RandomStuff: Configurable "dice rolling" program

[Hook]

VERSION 3!  EVEN MORE SHININESS!

Lots of people use dice to make decisions for their Sims.  For example, in the Legacy Challenge, you'd roll a die to determine if your Sim was Knowledge, Romance or whatever.  Then you'd have to cross reference a table to match the number with an aspiration.  Other people like to have random zodiac signs... got any 12 sided dice around?   Some people flip coins to make yes/no decisions.

I watched some people in chat using the chat bot to generate random numbers for them, and figured there might be an easier way.  I finally got around to writing a program to do it.

What's special about the program is, you make a config file with the various values you want.  For example, if you want the program to "flip a coin" the config file would include the following lines:

*Decision
Yes
No

If you want to pick a random aspiration, the config file also has:

*Aspiration
Knowledge
Pleasure
Fortune
Family
Romance

Running the program produces the output (with random values):

Decision
* Yes *

Aspiration
* Fortune *

You can put any decision you like in the config file, using simple formatting rules, and the program will generate a random value from the selections given.

The program is a small 20K DOS-type program.  Just double click on it and it opens a window, selects from the available options, and displays them.  No more referencing a table to figure out what aspiration you rolled!

Config file includes options for Decision(Yes/No), Zodiac, Aspiration, Random letter, and I think you can figure out the format to add whatever other random thingies you want.  The config file must be in the same folder as the program exe.

Edit: Version 2 includes:

Weighted selections.  Described in later posts.  Example:

*Orientation
Gay [2]
Bi [4]
Straight [6]

... will give half straight Sims, 1/3 bi Sims, 1/6 gay Sims

Random numbers up to 9 digits.  Example:

$$999999999

... will give a random number from 0 to 999,999,999

Random numbers in a range.  For example:

*Cooking
$5-9

... will give a random number 5 to 9 inclusive for cooking skill.

Putting the string *csv in the file will cause a .csv file to be generated from that point on.

Lots of new examples in the enclosed config file.  Feel free to remove the excess and modify as you wish.

Edit: Version 3

Includes support for drag and drop.  Have multiple config files, just drag the one you want to use on top of the program icon and it will generate the data from that config file.  Double clicking on the program icon will use the default config file.

Multiple selections for a category can be generated without duplicates.  Useful for turnons/turnoffs.  Coded as follows:

*Turnon/off [3]
Stinkiness
Cologne
Fitness
Brown hair
... etc...

See the RandomStuff.txt file for additional examples.

I've included a file of first and last names, set up to generate three male first names, three female first names and three last names.  These names are taken from the US census data, so they shouldn't look too odd. At least if you're from the US.

The CSV file is now appended to, rather than overwritten each time, so it will preserve existing data.  The CSV file will have the same filename as the config file you use to generate it.

When you get the option to "Press a key to continue" if you press R it will regenerate the list.  You can scroll up in the DOS window to get the older lists if you wish. 

There are a couple of minor bug fixes, including one that didn't handle the display of random numbers correctly if they weren't the first thing in the file.  It should work correctly now.

Hopefully this will be the last version, but if anyone finds a bug or someone comes up with a really cool idea, I'm more than happy to get back into the code.

Enjoy.

Hook

[Hook]

Just wanted to mention this in case it's not obvious.  The config file can be used as-is, or you can add anything else you like.  For example, the original Legacy Challenge rules allowed you to choose your own aspiration on a die roll of 6.  To do this, simply add a line to the aspirations that says, "Choose any" and that will come up 1/6 of the time.

If you'd rather see more Knowledge Sims than anything else, you can do that too.  Here's an example:

*Aspiration weighted for Knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge
Fortune
Family
Romance
Pleasure

This will give you a Knowledge Sim half the time.  You can also remove any aspirations from the list that you don't like.

Any comments or questions would be appreciated.

Hook

[rosenshyne]

As a matter of fact, I do have a 12-sided die lying around... *slinks away in geeky shame*

[dizzy]

I use a deck of cards and redefine them in whatever way fancies me at the moment. For example:

Ace to Queen = 1 to 12 (Aries to Pisces, respectively)
King = Whatever personality I feel like
Spade = Knowledge or Family
Heart = Romance or Pleasure
Club = Popularity
Diamond = Fortune
Joker = Grilled Cheese (next card for personality)

[witch]

Any comments or questions would be appreciated.

I spent about an hour the other week looking for a legacy style sims generating chart, I'm more than willing to give this a bash. I get sick of trying to be random when making a clutch of townies, for instance, I bet I'm not really random at all.

I've just got all keen on the MATY sims again because it's the current trend dontcha know, I might add to my townie population this weekend.

Part of my non-randomness means I tend to give certain starsigns to certain aspirations, generally what I think would be a good personality for that type of sim. Which means I don't get hard ones to play like popularity sims who are shy or whatever.

