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[dragnar]

You have any idea how annoying it is to lock those damn doors?

Thanks goodness all Dwarven Doors have Psychic locks

and magical cat-flaps!

No they don't. Those FPS-killing-demonspawn just CLAW their way through. (and cats can fit through some very small holes)

[atomfullerene]

Has anyone here played sim life?   that's what these ecology questions remind me of.  I loved that game.

I'd be pretty happy if DF just picked an appropriate set of animals at the beginning of world gen, didn't simulate any sort of population related things at all, but let the animals interact according to their place on the food chain while they were onscreen.  IE: it'd be cool to see wolves hunting deer while playing, but I don't care if deer and wolf populations are determined by simulating all their hunts throughout history (It'd be neat, mind you, but it's way down on the list of importance for me).

[Vester]

I remember Sim Life! I still have the cd, in fact. Fun game, even given the fact that I had no idea what I was doing when I played it.

I like the whole living world thing myself, so I'd love to actually come a cross a wolfpack assaulting, say, a unicorn.

[Innominate]

As far as I remember, the game doesn't maximally populate a biome. That is, if there are 50 species (ark project perhaps) which can all go in a biome, it will only use a subset of those 50. This might have the annoying side effect that in some fortresses you end up with all carnivores or all herbivores, but it will also allow some differentiation between different biomes of the same type.

[Shoku]

Has anyone here played sim life?   that's what these ecology questions remind me of.  I loved that game.

I'd be pretty happy if DF just picked an appropriate set of animals at the beginning of world gen, didn't simulate any sort of population related things at all, but let the animals interact according to their place on the food chain while they were onscreen.  IE: it'd be cool to see wolves hunting deer while playing, but I don't care if deer and wolf populations are determined by simulating all their hunts throughout history (It'd be neat, mind you, but it's way down on the list of importance for me).

Ya but you don't really want wolves hunting porcupines and armadillos and sometimes you'd want to mod in creatures that don't so easily fit into natural or even predictable categories.

As far as I remember, the game doesn't maximally populate a biome. That is, if there are 50 species (ark project perhaps) which can all go in a biome, it will only use a subset of those 50. This might have the annoying side effect that in some fortresses you end up with all carnivores or all herbivores, but it will also allow some differentiation between different biomes of the same type.

Mostly what we want is something more akin to choosing to exclude creatures from a biome when they live on the other side of the world... sometimes. As of now you could probably get unlucky and have all of your swamp biomes get dealt the exam same set of creatures.

[CobaltKobold]

On-topicish question.

Can bodyparts stick in their target when used to attack?
Clearly needed before we can make bee-men properly. (The other main deal being flying pathing fix.)

[Nivim]

And there is the first problem. You tried to lump a Djinn with the Megabeasts when there is no reason to. They arn't giant, nor are they that powerful. Which creates the other problem, Toady will basically have to define Megabeasts, Semimegabeasts, and powers as far as what they mean.

I'm a bit confused here, I recall Djinn where of the "Genie" group, and they are powerful enough to be confident that they can do whatever a mortal imagines. As far as I know, none of them have failed to fulfill their end, misconceptions aside. I'd expect they would be like gods that would only work with one (or a few) person (people) at a time. I also thought they were one of the ones that could choose their size, and form, so the being could easily have the megabeast tag. (Djinn enters map. Djinn teleports to dining room. Djinn uses the entire ceiling a portal to the molten core, and teleports away. Everyone in the fort dies from the explosion of magma.) I didn't expect that group of beings to even be in the game, as they are natural game breakers.

You have any idea how annoying it is to lock those damn doors?

Thanks goodness all Dwarven Doors have Psychic locks

 I've always thought the reason you had that control over the doors is because 'you play the fortress, you are the fortress'.

[Neonivek]

That is assuming Djinn are all powerful.

Depending on the version some Djinn arn't even all that overtly magical they are just so well connected and rich they very well could grant your every desire. Want riches? They have plenty... Want women? The Djinn has a concubine army! Want someone killed? Well the Djinn is still above a mortal.

