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[voliol]

I would like to suggest the feather star

It would almost make sense if you could shear the ends of the feather star's arms for rope or thread or something, they grow them back in no time anyways.

I included this for the sake of it, but considering they are fully aquatic getting your hands on them, and then shaving them, which I believe is only possible with tame animals, should prove quite a challenge. Heh.

A big(ger) update this time, and one direly needed, considering this managed to slip off into the second page :p. I've now checked off most of the planned/suggested additions from my to-do list, so I'm open for more suggestions.

Version 2.2 up.

[Fleeting Frames]

Butchering them would also yield wool, so it'd be neat thing for moods.

And huh, first time seeing GOBBLE_VERMIN_CLASS. That's a neat tag, I wonder if it satisfies the hunger of carnivorous grazers.

Also, your blue whale has [GOBBLE_VERMIN_CREATURE:GENERAL_POISON]. I think that should be either class or creature name?

Same with humpback whale.

Takin included "whenever that is added, restrict this animal to high altitudes".  I thought making it die in cold would work, but iguana included note that that wouldn't work. I take it that the lack of animals in deadly cold tundras is a general restriction.

[voliol]

Butchering them would also yield wool, so it'd be neat thing for moods.

Figures, that's handy, you'd still have to get them out of the water, but now at least air-drowning them will work as well as catching them in cages.

And huh, first time seeing GOBBLE_VERMIN_CLASS. That's a neat tag, I wonder if it satisfies the hunger of carnivorous grazers.

Can you even combine [CARNIVORE] with grazing? The wiki says [CARNIVORE] means the creature only eats meat, so I expected one of them to overwrite the other, but maybe it just means they need to graze but refuse to, so they starve to death?

Also, your blue whale has [GOBBLE_VERMIN_CREATURE:GENERAL_POISON]. I think that should be either class or creature name?

Same with humpback whale.

Whoops, fixed now for the next version. Curious that the game didn't object to a non-existing creature being suggested by leaving an error message.

Takin included "whenever that is added, restrict this animal to high altitudes".  I thought making it die in cold would work, but iguana included note that that wouldn't work. I take it that the lack of animals in deadly cold tundras is a general restriction.

You can't really restrict creatures to more than the general biomes, that are sometimes a bit too general. Well, takins I'm not sure why they only live at high altitudes (not to be confused with latitudes), and it's possible that's just because they happen to have evolved in a generally elevated area (the Tibetan plateau), and they'd do just fine if relocated to lower altitudes. Still, whenever that kind of distinction comes, and plateaus for that matter, restricting them to them would make sense, or at least add some flavor.

The problem with desert iguanas is that dwarf fortress deserts are only decided on rainfall and drainage. Almost all other biomes are decided by both that and temperature, e.g. tropical and temperate grasslands have different biome tokens, unlike deserts that can still differ in temperature but all share the same biome token.
Now, I'd assume most deserts are placed in moderately hot areas, due to the climate model where latitude should affect rainfall, but desert iguanas in real life only live (and survive) in the hottest deserts, preferring temperatures above 40°C.
I could easily make their tissues take damage from cold easier than other creatures, but this wouldn't stop them from spawning in colder deserts, and then promptly freezing to death as they enter the map.

The lack of animals in the tundra should just be that very few are assigned to it, though I've never had a fort in one so I'm not sure; there could be some parallel system making animals rare to mirror the lack of nutrients and energy.

[Fleeting Frames]

No idea if silly tag combinations could even throw errors; I'm no modder. Well, they'd only starve to death if you trained them and then didn't have dwarves give them food, assuming gobbling vermin doesn't satisfy hunger.

Takins being assigned to tropicals is a little weird for me too considering the higher elevations are colder. If poles are off, you can actually observe tropics change to temperate in some cases as elevation rises. That said, I know nothing about Takin besides what you've said.


Well, you can still get animals in the normal, liveably cold tundra; I've certainly had them wander in. In the first place, game tends to near immediatelly spawn a new animal group after last one leaves in my experience, as long as there is something to roll and the group isn't stuck behind map border (observable with fix/retrieve-units; TheFlame50(spelling?) got an enermous cacaphony in Bastiongate with that). Meanwhile, deadly cold tundra got nothing in years.
Untamed Wilds additional group follows different rules, though.

A separete problem with the cold-vulnerable iguana is that if you make it poof with cold, you can't craft anything from it underground either.

[voliol]

Takins being assigned to tropicals is a little weird for me too considering the higher elevations are colder. If poles are off, you can actually observe tropics change to temperate in some cases as elevation rises. That said, I know nothing about Takin besides what you've said.

It is true that the climate gets colder the higher up you get, the plateau and surrounding mountains range from tropical to temperate climate, and of course frozen glaciers on the mountaintops. The takin is found in low-ish altitudes, 1000-4000 meters above sea level, in parts on the border of tropical and sub-tropical. From what I could find, the takins also migrate down to lower more tropical altitudes in winter, hinting at them not handling the cold very well.