Questions will no doubt be forthcoming.  Cheers for sharing this.

[Hook]

I use a deck of cards and redefine them in whatever way fancies me at the moment. For example:

Ace to Queen = 1 to 12 (Aries to Pisces, respectively)
King = Whatever personality I feel like
Spade = Knowledge or Family
Heart = Romance or Pleasure
Club = Popularity
Diamond = Fortune
Joker = Grilled Cheese (next card for personality)

Here's how you'd set up the config file for that.  Add the following two new sections:

*Dizzy Zodiac
Aries
Taurus
...etc... Fill in the correct signs
Aquarius
Pisces
Your choice

*Dizzy Aspiration
Knowledge or Family
Romance or Pleasure
Popularity
Fortune

There's no really easy way to set up for the joker, but you can generate a random number:

*Dizzy Cheese
1
2
... etc ... fill in the numbers
24
25
Grilled Cheese

The above is for a two joker deck.  If you want one joker, the numbers end up 50, 51, Cheese.

Instead of the numbers, fill in all the lines with "Normal Aspiration" except the last one which would be "Cheese"

I probably should add a way to generate a random number within a range.

Hook

[Hook]

Part of my non-randomness means I tend to give certain starsigns to certain aspirations, generally what I think would be a good personality for that type of sim. Which means I don't get hard ones to play like popularity sims who are shy or whatever.

Set up a section as follows. I've used random things here; fill in your own preferences.

*Witch Combinations
Knowledge, Aries
Knowledge, Gemini
Knowledge, Cancer
Popularity, Taurus
Popularity, Leo
Fortune, Aquarius
Fortune, Pisces
Fortune, Aries
... etc ...  Fill in the rest of your preferences here

I've intentionally used Aries for both Knowledge and Fortune, just to show what can be done.

I've played shy Popularity Sims.  The only problems are that they sometimes complain when you ask them to do some action, and if you don't have the phone hack, it's harder to keep a relationship up by phone as they won't talk very long if their Social is maxed and their Social decays slowly.

Hook

[witch]

Woohoo - first test sim and I get one I would NEVER have chosen.

*****  RandomStuff *****
BodyType
*  Fat  *
Gender
*  Male  *
Orientation
*  Straight  *
Astrological Sign
*  Virgo  *
Aspiration
*  Popularity  *
Age
*  Adult  *
Press a key to continue:

I thought about trying to do interests - generate an interest, then a random number between 0 and 11, but there's no way to exclude an interest that's already been chosen, is there?

PS

Set up a section as follows. I've used random things here; fill in your own preferences.

*Witch Combinations
Knowledge, Aries
Knowledge, Gemini
Knowledge, Cancer
Popularity, Taurus
Popularity, Leo
Fortune, Aquarius
Fortune, Pisces
Fortune, Aries
... etc ...  Fill in the rest of your preferences here

I don't quite get what you mean here. Do you mean set up odd combos? If so, I think I'd rather just random both asp. and sign individually.

[Ness]

You've made X3 redundant?!

Can it do the roll a 26-sided die to pick the first letter of a name thing?  I'm guessing it can, but I haven't read all the details closely just yet.

[witch]

Yep. I saw that in there.

[Hook]

I thought about trying to do interests - generate an interest, then a random number between 0 and 11, but there's no way to exclude an interest that's already been chosen, is there?

*Witch Combinations
Knowledge, Aries
Knowledge, Gemini
Knowledge, Cancer
Popularity, Taurus
Popularity, Leo

I don't quite get what you mean here. Do you mean set up odd combos? If so, I think I'd rather just random both asp. and sign individually.

In the example above, you would generate Knowledge Sims who would be Aries, Gemini or Cancer.  Popularity Sims would be Taurus or Leo.  If you have a preference for certain aspirations having certain zodiac signs, this would do it.

As for interests, do it this way:

*Food
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

*Animals
5
6
7
8
9

*Politics
8
9
10
11

This way you can generate numbers for all the interests, and limit them to certain numbers if you wish.  There's a problem if you end up with more interest points than the game allows you to distribute, but you can adjust these manually if necessary when you actually fill in the numbers.

Good thing the DOS window has a scroll bar.

Hook

[witch]

Good thing the DOS window has a scroll bar.

I'll say! I've also got it making choices about skintone, eye colour and hair as well. (Including all my geneticised skintones in the list).

I was trying the interests the wrong way round, making the list out of the interests instead of the numbers. D'oh! This means I can do skills too.

Then there's badges... turn ons...

CoolToy!

If I go something like this:
*Orientation
Gay
Gay
Bi
Bi
Bi
Straight
Straight
Straight
Straight
Straight
Straight
will that make any difference to percentage chances? Like there should be more chance a sim is straight? Or does that not matter in random choice?
ETA: Doesn't matter, I'm sure it has to work, there has to be more chance your exe will pick something that appears multiple times.

