[HN Gopher] So you want to build a generator (programming)
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       So you want to build a generator (programming)
        
       Author : bryanrasmussen
       Score  : 45 points
       Date   : 2021-05-25 05:32 UTC (17 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.galaxykate.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.galaxykate.com)
        
       | ajuc wrote:
       | I'm making a generator of battlemaps for tabletop rpgs.
       | 
       | First version was this:
       | https://ajuc.github.io/outdoorsBattlemapGenerator/
       | 
       | It has some nice features (for example exporting to virtual
       | foundry vtt format .dd2vtt with colliders), but after a while I
       | noticed that user interface is the biggest problem - I have a lot
       | of knobs to play with and not enough space and user patience to
       | explain them.
       | 
       | So I abandoned that and started making a new one:
       | https://ajuc.github.io/kartograf/
       | 
       | This one has much less features right now (no water, stones,
       | twigs, no constrains like "trees can't grow on each other", no
       | export, etc), but it is built on a great graph editor library
       | (litegraph) with nodes that you can join and combine. This should
       | allow much better configurability once I get it to feature
       | parity. UI is still pretty bad, I will try to encapsulate the
       | submodules into subgraphs eventually and then I plan on adding
       | the possibility of exporting generators as submodules which can
       | be versioned and used by others - kinda like maven repo for
       | generators. If I don't abandon it before that :)
        
       | bryanrasmussen wrote:
       | I added the (programming) as I thought people might be confused
       | into thinking the article would be about electrical generators
       | and find themselves disappointed when clicking through.
        
         | a1369209993 wrote:
         | I'd suggest:
         | 
         | > So you want to build a [procedural content] generator
        
           | bryanrasmussen wrote:
           | well there's a couple suggestions on that line but my edit
           | window seems to have passed
        
         | sizeofchar wrote:
         | The best term to describe this kind of generators is procedural
         | content generation, or just PCG.
        
           | bryanrasmussen wrote:
           | sure, but I didn't want to change the title a lot, just to
           | prevent any wild and crazy misunderstandings.
        
         | ISV_Damocles wrote:
         | Maybe `(graphics programming)` would be better, because I
         | assumed it was for generator functions.
        
           | rolha-capoeira wrote:
           | It's not only graphics, though. Kate Compton is well-known
           | for creating Tracery
           | https://github.com/galaxykate/tracery/tree/tracery2.
        
         | fullstackchris wrote:
         | I knew enough to expect it was about programming, but in the
         | other way: a code or program generator. This seems about art
         | generation! Very interesting still.
        
       | sidpatil wrote:
       | From the title, I thought it would be about these generators:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generator_(computer_programmin...
        
         | gilleain wrote:
         | Generation with constraints is a fairly common algorithm in
         | combinatorics. When you need a set of objects with a particular
         | structure, you could just make all possible examples and then
         | filter out the unsuitable ones.
         | 
         | However if there are too many objects (matricies, graphs, etc)
         | then this is inefficient. It is better to constrain the
         | generation so that you 'prune' the tree of possible objects.
        
         | duped wrote:
         | Me too. I think "data synthesis" is a better phrase if we're
         | inventing jargon (contrast to "data analysis")
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-25 23:01 UTC)