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Extract even MORE data - I want to customize what I get.

50 (24.3%)

Megabeasts and semimegabeasts need more work.

15 (7.3%)

Why no vermin? I want to annoy the heck out of myself.

10 (4.9%)

Nothing swims underwater?! How could you? I want aquatic life.

60 (29.1%)

Let's have (rare) random creatures that breathe fire and/or poison you to death.

34 (16.5%)

Forget RandCreatures; work on LangCreate.

17 (8.3%)

Zombie's Toothbrush.

6 (2.9%)

Make birds more birdlike.

12 (5.8%)

I want something else, but I'll suggest it in-thread.

2 (1%)

Total Members Voted: 205

[Azkanan]

Ah... Anybody else crashing when RandCreatures makes a civ?

[Talvieno]

Ah... Anybody else crashing when RandCreatures makes a civ?

Randcreatures doesn't work with 40.xx yet. I'm rewriting it from the ground up for a number of reasons, among them:

1. Better language, more platforms - We had a lot of people having trouble with it running on Linux
2. More exported data - I'm building a simple scripting language based on DF's own raws so modders can mod in exactly what they want
3. Accessibility - Hopefully some of the data will be editable within the generator, but no promises here.
4. Smarter code - The new version is going to read directly from the vanilla raws (or whatever raws you want to link them to) to build bodies more intelligently and reliably.
5. No more file errors - a lot of people had the issue that they didn't put the files in the right folders and it wouldn't do anything. I hope to solve that.

and other reasons... but that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

And potentially creatures that poison you to death (cute and tiny optional).

domesticated poisonous fluffy wambler-alikes.  This is where this is going.

If you want bizarre/hilarious, I once made cats that exploded violently when attacked, giving the attacker a terrible necrosis of the entire body... and "bob-ombs" that walked around and exploded when you got close to them - they were capable of setting stuff on fire. I don't know if we'll see that - I try to stick as closely to vanilla as possible - but it'll be interesting. Lots of variety for sure. You'll probably be just as likely to see large poisonous monsters as tiny ones. I'm hoping to also make it so that by editing the files you can do pretty much whatever you want as far as poison goes... but we'll see.

[Meph]

It would be quite simple to make several buttons instead of just "generate creatures"... one could be vanilla-like, another makes easy/medium/hard monsters, with different bodysizes and interactions and poisons. That way everyone gets what they want.

[Vorthon]

Oh hey, glad to see that this is being updated/revamped. Might actually do a reboot of that old failed LP of mine once it's ready. And the current stream of bugfix releases slow down. :u

[Talvieno]

It would be quite simple to make several buttons instead of just "generate creatures"... one could be vanilla-like, another makes easy/medium/hard monsters, with different bodysizes and interactions and poisons. That way everyone gets what they want.

Okay. This greatly intrigues me. It would be difficult, though, to accurately gauge creature difficulty... there are so many variables involved it's just... hrm. I think I could come up with something, but it would be messy. I wouldn't be satisfied with just bodysizes and poisons.

Vanilla-like monsters, it already (mostly) gens... but I think I see what you mean. Carp, I'm going to be awake all night trying to get this figured out...

For hardcore modders: what I have of the DF Rand Create scripting stuff: http://pastebin.com/pUbGwYfJ    Still taking suggestions.

Oh hey, glad to see that this is being updated/revamped. Might actually do a reboot of that old failed LP of mine once it's ready. And the current stream of bugfix releases slow down. :u

Yeah, I was watching that - felt a little sad to see it peter out like it did. Ah well, though - if you do turn it into a really good LP, I'll post a link in the thread.

I'm actually considering making a new thread, or moving this one to the utility forum.


Edit: new work: In the 34.xx version, runspeed and monetary values were randomly assigned... I think this time around I'm going to try to pick the raws apart and produce an algorithm to pseudo-intelligently calculate appropriate, believable values for each. It'll be a slow process but at least it'll look better.

[Vorthon]

Yeah, it kinda died out because I had a falling out with my stepdad (Which has since been patched up, thankfully. we seem to get along better if we spend less time around each other.) and wound up moving in with my grandmother. By the time I'd calmed down enough to get back to it, I had another project on the go and it kinda... fell by the wayside.

