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[Starmantis]

Artificial life, while many see it as a modern aspiration the interest in such things dates back throughout human history and is not uncommon in fantasy settings and I believe it would be an appropriate addition to dwarf fortress. Here are three different forms of construct that dwarven (or human or whoever) engineers may be able to construct with sufficient skill.

Golem: Golems are the most 'magical' of constructs, in order to construct a golem one must first create the body, the body may be constructed of a variety of materials but unless the body is masterwork the golem creation will fail, a golem may be made in a variety of different forms like a statue, larger creatures require more material to construct. the golems body plan will be based on the creature constructed although it lacks organs. bringing life to a golem requires a secret much like necromancy. While sentient most Golems cannot speak or gain or lose attributes.

Automaton: Automatons are more complicated to build but dont require 'supernatural' secrets, automatons are created at a special workshop 3 steps are involved in the construction of an automaton, the first is the design phase, in order to design automatons a dwarf must have high enough engineering skill. the game will then generate a new kind of creature (though not spawn one) many different classes of automatons are possible. In general automatons are only capable of doing a single type of job. types of automaton may include haulers, miners, and even crafters. crafters always produce goods of the same quality. most automaton cannot gain or lose skill and can never raise attributes. after completing the design you must build all of the parts and put them together and voila you have an automaton

an automaton can sometimes acquire a soul but that requires philosophical knowledge and a well crafted soul gem (or something) these automatons have personalities, can speak, and can gain skill (but not attributes) a soulless automaton may also be possessed by a ghost for !!FUN!! automatons with souls can also perform a wider variety of jobs and are essentially living creatures.

[Orbotosh]

The wiki mentions that artificial creatures may be added in a future version as a class of night creature.

[GoblinCookie]

Is this not what bronze collosus already are?

[NJW2000]

ptw

[SixOfSpades]

Leaving magic completely aside for the moment, Toady has said (and I'm in agreement) that he wants to avoid DF having a "steampunk" feel, so we almost certainly won't have robots walking around & performing meaningful tasks. But considering dwarves' mechanical inclinations, I too have supported the idea of high-level Mechanics producing luxury goods like Automata--provided that these automatons are limited to the same sorts of capabilities that were shown by those made in real medieval Earth history. There are descriptions of wall-mounted human-like automata that open up their bellies to serve food & drink that was loaded into them by servants working on the other side of the wall . . . or hand-washing assistants that pour a set amount of warm water, then hand you the soap, then accept the soap back, & pour some more water. I can also see "robotic" Pump Operators, which are really just humanoid figures attached to pumps that were already operating under external power, the automata are just there for show. In each of these cases, the automaton would be classed as furniture, not a creature.

Now, mechanical miners . . . humanoid robots performing this task would be out, but the idea of some kind of tunneling machine might be plausible--IF there was a way to provide power to a moving target that didn't involve some kind of steam or internal combustion engine, which Toady has specifically mentioned that he's against.

[Starmantis]

This is more about magical constructs which arent uncommon in mythology. Simulacrum might be a better name than automaton

[Deboche]

I like the idea though I don't think it'd fit in the vanilla version. It might be interesting to mod it in when multi-tile creatures are implemented.

[crazyabe]

PTW

[Dirst]

To my mind, automatons include two broad categories: "golems" and constructs.

A "golem" is something inert animated by a magical/spiritual force which includes zombies/skeletons/etc as well as bronze colossus and the typical stone golems from classic RPGs.  I agree that these should require a "secret" of some kind.  "Intelligent" golems would require some kind of soul, using whatever soul-gathering mechanisms find their way into the game.

A "construct" is a clockwork-style device that does some work that would typically be provided by a citizen.  This should involve mechanisms and design tasks.  It makes more sense if there are ever siege engines and the like that require multiple crewmembers.

A device can be designed so that a mechanism functions as a "virtual crewmember."  Suppose a vanilla ballista requires four crew.  A good engineer could design a ballista that uses two extra mechanisms and only requires two crew to operate.  An example from current vanilla would be to hook a pressure plate to a bridge, serving as the "virtual lever-puller."

Fully automating a device in a safe manner could be a challenge.  Sure, you could use three mechanisms and a linked pressure plate to fire ballista bolts down the hall... just be sure no diplomats use that hallway!  A more complicated solution is to use AND, OR and NOT gating to arm/disarm things.

What I do not see coming to DF is the clockwork robot style of construct... but it would be nice if it was achievable through modding.  The game might treat it like a pseudo-golem whose reaction requires X bars of metal and Y mechanisms (and perhaps weapons).

[expwnent]

Posting to watch.

[Sirbug]

I wanted to propose "secrets of animating matter" one day. My idea is to see golems being made out of any rock with two gems for eyes and need a few fresh corpses to infuse them with soul. For adventure mode it would be just pile ingridients and cast an ability. NPC golemmasters would build their armies and harass people.

Could probably use some kind of hard cap on how many one can control.

[SixOfSpades]

A "golem" is something inert animated by a magical/spiritual force which includes zombies/skeletons/etc as well as bronze colossus and the typical stone golems from classic RPGs.

I interpret undead as being fundamentally different from golems/collosi, partly due to the necessity of forming the latter creature: Undead are already formed, and need only animation to regain a semblance of their former mobility, whereas constructs are created from the whole cloth, the wizard needs to teach them how to move--and even what movement IS.

Once the Religion arc gets going, priests (especially elderly ones) might petition their gods to transfer their souls into statues of those same gods, so that the priest could literally become their deity's representation & vessel. Whether this "avatar" could move and act (fight?), or just speak, might depend on the intensity of the priest's faith, as well as the power of the god and its associated spheres. (Side note: It would be AWESOME to see an animated statue made of magma-safe stone willingly submerge itself in magma in order to save the fort. But that's the problem with DF, just because something cool happens doesn't mean you're there to see it.)