I should really have worked toward one of the things we already listed in one of the threads such as "» Solo scenarios, can someone make them ?", or the GIMP thread I started, but NOOoooo I had to go get distracted by a stupid comment on commander names.
After trying half a dozen different methods like alternating vowel/consonent, building tables based on letter frequency (scrabble sites are a great help), looking at other peoples generators, I finally came up with one that is surprisingly simple.
I make one long string of all the names I like, then randomly grab a piece out of it. Such as...
conan xena kull
makes a string of conanxenakull
which generates names like Anxe, Enak, Aku, Onanx, Xenak, Nanxe
Allright. They arent great names but they are unique and pronouncable. And very simple to do in very little code.
In fact, Im about to test a theory but I THINK that building a string of celtic names might generate fairly Celtic names, Cthulu, Chinese, etc etc. So I could build a string of the names illwinter is already using for each nation and get (I think) national sounding names.
The efficiency is just in case Illwinter might be interested. For what Im doing in my projects speed and efficient short code isnt really a factor. If I generate the maps every night it doesnt really matter how long it takes. I also have other code to come up with decent word combinations to name forests, plains, etc that can be used also now that there are terrain codes in Dom2
http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion...PlainsName.txt
http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion...orestNames.txt
Maybe I will update the "Poke in the Eye" generator to include at least some province names and naming all the dropped in commanders uniquely.
Im afraid that having the commanders dropped in sensibly (land units not dropped into water and vice versa) is still a ways off. I havent gotten up the motivation to add terrain preferences to the AllUnits spreadsheet. Maybe someone else will. Id love to see unit ID, terrain, commander or troop, and size of unit be easily accessable in a file.