[TD1]

Ptw

[Talvieno]

Update.

http://pastebin.com/LbrFeVwS

The script itself is mostly done (3500+ lines of code), minus the civ work. After this I just have to write a program that can read it and pull it all together into a list of however many creatures you want. Gaits are given intelligently like I wanted, biomes match stuff pretty well, creatures can poison you... it looks good so far. The program itself is going to be the hard part.

Working on updating teh Lolmod for Apiks and co. at the moment, but will continue soon after.

[Lord Dalek]

I really hope you make special characters usable. Partly because of my fantasy writing (DF is shockingly good inspiration), I use a lot of fake languages. And normal english letters are kinda boring. Anyways, great work on both.

[Talvieno]

I can try. The main issue with special characters is that I have to assign them all values beforehand - i.e. an integer that says whether they're a consonant, a vowel, or both in special circumstances (e.g. "y"). It's doable, though, if I use Java.

[Meph]

Nice seeing the progress towards 40.x. One more utility that I can keep in the end.

[Talvieno]

Yep, work is still ongoing. I've almost completely finished the script, and the parser for it reads almost everything at this point - just a couple tokens left to add. The parser for Toady's bodypart raws is done - the program can read BP raws now. What this means for modders: RandCreatures will be able to read your custom-made bodyparts and attach them appropriately. The entire thing is, as of right now, exactly 256 kb in size (code + script). That's about 50k words' worth of programming code. (I like numbers.)

edit: genned the first [BODY: tokens today. debug logs:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(neckList)
equal: (RND:1:1000)
Part added: SPIDER
Part added: TONGUE
Part added: SPINE
Part added: BASIC_HEAD
Part added: BRAIN
Part added: 2LUNGS
Part added: FACIAL_FEATURES
Part added: RIBCAGE
Part added: TAIL
Part added: HEART
Part added: DORSAL_FIN
Part added: MOUTH
Part added: 4TOES
Part added: FRONT_BODY_FLIPPERS
Part added: 2EYES
Part added: TEETH
Part added: SKULL

Obviously it still needs a bit of work, but I'm getting there. The above, in body token form, ought to work - everything ought to be in the right order.

The downside is that genning creatures is going to take more than a few seconds.

[Baffler]

I've been having quite a bit of difficulty getting LangCreate to work properly. The first time I tried using it, it simply crashed (I think I forgot to end a word in a vowel) but I tried twice more with all of the parameters met. Both times it created an empty text file, and froze up. I let it sit for nearly 4 hours, and it still hadn't done anything but create that text file. Does it just work slowly, or did I do something wrong? I extracted the .zip onto my desktop and ran it out of the folder.

[Talvieno]

I've been having quite a bit of difficulty getting LangCreate to work properly. The first time I tried using it, it simply crashed (I think I forgot to end a word in a vowel) but I tried twice more with all of the parameters met. Both times it created an empty text file, and froze up. I let it sit for nearly 4 hours, and it still hadn't done anything but create that text file. Does it just work slowly, or did I do something wrong? I extracted the .zip onto my desktop and ran it out of the folder.

That's strange... what operating system are you running it on? No, it should've been done in the blink of an eye, really. The empty text file means it created the file but didn't write to it...

Edit: Ohhhhh. Try extracting it into the DF raws folder. See how that works out. It reads the default DF raws when it gens. This is probably your issue.

[Talvieno]

I moved this over here from DF Dwarf Mode Discussion. The primary reason for this is that now that I'm adding so much to it, it's really just as much for adventure mode as it is fortress mode. I don't feel keeping it there is justified anymore. Also... we have a Utilities board now. No reason at all to keep it where it was.

Here's a full update on the progress, as it's been about month since I started rewriting RandCreatures. All told, it's very roughly a third of the way done. Here's a fancy development list:

