jeffreys2015 / subjectnamehere

A random generator for buzzword-laden indie gaming pitches, written in Perl

SubjectNameHere

A random generator for buzzword-laden indie gaming pitches, written in Perl.

Data Format

Subject Name Here takes random words and phrases from a plain text file called 'indiegaming.buzz'. That file defines the whole structure of the generated text.

The format for buzzword files is:

• Everything after a // is treated as a comment and ignored.
• The file is split into blocks, headed by [headers]. Everything before the top header is treated as part of the [default] block.
• Normal blocks contain lists of words or snippets of text separated by pipes | and newlines.
• Blocks whose names start with phrase_, on the other hand, contain phrases separated by lines that contain only a %.
• Either way, phrases can contain <references> to other blocks. References get replaced with one of the phrases in the corresponding block, chosen at random. The format for a reference is <[a] reference [option]>.
  • [a], which can actually be written a or an, will use Lingua::EN::Inflect to put an 'a' or 'an' before the content of the reference, as dictated by English grammar.
  • [option] can be one of two things: * static will make the block static. This means the block will pick one option at random, and then that option will be chosen again every time the block is called subsequently with the static option. Keep in mind that if the block contains references to other blocks, those references will change unless they, too, are called statically. * x:y, where x and y are numbers, will call the block repeatedly at least x times and at most y times.

Reading the actual file will probably make this clearer. The [main] block is the only one explicitly called by the Shuffler module; [main] in turn calls other blocks.