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[Mr Crabman]

Plantigrade animals like humans, elephants and bears, walk with their entire foot flat on the ground, but digitigrade animals walk on their equivalent of "toes", and their "foot" is extended/longer, so effectively their feet are an "extra" leg segment (it's common to think of these animals, especially birds, as having "backwards" knees even though technically those are their ankles).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitigrade

But in the current raw files, the likes of birds, horses, cats, satyrs and so on all use the same relsizes as humans (satyrs actually directly use HUMANOID_RELSIZES, but the default sizes of HUMANOID_ARMLESS bodes used by birds are the same). That is, the upper leg is 500, lower leg is 400, and the foot is 120, everywhere (except penguins, who have smaller legs).

Also, to put it in terms other than just relative sizes, humans have 2 leg segments (not including joints) before arriving at the [STANCE] body part, and most animals should have 3, but they don't, meaning ultimately these creatures have a "missing" leg segment. So they should have 3, with one of these replacing the feet, and in the case of hooved animals, they will need 1 extra body part in total to account for it (they actually have a missing "joint" of sorts).

One tricky part with this suggestion is naming; we already have "upper leg" and "lower leg", and "foot", but these are "folk" names, not anatomical names per-se, so what do you call an extra leg segment? Technically it's the same part as a "foot", but most people would say a cat, dog, bird or goat all walk on their feet, not "their toes", so it would be kind of confusing to have a body part called a "foot" that is not walked on directly.

Obviously this can pretty much be modded in, and it's not like we need 100% anatomical accuracy in vanilla Dwarf Fortress.... But something that manifests noticeably in real life as "backwards knees" and "3 major leg segments before the feet" seems worthy of being represented ingame in vanilla.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

+1, might also be the case for certain humanoid races (seems fitting for kobolds, which not uncommonly have canine or reptilian traits in modern fantasy).

[Mr Crabman]

Maybe so; animal people and werebeasts too, since those are often/usually depicted with digitigrade legs (depending on the species).

[voliol]

I feel the need varies between the digitigrades. Dogs (and other canines) have thigh bones that are relatively long and pointed downwards, so these are clearly visible as separate segments of the legs. This is unlike e.g. horses whose thighs are short and positioned towards the body, plus very very muscular, so they visually merge with the ”lower legs” when they are not rampant*. Basically, their thighs and ”lower legs” could qualify as ”upper legs” and the parts that are technically toes as the ”lower legs”. If that made any sense.

*Maybe ”forcené” is the correct heraldric term; when they are raising up on their hind legs, I don’t know if there’s a non-heraldic English term for this.

[Mr Crabman]

I feel the need varies between the digitigrades. Dogs (and other canines) have thigh bones that are relatively long and pointed downwards, so these are clearly visible as separate segments of the legs. This is unlike e.g. horses whose thighs are short and positioned towards the body, plus very very muscular, so they visually merge with the ”lower legs” when they are not rampant*. Basically, their thighs and ”lower legs” could qualify as ”upper legs” and the parts that are technically toes as the ”lower legs”. If that made any sense.

I see what you mean with horses, their thighs look kind of like "shoulders" almost.

It does become quite noticeable when reared up though (as you point out), and this would apply at all times to the likes of "horse men" and werehorses; if the naming issue is solved for other digitigrades it may as well be done for horses too.

[DwarfStar]

+1 to fixing this in the raws. This brings up a more general question about raws fixes, which is is there or could there be a way to get them back into the official release? Something like pull requests.

Btw, I believe the layman’s term for the extra leg part is the “hock”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hock_(anatomy)

[Mr Crabman]

+1 to fixing this in the raws. This brings up a more general question about raws fixes, which is is there or could there be a way to get them back into the official release? Something like pull requests.

