Print

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

[HollowClown]

Silverionmox, I think that's a great solution to the wound handling issue;  it makes a lot more sense than trying to mod in custom wound handling transitions.  It would keep creature data in the RAWs, and (presumably) wouldn't be much more complicated than the current creature maturation code.

I'm not sure how this would tie in to some of Toady's latest changes to creature anatomy, but it might make life easier there, too -- it would make it easy to have baby elephants with skin that wasn't as thick as that of adult elephants.  Plus, coupled with his new ecosystem code, this change would let _everything_ in the world breed....it might slow the game down, but it would be so worth it.

On a semi-related note, what would a purring maggot pupate into? 

[Grimlocke]

This actualy seems like a very good way to solve the problem of every single creature breeding like mammals do.

Eggs could be implemented quite easily by making the first creature in the line of developement, for example 'giant eagle egg', immobile, unable to interact with anything, and having just an eggshell bodypart that shatters on break. The mature creature that lays eggs could either find a safe place  to lay eggs, or it could just give birth anywhere and carry them around like dwarves carry babies. (So long as the creature doesnt lay eggs midair).

[Rowanas]

Purring maggots grow into purring hornets.

[dizzyelk]

This actualy seems like a very good way to solve the problem of every single creature breeding like mammals do.

Eggs could be implemented quite easily by making the first creature in the line of developement, for example 'giant eagle egg', immobile, unable to interact with anything, and having just an eggshell bodypart that shatters on break. The mature creature that lays eggs could either find a safe place  to lay eggs, or it could just give birth anywhere and carry them around like dwarves carry babies. (So long as the creature doesnt lay eggs midair).

You'd have to add a tag to also only allow cooking from raw, unbroken eggs. Maybe just "kill" it when its moved, and have it drop a food item called egg.

[Granite26]

To a certain extent, the new and improved (tm) raws will have this.  Just have BPs you don't want to support start at size zero and grow to full size when adulthood is reached.  The same is also true going the other way.  IIRC, you can set the start and end years for these changes, so you should be able to do it instantaneously... Or even better, over a single crazy year of adolesence when they'll have trouble walking and stuff

You should be able to model frogs like this (slowly growing legs) and even catapillers (at year X-Y, Grow a giant shell and lose all 'transport' limbs, when it's time to burst, shrink the shell and grow wings).  Ants are possible by calling all children larvae.  They'll all have the same forms and names until puberty, when they'll take their final forms.

I won't consider any RAWs complete until I can model the xenomorph's lifecycle.  (eggs -> facehuggers -> hosts -> xenomorphs /praetorians/queens)

[Bricks]

Oooo, Granite26, that is clever.  Didn't think of it that way.  I can see some problems, though Toady may have already anticipated them.  There still exists issue like caterpillars being able to fly around because they have size-0 wings.

[Vieto]

This actualy seems like a very good way to solve the problem of every single creature breeding like mammals do.

Eggs could be implemented quite easily by making the first creature in the line of developement, for example 'giant eagle egg', immobile, unable to interact with anything, and having just an eggshell bodypart that shatters on break. The mature creature that lays eggs could either find a safe place  to lay eggs, or it could just give birth anywhere and carry them around like dwarves carry babies. (So long as the creature doesnt lay eggs midair).

You'd have to add a tag to also only allow cooking from raw, unbroken eggs. Maybe just "kill" it when its moved, and have it drop a food item called egg.

Better yet, cage the egg and tame the hatched giant eagle.   

[Dae]

You should be able to model frogs like this (slowly growing legs) and even catapillers (at year X-Y, Grow a giant shell and lose all 'transport' limbs, when it's time to burst, shrink the shell and grow wings).

Do you know if said caterpillars will really lose their limbs ? I mean, drop a 'caterpillar 18th left leg' we could harvest ?
And have periodical transformations been discussed ?

[Granite26]

You should be able to model frogs like this (slowly growing legs) and even catapillers (at year X-Y, Grow a giant shell and lose all 'transport' limbs, when it's time to burst, shrink the shell and grow wings).

Do you know if said caterpillars will really lose their limbs ? I mean, drop a 'caterpillar 18th left leg' we could harvest ?
And have periodical transformations been discussed ?

I'm by no means an authority, but:

No, the leg won't drop.  In fact Bricks has the same interpretation as me that we will be fortunate if size zero limbs (which I'm 99.9% sure don't display) don't add functional capabilities (like size zero wings allowing flight).  Specifically, the limb will still be a part of the creature, just invisible and too small to do anything (AKA attack or be attacked).

