Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Dirst]

I think the easiest way to accomplish this would be to have a specific cross-breed creature, with some tags to establish what combination(s) of parents lead to that creature.

Code: [Select]

[CREATURE:HALF_ELF]
    [DESCRIPTION:A medium-sized hybrid of a human and an elf.]
    [NAME:half elf:half elves:half elven]
    ...
    [HYBRID:HUMAN:MALE:ELF:FEMALE]
    [HYBRID:HUMAN:FEMALE:ELF:MALE]
    [HYBRID:HALF_ELF:MALE:ELF:FEMALE]
    [HYBRID:HALF_ELF:FEMALE:ELF:MALE]
    ....

This lets the game make completely arbitrary decisions about what gross features come from each race, and it could vary depending on which parent is the mother.  By default, two HALF_ELF creatures could also have an HALF_ELF child.  In the above example, the HUMAN creature would need [HYBRID:HUMAN:MALE:HALF_ELF:FEMALE] and [HYBRID:HUMAN:FEMALE:HALF_ELF:MALE] tags for completeness.

So you could allow Half Dwarves or not without affecting Half Elves.  You could go all D&D and make Orc hybrids for everything, or Tolkein where the hybrid of Goblins and Men yields an Uruk larger than either.

[GoblinCookie]

Race is definitely partially genetics.

Race also mixes in culture and language, etc.

In DF, I think these are pretty clearly split between castes and entities, with the genetic component being in the castes, and the cultural component being in the entity. So the castes are half of what race is, fine. But it's the half that completely matters for purposes of this thread, whereas the cultural side doesn't (except perhaps as a factor in sexual preference).

I've never seen a mod that actually mods in different genetic races, like black dwarves and white dwarves, etc. But if you did want to for some reason, castes is where you would do it.

You seem not to have got what I was saying. 

I am arguing that entities in game terms ARE races.  Black dwarves and white dwarves as they exist in the game are actually entities rather than castes.  During world-generation the game creates a unique race for each entity essentially at random out of the traits that are in the creature-file.  I am not sure if it takes the climatic factors into account using the darkness or brightness of the colours. 

Castes are not races at all, they are genetic variations within a species and all it's componant races.  I originally wrote races but I changed it to species because that was more accurate but maybe I should have kept it as race.  Castes are gender, they are variants at a species level that exist within all populations of that species.  Mostly that just means sex. 

Okay I see what you mean, but that is also just as effectively squashed as a long term issue (if we care) by just making hybrids infertile. They may still rise to noble positions or whatever, but they won't pass on those traits. It would only lead to temporary spikes while the "stud" is in the population, and then once they die (from combat or something), it goes away again back to normal.

If the races are CONSTANTLY interbreeding freely, then yes, they would pretty much take over, but not if it's just an odd freed prisoner here and there.

But it is more interesting to have them fertile because that way we can have new races developing in a natural manner as per a crossbreed of existing races.  We make them infertile and the potential for the whole race mixing idea is rather wasted because we have a finite number of hybrids rather than infinite number. 

The real question is whether the immortality snowball should be embraced as evolution in action spreading superior traits throughout the species that were originally localised or whether we should attempt to limit it's ability to spread through hybridisation.   

I think the easiest way to accomplish this would be to have a specific cross-breed creature, with some tags to establish what combination(s) of parents lead to that creature.

So you could allow Half Dwarves or not without affecting Half Elves.  You could go all D&D and make Orc hybrids for everything, or Tolkein where the hybrid of Goblins and Men yields an Uruk larger than either.

No surprisingly that is the hardest way of doing it.  The easiest way to do it is simply to proceedurely generate a brand new hybrid creature every time there is mixing of individuals and then keep track of how much % of each race it has.  The name is proceedurely generated also, we simply call then half-whatever. 

The easiest way to stop them breeding together would be to define in the creature files Infertile with X.  By default everything that has all the core humanoid body profile will hybridise if it finds itself in the same site.  That way the system automatically supports hybridisation with modded in humanoid races without the modder having to add in hybrids.

[Dirst]

I think the easiest way to accomplish this would be to have a specific cross-breed creature, with some tags to establish what combination(s) of parents lead to that creature.

So you could allow Half Dwarves or not without affecting Half Elves.  You could go all D&D and make Orc hybrids for everything, or Tolkein where the hybrid of Goblins and Men yields an Uruk larger than either.

