@enkiv2 @natecull Hmm. Are there any good libraries for this kind of thing for Java? Or is that massive overkill? :/

@Angle @natecull
Depends on what exactly you're trying to do.

If you're going to use a planner on these associations, I'm pretty sure there are planner libraries, and there's a Java binding for Swi-Prolog & vice versa if you really like overkill.

If you plan to traverse a tree & choose a random valid value it's overkill and you should just roll your own triplet store with fast lookup.

@enkiv2 @natecull Not sure what a planner is in this context? But I'm mainly going to use them for procedural generation. Making skill trees with random weapons, techniques, stats used, etc. But I don't just want it to be random, I want there to be a certain degree of cohesiveness. So the stats fit the weapons fit the techniques, etc. But still have a chance for variation and oddball stuff. :/

@Angle @natecull
If you want to structure your thing so that you can chain by appropriateness (ex., choose a random weapon and if it's a two-handed weapon choose a secondary weapon that doesn't require a free hand) then you don't need a planner.

If you want to be able to make an incoherent build and then back up and retry until it's coherent, you need a planner.

Rolling your own planner might be easier than using an existing one, if you don't need it super general.

@enkiv2 @natecull Ah, gotcha. Do you know any good primers on this sort of thing? It's all pretty new to me. :/

@Angle @natecull
Sorry, I learned all this by learning prolog, basically. (And learning prolog is not necessarily the ideal way to approach it -- but is still better than approaching it from the RDF/OWL side.)

There used to be a bunch of good books on the subject in the 80s.

The other place you can look is the tracery community. They're the former (non-planner) approach -- they use generative grammars. http://www.crystalcodepalace.com/traceryTut.html

@natecull @Angle
There's probably good stuff specific to generative game design re: conventional 2d/3d games that I'm simply not aware of though.

@Angle
Ex., here's a planner I wrote for generating caper stories: https://github.com/enkiv2/scene-sequel

@enkiv2 @Angle @natecull speaking of rolling your own triple store in Java, this article might help if you want to save some time and learn a new tool https://neo4j.com/blog/rdf-triple-store-vs-labeled-property-graph-difference/