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[Mephansteras]

With about 10 new races in my mod, I got a little tired of everyone using the standard ELF, DWARF, HUMAN, and GOBLIN languages. So I'm working on a perl script that'll generate random words based on some  basic rule sets.

It's still in development, but I figured I'd mention what I've got and see what ideas other people have come up with.

Right now, I've got three lists it works with. 1 for Vowels, 1 for Consonants, and 1 for Rules.

For example:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

my %Vow;
$Vow{'a'} = 4;
$Vow{'e'} = 4;
$Vow{'i'} = 10;
$Vow{'o'} = 5;
$Vow{'u'} = 5;
$Vow{'y'} = 0;
$Vow{"\'"} = 0;
$Vow{'ï'} = 1;
$Vow{'â'} = 1;
$Vow{'ë'} = 1;
$Vow{'õ'} = 1;
$Vow{'ü'} = 1;

my %Const;
$Const{'b'} = 1;
$Const{'c'} = 2;
$Const{'d'} = 1;
$Const{'f'} = 1;
$Const{'g'} = 1;
$Const{'h'} = 1;
$Const{'j'} = 2;
$Const{'k'} = 2;
$Const{'l'} = 4;
$Const{'m'} = 4;
$Const{'n'} = 4;
$Const{'p'} = 8;
$Const{'qu'} = 2;
$Const{'r'} = 4;
$Const{'s'} = 3;
$Const{'t'} = 2;
$Const{'v'} = 8;
$Const{'w'} = 8;
$Const{'x'} = 8;
$Const{'y'} = 6;
$Const{'z'} = 1;
$Const{'th'} = 4;
$Const{'sh'} = 4;

my %Rules;
$Rules{'StartWithCons'} = 1;
$Rules{'StartWithVowel'} = 0;
$Rules{'EndWithCons'} = 0;
$Rules{'EndWithVowel'} = 1;
$Rules{'NoDoubleCons'} = 1;
$Rules{'NoDoubleVowels'} = 0;

This rule set outputs words like these:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[T_WORD:NET:cüoxuiquâio]
[T_WORD:NETTLE:thõõvüawu]
[T_WORD:NEW:wuëla]
[T_WORD:NEWT:kaereuï]
[T_WORD:NIBBLE:riuwuë]
[T_WORD:NIGHT:võupoothi]
[T_WORD:NIGHTMARE:xaoshaixë]
[T_WORD:NOBLE:niiwuasaa]

And puts everything in the same basic format that the stock DF languages use. Oh, and it gets its list of words from the language_words.txt file.

Thoughts on ways to improve this? Interest in me releasing the script at some point?

[Aqizzar]

Tons of interest.  I love language generators, and I tried to write a java script to write out random languages in the same way the stock ones are written, but it fell apart on me.

There's a great random word generator for Space Empires IV out there somewhere that I've used for other things but I can't find it now.  I have the page saved to my drive, but the links appear to be long gone.

[Dasleah]

Ooh, very nice. Can the 'consonants' and 'vowels' consist of more than one letter, so that we can force bias towards words with certain chains of letters in their words? That'd be nice.

[Angry Lawyer]

I've got half of one in C++ that I coded.  I worked through generating a batch of syllables based on weightings for all the letters, and then randomly sticking them together.

One day I'll tidy it up and release it.

-Angry Lawyer

[Owie]

I'd love to see this finished, if only so I can mess with it. It would be great to see some new names and words.

[TheSpaceMan]

using the japanese layout might work. Connecting each sound to a double letter and simular (consonant + vowel). Might generate more resonable sounding words? or a simular design. Like someone said, pair more letters together makeing small resonable sounds.

ka ki ke ko.
na ni ne no.

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, you can pair as many letters together as you like, really.

And, yeah, the Japanese system works pretty well. You can actually mimic it pretty well with the current system. You can just set it so that it never allows consonants or vowels to be doubled up, which gives you the ability to put together specific groupings that are ok and disallow everything else.

You can also do interesting things by allowing/disallowing consonants or vowels at the beginning and ending of words. Kind of like how japanese tends to always end with a vowel.

It's got a bit more work that has to go into it before I'll really be happy with it. I need to be able to apply rules to specific letters, for example, to stop things like this from showing up: 'm'. Which I got when making my High Elf language.

I also need to refactor my letters to use the same ascii set that the game font uses. Right now I get some odd results with the special characters I had put in.

Oh, it also lets you define minimum and maximum word length, which I need to play with a bit. Since DF tends to use compound words for people and place names, smaller is probably better. Two 12 length words stuck together gets to be a bit much.

[Mephansteras]

Things are going well. I'm adding in letter specific rules, which I think will help a lot.

On an amusing note, I had this combination generate:
[T_WORD:BOG:urbreath]

[Idiom]

Didn't someone already work on or make this?

[Nite/m4re]

If I remember, Fenrir was working on something like this, but ended scrapping the project.

[Jay]

If I remember, Fenrir was working on something like this, but ended scrapping the project.

And all his interest in the forums at all, apparently.
Wasn't he the one who stormed off?

[Kagus]

Stormed?  No.  He drifted.

He was suffering from forum addiction, and was having a seriously hard time going cold turkey.  It wasn't until the new forums software update (where we can delete our own accounts) that he finally left all the way.  He's probably still haunting the boards, it's just that he can't say anything now.


And it wasn't just the forum that he was leaving, he left Dwarf Fortress.  And his own site.  I think he was having personal troubles of some sort, as he seemed somewhat melancholy towards the end.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Wow, epic story.
Can be made into drama, don't you think?

 

[Sean Mirrsen]

How about the word generator using the source word (it does read the list of words from language_words.txt, right?) as a seed, or an otherwise influencing parameter in the final generation of a word? I mean adjustin the weighting of some letters according to the letters and letterforms in the original word, so the generated word retains the "feel" of the original? I'm not sure of the exact mechanics, I just think something like this could produce interesting results, at the same time making sure that no two words are too similar.

[Tormy]

Some utility like this would be excellent to have for modders. Too bad that I cannot help in this....[Im way too stupid for coding, in fact I was very bad in math even... ]