Btw, I believe the layman’s term for the extra leg part is the “hock”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hock_(anatomy)

AFAIK Toady doesn't even use source control, so I'm not sure what his approach for that is. I think he does sometimes/has in the past accepted community-sourced raw changes, mostly for things that are added in massive bulk (I think this is where the real life stones mostly came from?).

Interesting about the hock.

[DwarfStar]

Interesting about the hock.

And now you know where navy bean soup comes from!

[Strik3r]

I 100% agree with this suggestion. It's something that has been bugging me for a while, as well as the other, numerous biological inaccuracies present in DF. Thankfully yeah, digitigrade legs are something we can mod in ourselves, and is in-fact, a standard feature in my mods.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hock_(anatomy)

Interesting about the hock.

I agree, it's an interesting fact that even i didn't know.
In my mods, in which proper digitigrade legs are a standard feature, the naming convention is thus far
Upper leg > Lower leg > foot > paw/hoof and in earlier mods it was Upper leg > Lower leg > upper foot > lower foot/hoof, i believe .
But i suppose including 'hock' in there would be fine if it's agreed on to be a better naming scheme, which would then be
Upper leg > Lower leg > hock > foot?

I like my naming scheme because evidently, not everyone knows what a 'hock' is, but i think most people know what a 'paw' is, even if it's typically associated with cats and dogs, two totally unrelated animals anyway.

+1 to fixing this in the raws. This brings up a more general question about raws fixes, which is is there or could there be a way to get them back into the official release? Something like pull requests.

AFAIK Toady doesn't even use source control, so I'm not sure what his approach for that is. I think he does sometimes/has in the past accepted community-sourced raw changes, mostly for things that are added in massive bulk (I think this is where the real life stones mostly came from?).

I'm with you on fixing the raws, theres a few bugs and omissions here and there, as well as things that haven't been updated with time. Plus the raws are a total, unreadable mess. especially the creatures. So i wouldn't be against getting them cleaned up and making them readable... I do actually have the beginnings of such a project somewhere.

[FantasticDorf]

+ 👍

New creature drive would probably be a good excuse to address this if there's still room in the creature per biome limit and give us some more natural animal tokens id hope, though i don't envy Meph having to draw 100 pictures of Gnu's after just finishing steam release as-is.

[Eric Blank]

I agree as well on both updating creature body plans and possibly looking into a new creature drive/updates.

I would even contribute to community bugfixing, though I'd have to have a list of fixes to work off of. I know GCS' will reproduce but give birth to adult young, dragons are also born adults if you manage to breed them. Shouldn't aquatic animal people be able to breathe air at least? Currently they just sit there and suffocate.

[A_Curious_Cat]

What about unguligrades?

[Strik3r]

What about unguligrades?

In their case the entire paw and toe arrangement is just replaced with a single hoof BP. This doesn't account for the 'cloven' hooves of deer and whatnot, which are in-fact just multiple toes. I have no idea how to handle this accurately, but i don't think its necessary, unless it is agreed upon to be.

However as an addendum, i have realized that there might be an even bigger problem with naming, in regards to the forelimbs of creatures. They're just as interesting as the hindlimbs, if you have a cat or a dog, look at how their front limbs move. All the same structures are there that you have, there's the equivalent of a shoulder, an elbow and a 'wrist' furher down between the 'elbow' and the 'paw'.
But what are we supposed to call all the parts there when we go about implementing proper limbs for quadruped creatures?

I'm also asking this because i'm keen on replacing clumsy and confusing wording such as "Left front upper leg" with something more elegant

[Mr Crabman]

+ 👍

New creature drive would probably be a good excuse to address this if there's still room in the creature per biome limit and give us some more natural animal tokens id hope, though i don't envy Meph having to draw 100 pictures of Gnu's after just finishing steam release as-is.

There's a creature per biome limit? I mean, of course there can probably only be a finite number of species/creatures in a given amount of space, but is this like some coded thing where too many creatures will lead to some simply being ignored? I'd have hoped it would at least pick from the available ones randomly.