No surprisingly that is the hardest way of doing it.  The easiest way to do it is simply to proceedurely generate a brand new hybrid creature every time there is mixing of individuals and then keep track of how much % of each race it has.  The name is proceedurely generated also, we simply call then half-whatever. 

The easiest way to stop them breeding together would be to define in the creature files Infertile with X.  By default everything that has all the core humanoid body profile will hybridise if it finds itself in the same site.  That way the system automatically supports hybridisation with modded in humanoid races without the modder having to add in hybrids.

You have a good point that the hybrid-ing tags belong with the parents, so there is less need to scan all of the raws and specific population ratios can be set.

So, under the ELF:FEMALE caste you'd have something like [HYBRID:HUMAN:MALE:HALF_ELF:100] and [HYBRID:HALF_ELF:MALE:HALF_ELF:100].

As for species and the like, it's important to keep in mind the difference between a class and an instance of that class.  OBJECT:CREATURE is a class, and OBJECT:CREATURE:DWARF is an instance of that class.  It's also a class in itself because Urist McExample is an instance of the OBJECT:CREATURE:DWARF class.

The closest analog to a species in DF is a specific OBJECT:CREATURE:? class.  Two OBJECT:CREATURE:DWARF instances can breed with each other, an OBJECT:CREATURE:DWARF instance and an OBJECT:CREATURE:GOBLIN instance cannot.  This has naught to do with whether the things could actually cross-breed in reality (e.g., horses and donkeys can't make mules).

The entity_default.txt file defines the various OBJECT:ENTITY:? classes in the game.  If you're playing on a reasonably large world, there will be more than one instance of each class.  So OBJECT:ENTITY:MOUNTAIN is a class and The Silver Billows is an instance of that class.  At the moment, instances of an OBJECT:CREATURE:? class can vary quite a bit from one another, but instances of an OBJECT:ENTITY:? class are almost identical.  In fact, other than the name, the only thing differentiating newly-placed instances of an OBJECT:ENTITY:? is the OBJECT:CREATURE:? chosen to inhabit it (and for most vanilla ones there is only one choice).^*

A civ (which is used as shorthand for "an instance of any OBJECT:ENTITY:?") will have a single OBJECT:CREATURE:? native to it, though other individuals (shorthand for "an instance of any OBJECT:CREATURE:?") can join in later.  Marriages only occur between members of the same civ, and I think only between members of the same OBJECT:CREATURE:? class.  In any case, only pairs within the same OBJECT:CREATURE:? class can breed.

So there is no particular reason that two civs would be different "races" any more than OBJECT:ENTITY:REALWORLD:United States and OBJECT:ENTITY:REALWORLD:Canada would be.

A caste is an instance of its parent OBJECT:CREATURE:? class, though specifying castes in the raws are a bit of a mess.  Each individual is marked as being a specific CREATURE and a specific CASTE.  Although most vanilla creatures have two castes MALE and FEMALE, with the MALE caste being of male gender and the FEMALE caste being of female gender, that is not true of all creatures.  For a vanilla example, look at ants and ant men.  Any male caste can breed with any female caste of the same OBJECT:CREATURE:? class.  The wiki has a semi-serious example of making a single creature definition that has some castes similar to humans and other castes similar to giant cave spiders.  Nothing would prevent a male "human" from marrying a female "spider" and having children.  Also, the castes of children are based on the whole OBJECT:CREATURE:? class with no regard for the castes of the parents (other than requiring them to be a male and a female).

^*Stay tuned, variations between instances of an ENTITY:? are definitely planned.

[GavJ]

I am arguing that entities in game terms ARE races.  Black dwarves and white dwarves as they exist in the game are actually entities rather than castes.

I understood what you meant. It is just wrong, though.  Skin color (and all other biological markers) is clearly defined in the creature raws, not in the entity raws.  Entity is purely culture and behavior, not any physical traits or anything that seems like it would be relevant to genetics.

And if you want two skin colors to be able to intermingle and breed, yet still be meaningfully defined and separated things in the raws, the only way to do that currently is with two castes, each of which has a specific range of skin colors and other features.

Specifically, you would do 4 castes if you wanted two races of dwarves explicitly defined:
Male+black dwarves
Female+black dwarves
Male+white dwarves
Female+white dwarves




Castes might work right now as a hackish way to mod in hybrids that seem to function if you want, but there's no way currently to really "properly" do it as not-either-species as intended with the raws. It would really have to be a change to the code to work elegantly. Which is appropriate as this is the suggestions forum. So he came to the right place.

