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[Organum]

I'm modding in some wolf-like creatures and considering whether to give them six legs or just let them have the usual four.

I like the idea of six legged wolf monsters being ridden by anthropomorphic polar bears, but I wonder if, logically, the extra pair would impede rather than improve movement. Thoughts?

[Ockad]

A wolf-like creature with six legs wouldn't be much of a wolf anymore would it now?
I think you should go by your own imagination, and not copy the wolf from God ( who? ).

Sure, sounds cool enough, a being with six legs. Your note on the 2 extra legs being an impedement. I don't think so.
It could function as actual 'tools' for the creature. Just giving my 2^ cents.

[JoRo]

Note that the only default body with 6 legs is the 'insect' one which has the thorax/abdomen names for the body; if you wanted standard mammal names you'd have to cobble it together yourself.

[3]

The above post in mind, this seems a decent moment for me to suggest you start using VBASE. Assuming you're not already.

[Organum]

I went with six.

Ockad; I think they'd trip on them...but six legs means a longer body, and if they are proportioned right the end result would be useful.

JoRo and 3; I made a new entry to the body_default.txt called "sextapod" that was basically the quadruped entry, but with the insect leg bits replacing the originals.

I want to use VBASE because it seems pretty good, but I don't want to lose the body parts I've made already...Although, I've changed some things since the last time I thought about using it, and if there's a six-legged body in VBASE I'll probably switch over.

[i2amroy]

Six legs doesn't always mean that they would get in the road. Did you see the movie Avatar? Most of the creatures, including the giant panther thing, had six legs, and that thing seemed to move rather well.

[ungulateman]

^ And Avatar is so realistic with its portrayal of the local wildlife, isn't it?

[Jordrake]

^ And Avatar is so realistic with its portrayal of the local wildlife, isn't it?

I think he means in terms of the mechanics of moving with six legs, not the biological realism.

[Autochton]

^ And Avatar is so realistic with its portrayal of the local wildlife, isn't it?

More so than many other scifi films and TV shows you might care to mention. But that's not the discussion at hand, and I'm not about to derail this thread.

Hexapodal life is far from an impossibility at the macroscopic scale. A body structured to work with six limbs is no more far fetched than the way life on our world is structured to work with four or two. A longer body, providing spacing between front, middle and rear limb sets, for example, or a lateral spacing, as seen in Avatar, where most creatures have one of either the front or middle set of legs set wider than the other, giving them space to work without interference. As for the 'legs tangle' argument, they do that on four-legged creatures, and yet not all species move around on two.

And lastly, this is bloody Dwarf Fortress, where the Rule of Cool (aka. the Rule of Magma) reigns supreme over any piddling 'realism'. Do what feels right, what you'd like to see, rather than worrying whether it's realistic. 

[GaxkangtheUnbound]

I made giant scorpion beetles.
They have bigass pinchers that sliced humans in half.
My trolls gored it to death before they could cause any harm, though.

[Drakeero]

If I remember, Odin's horse had 6 legs and still came across as a pretty damn good war horse.

[krenshala]

Sleipnir was an eight legged horse.

[Eugenitor]

IRL, hextuped creatures would simply be longer than their quadruped counterparts, assuming the same proportions. Great for carrying multiple riders or hauling.

In DF it makes hacking their legs off to make them fall to the ground virtually impossible, as they don't go down until all legs on one side are chopped off.

Sleipnir was fucked up. In pretty much all depictions, his legs are simply *doubled*, sometimes the whole leg, sometimes just the foreleg.

[Organum]

This mythological precedent intrigues me. Even if Sleipnir does look broken, that's pretty awesome.