What about unguligrades?

In their case the entire paw and toe arrangement is just replaced with a single hoof BP. This doesn't account for the 'cloven' hooves of deer and whatnot, which are in-fact just multiple toes. I have no idea how to handle this accurately, but i don't think its necessary, unless it is agreed upon to be.

However as an addendum, i have realized that there might be an even bigger problem with naming, in regards to the forelimbs of creatures. They're just as interesting as the hindlimbs, if you have a cat or a dog, look at how their front limbs move. All the same structures are there that you have, there's the equivalent of a shoulder, an elbow and a 'wrist' furher down between the 'elbow' and the 'paw'.
But what are we supposed to call all the parts there when we go about implementing proper limbs for quadruped creatures?

I'm also asking this because i'm keen on replacing clumsy and confusing wording such as "Left front upper leg" with something more elegant

Totally agree with you about unguligrades.

As for your addendum, silly me was hoping that correct and understandable names for the front limbs on quadrupeds would be the same as the back legs, but I may be mistaken.

As for your keenness on replacing clumsy wording, I saw a mod (Dwarf Fortress Revised) that does something like replacing "upper leg" with "thigh", but didn't see anything for lower legs; I don't think "calf" would work, because that's only for the back part, and this article doesn't seem forthcoming with layman-recognizable terms even for human lower legs, what to speak of animals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_leg

For the "front" legs "foreleg", could work maybe. "Left forethigh" or "right forefoot" is nice and short (though I'm not sure "forethigh" is a real word; hopefully it's at least understandable), but I can't think of how to fix "left rear lower leg". Maybe get rid of "rear" or "back" (whichever it is now), by using the same naming scheme, but with "hind" instead of "fore"? So right hindhoof?

Of course, thinking about procedural generated fantasy creatures with 6 or more legs kind of hurts this idea a bit (I mean, "upper leg" can still be replaced with "thigh", but defining "front" and "back" parts along with all the "middle" ones is tricky to consider).

I 100% agree with this suggestion. It's something that has been bugging me for a while, as well as the other, numerous biological inaccuracies present in DF.

Out of curiosity, what are these inaccuracies, other than ones that are limitations of the current engine (like metamorphosis/tadpoles)? Actually, for that matter, ones that are tech limitations as well, since if the changes needed to make them doable aren't already planned, suggestions may as well be made for them.

In my mods, in which proper digitigrade legs are a standard feature, the naming convention is thus far
Upper leg > Lower leg > foot > paw/hoof and in earlier mods it was Upper leg > Lower leg > upper foot > lower foot/hoof, i believe .
But i suppose including 'hock' in there would be fine if it's agreed on to be a better naming scheme, which would then be
Upper leg > Lower leg > hock > foot?

I like my naming scheme because evidently, not everyone knows what a 'hock' is, but i think most people know what a 'paw' is, even if it's typically associated with cats and dogs, two totally unrelated animals anyway.

That's an alright naming scheme, though kind of awkward for birds (birds with paws?), it does have the advantage of the words being recognizable. Then again, aren't there some technical/archaic terms used in DF right now? "Eye teeth" come to mind.

I'm with you on fixing the raws, theres a few bugs and omissions here and there, as well as things that haven't been updated with time. Plus the raws are a total, unreadable mess. especially the creatures. So i wouldn't be against getting them cleaned up and making them readable... I do actually have the beginnings of such a project somewhere.

If you have a project involving raws (or even just for any current modding you do), I recommend this VSCode extension I'm working on with someone else if you haven't seen it already:

https://gitlab.com/df-modding-tools/df-raw-language-server
https://discord.gg/6eKf5ZY

It doesn't work properly for creatures yet as it's still in alpha/beta, but we'll be getting that working quite soon (actually, it does work on one branch of the project, but that functionality isn't in the public/main version yet), and more features than just syntax highlighting and simple error detection will be coming after the initial release.