Utility: SemiRandom project beta release / announcement...

[Ballbarian]

The random name generation has been improved considerably since the last post. I have also found and corrected several errors in the initial GAN sets. Mostly a few Faerun provinces where I had missed removing a few #setland commands.

I am considering some additional options:

One would be the ability to label certain province designs as being era specific and allowing the user to specify early, middle, late or no preference. This would allow GAN authors to design a province using LA Atlantis units without the province appearing in an EA game.

The other would be an option to obscure or obfuscate the appended special provinces by stripping them of all comment lines and replacing strings with the numeric ID where possible. The idea is that it would make it less tempting to browse the map file prior to attacking a given province and limit spoilers.

So the following map code:

-- Mithril Hall
#landname 95 "Mithril Hall"
#poptype 33 -- Lt. & Hvy Inf, X-bow
#killfeatures
#knownfeature "Great Gold Mine"
#knownfeature "Great Silver Mine"
#feature "The Vaults Beneath"
#feature "Gorge"

#commander 323 -- Dwarven Smith
#comname "Bruenor Battlehammer"

Would become:

#landname 95 "Mithril Hall"
#poptype 33
#killfeatures
#knownfeature 253
#knownfeature 254
#feature 524
#feature 257
#commander 323
#comname "Bruenor Battlehammer"

It would still be possible to sort it out for a determined person with a numbered list at hand, and as far as I know, it is not possible to do the same with items.

Now, before I spend time implementing these changes, does anyone have an opinion? Is it something anybody would want? I have no problem staying out of the map file while playing my turns, so I can live without the 2nd option. I also don't personally care about filtering eras in my own games, but maybe someone else does?

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