[Hook]

I'm sure it has to work, there has to be more chance your exe will pick something that appears multiple times.

Yup, that was the whole idea.  If you wanted something to appear more often, you'd put it in the list more times.

I probably need to figure out a way to weight the choices, hopefully without making the config file too complicated.

Hook

[witch]

Don't s'pose there's any chance of exporting to a csv file or anything? Mate?

[Gwill]

Other people like to have random zodiac signs... got any 12 sided dice around?

I've got three D12s within reach of my computer, three D20s on the table as well as one in a necklace around my neck.  Aside from that I have two D10s one D4 and exactly one D6.
I recent the implication that threre are no 12 sided dice.
Nerd discrimination!

[Hook]

Lessee... fourteen 20 sided dice in various colors, thirty 6 sided dice, three 4 sided dice, four 8 sided dice... damn, no 12 sided dice here.  I guess my son misplaced it last time he and his friends played D&D.

Not everyone is a nerd, y'know.

Witch:  Next version will have additional features, like generating a random number (up to 9 digits if you want), weighted selections (for your gender preference thingy) and I can add a command to output a csv file as well.

*Orientation
Gay [2]
Bi [3]
Straight [6]

Weighted selections will also allow things like "If it's a joker, they're Grilled Cheese aspiration."

*Grilled Cheese
No [25]
Yes

Weighted selections doesn't work yet.

Edit:  Well, I already have it working, but it's not in the current version.

Hook

[floopyboo]

Gwill - you have a d20 necklace? /worships.

I have my favourite pointy dice in the bag on the desk beside me - they are two sets of uniques that came with the pound-o-dice bags we got ages ago.

Anyway, onto the topic. I usually roll 1d12 for the personality & 1d4 to see if I fiddle with it a bit (so not every aries is a neat freak sociopath).

I then roll 1d6 to determine aspiration (if it's family I roll again & if it's still family I stick with it. Well, most of the time.)

I then 1d4 to see if the fourth page of turnons & turn offs turns up (if it's a four, they like old wrinklies, lucky them), then 2d6 to determine the page ( 1-2 = page 1, 3-4 = page 2, 5-6 = page 3) to determine turn ons & turn offs.

Normally I'd be all for a random number generator, but that would mean my pointy dice would only get used when on a dungeon crawl. And that simply cannot be!

[J. M. Pescado]

I've got three D12s within reach of my computer, three D20s on the table as well as one in a necklace around my neck.  Aside from that I have two D10s one D4 and exactly one D6.

I have a barrel of them. A literal barrel. It cost me $5.

[Hook]

New version up, enhancements described in first post, but it's all the stuff that's been asked for so far.

Anyone else have any other ideas, let me know, while I still understand my own code.

Hook

[Gwill]

D20 necklace from here:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/apparel/jewelry/7ae3/
Currently out of stock.

I don't trust any form of electronic randomness generator, so I'll stick with my dice and scowl.

[Hook]

I don't blame you for not trusting it, but I massaged the standard random number function severely a few years back for use in a wargame battle generator.  I did all sorts of stuff to make sure the results were actually random, and didn't follow patterns.  For example, I have a fix in the program for a rounding error that occurred 2 times out of a billion.  You think it got tested sufficiently?

Hook

[gethane]

I realize this is telling about my life, but this is the most excited I've been all week!

I added to my txt file

*Sim Type
Normal [46]
Vampire
Zombie
Werewolf
Plantsim

*Affair
Yes [15]
No [85]

*Kids
1 [20]
2 [20]
3 [6]
4 [3]
5 if family-go for 10 kid want

*Career
Normal [35]
Home Business [5]
Community Lot Business [5]
Artist or Farmer only [5]
That way occasionally I'll have to play less than normal sims. Occasionally I'll have to break the heart of my sims couples. Etc. etc.

[Zazazu]

Hm, I use these: aspiration die. Revised ganked-over die that I don't recall who made originally, so I don't take complete credit. I like having something physical to toss around. However, this will help when Mikko decides to chew up my current one. Plus, I don't like my current set-up for astrological sign choice.

Thought: You could actually add a random name generator on to this. It would require a lot of text addition to the coding, therefore bloating the file, but could almost be better than using a die + the random name generator from babynames.com.

[gethane]

For things like turn ons/offs is there a way to make a list of items randomize then the output would only list three: turn on 1, 2, and turn off. That way you wouldn't get repeats?

disclaimer: i am not a programmer, no idea if that's realistic

[Hook]

Generating names:  MikeInside has a great random name generator.  Here's the link:

http://mikeinside.modthesims2.com/family/index.html

It shouldn't be too much trouble to generate multiple things from one list, for use in turnon/off.  I can think of a couple of ways to do it right off the top of my head.  I just want to make sure that you can give red hair, for example, a high weight and still have the program work.   In the mean time, you can run the program multiple times until you get three different things.

Hook