[Knight Otu]

I think the easiest way to accomplish this would be to have a specific cross-breed creature, with some tags to establish what combination(s) of parents lead to that creature.

Code: [Select]

[CREATURE:HALF_ELF]
    [DESCRIPTION:A medium-sized hybrid of a human and an elf.]
    [NAME:half elf:half elves:half elven]
    ...
    [HYBRID:HUMAN:MALE:ELF:FEMALE]
    [HYBRID:HUMAN:FEMALE:ELF:MALE]
    [HYBRID:HALF_ELF:MALE:ELF:FEMALE]
    [HYBRID:HALF_ELF:FEMALE:ELF:MALE]
    ....


I've come to think that crossbreed would best be part of the interaction system - it makes the question whether child or parent creature should get the tags moot, as well as making it easy to add hybrids without having to edit more and more creatures, may allow access to random creatures, and might make it easier to procedurally generate hybrids. The raw structure could look something like this:

Code: [Select]

[INTERACTION:MULE_CROSSBREED]
[I_SOURCE:CROSSBREED]
[IS_PARENT:A:HORSE:FEMALE]
[IS_PARENT:B:DONKEY:MALE]
[I_EFFECT:OFFSPRING]
[IE_TYPE:PREGNANCY:A]
[IE_CREATURE:MULE:ALL]

[INTERACTION:HALF_ELF_CROSSBREED_1]
[I_SOURCE:CROSSBREED]
[IS_PARENT:A:HUMAN:MALE_OR_FEMALE]
[IS_PARENT:B:ELF:OPPOSITE_GENDER:A]
[I_EFFECT:OFFSPRING]
[IE_TYPE:PREGNANCY:FEMALE_PARENT]
[IE_CREATURE:HALF_ELF:ALL]

[INTERACTION:HALF_ELF_CROSSBREED_2]
[I_SOURCE:CROSSBREED]
[IS_PARENT_CLASS:A:HUMAN_ELF:MALE_OR_FEMALE] creature class for human, elf, half-elf
[IS_PARENT:B:HALF_ELF:OPPOSITE_GENDER:A]
[I_EFFECT:OFFSPRING]
[IE_TYPE:PREGNANCY:FEMALE_PARENT]
[IE_CREATURE:HALF_ELF:ALL]

[INTERACTION:HALF_DEMON_1]
[I_SOURCE:CROSSBREED]
[IS_PARENT:A:DEMON_6:MALE_OR_FEMALE] *Any of the unique demon types*
[IS_PARENT_TYPE:B:CIV_CREATURE:OPPOSITE_GENDER:A]
[I_EFFECT:OFFSPRING]
[IE_TYPE:PREGNANCY:FEMALE_PARENT]
[IE_CREATURE:FROM_PARENT:B:ALL]
[SYNDROME] *Add creature effects to make the creature closer to the demon*


[GoblinCookie]

You have a good point that the hybrid-ing tags belong with the parents, so there is less need to scan all of the raws and specific population ratios can be set.

So, under the ELF:FEMALE caste you'd have something like [HYBRID:HUMAN:MALE:HALF_ELF:100] and [HYBRID:HALF_ELF:MALE:HALF_ELF:100].

It is very important that the game would proceedurely generate the hybrid creature as it occurs; it would not be written into the creature files in the raws.  This is the key thing that is very important, or else I will have to actually manually add a hybrid for every possible creature that I creature. 

I could for instance go through every creature presently in the game and add a half-xvart for each of them.  But I do not know what combination of modded creatures the player is using.  Say my player is using Direforged and our xvart marries an auride, I have not defined a xvart-auride cross. 

With proceedural generation however, during World-Gen the game went through the total number of intelligent creatures in the game that have the basic humanoid bodytype and made up a hybrid creature with a generic name (half-something) for everything that exists; unless the creature raws specifically forbid it from happening.  This means we will have XVART_KO_DF_AURIDE_HYBRID as the code-name and the creature will have a generated name along the lines of Half-Xvart/Auride. 

As for species and the like, it's important to keep in mind the difference between a class and an instance of that class.  OBJECT:CREATURE is a class, and OBJECT:CREATURE:DWARF is an instance of that class.  It's also a class in itself because Urist McExample is an instance of the OBJECT:CREATURE:DWARF class.

