ingame creature count relative to the number of species. Instead, they add up. 10000 creatures means approximately 50 times as many creatures ingame as you'd normally see. (this is fixed - the creature count WILL go up, but it won't be 50x.) Toady One has only made about 650 creatures total. This gens up to 1000 at a time.
Entities will siege or trade now. Look forwards to more fun and Fun in fortress mode.
NONE OF THE CREATURES HAVE SPECIAL SYNDROMES. Nothing (should) set you on fire or poison you to within an inch of your life. There are a few (muahaha) exceptions, but other than that...
Enjoy!
- Talvieno
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Topic: LangCreate (v34 and v40) and RandCreatures (v34, being rewritten) (Read 84283 times)