• External script, creature-related - Roughly 90% done. I'll continue to make small tweaks and changes, and there's a little more I still need to add. The external script is basically a huge DF-style script that you can customize any way you want.
• Gathering body data - Completely done. Data gathered includes all vanilla bodypart names, and weighting how often they should be used when building creatures. All of this is completely customizable.
• Gathering gait data - Completely done. Required building an external program to assist in the data-gathering process. Data gathered basically makes it so the program can intelligently determine viable gaits for the creature. All of this is completely customizable.
• Gathering biome data - Completely done. Required building an external program to assist in the data-gathering process. Data gathered includes all vanilla biome types, likelihood of each biome being used, and likelihood of each biome combining with another.
• Script parser - Around 90% done. There are a few tokens/functions/calls I need to add support for, but for what is added, it reads perfectly.
• Dwarf Fortress BP raws parser - Completely done. This was actually far easier than I'd anticipated because I was able to use the script parser I'd built for a lot of it. The whole thing only took a day.
• Body generator - I guess around 80% finished. It builds bodies without issue - any body it makes would be accepted by the game without giving an errorlog. However, I need to make it weight things a little more realistically in regard to fins and wings, and I need to make it so that creatures with lungs can breathe, creatures without brains won't die or be forced to crawl, and creatures without eyes still have a way to see.
• Gait builder - No progress. I haven't started on this yet at all, actually.
• Description data - Maybe 75% done. I'm planning on making RandCreatures 2.0 have descriptions that are far more varied than the original. I gathered a lot of data from the vanilla raws, and I'm still going to try to stick to making the descriptions as vanilla-DF-like as possible. I haven't implemented a lot of the description data into the script yet, though.
• Description generator - Zero progress, as I haven't started working on it.
• Looping for multiple creatures - I guess around 33% done. Yeah, this is a thing. A big thing, as you're allowed to define ints, booleans, etc. from within the external script. It's going to take some work, but I've been working towards it from the beginning. I should have this done within the next few days.
• Dwarf Fortress language raws parser - No progress. Haven't gotten to this yet. The parsers I've already built should make it far easier.
• Dwarf Fortress symbol raws parser - No progress, as I haven't gotten to it yet. Same as above, pre-built parsers should make it easier.
• Creature name generator - Done. I may wind up rewriting part of it to double as a language generator. Once the language generator is complete I can pull from it to make an updated LangCreate, so yes, I'll be updating LangCreate in the future as well, hopefully - mostly just for polish, as it already works pretty well. Updated LangCreate will have a better UI and more customization controls. As an added bonus, it will not crash when the input requirements are not met. It'll simply work around it.
• Creature name data list - No progress. It'll be a list of words/names to craft creature names from. It'll be completely customizable and controlled in-script.
• Language generator - No progress. I'm planning on implementing support for prefix/suffix symbol stuff. You'll be able to turn that off if you want in the UI. I'll also let you decide whether you want to just go with one of the default languages.
• External script, language/word-related - Zero progress. You'll be able to customize everything, though - except actually crafting the words, that'll be handled internally.
• Language data list - No progress. It'll be a list of very distinct, themed words that the program can pull from to craft unique languages from for the civilizations it creates, which leads me to:
• Gathering civilization data - I still need to go back through and re-gather civ data.
• External script, civ-related - Again, 0% done. This'll take a bit to complete. I'll be rewriting the majority of RandCreature 1.0's civilization code into the scripts so you can customize it however you want. I'm putting everything into the same file, but will split it up later if necessary... and add support for reading from multiple files.
• Civilization generator - No progress. The internal civilization builder. It ought to be really simple, as most of it will be handled in the script. I'm going to allow you to customize the civilizations you create too, pre-gen. You'll be able to play as one of your new civilizations if you so desire.
• The program's UI - About 5% done. All I have so far is a way to list out debug messages. This UI will be far better than the last one (which was practically nonexistent).
• Error messages and catches, error handling - I guess around 20% done. I don't want to leave you in the dark if your script fails, and I definitely don't want the program to crash because you wrote one line a little wrong. This is where I come clean and admit that I hadn't originally intended RandCreatures and LangCreate for use by the public - they were just a couple of toys I'd built and had floating around. I want these new versions to be polished, foolproof, and crash-proof. I'll be writing something to randomly screw up the script it reads in, to try to force the program to crash in any way I can, so that I can catch the errors, output error messages to the UI, and hopefully tell you how to fix it.
• Major in-program bugtesting - I'm not going to list off a percentage for this as it's an ongoing, constant process. I'll do a ton of tests at the end, of course, but I'm always fixing bugs as I find them. You kind of have to, to be sure it's running correctly.
• Ingame testing - Obviously this is a bit farther than I am right now, but it's definitely on the list.