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IDEA: maybe using a game editor: generate a graph of a room full of people

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urlwolf:
 Ok, this one should be easy for people who are into games (maybe the sims?) and
have played around with game editors.

The reason I need this (weird) thing is that I'm going to use it for a
psychology experiment.

I need a graph of a "room" (square) full of people. The people should be
different from one another, and should be in random locations. I plan to
generate several (many) rooms with different numerosities (i.e., 19, 23,...60
people). Ideally, no person should appear in two rooms.

I can generate random coordinates and pass them to the program (game editor?) or
I can just use the random coordinates that the program generates itself.

I will need 20 + 10 + 60 = 90 rooms, so it'd have to be something that doesn't
require manual intervention (i.e., works in batch mode).

Finally, it doesn't matter if the people are trolls, astronauts or wearing roman
togas :) but they should all be part of the same category, i.e., no one guy
sticking out. Maybe contemporary clothes would be best (I'm thinking sims?
then?).

Doable?

urlwolf:
*bump*

easing the requeriments:
the graph generated could be just a jar containing marbles, or a parking lot containing cars, etc.
As long as I can input a number and the program gives me an image with <number> things, I'm happy.

There must be a program out there that does this, I'm sure, but it does require a bit of 'lateral' thinking...

dajo:
You might do it with Excel.  Just put =RAND() in a grid 2 columns wide and X rows long, then do a plot graph.  Not fancy, but maybe you can pretty it up with other kinds of markers and colors.

urlwolf:
Thanks dajo,

Actually I have generated the random matrices and dot clouds already (using R, my favorite prog. language).
What I want is to actually have a graph of a room with little characters (taken from a game maybe?) to make sure that they are all different and memorable...

I did the experiment already with random dots as your screenshot describes. It failed beacause people cannot remember them well.

This is the reason I want to make the "room" idea. Rooms should be a lot more memorable, since the random location of characters are... well, not simple dots, but people.

Any ideas for something that takes the coordinates and generates a graph of people (or objects. whatever)? I'm thinking about some isometric view of a room but a bottle full of marbles would do too.

Thanks a lot

dajo:
You might try Google SketchUp.

It supports scripting in Ruby, which might let you load the people dynamically.

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