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[kiiranaux]

Highfantasy is right on the cusp of moving from dev version 1.3.16 to a 1.4.00 release. The last thing I can't seem to figure out is the token FEATURE_BEAST, and the wiki doesn't have much helpful information on it. Here are a few cases and things I noticed.

Creature A is a former cavern layer 3 creature with no special castes, changed into a feature_beast spawning layer 3-3.
Creature B is a former semimegabeast changed into a feature_beast spawning layer 3-3.
Creature D is a multi caste creature with a FEATURE_BEAST caste and a DEMON caste. Spawn layer, which must be defined at CREATURE level, was listed as 5-5 to cover the demons. Note that generated forgotten beasts don't even have a spawn layer defined.

How on earth do I check if these guys are spawning?
FEATURE_BEAST clearly hides their entries from world_sites_and_pops, so that's a no-go.

I added [LOCAL_POPS_CONTROLLABLE] for debug purposes to check if I could play any of them in adventure mode, confirming their presence. I could only get Creature A to appear on the Intelligent Wilderness Creatures list, which suggests to me at least that one is spawning. The adventurer was able to spawn from a Dark Fortress civ ruled by a unique demon, suggesting it gained adventurer-ness by crawling up the spire into the dark fort.

Some observations:
-turning off/on LARGE_ROAMING didn't seem to change anything
-nor DEPTH vs no DEPTH
-nor adding cluster, population, frequency
And by "change anything" i mean produce any of the following:
-nothing made the demon caste of Creature D show up in the demon list of world_sites_and_pops
-nothing made any difference in debug adventure mode playability of creatures B or D
-nothing made any of these creatures appear in legends mode as historical figures, despite many forgotten beasts being listed there, not even Creature A in the saves where I could play as one as adventure to debug

Any thoughts or help on how exactly this tag works?

[voliol]

It’s a new tag (for modders to use) so I have no knowledge on it beyond what the wiki had to say, but I have some thoughts:

I don’t see the difference between A and D, assuming they have lost LARGE_ROAMING and SEMIMEGABEAST respectively. Are there any other tokens you believe make a difference?

What was C? I assume you have already filtered it out for some reason, and that it was a creaturewith some other configuration of tomens. Which and how did it act?

Have you tried removing all other underground creatures, and digging down in fortress mode? I figure they should be forced to spawn if they exist and nothing else is available.

There is a possibility/risk that FEATURE_BEAST does not cover the whole behavior of the Forgotten Beasts, or even worse that it is defunct. IIRC Toady turned on the tokens unavailable to us (also the demon tokens), but were not sure how they worked. One reason to believe this might be the case is that Forgotten Beasts are always unique histfigs and in theory they could be controlled that way. A reason to believe it is not the case is that A counted as an Intelligent Wilderness Creature, so if it didn’t have LARGE_ROAMING it must have been supposedly spawned through FEATURE_BEAST.


What happens if you have an entity composed of FEATURE_BEASTs?

[kiiranaux]

Good points. Some thoughts:

I don’t see the difference between A and D, assuming they have lost LARGE_ROAMING and SEMIMEGABEAST respectively. Are there any other tokens you believe make a difference?

On A, F_B is a creature-level tag. On D, it's a caste-level tag

Creature C

These were named for convenience, A for Animal, B for (semimega)Beast, D for Demon.

Have you tried removing all other underground creatures, and digging down in fortress mode? I figure they should be forced to spawn if they exist and nothing else is available.

I'm currently doing a rushed fortress mode to try and spawn them, but you have made me realize I can just turn their spawn triggers to very low created/exported wealth and see what happens, then dig down.

Forgotten Beasts are always unique histfigs

Good point; It's possible the F_B tag does not create histfigs. Which is strange, since the Megabeast and Semimegabeast tags do create histfigs. This explains why they aren't in the legends list.

A counted as an Intelligent Wilderness Creature, so if it didn’t have LARGE_ROAMING it must have been supposedly spawned through FEATURE_BEAST

I agree - I'm just surprised I couldn't get B or D to spawn that way.

What happens if you have an entity composed of FEATURE_BEASTs?

science TBD!

[kiiranaux]

Updates: I'm pretty sure this tag doesn't work as intended, or that we don't know enough about it to know which tags it is compatible with, or that it doesn't actually function without GENERATED. I set all the attack triggers to 100 created wealth (no exported or population trigger) and pierced the caverns, and its been years and none shows.

Also note that there's a likely error on the wiki page for FBs. It says right at the top that "Forgotten beasts are attracted by wealth and population size." But all FBs have attack trigger    [ATTACK_TRIGGER:0:0:50000], so 50k created wealth as the only requirement - not related to population.

Creating an entity with all FEATURE_BEASTs works as normal, but that makes sense because entities can overwrite just about any creature tag in their spawning.

[kiiranaux]

Alright, for science, I tested an aweful lot of things.

