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[DizzyCrash]

Ok so I have this incredibly odd compulsion to scan my legends mode for hours and hours and hours before ever even setting foot in adventure or fortress mode, i get out a pen and paper and detail every god, every titan, every civilization, every demon king that i can! and I basically create a encyclopedia for my world, so as you can imagine i dont often restart my worlds once I have one i am satisfied with cause of the amount of work involved for me, but as I was detailing them I was getting confused by the sizes and how i should imagine these beings.

like.. Is Towering larger than gigantic? and where does huge find its place on the scale? if somebody could help me build a nice size reference for each creature i would love that! Like.. what size are dragons and cyclopses?

[DizzyCrash]

Like.. how does Towering relate to huge or gigantic? whare on the spectrum does it go?

[GavJ]

I'm pretty sure all titans and FB are the same size (10,000,000 units). If so, they are all simply flavor descriptors that don't mean anything (just like "undulating" etc.)

[Ogdibus]

~31.63m length, height, width if it were a cube, I think.  I might have mathed wrong.

[GavJ]

It's cubic centimeters, so 10,000,000 cube root = 215cm = 2.15 meters to a side of a cube.

In reality, with lots of airspace between the legs and limbs etc., things usually not being cube shaped, it would be roughly the size of an especially large real life elephant.

Dwarves being about the size of a human in volume (presumably shorter but fatter)

[Manveru Taurënér]

It's cubic centimeters, so 10,000,000 cube root = 215cm = 2.15 meters to a side of a cube.

In reality, with lots of airspace between the legs and limbs etc., things usually not being cube shaped, it would be roughly the size of an especially large real life elephant.

Dwarves being about the size of a human in volume (presumably shorter but fatter)

Going by the raws it'd be the size of 2 full grown DF elephants. Not sure how accurate those are though ofc.

[Ogdibus]

I forgot how to use a calculator.  It's been a long time.  The thing didn't even have a cubed root button. x3

[Salmeuk]

Dizzycrash, your questions might be answered by visiting http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Size on the wiki.

[Dirst]

It's cubic centimeters, so 10,000,000 cube root = 215cm = 2.15 meters to a side of a cube.

In reality, with lots of airspace between the legs and limbs etc., things usually not being cube shaped, it would be roughly the size of an especially large real life elephant.

Dwarves being about the size of a human in volume (presumably shorter but fatter)

Based on Wolfram Alpha stats, the real-world average for humans 162 cm tall and 66,400 cm³ volume.  That means that a humanoid titan would be about 150.6 times the volume of a human.  Cube-root that and multiply by average height to get a titan height of 8.62 m (28' 3") assuming typical human proportions.  Giants and such are typically depicted as being stocky, so maybe 7.62 m (25' 0") would be a better guestimate.

[pisskop]

The ambiguous dimensions of creatures adds more vagueness to an already vague game.  One tile will stretch to infinity to hold as many monsters as can fit.  Dwarf caves can be safely traversed by colossi and forgotten beasts.

Anywho.  The best way to get a measure of a beasts size is to raise their size in the raws by ^3.  Then assuming it has a basis in reality you can guestimate their sizes from there.  I think the vagueness atp helps  fuel the imagination.

Anywho  actual dimensions don't play a role in the game as of yet (indeed they don't exist), but their cubed size does.  Its probably possible to compare their materials and get a weight, but ehh.

So, although body plans specify body connections and limbs, etc, those things don't seem to occupy space in any manner we think about it.  When you swing at it, the relevant info is pulled and measurements taken.  some (a lot) RNG goes into it, and we have a result.  Then it goes back into conceptual space.  I believe this is kind of like the idea that adventurers can put coins in every item, or hold so much mass.  Or the cage of a thousand cats.

Dunno


EDIT:  in the universe of DF, ancient philosophers would be king.

[Xazo-Tak]

I think the raws contain enough data to work out the dimensions of each body part, but it'd be extremely tedious to do.

[alexandertnt]

I think the raws contain enough data to work out the dimensions of each body part, but it'd be extremely tedious to do.

They contain enough data to work out their volume, but not each dimension.

[Melting Sky]

The ambiguous dimensions of creatures adds more vagueness to an already vague game.  One tile will stretch to infinity to hold as many monsters as can fit.  Dwarf caves can be safely traversed by colossi and forgotten beasts.

Anywho.  The best way to get a measure of a beasts size is to raise their size in the raws by ^3.  Then assuming it has a basis in reality you can guestimate their sizes from there.  I think the vagueness atp helps  fuel the imagination.

Anywho  actual dimensions don't play a role in the game as of yet (indeed they don't exist), but their cubed size does.  Its probably possible to compare their materials and get a weight, but ehh.

So, although body plans specify body connections and limbs, etc, those things don't seem to occupy space in any manner we think about it.  When you swing at it, the relevant info is pulled and measurements taken.  some (a lot) RNG goes into it, and we have a result.  Then it goes back into conceptual space.  I believe this is kind of like the idea that adventurers can put coins in every item, or hold so much mass.  Or the cage of a thousand cats.

Dunno


EDIT:  in the universe of DF, ancient philosophers would be king.

I think basically the game doesn't take into account or really treat creatures as having actual dimensions as far as how they occupy and move through the game space but it does take this information into account during battle. Large limbs are harder to cut off for instance and deliver much more powerful blows than smaller ones.  The game also tracks things like tissue depths and weapon penetration to determine wounds etc.

[Talvieno]

At the OP:

When I made RandCreatures, I scanned the raws and wrote down (just from the raws) what Toady's scale descriptions appeared to be. I don't have "towering", but I do have "gigantic".

It goes (largest to smallest): Gigantic > large > huge > medium-sized > small > tiny, with values of roughly:

200-10000: Tiny
1000 - 59000: Small
3000 - 137000: medium-sized
92000 - 4608000: huge
138000 - 6912000: large
588000 to infinity: gigantic

So, as you see, they overlap in a lot of places. If you have something 200-1000, it'll be "tiny". If you have anything above 6912000, he lists it as "gigantic". That's about all the research I did, though. Most of the values seem to be largely ambiguous/random - there isn't any set method to it, just whatever he feels like when he's writing. I was surprised to find that "large" was bigger than "huge", though... but, I wanted the descriptions to sound as "authentic" as I could make them, so it worked its way into the code.


And yes, I realize this doesn't really answer your question, but, in the interests of SCIENCE, I felt compelled to post.