Generating a word out of an array, each has its own rarity.

Questions & Answers
1

I’m making a script to generate random weapons with prefixes and a suffix.
I’ve made 2 structs, one called ModifierPrefix and another called ModifierSuffix. They each have:

  1. A name (string)
  2. A damage modifier (float)
  3. and a rarity (float between 1 and 10)

I just need a way to generate a random prefix and suffix based on it’s rarity.

Here’s the script:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class Weapons : MonoBehaviour {

	[System.Serializable]
	public struct ModifierPrefix {
		public string modifier;
		public float damageChange;
		public float rarity;
	}

	[System.Serializable]
	public struct ModifierSuffix {
		public string modifier;
		public float damageChange;
		public float rarity;
	}

	[System.Serializable]
	public struct Weapon {
		public string name;
		public float damage;
		public ModifierPrefix[] prefixes;
		public ModifierSuffix suffix;
	}

	public Weapon[] weapons;
	public ModifierPrefix[] possiblePrefixes;
	public ModifierSuffix[] possibleSuffixes;

	// Generate a new weapon

}
2

A simple way to do it would be to create a large array of prefixes and have it filled up with prefixes based on their rarity, and then selecting a random prefix from this list.

From these suffixes: [name, rarity], [deadly, 1], [rare, 3], [common, 6]

you would generate a list looking like:
(deadly, rare, rare, rare, common, common, common, common, common, common)

The rarity dictates how many copies of each prefix you put into this array. Now this array represents your chances of getting each prefix.

Now use Mathf.Range(0, listSize - 1) to select a prefix from it.

Rinse and repeat for suffixes and damage.

3

Personally I would change the Arrays to Lists and use LINQ to sort through them by rarity. You could do something like this:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

public List<ModifierPrefix> possiblePrefixes;

//Gets a collection of modifiers that have a rarity > 7.0
IEnumerable<ModifierPrefix> sorted = possiblePrefixes.Where(x => x.rarity > 7.0f);

//Picks a modifier from a random location in the collection
ModifierPrefix randomPrefix = sorted.ElementAt(Random.Range(0, sorted.Count()));