The closest analog to a species in DF is a specific OBJECT:CREATURE:? class.  Two OBJECT:CREATURE:DWARF instances can breed with each other, an OBJECT:CREATURE:DWARF instance and an OBJECT:CREATURE:GOBLIN instance cannot.  This has naught to do with whether the things could actually cross-breed in reality (e.g., horses and donkeys can't make mules).

The entity_default.txt file defines the various OBJECT:ENTITY:? classes in the game.  If you're playing on a reasonably large world, there will be more than one instance of each class.  So OBJECT:ENTITY:MOUNTAIN is a class and The Silver Billows is an instance of that class.  At the moment, instances of an OBJECT:CREATURE:? class can vary quite a bit from one another, but instances of an OBJECT:ENTITY:? class are almost identical.  In fact, other than the name, the only thing differentiating newly-placed instances of an OBJECT:ENTITY:? is the OBJECT:CREATURE:? chosen to inhabit it (and for most vanilla ones there is only one choice).^*

A civ (which is used as shorthand for "an instance of any OBJECT:ENTITY:?") will have a single OBJECT:CREATURE:? native to it, though other individuals (shorthand for "an instance of any OBJECT:CREATURE:?") can join in later.  Marriages only occur between members of the same civ, and I think only between members of the same OBJECT:CREATURE:? class.  In any case, only pairs within the same OBJECT:CREATURE:? class can breed.

So there is no particular reason that two civs would be different "races" any more than OBJECT:ENTITY:REALWORLD:United States and OBJECT:ENTITY:REALWORLD:Canada would be.

A caste is an instance of its parent OBJECT:CREATURE:? class, though specifying castes in the raws are a bit of a mess.  Each individual is marked as being a specific CREATURE and a specific CASTE.  Although most vanilla creatures have two castes MALE and FEMALE, with the MALE caste being of male gender and the FEMALE caste being of female gender, that is not true of all creatures.  For a vanilla example, look at ants and ant men.  Any male caste can breed with any female caste of the same OBJECT:CREATURE:? class.  The wiki has a semi-serious example of making a single creature definition that has some castes similar to humans and other castes similar to giant cave spiders.  Nothing would prevent a male "human" from marrying a female "spider" and having children.  Also, the castes of children are based on the whole OBJECT:CREATURE:? class with no regard for the castes of the parents (other than requiring them to be a male and a female).

^*Stay tuned, variations between instances of an ENTITY:? are definitely planned.

The system should be based upon body-type.  Spiders will never be able to hybridise with humanoids whatever the case, but all intelligent humanoids will be able to hybridise with other intelligent humanoids which are not massively larger that have the same body type unless it is specifically defined otherwise. 

What this means is that a xvart will be able to automatically hybridise with an auride unless either of us specifically defines that they can't by adding in any of these entries to their creature file. 

INFERTILE: ALL
INFERTILE: KO_DF_AURIDE
INFERTILE: XVART

We can also have infertile hybrids.

INFERTILE_HYBRID: ALL
INFERTILE_HYBRID: KO_DF_AURIDE
INFERTILE_HYBRID: XVART

By default however it generates a hybrid creature by scrambling the values of both xvart and auride parents.  They may end up with blue skin or golden skin, they may end up as tall as an auride, as short as a xvart or somewhere in the middle.  The name, the symbol and the proceedurely generated hybridisation 'rules' are laid down in the generated creature entry. 

However in the case of another creature, the reptilian Enku will not be able to crossbreed with xvarts because of the following problems. 

Feathered Enku Caste
BODY:HUMANOID_NECK:2EYES:2EARS:NOSE:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:HUMANOID_JOINTS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:SKULL:5FINGERS:5TOES:MOUTH:
FORKED_TONGUE:TEETH:RIBCAGE:TAIL

Xvart
BODY:HUMANOID_NECK:2EYES:2EARS:NOSE:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:HUMANOID_JOINTS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:SKULL:5FINGERS:5TOES:MOUTH:TONGUE:
FACIAL_FEATURES:TEETH:RIBCAGE

The game guesses the evolutionary relationships between all the beings that your game has.  Because the two creatures do not have the same body-type definition, the game guesses (correctly I think) that their similarities are the result of paralell evolution rather than common ancestry and so whatever the relationships no half-breeds between the two creatures will be generated.

