Re: I was wondering if?

From: Ken Mulholland <Ken@timepatternspbm.demon.co.uk>

Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

In article <0OF0SxAWkxM4Ewu+@homeway.demon.co.uk>, Sam Palmer wrote:
> I am looking for ways of generating names for my roleplaying game, but
> it can't cost money.
>
'It can't cost money' - sigh - what else is new?
We have a routine which we use to generate starnames for StarGlobe. It
is based on the idea that, in English, words are in the form of
Preceeding consonant-vowel-middle consonant-vowel-end consonant. There
are subsets of this rule and also more complicated longer words
(duuhhh!).
The point is that only a limited group of consonants (which can consist
of more than one letter) are valid for each of the three groups. (e.g.
chr is a valid preceeding consonant but not a valid ending one).
By building up a list of consonants for each of the three catagories and
using a random routine to choose the CVCVC combination we can easily
produce lots of lovely meaningless but English sounding names for the
2000 stars in each StarGlobe game. Of course the generator has a
perverse tendancy to produce obscene and sacrilegious words so we have
to weed them out (can't have those muslims coming after us!) but it
works quite well. I don't suppose there is any point in offering you the
routine since it is written in (shock horror) QB7! But I hope the above
ideas help!

Ken.

References

I was wondering if?
Sam Palmer <Sam@homeway.demon.co.uk>
Wed, 17 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000