site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   4460 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 16, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Realistic Randomizers

So I have a project where sprite elements (head, hair, colors, several body bases, clothing) get composited into a character, and I want to add a random function to it. Call it an NPC generator.

The problem is most programs like this produce a jumbled mess: black-skinned blondes, children with beards, etc., and the end result looks like a Portland street camp.
Does anyone know a standard way to sample from multiple correlated variables to give realistic results? I'd prefer that over hardcoding a bunch of rules or templates, which is what most people default to.

A simple example of the handmade mechanic I already use is age+sex+race= height distribution.
The first 3 are uncorrelated and picked randomly unless a selection toggle overrides it. Age multiplies the mean of the normal distribution, then sex multiplies both the mean and standard dev, and finally race does the same. Height is then generated from the modified normal distribution with cutoffs.

Is there a better way to do this for e.g. hair color or presence of freckles? Someone much smarter than me must have encountered this problem and come up with a solution.

Ideally I'd just like to make a huge n-dimensional joint probability distribution to sample from. This would probably be a lot easier if I'd paid attention in linear algebra.

yeah, a bayesian network lets you just specify the conditional probabilities directly between nodes (nodes being character features here).

https://pgmpy.org/detailed_notebooks/2.%20Bayesian%20Networks.html

https://aima.eecs.berkeley.edu/slides-pdf/chapter14a.pdf

A Bayesian network might make sense here. ChatGPT can generate some reasonable sample code to give you a sense of what it'd look like ("Please write some sample code for pgmpy that uses a Bayesian network to generate characters for a game. Particularly for the traits age, height, sex, race, and having a beard").

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats