Finished name generation

The results weren’t as good as I hoped, but at least they’re fully procedural and there’s not many idiot names in the lists…

I tried using a syllable-based system, but there are just too many of those, so the memory required for this algorithm would be just too much!

Ended up using a list of names from sci-fi worlds, combining them together to generate the probability tables and then using that to generate names. To have some different types of names depending on the type of planet, before I add a string to the dictionary’s, I decide on which dictionary to add by analyzing the character content of the name. For example, a name with a lot of “A” and “E” will be either a jungle or swamp planet… This is combined with a bunch of other rules to decide which type of planet this is, and then adding this to the dictionary for that type of planet…

Convoluted, that’s for sure, but the results are a bit better this way… Still see too many cases where the planet name starts with double consonants (which makes it harder for the player to read), I might still do something to remove that situation…

Anyway, in keeping with my tradition, next step is some bug fixing, then some optimization before going back to polish…

Since I had to restart the game (to generate planet names for testing), I’m going to start my bugfixing in the first planet, see if I broke something on the initial cutscenes…

Now listening to “The Singles 86-98” by “Depeche Mode”