I've not seen periodical transformations discussed.  All discussions have been couched as dwarf-beards, so that a (male) dwarf always has a beard, it starts growing at puberty (age 12) and doesn't stop, but can be trimmed.  I'll see if I can't find the relative Toady quotes.

[Granite26]

BONUS DOUBLE POST!!!

I guess you could still define many separate phases through the life of the turtle, with increasing size.

I believe you can only specify a start date, a stop date, and a growth rate during that one period.

The appearance modifier (hair length, etc.) growth factors work that way, but size is a little more versatile.  You can define a series of time points and the average size of the creature at those times.

Dwarves currently have:
[BODY_SIZE:0:0:100]
[BODY_SIZE:1:168:1500]
[BODY_SIZE:12:0:6000]

Which makes them grow linearly between the last numbers at the year:day numbers on the left (I haven't thought about the actual numbers much, so ignore those).  You could just as easily do:

[BODY_SIZE:0:0:100]
[BODY_SIZE:1:168:1500]
[BODY_SIZE:12:0:6000]
[BODY_SIZE:15:0:6500]
[BODY_SIZE:18:0:8000]
[BODY_SIZE:50:0:16000]

to make something grow along a different curve.  Individual size variability is handled via body appearance modifiers like body length, and those can only have one spurt.  So a creature can grow in total size along a weird curve, but only have one growth spurt per dimension.  BODY_SIZE itself doesn't set up infinite growth, but you could set up modifiers for body length/width/height that all constantly grow like hair at the same rate forever, and this would have the same effect.

From here

[SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:HAIR]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:CHEEK_WHISKERS]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:CHIN_WHISKERS]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:MOUSTACHE]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:SIDEBURNS]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:LENGTH:0:0:0:0:0:0:0]

            Here we set the growth rate.  This will change the modifier (LENGTH) by 1 each day up to a maximum of 1000 from the start of the dwarf's life (early beards!) for as long as the dwarf is alive.  The format is (APP_MOD_RATE|<rate>|<scale>|<min>|<max>|<start year>|<start day>|<end year>|<end day>) where the final two tokens can be replaced by NO_END if the growth is to continue indefinitely.
            
            [APP_MOD_RATE:1:DAILY:0:1000:0:0:NO_END]

Quote
Looks like it's easy to make creatures grow as they get older.  Can we shrink them back down?

Yeah, each of those body size values is just a point on a size vs. time graph, and they can be whatever positive values you like.
Quote
Will it be possible to make dragons that get bigger and bigger for all time?

I don't think it accepts NO_END for size times right now, but if you put the last point far enough out in time it'll work for most intents (unless you want a larger slope than that method can provide, but in that case, you'd likely hit the maximum size value which is currently 1000000).

[HollowClown]

Thanks, Granite26.  Somehow I missed that discussion the first time around.  Assuming that the size-0 parts will be effectively non-present, that would indeed compensate for a lot of the functionality/body-part issues that I was thinking of in my original post.  Having a way to control the way that creatures grow, as opposed to the magical kitten->cat transformation, would be awesome.

That being said, it seems like a lot of other life-cycle issues have come up in this thread, most of them awesome.  It would still be cool to have multiple options for what creatures turned into (as suggested by alfie275), with antman larva -> antman worker/warrior/drone/queen.  It would still be cool to have creatures turn into/from vermin, as with the cave spider / giant cave spider switch.  And, while the growth system could (in theory) handle multiple stages of creature development, it seems like that would be awfully cumbersome to implement -- eg a caterpillar with 30 limbs turning into a pupa with no limbs, then a butterfly with 6 limbs.

Originally, I was thinking that having separate RAW files for the creatures would be the easiest way to provide flexible, in-depth control of all of this, but now I'm not so sure.  At any rate, it certainly doesn't look like the development is heading in that direction.  Anyone have any thoughts as to how some of these features could be (easily) added in?

[Granite26]

I think they'll be supported eventually.  The castes are an important first step.  Toady has mentioned on numerous occasions that the REAL problem with caterpillars is how to carry over damage correctly.  If you pull a random leg of a caterpillar, is there a chance that one of it's butterfly wings doesn't come in?  That's almost certainly true for antenae.

Growth in raws works perfectly for 1-1 correlation, but complete metamorphisis isn't so easily defined (it would be a complete RAW-language for aligning parts and carrying damage over.  This is of limited use compared to the ability to have things grow with time.

I'd be surprised if there isn't a metamorphisis release (given the desire for new shorter release schedules) that does nothing but fix this problem.