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Do you want 'Giant' Giant Creatures?

Yes.  They need their own creature
- 9 (9.9%)
Yes.  But make them rare castes of the already giant creatures
- 44 (48.4%)
Neutral
- 9 (9.9%)
No
- 26 (28.6%)
Other
- 3 (3.3%)

Total Members Voted: 91


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Author Topic: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?  (Read 6809 times)

Naryar

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #15 on: December 24, 2014, 06:21:45 pm »
What is more important is that we don't need a bloated number of creatures.

IIRC it was fine in .31.01.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #16 on: December 24, 2014, 08:02:24 pm »
But dat creature loading screen
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Naryar

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #17 on: December 25, 2014, 07:34:56 am »
Quote from: Loud Whispers on December 24, 2014, 08:02:24 pm
But dat creature loading screen

What, haven't seen enough thrips men ?
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GiglameshDespair

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #18 on: December 25, 2014, 08:23:07 am »
The majority of animal men are pointless, doing nothing new and simply not allowing you to butcher them.
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Meph

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #19 on: December 25, 2014, 09:37:04 am »
Yeah, I modded a few creature variations in the past. "curious (lever pulling)". "tiny/small/large/giant (25% size, 75% size, 125% size, 200% size)", "aggressive (prone-to-rage:10)", "cowardly (fleequick)" and so on...

Dire shouldnt just mean giant giant though... maybe same size as normal creature, just stronger, better tissue materials, and predatorial.
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Melting Sky

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #20 on: December 29, 2014, 08:34:34 pm »
The game already has giant creatures so I think perhaps rather than "dire" beasts just being yet another even larger variant of our native species that they could instead include a couple of other more gameplay meaningful tweaks than just being another size variant.

Perhaps make the dire versions of creatures just marginally larger than their normal versions but give them mandatory aggressive, fearless and or large predator tags as part of their raw definition.

It's not that our current wildlife is too small and weak to be a threat to dwarves but rather that they all tend to be non aggressive cowards. Badgers are a good example of a relatively small and weak creature that is still respected simply for the fact that they can go berserk. If dire versions of animals were just slightly stronger but much more aggressive versions of normal animals they could make an interesting addition to evil and or savage biomes. Nothing is sillier than when you come across a giant version of an animal, particularly a carnivorous one, and it acts about as dangerously as a mild mannered herbivore. I've always thought that any giant version of a small carnivore should automatically gain the large carnivore tag. Perhaps, dire beasts could fill this niche.

Imagine the fun of carnivorous, highly aggressive flesh eating dire Elephants and Moose. They don't need to be giants to be frightening. They just need to be filled with rage and blood lust.
« Last Edit: December 29, 2014, 08:42:50 pm by Melting Sky »
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Naryar

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #21 on: December 31, 2014, 05:19:02 am »
Quote from: Melting Sky on December 29, 2014, 08:34:34 pm
Imagine the fun of carnivorous, highly aggressive flesh eating dire Elephants. They don't need to be giants to be frightening. They just need to be filled with rage and blood lust.

"the trumpeting... THE TRUMPETING!"
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Agent_Irons

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #22 on: January 01, 2015, 01:03:30 pm »
Dire versions of things should be strictly smaller than the giant versions of same.

Give them all NOPAIN, nauseating/painful bite/sting, and berserk abilities and no matter their size they will be respected and feared.
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Badger Storm

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #23 on: January 01, 2015, 03:52:37 pm »
I modded in a dire wolf, though it was basically a giant wolf with a different name.  A bit larger than a giant dingo, and a large predator to boot.  The thing eats yetis for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Not all dire creatures have to be bloodthirsty carnivores; some animals are just peaceful by nature, and the idea of flesh-eating elephants or deer rather smacks of B-movie to me.  And then you have creatures like hippos - vegetarian, but can still bite you clean in half.  It's a shame there's no tag for something that actively resents your continued existence but doesn't have a taste for dorf. 
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pisskop

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #24 on: January 14, 2015, 07:10:54 pm »
Does anybody have any ideas for specific critters to mutate apply a variation to?

  I could also swing adding in castes, but that requires more fine-tuning than these critter variations.  Its also impossible to control which caste of a critter is born, whereas with variations you know what the child is going to be.

Here are some basic ideas I had.  You can browse them, but its probably easier if I told you what exactly distinguishes them.
  -Giant Giant critters would be, by default, 20x [2000%] bigger than their base critters.  for reference, giant critters default to 2x the size.  Giant Sperm whales are 8x larger, and GCS is 4000x bigger.
  -Dire Critters default to 120 [120%] the size, but are prone to rage and difficult to control under the best of circumstances.  Fully trainable; a double-edged sword.
  -Emaciated Critters are 0.7x [70%] the size, but are [crazed] and [evil].  They will thus spawn in evil biomes and even without crazy weather will ruin your day.
  -Miniature Critters are 0.4 [40%] are tiny animals found in good regions.  They are hunting trainable by default because this amuses me.

The giantgiants and dire critter would have across the board buffs to certain attiributes.  Endurance, willpower for sure and likely strength and recuperation too.