I understood what you meant. It is just wrong, though.  Skin color (and all other biological markers) is clearly defined in the creature raws, not in the entity raws.  Entity is purely culture and behavior, not any physical traits or anything that seems like it would be relevant to genetics.

And if you want two skin colors to be able to intermingle and breed, yet still be meaningfully defined and separated things in the raws, the only way to do that currently is with two castes, each of which has a specific range of skin colors and other features.

Specifically, you would do 4 castes if you wanted two races of dwarves explicitly defined:
Male+black dwarves
Female+black dwarves
Male+white dwarves
Female+white dwarves

Castes might work right now as a hackish way to mod in hybrids that seem to function if you want, but there's no way currently to really "properly" do it as not-either-species as intended with the raws. It would really have to be a change to the code to work elegantly. Which is appropriate as this is the suggestions forum. So he came to the right place.

Unless you are more ignorant of the game than I would suspect you are definately misunderstanding what I mean by entity.  By entity I do not mean the entity file I mean the individual proceedurely generated civilization that is based upon those files.  A race is not generated per entity, based upon the creature file a race is generated for each civilization.

A civilization actually has a native race created for it, you do not end with a random distribution of black skin and white skin and other genetic traits within the population.  Instead the civilizations native population always has a limited range of genetic variation that is less than the total of the species; so that means that entity/civilization biologically correlates with race in the game.

[Dirst]

(Passionate defense of procedurally-generated cross-breeds)

Two creatures can have the same body type and be made of completely different materials.  For example, under your system the Magma Man and Iron Man could cross-breed.  They might also share a common ancestor and BODY plan but be quite speciated from each other, like dogs and cats.

The number of special cases can explode combinatorially, which is why I'd rather specify the available cross-breeds rather than forbid the ones that don't make sense.  And why should I need to have Xvart-related tags in a mod that doesn't include Xvarts?

A raw-processing tool could propose cross-breeds for whatever species are in a particular player's raws.  To me that sounds more like Rubble than core DF functionality.

I understood what you meant. It is just wrong, though.  Skin color (and all other biological markers) is clearly defined in the creature raws, not in the entity raws.  Entity is purely culture and behavior, not any physical traits or anything that seems like it would be relevant to genetics.

And if you want two skin colors to be able to intermingle and breed, yet still be meaningfully defined and separated things in the raws, the only way to do that currently is with two castes, each of which has a specific range of skin colors and other features.

Specifically, you would do 4 castes if you wanted two races of dwarves explicitly defined:
Male+black dwarves
Female+black dwarves
Male+white dwarves
Female+white dwarves

Castes might work right now as a hackish way to mod in hybrids that seem to function if you want, but there's no way currently to really "properly" do it as not-either-species as intended with the raws. It would really have to be a change to the code to work elegantly. Which is appropriate as this is the suggestions forum. So he came to the right place.

Unless you are more ignorant of the game than I would suspect you are definately misunderstanding what I mean by entity.  By entity I do not mean the entity file I mean the individual proceedurely generated civilization that is based upon those files.  A race is not generated per entity, based upon the creature file a race is generated for each civilization.

A civilization actually has a native race created for it, you do not end with a random distribution of black skin and white skin and other genetic traits within the population.  Instead the civilizations native population always has a limited range of genetic variation that is less than the total of the species; so that means that entity/civilization biologically correlates with race in the game.

The part I colored in green is contradictory; from what follows it sounds like the 'not' was left in by accident.  It doesn't help that the standard in computer science is to name the class after its instance (so we have OBJECT:CREATURE raws rather than lexically clearer OBJECT:SPECIES raws), so we have to put up with an "ENITY" raw that defines how "entities" appear in the game.

The game seeds each civ (which I use for an instance of an OBJECT:ENTITY:? so I don't have to overload the word "entity") with a bunch of breeding pairs from the appropriate OBJECT:CREATURE:?.  Those seeded individuals will have randomly-chosen coloration based on the creature raws.  The way DF genetics work, any color earlier in the list is "dominant" so it's possible that different civs eventually end up with distinctive coloration... but no one cares because social interaction is based on ethics (which are identical for different civs of the same OBJECT:ENTITY:?) and marriage is based on being in the same civ and the same creature type.  The "species" is controlled by the creature type and the "nationality" is based on civ membership... there is no real concept of "race" in the game, and it seems unlikely that it ever will for political reasons.