Well, you can still get animals in the normal, liveably cold tundra; I've certainly had them wander in. In the first place, game tends to near immediatelly spawn a new animal group after last one leaves in my experience, as long as there is something to roll and the group isn't stuck behind map border (observable with fix/retrieve-units; TheFlame50(spelling?) got an enermous cacaphony in Bastiongate with that). Meanwhile, deadly cold tundra got nothing in years.
Untamed Wilds additional group follows different rules, though.

A separete problem with the cold-vulnerable iguana is that if you make it poof with cold, you can't craft anything from it underground either.

I have no idea on biomes with freezing temperature :/

Regarding the iguana, I imagine it's certain tissues that get damaged by the "cold", so you'd still be able to craft things with say, its bones. Still waiting it out until I can guarantee they won't spawn in too cold biomes.

[voliol]

This mod is not 100% dead. Look, a new update! More focus on plants this time, there's only two vermin on the creature side in the list of addition. Most of this was done months ago, but I got stuck trying to make hermit crabs, something much trickier than anticipated. They are still not in this update. Oh well.

Version 2.3 up.

[Fleeting Frames]

Huh. Is the lemon juice something to aid in leatherworking, cooking or just for drinking?

I approve of cup lichen. Far more likely to encounter that than any animals, in my experience.

[voliol]

Huh. Is the lemon juice something to aid in leatherworking, cooking or just for drinking?

I approve of cup lichen. Far more likely to encounter that than any animals, in my experience.

Lemon juice is just for cooking and drinking. It’s used for cleaning leather right? That’s something that both feels like it’s outside the scope of this mod, and it’s also something I’m not sure how to implement even if I were to.

I’m glad you like the cup lichen

[voliol]

A few plants, but mostly birds in this new update. The next update will be 3.0, as the the goalpost I've set for that is having 4 times the additions as the 1.0 version, that is 60 creatures/vermin/plants. As of this version there's 59.

I've also changed up the naming convention used in the file names, as having "volmod_real" as the prefix was just to unwieldy. Now the shorted prefix "vvv" is used instead
(e.g. "creature_volmod_real_small" => "creature_vvv_small"). This should not break save compatibility, as long as the old files are properly deleted.

Version 2.4 up.

[firons2]

When I try to install this mod via the "Mods" tab on the PyLNP, I get a "The selected mods have merge conflicts and should not be installed" error. Thoughts? Should I just install this manually?

Also it is possible that is is crashing with Revised, another merged mod I have.

[voliol]

I checked, and there are no shared file names between this mod and Revised. There are however ones between Revised and Vanilla, as revising the vanilla files is kind of the point of it, so I could imagine the merge error coming from there. Try bypassing the error message if possible, otherwise manual installation (over-writing the Vanilla files) should work.

[firons2]

I'm just gonna install it manually. Thanks for the reply, I really like your creatures!

[voliol]

I'm glad to hear that
If you have any suggestions feel free to put them forth and I'll try my best to include them.

[terqo]

Great mod Voliol! I'm still way too interested in the base game to be modding game mechanics or anything bigger but I've felt like the creatures have needed more focus for a long time now so this mod really brings a lot of refreshing content to me. So just thank you to you and all of the other people making these creature mods.

Anyway if you're still taking in suggestions a couple of possibly interesting thoughts came to mind:

Roadrunner: a vermin hunter flightless bird and the giant version could be a somewhat dangerous carnivorous hunter animal?

Mammoth: wool, ivory, meat...big and useful but only in tundra maybe

Fruit bat: a less dangerous (if at all) version of the GCB found aboveground

Pelicans?

If you don't want any suggestions or think these suck or don't work with your ideas, no worries. Mod is still greatly appreciated. If you want more ideas, I can definitely come up with some since i want to get rid of bumping into the same animals all the time. Do you have any plans or interest in making fantasy animals/beasts? Manticores, jackalopes or anything towards myths?

[voliol]

I'm glad you like it . I'm still very open for suggestions on this, and it's still being updated whenever enough suggestions (or ones I do on my own behalf) have been implemented.

Regarding your suggestions, fruit bats and pelicans are certainly on the todo-list, long as it may be, and as of this suggestion they climbed up to (close to?) the top. I am trying to restrict myself to real animals on this mod, so the others are not really something I'd like to have in this mod. I suppose I could start another mod for jackalope-type stuff, but I don't really have the time/energy for that... Starting new projects is dangerous.

There should be mammoths at least in one of the many prehistoric animal mods. Roadrunners are actually a quite funny idea, but I think I'm reserving that as an addition to Teh LOLmod, if that is fine with you? (I'll PM you the raws separately if you don't know how to/want to separate them from the LOLmod raws)