Started by copying a vanilla FB and did nothing except rename and delete [GENERATED.] The beast does not appear in legends mode, meaning F_B alone is not enough to create it as a historical figure. It works - but it's hard to tell that it does due to the number of FBs in a game... as i learned from multiple playtests.

Then added local pops playable to test spawning as debug. Bingo. They are spawning. They may not spawn every time, especially if they have a cavern biome and compete with FBs, but the tag does work.

So to make it a bit easier to test, I added biome: not_freezing, which has a high success rate than biome: sub...X.

Learning:

F_B always hides the creature from the sites and pops document.
F_B NEVER adds the creature to legends mode as hist figs.
F_B is completely incompatible with large_roaming - UNLIKE megabeast/etc which stack with large_roaming.
F_B is, I'm about 90% certain, incompatible with [DEMON].
F_B works with either a surface biome or a subterranean biome + depth.

Have edited the wiki and closing the conversation.

[brewer bob]

I've been using FEATURE_BEAST combined with NIGHT_CREATURE_HUNTER and/or SPOUSE_CONVERTER to make "only of its kind" creatures (that is, there'll be only 1 of the creatures). I'm not sure which token does it (maybe spouse converter?), but they've so far been always listed as historical figures. Can't remember if I tried with only the feature beast tag.

Couldn't get them to attack forts (though they did kill people in legends), so I scrapped the project.

F_B is completely incompatible with large_roaming

How does this appear in the game? I've used it in the creatures mentioned above and I didn't seem to have any issues, but I could've missed something as I didn't do much testing.

[ZM5]

I've been using FEATURE_BEAST combined with NIGHT_CREATURE_HUNTER and/or SPOUSE_CONVERTER to make "only of its kind" creatures (that is, there'll be only 1 of the creatures). I'm not sure which token does it (maybe spouse converter?), but they've so far been always listed as historical figures. Can't remember if I tried with only the feature beast tag.

Couldn't get them to attack forts (though they did kill people in legends), so I scrapped the project.

F_B is completely incompatible with large_roaming

How does this appear in the game? I've used it in the creatures mentioned above and I didn't seem to have any issues, but I could've missed something as I didn't do much testing.

Yeah, only FEATURE_BEAST doesn't make them into historical figures - I think its NIGHT_CREATURE_HUNTER that did it.

Incidentally the [TITAN] tag seems to be in a similar boat of not-really-working. Made a pair of titan creatures but they just wouldnt spawn.

[kiiranaux]

Brewer: Large Roaming: In my experience, using FB with L_R meant that it wouldn't spawn in either format. It's challenging to check, what with being hid from world_sites_and_pops.

Brewer: Large Roaming: One of a kind: It's probably night creature hunter. That being said, NCH is a fully functional tag and is compatible with large_roaming. If you make a large_roaming creature, and make one of its castes NIGHT_CREATURE_HUNTER + SPOUSE_CONVERTER, you'll get the NC caste spawning as a NC and the non-NC caste spawning as a normal creature. Pretty cool.

ZM5: Yeah, if I had one suggestion for Toady it's that FB should proably just go ahead and make hist figs. That would feel right AND it would allow easy testing of the spawning of FBs in all these different scenarios.

[FantasticDorf]

Its a broad observation without looking at the mod in question but have you tried removing FB's from the advanced worldgen criteria? The game always favors generated entities over player input ones, it'll always try to push in additive generic necro-secrets for instance, but most creatures arent additive at all.

They also have to be put to their layer too im certain, all demons have a innate layer of 5 (in stringdump anyway that keeps them there), so within normalish FB parameters or specifics you'd maybe want 1 to 3 and see from there on if it needs a biome. I have tried setting some custom demon HFS feature beasts for some content to apply to that layer (bloodthirsters with melee weapons via habits), but they're still waiting to go through the testing phase to ensure they run correctly.

[Mobbstar]

The game always favors generated entities over player input ones, it'll always try to push in additive generic necro-secrets for instance, but most creatures arent additive at all.

I have observed no "favor" with Secrets and Night Trolls.  My custom Secrets and NCH / Spouse Converter always spawn in addition to however many generated ones are requested in the world parameters.  However, I also noticed Megabeasts use their number as a population cap and pick random candidates from the raws.  Perhaps Titans and FB are something between the two behaviours.

(Edit: Disabling Night Trolls / Secrets entirely also disables the custom ones.)

[brewer bob]

(Edit: Disabling Night Trolls / Secrets entirely also disables the custom ones.)

Setting secrets to zero in advanced world gen doesn't disable custom secrets. In my experience, the amount of secrets doesn't affect custom ones at all: e.g. you have 10 custom secrets and set the amount of secrets to 2, all the ten custom secrets might produce slabs and additionally there'll be a possibility for 2 different necro secrets.

Can't say about night trolls, though.