Spoiler: codes (click to show/hide)

based on this
Spoiler: GIANT_EAGLE (click to show/hide)

  To set these up yourself:
-copy the tag from your desired critter
-apply your variant
-remove the default stuff you don't want or want to change from the default
-set up (caste) names
-colors, population, etc
-define extra doodads, bells, and whistles
-set actual speed.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2015, 07:35:44 pm by pisskop »
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FallenAngel

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #25 on: January 15, 2015, 11:17:41 am »
I agree with a bunch of different variations.
I'll just hurl my ideas out.
Also, features some stuff posted in this thread because why not.

Giant
  • 2x larger by default, normally goes up to 20x
  • no major changes besides size
  • already aggressive creatures become more vicious, otherwise, they act the same

Dire
  • Between 1.1x and 1.8x times normal size
  • much more aggressive and prone to rage
  • omnivores become more frequent meat-eaters
  • stronger attacks

Dwarven
  • 0.6x to 0.85x times normal size
  • humanoids steal booze
  • wild animals drink your booze
  • greater strength, reduced agility

Small
  • 0.4x to 0.7x times normal size
  • significant agility/gait speed boost
  • loss of strength and toughness
  • war trainable for the lulz

Tiny
  • 0.1x to 0.33x times normal size
  • extremely agile
  • very fragile

Minuscule
  • 0.01x to 0.09x times normal size
  • basically impossible to catch or hit
  • weak enough that one hit should be enough
  • basically vermin, but able to be hit

Giant Giant
  • 20x larger by default, normally goes up to 200x
  • due to size, severe drop in agility, gains to endurance, strength, and toughness
  • carnivores and omnivores are much more vicious, herbivores are just far harder to fight

Massive
  • Any creature larger than 250x times regular size
  • very low agility, but extremely tough to kill, even with spears
  • even herbivores are somewhat more vicious than usual

Might think of more.
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pisskop

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #26 on: January 15, 2015, 08:11:22 pm »
Castes within creatures can receive variations, right?
  What I have done with them suggests so?


---

The problem seems to be that the tag is a creature level instead of a caste level tag.  It simply overwrites the old data/variationtags.
« Last Edit: January 15, 2015, 08:26:22 pm by pisskop »
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Moonshadow101

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #27 on: January 16, 2015, 12:38:33 am »
Seems like a staggeringly boring way to add variety. If I remember my old DnD sourcebooks right, Dire Creatures there weren't just larger, they were actually physically different. They had horns and tusks and jagged spikes sticking out of their hides. In my mind, Dire Creatures should actually be somewhere between non-giant and giant in size, but should make up for the difference with some procedurally generated modifiers.

So, like,

Wolf = 1.0x Wolf
Giant Wolf = 2.0x Wolf
Dire Wolf = 1.5x Wolf but also it has tusks to gore you with or it breathes fire or it has lasers I don't know

I realize that implementing a system like this isn't as simple as tinkering with the RAWS, but it's the only thing I can see that would actually be worth it. There's already too many creatures imo, if we're going to add more they'd better be more interesting that just "bigger."
« Last Edit: January 16, 2015, 12:40:45 am by Moonshadow101 »
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IndigoFenix

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #28 on: January 18, 2015, 12:29:31 pm »
I prefer modding behaviors, rather than piling on immunities and size increases.  This is one of my favorites.  It adds LARGE_PREDATOR and some personality modifiers that cause any creature, even tiny ones, to be willing to attack creatures much larger than themselves.  Works best on tiny critters that come in large clusters.  Packs of violent, predatory rabbits, anyone?

Code: [Select]
[CREATURE_VARIATION:VIOLENT]
[CV_REMOVE_TAG:NAME]
[CV_REMOVE_TAG:GENERAL_CHILD_NAME]
[CV_REMOVE_TAG:GENERAL_BABY_NAME]
[CV_REMOVE_TAG:CASTE_NAME]
[CV_REMOVE_TAG:CHILDNAME]
[CV_REMOVE_TAG:BABYNAME]
[CV_REMOVE_TAG:MEANDERER]
[CV_NEW_TAG:SELECT_CASTE:ALL]
[CV_NEW_TAG:LARGE_PREDATOR]
[CV_NEW_TAG:PRONE_TO_RAGE:10]
[CV_NEW_TAG:PERSONALITY:VIOLENT:90:95:100]
[CV_NEW_TAG:PERSONALITY:BRAVERY:90:95:100]
[CV_NEW_TAG:NATURAL_SKILL:DISCIPLINE:1]
[CV_NEW_TAG:CHANGE_FREQUENCY_PERC:50]
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Wimopy

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Re: Opinion: 'Dire' critters who are gianter than . . . giant critters?
« Reply #29 on: January 18, 2015, 02:28:12 pm »
I like the sound of "violent", "cowardly", etc. variations

I'll throw in "petrified" or "elemental" versions, that have different materials instead of basic. Like bones made of stone. That would make them tougher (a bit) while not messing around with size (as the previously linked thread shows, I've had enough troubles with BODY_SIZE).
Random HOMEOTHERM and FLIER tag changes might also be hilarious. (In Scorching biomes, a chance to spawn "Blazing" variants -> Homeotherm:14000)

Immunities and sizes get boring, speed, tags and personality changes are far more interesting.
Sonic variants of birds sounds especially evil. Raven flies in at lightspeed - harasses a bit (but is harmless because attack speed is seperate!) then wizzes away, only to come back and annoy the crap out of you later.

I also like the idea of alcoholic animals that deliberately go after your booze.

TL;DR: Less size variants, more everything else.
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