Naming Things

Ive never been great at naming things or coming up with "new" words.

After doing some research I've discovered the Markov method of proceduarally generating new things. One of those things has the ability to be names.

I present to you my Linguist-o-matic. This program works off a single or multiple training word files and when you hit generate you get a whole new set of words. I recommend using the bulk generate and cherry pick the words you like to use.

The training files are simple text file lists of like minded or categories of words. Please feel free to make your own, create new categories, add to existing files, ect. The only thing i ask is that if you do please share them with them with everyone. Chances are good that ill add them to "official" list distributions which would be a good thing so updates shouldn't mess up your personal library then.

The basics for using are as follows

1.Click on the "Trainer Files" tab
2.In the tree layout on the right navigate to one or more training files and click the check box for each one you want to use
3.Go back to the main tab and click either "Generate Next" or "Generate Bulk"

If you find the words your trying to generate are not what your looking for its typically due to a lack of training words.
You can try two things, one being increase the scramble noise, 0.00 to 0.10 yeidls good results.
Your other option is to feed it more learning words in the style your looking for.

All the trainer files can be found in the "\Resource\TrainingDictionaries", you can find this location easily by clicking the "Open Library" button. All of the files are simpel .txt files that can be editied in any text editor program. Each word must have its own line.

Loaded training words will show you a list of all the words currently being used to generate words

The black list will stop certain words from appearing the generated list

I have no doubt their are bugs in this program, if you find any please let me know so i can take care of them ASAP.

EDIT:
V1.1 has been uploaded. Some buttons have been moved around. Theirs a new "Help" file that should explain some things better. I've gone thru and added in a bunch of error checking code and polished some other things under the hood.

Comments

  • It appears that you are not working on a Windows computer, as the training files do not use standard end-of-line characters. Which means that they can't be edited directly in Notepad (which is the default program for .txt files in Windows). New training files created within the program save with standard (for Windows) CRLF for EOL, and editing and existing file within the program saves them with Windows EOL characters, and those appear to work normally.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    Pretty cool. Have you thought of making this a CC3+-addon instead of a standalone program?
  • taustinoc, I am on a windows machine and i have no issues editing them in notepad personally. The files were last edited using VS2017 internal editor, maybe that has something to do with it. Are you having problems with the supplied files? Ive tested the program on a few different machines one of them even being a linux flavor with the MONO runtime and have no operational bugs as of yet.

    Monsen, I've thought about it and i just don't know... The nice thing about the standalone is its a simple package that requires no install just unzip and run. It also runs in its own little managed sandbox so if it goes critical the only thing that could happen is the program terminates. As an add-in i would imagine its a lot like the SW add-ins i make for work where if one of them crashes you run the risk of really messing things up.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    Sure, getting it to work inside CC3+ does require a bit more steps, and you should be more vary of crashes, but you can also integrate it better, since it can interact with the map itself.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    On the other hand, if you make an add-on you may find that more people are likely to try it?
  • Maybe, for now I want to get this app running tops before i really do anything else I still have a good sized list of things i want to see from it before i move on to another project, good instructions and dirty code clean up being at the top of the list.
  • Must be the VS2017 internal editor, then. Everything works, regardless of the EOL characters. I just couldn't edit the existing files with Notepad without first saving it with the built in editor, because the entire file was on a single line.

    And now that I'm at work, on a Win10 machine, I can actually open up the training files directly without issue. The hope machine is Win7, so apparently Win10 is more flexible on these things.

    This reminds me of the Everchanging Book of Names program. Yours is a bit easier to customize, though.
  • So i went and checked out the other program quick, its neat, I've never seen it before and sadly looks like it hasten been touched in nearly 20 years.
    What i like about it is how it stores its dictionary files, they are the serialized data from the internal memory of the program, so for my non-nerds it means it can load larger dictionaries faster than mine as it doesnt have to calculate the language data from the words every time, however that limits you from being able to mix dictionaries to generate totally new styles. For example what if you mixed the pokemon list with the suess list?

    Floraikou, Kakunalame, Kangoot, Licky, Nerdier, Pidgeoduo, Sawsbuckle, Zweilosion

    Also reading that your home machine is win7 makes me a little happier that i didn't do with the newer "windows universal" UI, i was seriously tempted to even take the .net version down to 3.5 as the program doesnt really make use of any new language features than that. If anyone does have issues with .net 4.6 please let me know and ill see if can knock it back.
  • Posted By: SkullCrusherSo i went and checked out the other program quick, its neat, I've never seen it before and sadly looks like it hasten been touched in nearly 20 years.
    It's been updated more recently than that, though perhaps not much. (I used to have to run it in an XP virtual machine, because it had a 16 bit .dll).

    There are advantages to both programs, but for the moment, I actually prefer yours. (Plus, you aren't charging, and the free version of EBON is somewhat limited.)
  • I dont know, according to their website http://ebon.pyorre.net/ and the programs copyright 2000 was the last time the actual program got any updates. I may be on an old defunct site as well.

    This one will always be free, Im glad you like it makes sharing and improving it worth while to me.

    If you have any suggestions for the app please let me know.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    Everchanging Book of Names is actually the program I have been using myself up till now, I bought a license for it ages ago. It runs fine on 64-bit windows though, I run it on my 64-bit windows 10. The only component I had an issue with when moving to 64-bit years ago was actually the license checker which was 16-bit, but I contacted the author, and he provided me with a 32-bit one. It is true that it hasn't been updated in forever though.

    I'll be checking out your program a bit more, If I am happy with it, maybe I'll switch, or maybe use both, as of right now it looks like EBoN has far more dictionaries for various people names, while yours can generate names for quite a lot of other things.
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