Then even the more magical Djinn were basically just ordinary magical beings who were forced to do what you asked of them. So if something was beyond their power it couldn't be wished for.
-Remember all Genies were entrapped, though in some genie mythology the genies are pretty dang evil (and that is why they were locked up)

Somewhere and I don't know where... Genies suddenly became all powerful. Instead of granting wishes to the best of their abilities they suddenly had the ability to make wishes come true almost no matter what. Often these powers are even extended outside of wishes giving Genies (who are at least free) essentially unlimited power all the time. These are the genies that shouldn't be.

Other then that the statement sticks. Genies arn't Size 20 so they arn't Megabeasts... They are Powers at best (in fact being a "Power" fits them perfectly)

[Lord Shonus]

Actually, the original genies of the Thousand and One Nights were extremely powerful, and not bound to the mortal that freed them in any way. They simply granted a wish or two to that person as a ploy to encourage mortals to free any imprisoned Djinn they happened to find. (THey were not naturally imprisoned, many were defeated by the sorcerer Solomon (Yes, THAT Solomon) who could defeat them because he had the power of Allah on his side. They were as far above an ordiary mortal as an ordinary mortal is above a dog, or even a mouse.

[Neonivek]

Actually, the original genies of the Thousand and One Nights were extremely powerful, and not bound to the mortal that freed them in any way. They simply granted a wish or two to that person as a ploy to encourage mortals to free any imprisoned Djinn they happened to find. (THey were not naturally imprisoned, many were defeated by the sorcerer Solomon (Yes, THAT Solomon) who could defeat them because he had the power of Allah on his side. They were as far above an ordiary mortal as an ordinary mortal is above a dog, or even a mouse.

Right but they weren't basically supreme dieties like many people equate them as.

[Lord Shonus]

Maybe not a god, but an angel or demigod level of power is about right.

[Vester]

Actually, the original genies of the Thousand and One Nights were extremely powerful, and not bound to the mortal that freed them in any way. They simply granted a wish or two to that person as a ploy to encourage mortals to free any imprisoned Djinn they happened to find. (THey were not naturally imprisoned, many were defeated by the sorcerer Solomon (Yes, THAT Solomon) who could defeat them because he had the power of Allah on his side. They were as far above an ordiary mortal as an ordinary mortal is above a dog, or even a mouse.

Right but they weren't basically supreme dieties like many people equate them as.

Yeah, the Genie of the Ring from Aladdin and the Magic Lamp could do nothing against the Genie of the Lamp (which had been stolen by Aladdin's fake uncle), because their powers were on a different order of magnitude or some such thing.

Though I'm not sure if that's actually from Arabian Nights, since I found that story in an anthology.

[Lancensis]

The old Jinn were basically just another race that were made from fire instead of earth (like humans). Presumebly then, there would be exceptional jinn capable of doing great things, just as there are exceptional people capable of doing great things.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

jinns arent that different from dwarves, trolls, goblins, elves and fairys of old, they were magical creatures, and their powers and appearance varied a lot, adapting to their function on the story they apeared, and in modern fantasy they ended up as magical as humans witha few adaptations and specializations, if we are having an argument aganist europocentrism in fauna, we could also have some more exotic civilizations to go with exotic animals, djin coul fit in that role

[atomfullerene]

You have a good point there...while in the modern world we love to classify and analyze things, so that even our mythical creatures have statistics, in the past most mythical creatures were seen as more, well, mythical.  Even fundamental aspects of them could be highly variable, and depended more on the needs of the story or whatever particular point needed to be made.

As for genning populations, I don't think populations should be sorted always according to their real world distributions.  Eg, it would be nice for continents to have different fauna, but they don't always have to have "North American" and "Austrailian" groups all together

Also it would be neat to see a wolf try to attack a porcupine, get driven off with a face full of needles, and you kill the wolf later and find the needles on the corpse.