Bug Fix: Medieval Name Generator

Well, sometimes I have edge case bugs that are hard to track down. The failure to generate female names via the Medieval Names Generator was not one of those. I’m certain it worked at one point but I must have broken it at some point I have yet to find in the change log history.

I tweaked the interface slightly to use a robust paradigm used in many of my other generators to fix the issue. Unfortunately, it has been broken for many months.

My thanks to the anonymous individual who dropped me feedback to let me know it was busted. My apologies to the those who tried to generate female names only to get only male results.

Bugs. I code them daily.

Browsing Friendly & New Generator

Several people have requested browse friendly lists of names rather than my random generator chaos. I was reluctant. Chaos is what I do. However, I do understand the desire to see a big list and select from that. So I started with the medieval name database. The starting point is Browse-able Medieval Names. I couldn’t just produce 26 pages so I wrote code to allow you browse between 3 categories * 26 letters all on the same page. It’s not AJAX enabled like I generally do but I learned a few things doing it in alternative way, form free. Browse away, anti-random heretics. I still appreciate you and sometimes need massive results to inspire my creative flow.

If that serves the needs, I’ll likely open the Old West and Modern name databases in a similar fashion. I’m going to wait a few weeks before making that call. It’ll be trivial to open the other databases after working through the first iteration of the code.

Oh yeah, there is new stuff: Rap Sheet / Criminal History. I’ve been pondering this topic for a while and released the pure random variant. Eventually, I want to make it smarter so it can generate progressive criminal backgrounds rather than a few randomly selected elements. For now, it is sweet, tasty chaos.

I hope you all are having fun playing games, writing new fiction, or doing whatever brings you to my random corner of the internet.

Experimenting: Free vs. For Sale

Eighty five percent of the traffic on Mithril & Mages comes via search engines. Subsequently, the vast majority of those visits find and use what they need then move on to the next task. The overall usage rate for the pages visited is nice but I’ve had a few different documents available for consumption that were accessed by a rare few visitors. Direct visitors are also a small portion (~7%). Most of those visits are also use single random generator.

Overall, few visitors were unlikely to find any given document let alone download it. What would happen if I made the document available for sale? The visitation rate of RPG purchase sites is far larger than my traffic. Enter the experiment.

I uploaded Namespace: Given Names (forenames) as the starting point. I didn’t mention I’d done so anywhere. I sold a couple of copies for $0.99. Then I dropped the price to $0.59. Four more sales occurred in a couple of days.

Tonight, I added the Medieval Surnames document for $0.59 and bundled the two for 0.98. Cheap but far more than the original price of zero. Within an hour, I sold a copy of the bundle. The standalone surname document has yet to sell.

People who are purchasing the products are unlikely to visit this site. Still, those that purchased the Given Names document got a complimentary copy of Surnames. I could call it brand building but in reality I just felt it was the right thing to do.

The experiment shall continue. If you want a copy of both for the low, low introductory price of free, say something witty in the comment section within 24 hours. The comment email address will be used to issue the free copy.

Choices are Good

I love choice. I also enjoy pure randomness. Occasionally, I want to drive random in a particular direction. Now, the Medieval Name Generator allows more manipulation to produce results based on starting/ending portions of the names along with length. Forenames and surnames restriction are independently controlled. The added flexibility can result in no results. The boundary conditions will result in a ‘NO MATCH’ string.

I like the expanded functionality. The layout has a few remaining issues when hiding the expanded options. For now, I’ll settle with function over form. I always remove one item from the To Do list only to replace it with another.