[GavJ]

Unless you are more ignorant of the game than I would suspect you are definately misunderstanding what I mean by entity.  By entity I do not mean the entity file I mean the individual proceedurely generated civilization that is based upon those files.  A race is not generated per entity, based upon the creature file a race is generated for each civilization.

Like I said, neither location (in the files) is really fully race, it's a mixture. The creature files contribute random possibilities for racial genetic features. The entity file contributes ethics and stuff.

The actual entity in game not the file? Yes, that's a race (drawing from both files). I did misunderstand what you were talking about, but the reason is that I don't see what the point of talking about individual entity post-generation objects is?

I was trying to suggest how to actually intentionally control races that could interbreed if somebody wanted to. Knowing that current entities are randomly produced races isn't helpful for that, because:
1) You can't control it very well.
2) They don't fraternize with each other.

Castes are a much better way to do races that intermingle in a controllable way, because you can guarantee that within one civilization, you have some dwarves of however many races you want. You can even control the proportions. AND you can control exactly which ones they are, because each caste can be given only one choice for skin color and facial features and stuff, so that there's no guesswork involved.
25% male black
25% male white
25% female black
25% female white

offers races within one entity which is more relevant to the player since they only play one entity. And allows relationships between them. And allows full control over all the involved physical features. And has really no drawbacks.

It's not what the OP wanted, but I was responding to a side comment about how to best do races in game, and for THOSE, I think the current system already offers about all the control you might want... via the use of castes (which will then contribute to the makeup of an entity object, yes)

[Putnam]

Castes completely bypass genetics, though, while the in-game skin and hair color systems actually do have genetics, so that's not a good solution at all.

[GoblinCookie]

The part I colored in green is contradictory; from what follows it sounds like the 'not' was left in by accident.  It doesn't help that the standard in computer science is to name the class after its instance (so we have OBJECT:CREATURE raws rather than lexically clearer OBJECT:SPECIES raws), so we have to put up with an "ENITY" raw that defines how "entities" appear in the game.

I was explaining what I meant by entity.  I thought the meaning would be obvious but it was not hence why I said that a race is not generated per entity (as GavJ) understood the term. 

As I think, an entity means a civilization rather than the entity file.  The entity file creates entities, just as the creature file creatures creatures. 

The game seeds each civ (which I use for an instance of an OBJECT:ENTITY:? so I don't have to overload the word "entity") with a bunch of breeding pairs from the appropriate OBJECT:CREATURE:?.  Those seeded individuals will have randomly-chosen coloration based on the creature raws.  The way DF genetics work, any color earlier in the list is "dominant" so it's possible that different civs eventually end up with distinctive coloration... but no one cares because social interaction is based on ethics (which are identical for different civs of the same OBJECT:ENTITY:?) and marriage is based on being in the same civ and the same creature type.  The "species" is controlled by the creature type and the "nationality" is based on civ membership... there is no real concept of "race" in the game, and it seems unlikely that it ever will for political reasons.

They pretty much always end with a distinctive coloration and a few other traits in common as well.  It is not actually based upon actual genetic ancestry, the reason I know this that if you play as an extinct civilization the randomly generated individuals in your new settlement will have a consistant physical appearance. 

So yes the game procedurely generates an actual race for each civilization and then the individuals are given physical traits based upon their own civilizations race, not the general OBJECT_CREATURE list.  The game takes the list, uses it it creates a race and then gives the individuals their physical traits based upon what is in the race not in the creature list.

So basically you are wrong, races in the real-world sense are mechanically defined as part of the game and one is created for each civilization. 

Like I said, neither location (in the files) is really fully race, it's a mixture. The creature files contribute random possibilities for racial genetic features. The entity file contributes ethics and stuff.

The actual entity in game not the file? Yes, that's a race (drawing from both files). I did misunderstand what you were talking about, but the reason is that I don't see what the point of talking about individual entity post-generation objects is?

I was trying to suggest how to actually intentionally control races that could interbreed if somebody wanted to. Knowing that current entities are randomly produced races isn't helpful for that, because:
1) You can't control it very well.
2) They don't fraternize with each other.

Castes are a much better way to do races that intermingle in a controllable way, because you can guarantee that within one civilization, you have some dwarves of however many races you want. You can even control the proportions. AND you can control exactly which ones they are, because each caste can be given only one choice for skin color and facial features and stuff, so that there's no guesswork involved.
25% male black
25% male white
25% female black
25% female white

offers races within one entity which is more relevant to the player since they only play one entity. And allows relationships between them. And allows full control over all the involved physical features. And has really no drawbacks.

