Searching within a dictionary and return all possible results and randomly selecting one

[gray comet]

Let's say I have the following Dictionary (name, rarity)

var characters = { ["Foo", "common"], ["Bar", "common"], ["Baz", "rare"], ["Quux", "epic"], ["Quuz", "legendary"] }
 
And I want to randomly spawn an enemy based on rarity:
I define a random value between 0 and 1:

var roll = randf()

And then I limitate the probability

if roll < 0.8: return "Any Common monster" elif roll < 0.90: return "Any Rare Monster" elif roll < 0.99: return "Any Epic Monster" else: return "Any Legendary Monster"

What I want to do is replace return "Common" for a code that searches in my dictionary, filters all possible monsters by that rarity, and then randomly select one of them:

Example:

1. Randf() returns 0.5 --> Common
2. Filter Dictionary by Common = Foo, Bar
3. Randomly choose between all options (1 or 2) --> 1
4. Add Foo to a new dictionary

Hope I have been clear enough, as I am failing to understand how to do this from the documentation 😦

[primal dawn]

var characters = [
    ["Foo", "common"],

Btw your current code you have an array of arrays here

There is a difference of [] and {} in this context.

[gray comet]

Oh yeah, because I was trying to do it this way, it actually comes from a JSON, so definitely a Dictionary 🙂, fixed thanks!

[primal dawn]

Not sure if that is a typo or your actual code is like that.

Now you have a Dictionary with an Array inside which seems off also. Since the keys of a Dictionary should be String.

var characters = {
    ["Foo", "common"],
    ["Bar", "common"],

I guess the question is do you have an array of dictionaries, or do you have one dictionary and the creature names themselves only map to rarity and nothing else.

At a high level, I think I would change it so that it is more like so that my rarity is an enum of increasing int values:

[
    {"name": "Wolf", "rarity": 1},
    {"name": "Demon", "rarity": 5},
]

That way I could also add "hp" or whatever as an attribute in the future. But maybe you already have that but just did not share your whole JSON.

Then now technically you could just keep generating random number until list[random_number]["rarity"] <= random_rarity

[gray comet]

My JSON looks like this:

[gray comet]

The problem is that this method does not have weighted probability and Common will spawn the same times as a Legendary

[primal dawn]

If you randomize random_rarity then it won't.

[gray comet]

I'll try it

[gray comet]

will it work if do this?

[primal dawn]

That would work too.

[gray comet]

Why would you list instead of get the dictionary? (educational purpose only)

[primal dawn]

It would make this particular use case easier

Well, joke's aside

Having it be {"name": "Wolf"} instead of "Wolf": { } I think helps more clearly define the attributes of something.

It could help with translation in the future too maybe.

[gray comet]

Invalid get index 'list' (on base: 'Dictionary'). 😦

[primal dawn]

drop the .list

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_dictionary.html#class-dictionary-method-keys

and you want keys() in your way instead of my way

[gray comet]

oh

[primal dawn]

because my code assumes an array

[gray comet]

like this? return characters[random_number]["rarityindex"].keys() <= random_rarity

[primal dawn]

No, keys() returns an array which you can't compare with an int

return characters[characters.keys()[random_number]]["rarityIndex"] <= random_rarity

This assumes random_rarity is generated based on your desired probability.

and that "5" only comes up 1% of the time or whatever you wanted

Though probability is something that can be tweaked. Perhaps you could first confirm you are "randomly generating characters".

[gray comet]

I must be really dumb or something, I'm still getting the Index issue 😦

[primal dawn]

It still says index 3 though?

[gray comet]

no, rarityIndex now

[primal dawn]

Oh

yeah, that's my fault

I wrote rarityIndex

but you put rarityindex

So the code I gave you was wrong due to capitalization of i

[gray comet]

oh no, I tried both ways

[primal dawn]

print(characters[characters.keys()[random_number]])
return characters[characters.keys()[random_number]]["rarityindex"] <= random_rarity

Do that and see what is printed

It suggests rarityindex could not be found.

So we need to see what is in the obj

[gray comet]

same error 😦

Oh got it by uncommenting the return

my rarityindex is not there

that's why

OMG I didnt's save the file haahah

sorry 😦

THANKS 🙂 many many thanks for the patience

[primal dawn]

So your problem is resolved?