Add support for explicitly male/female names?

[1Hyena]

Not sure if this is a generator architecture related issue but since D and d are marked as suitable for a stupid person's name I would expect there to be types of random replacements that indicate the gender of the name to be generated. What say you?

[skeeto]

I suppose that could be a useful feature. The primary goal is to clone the RinkWorks name generator, but also add some useful, backwards compatible extensions. Your idea could perhaps be another kind of replacement class with its own letter.

[1Hyena]

@skeeto
I have to admit, I have no idea if this is even possible. It boils down to a question what makes some names feminine and other masculine. In Lord of the Rings there is a made-up language and in that language some words mean feminine things, so we get a name such as Shelob . But for generic names, I have no idea. From a game developer's point of view it is crucial to specify for the generator whether the target character is male or female, without that the random name generator (RNG) is not very practical. I guess RNGs that utilize Markov chains would not have this problem but on the other hand they would require a large database of known feminine and masculine names.

[Kronuz]

@1Hyena, What you need is a list of name parts for each gender; normally, the gender is in the suffix of the name; you can also have a list of house names for different tribes, for example. Then you would use those tables as the source of the two or four or whatever generators for each gender/tribe combination.

In some implementation you can easily extend the generator tables by adding your custom tables to different symbols:

In c++, you would add your tables to this:

fantasyname/c++/namegen.cc

Line 31 in 4d97716

static auto* const symbols = new std::unordered_map<std::string, const std::vector<std::string>>({

In JavaScript, you would add those to:

fantasyname/js/namegen.js

Line 104 in 4d97716

NameGen.symbols = {

Afterwards, you can then use such symbols in your generator at compile time.
There’s an example of extended tables here:

https://github.com/Kronuz/Xapiand/blob/30004104e3f52b8a9666bacaf15862306557e356/src/namegen.cc#L128

That example adds prefixes “K”, “L”, “E”, “F”, “k”, “l”, “e”, “f” to play with. “K” and “k” have lists of male and female prefixes and suffixes, but they’re mixed. You’d need to split the tables in two symbols (one for each gender) and use them in two or more different generators: a female drow generator, a male drow generator)

[1Hyena]

@Kronuz
thanks for the example. the solution you provided is indeed compatible with my namegen.cpp. Perhaps the main problem now is to have the actual name formulas for a relatively large number of races, including critters/vermin :D any pointers? It's a shame such public databases aren't easily available

[Kronuz]

@1Hyena I have no idea... if you come across such collection of names, or put one together, I’d be very interested. I’d love have there ability to generate names for multiple races.

[AquariusPower]

For female, this helps !ss(a) !sV,
For male, !ss(o) !sV,
not sure if good tho..
But I understand your question is about changing the code,
I just wonder if it can be accomplished using the existing features?

[1Hyena]

@AquariusPower
I actually don't know whether a template or a code change is more optimal to solve this issue.

For fantasy flavored names I'm starting to suspect that a template is the best approach as indicated by @Kronuz