It's not what the OP wanted, but I was responding to a side comment about how to best do races in game, and for THOSE, I think the current system already offers about all the control you might want... via the use of castes (which will then contribute to the makeup of an entity object, yes)

As I understand it the caste of the child is randomly selected from the parents castes, which have to definied as male and female.  That is why we can get away with defining male and female as castes; as every child has a father and a mother. 

If we do things that way, we will never get a mixed-race dwarf but randomly get white or black dwarves.  You cannot define it so that we get a mixed race person as a result of that system, the system simply continues to churn out dwarves of all colour castes indefinately.

It is also unneccesery the game already has race in it and individuals migrate across civilization boundries all the time (so 2. is incorrect).  It is quite possible to get a dwarf arriving in your fortress that is of another race to your civilization.  It is just unlikely because most migrants are not historical characters (or did not actually even exist before they arrived) so they have standardised genetics based upon the civilizations own core race.

The primary mantainer of sub-creature racial 'purity' is that the game only traces genetics for historical characters. 

[GavJ]

As I understand it the caste of the child is randomly selected from the parents castes, which have to definied as male and female. ... If we do things that way, we will never get a mixed-race dwarf but randomly get white or black dwarves.

So? Like I said, that is IMO the best/closest way we can get with the current game to mixed race fortresses with controllable race.

Not saying that't the best that COULD be coded. It's the best way to do it right now if you want to, in response to the guy early in the thread...

so 2. is incorrect

How would a dwarf from another civ ever end up in my fort, other than a vampire or similar? (Actually I'm not even sure if vampires cross civs) They don't go to war with each other so they don't take prisoners, etc. They don't babysnatch from one another. Also by default they don't even have slavery or babysnatching turned on...

[Dirst]

They pretty much always end with a distinctive coloration and a few other traits in common as well.  It is not actually based upon actual genetic ancestry, the reason I know this that if you play as an extinct civilization the randomly generated individuals in your new settlement will have a consistant physical appearance. 

So yes the game procedurely generates an actual race for each civilization and then the individuals are given physical traits based upon their own civilizations race, not the general OBJECT_CREATURE list.  The game takes the list, uses it it creates a race and then gives the individuals their physical traits based upon what is in the race not in the creature list.

So basically you are wrong, races in the real-world sense are mechanically defined as part of the game and one is created for each civilization. 

Coloration has that odd dominance pattern; the bodypart appearance modifiers that are ranges are deterimined by some under-the-hood genetics inherited from the parents.  Either could cluster into small subsets of the possible, but it still doesn't define a "race" in any way that is meaningful to the game's AI.  An individual who joins another civ doesn't suffer any prejudice and his/her genetics pass down normally.

Even if you want to describe a "race" as the player's pattern recognition, I have not noticed any pattern of my Starting Sevens resembling each other any more than would be suggested by the raws. I'll admit it's possible that Toady spawns migrants based on the population of historical figures in that civ (maybe picking two at random as pseudo-parents), but that would still take many generations to form noticeable "races."

[Bumber]

How would a dwarf from another civ ever end up in my fort, other than a vampire or similar? (Actually I'm not even sure if vampires cross civs) They don't go to war with each other so they don't take prisoners, etc. They don't babysnatch from one another. Also by default they don't even have slavery or babysnatching turned on...

Goblin babysnatch + site conquer by dwarves?

[Bohandas]

From what I have so far seen the races do not seem to live in strict isolation, which makes me wonder why we do not allow different races to marry and produce hybrid offspring.  I have seen a large number of dwarf fortresses in Adventure mode with apparantly quite well integrated goblin and human inhabitants, so the lack of hybrids is a question.

Because it's thoroughly unrealistic. Any appearance to the contrary is due to the egregious abuse of the word "race" at the hands of fantasy writers who use it to mean something more similar to a biological genus or species than the word's correct meaning which is biologically closer to a form or morph^*. Races in the fantasy sense of the term are too distantly related to interbreed unless some sort of magic or poor writing is involved. At a minimum it should require some kind of magic or whatever to achieve.


_{*See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomic_rank#All_ranks}

[Dyret]

There's really no reason to assume fantasy species aren't close enough to interbreed. They certainly look like it.