Introduction / my efforts

[isomage]

welcome. yeah I had a play about with the cave one too.great stuff!

Those map generators are really excellent.

Welcome Aboard!

Thanks

I was looking for a planet name creator only last month to try to make them with. I just stole arabic nouns in the end but your planets have good names.

I was initially playing around with Markov chains (see, for example, here), seeding them with Latin or Greek names or real star names, but I wasn't very happy with the results. In the end I just reimplemented the planet name generator from Elite (there's source code floating around on the web somewhere).

The most impressive thing is that you output in PDF. Do you use a converter like GhostScript or do you draw in postscript directly.

It generates PostScript which is then filtered through GhostScript to produce the PDF.

The only suggestion I would say is to have a checkbox for not having a grid on the cave generator.

Done!

[RobA]

@isomage -

Really sweet!

I took one of your the random caves (now without grids ) and scaled it 200% then ran my "dungeon map prettier" script in gimp that Redrobes mentioned.



Are you using a random walk algorithm to generate the caves?

-Rob A>

[isomage]

I took one of your the random caves (now without grids ) and scaled it 200% then ran my "dungeon map prettier" script in gimp that Redrobes mentioned.

That looks awesome

Are you using a random walk algorithm to generate the caves?

Yep. Random walks for the caves, fractal height fields for the hex maps, and by-the-book rules (Little Black Book 3, Worlds and Adventures) for the Traveller subsectors.

[Redrobes]

...I just reimplemented the planet name generator from Elite (there's source code floating around on the web somewhere).

Dang, I searched for that and mentioned it in my thread but I couldn't find the code. I remember it being cool so no wonder your names were pretty good. Now I know its out there ill try again. Wikipedia mentioned it but didnt have any link to it.

It generates PostScript which is then filtered through GhostScript to produce the PDF.

I had a friend once that used to program in postscript on the printer - as in use the printers CPU to generate patterns, fractal and other itterative ones, which it then printed. So you must be running your cgi script as a full exe not a perl/PHP thing then unless there is some nice interface to Ghostscript from a script. I am pretty sure I could not do that with my web provider as they only install a certain limited set of perl modules. Well, if your able to tell us more about the process that would be interesting. I thought it was quite impressive - what you have done is a bit harder than people might realize.

Done!

Cool and I see Robs already provided the demo I reckon that your page will see a lot of use with Robs script too.

[Midgardsormr]

Dang, I searched for that and mentioned it in my thread but I couldn't find the code. I remember it being cool so no wonder your names were pretty good. Now I know its out there ill try again. Wikipedia mentioned it but didnt have any link to it.

http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/bbc/index.htm#src

[Redrobes]

http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/bbc/index.htm#src

Thats cool Mid but I cant see any clear sources for that name generator. Its hidden in the assembly of the main game I think and that requires considerable effort to decode - to the point that he mentions that one guy has done it and recoded it and how hard it was. What I am hoping to find is a name generator in any modern language like 'C' or something like that. Maybe its not possible without all the game code too as a means of hashing up the name.

This is the closest I have but even this one reckons that its not the original code for it.

http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/p...domNameGen.php

Maybe its impossible to get the original generator any more. Isomage - do you think you have the original Elite name generator or something approximately like it.

[isomage]

Ian Bell has released C source code for a text-version of Elite, and it contains the name generator: http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/text/

I think I might have worked from Christian Pinder's reverse-engineered C code, which doesn't seem to be available from that site anymore.

Here's my Python version. If you set ELITE = True, successive calls to name() will generate the sequence of names used in the game -- look for Lave on call 7 (starting from 0); otherwise you'll get a random sequence.

ELITE = False

if ELITE:
    seed = [0x5A4A, 0x0248, 0xB753]
else:
    import random
    seed = [random.randint(0, 0xffff), random.randint(0, 0xffff), random.randint(0, 0xffff)]

def tweakseed():
    temp = (seed[0] + seed[1] + seed[2]) % 0x10000
    seed[0] = seed[1]
    seed[1] = seed[2]
    seed[2] = temp

digraphs = "..lexegezacebisousesarmaindirea.eratenberalavetiedorquanteisrion"

def name():
    longnameflag = seed[0] & 0x40

    name = ""

    for n in range(4):
        d = ((seed[2] >> 8) & 0x1f) << 1

        tweakseed()

        if n < 3 or longnameflag:
            name += digraphs[d:d+2]

    return name.replace(".", "").title()

[Redrobes]

Wow that's excellent and totally rep worthy if I haven't already. I actually remember 'Lave' too. I think I might just try this to see what the names were and if I remember any more. Did you see all of our November challenge entries ? I think mine would have been improved with better names. Although our stars are named with Arabic, for some reason I think the ones in the sky sounded better than the ones I had used.

[isomage]

So you must be running your cgi script as a full exe not a perl/PHP thing then unless there is some nice interface to Ghostscript from a script.

I did it in Python, but the basic idea would be the same in PERL: open a pipe to the system's GhostScript converter and write your generated PostScript code to it like a file.

[Redrobes]

I did it in Python, but the basic idea would be the same in PERL: open a pipe to the system's GhostScript converter and write your generated PostScript code to it like a file.

Very good. I don't think I am able to do that tho. I use an external web space provider which gives certain access rights. I don't think I can run GhostScript on their server in the cgi-bin area. Still, if your able, then thats a really excellent thing to do.

I am gonna go and see if I can Perl up your python Elite code.