Array of objects adding more

LeeGregory

Twine 1.42
SugarCube 2.5

I'm not sure how to even explain this, so I hope it makes sense.

I'd like to create sort of random NPCs. They will have a name and traits that are assigned randomly from pre-created lists.

So the array of objects would be something like:

code
<<set $NPCs to [
{
firstname: "Mark",
lastname: "Martin",
haircolor: "Brown",
eyecolor: "Brown,"
},
{
firstname: "Brad",
lastname: "Johnson",
haircolor: "Blue",
eyecolor: "Brown,"
}
/code

I can do that, but I'd like the NPCs to be different on any given play through, they are filler, not the main characters.

So I created array lists and tried to insert their information randomly, which works if I already created an array with the number of possible index values.

code
<<nobr>><<set $RandomMaleNames to [
"Jeff",
"Ryan",
"Donald",
"Alexander",
"Lewis",
"Xavier",
"Brad",
"Theron",
"Bernie",
"Lee"
]>>

<<set $lastnames to [
"Li",
"Smith",
"Lam",
"Martin",
"Brown",
"Roy",
"Tremblay",
"Lee",
"Gagnon",
"Wilson"
]>>

<<set $NPCs to [
{
firstname:"Boo",
lastname: "Boo"
},
{
firstname:"Boo",
lastname: "Boo"
}, {
firstname:"Boo",
lastname: "Boo"
}, {
firstname:"Boo",
lastname: "Boo"
}, {
firstname:"Boo",
lastname: "Boo"
}, {
firstname:"Boo",
lastname: "Boo"
}, {
firstname:"Boo",
lastname: "Boo"
}, {
firstname:"Boo",
lastname: "Boo"
}, {
firstname:"Boo",
lastname: "Boo"
}
]>>

<<set $namecounter to $lastnames.length>>

<</nobr>>
<<for $i to 0; $i lt $namecounter; $i++>>\
<<set $NPCs[$i].firstname to $RandomMaleNames.random()>>\
<<set $NPCs[$i].lastname to $lastnames.pluck()>>
<<print $NPCs[$i].firstname>> <<print $NPCs[$i].lastname>>
<</for>>
/code

So this code creates 9 NPCs with different last names, but they can share the same first name.

It appears to work, except for the tenth name. Which I intentionally left off to demonstrate the problem. I get the errors:

code
Error: <<set>>: bad evaluation: Cannot set property 'firstname' of undefined Error: <<set>>: bad evaluation: Cannot set property 'lastname' of undefined
Error: <<print>>: bad expression: Cannot read property 'firstname' of undefined Error: <<print>>: bad expression: Cannot read property 'lastname' of undefined
/code

Which I assume is because there isn't a tenth spot. If I add a tenth one to the $NPCs array all errors go away.

This is fine, I can work with it, but I was wondering if there was a better way. One in which if I added more last names the array would grow without me needing to manually add to the NPCs array.

If anyone should notice any non-related errors that will bite me later I'd appreciate the heads up too.

greyelf

You can use the Javascript Array's push() method to achieve what you want.

The following demonstrates the setting up of the $NPCs array and the <<for>> macro, it assumes everything else is the same as your example.

<<set $NPCs to []>>

<<for $i to 0; $i lt $namecounter; $i++>>\
	<<set $NPCs.push({
		firstname: $RandomMaleNames.random(),
		lastname: $lastnames.pluck()
	})>>
	<<print $NPCs[$i].firstname>> <<print $NPCs[$i].lastname>>
<</for>>

LeeGregory

Thank you! That's much better. Exactly what I was hoping for.