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[Eldrick Tobin]

Outside contact has prompted me to blow the cobwebs off and bring this thread, and the creatures therein, back from the grave!

In all seriousness... I'd hoped to bring this into 0.31 when it came out, but the sheer degree of extra detail in the raws overwhelmed me, and then some serious gameplay bugs drove me to take a step back from the game.

Now, the detail in the raws is still there, still daunting; to overcome it, I figure I'm going to have to take this in stages rather than coming right out with a working draft.

The first thing I need to hammer out is the body plan. All drakes could be considered close cousins in evolutionary term, so they all have more or less the same plan. If possible I'd like to make the swimmers (and such hypotheticals as subterranean webspinners) lose the membrane from the wings and instead thicken them... but first I need a working body plan.

In the interests of not reinventing the wheel, is there an existing creature that has four legs, tail, neck, and two wings anchored to or just under the shoulder? (ed: Dragons don't, far as I can tell.) If not, what might the closest body plan be - insects? Hindlegs would need to be moved to the abdomen instead of the thorax, and of course there'd only be two pairs, but...

On the BODY: section I just plopped in "2WINGS" onto dragons and [FLIER] after the tissues and materials were finished up.

You don't have to build a custom body for them, as this gives you the near enough. Of course you could always grind out something like:

Code: [Select]

[BODY:QUADRUPED_FLIER]
[BP:UB:upper body:upper bodies][UPPERBODY][CATEGORY:BODY_UPPER]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:1000]
[BP:LB:lower body:lower bodies][CON:UB][LOWERBODY][CATEGORY:BODY_LOWER]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:1000]
[BP:HD:head:STP][CON:UB][HEAD][CATEGORY:HEAD]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:300]
[BP:RA:right front leg:STP][CON:UB][LIMB][RIGHT][CATEGORY:LEG_FRONT]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:900]
[BP:LA:left front leg:STP][CON:UB][LIMB][LEFT][CATEGORY:LEG_FRONT]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:900]
[BP:RH:right front foot:right front feet][CON:RA][STANCE][RIGHT][CATEGORY:FOOT_FRONT]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:120]
[BP:LH:left front foot:left front feet][CON:LA][STANCE][LEFT][CATEGORY:FOOT_FRONT]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:120]
[BP:RWING:right wing:STP][CONTYPE:UPPERBODY][LIMB][RIGHT][FLIER][CATEGORY:WING]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:500]
[BP:LWING:left wing:STP][CONTYPE:UPPERBODY][LIMB][LEFT][FLIER][CATEGORY:WING]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:500]
[BP:RL:right rear leg:STP][CON:LB][LIMB][RIGHT][CATEGORY:LEG_REAR]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:900]
[BP:LL:left rear leg:STP][CON:LB][LIMB][LEFT][CATEGORY:LEG_REAR]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:900]
[BP:RF:right rear foot:right rear feet][CON:RL][STANCE][RIGHT][CATEGORY:FOOT_REAR]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:120]
[BP:LF:left rear foot:left rear feet][CON:LL][STANCE][LEFT][CATEGORY:FOOT_REAR]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:120]
which is just the 2wings data pasted into quadruped behind the front limbs. Simple enough to tag in a tail in the body tag... You'd call the whole shebang (including vanilla raw dragon parts) with:

[BODY:QUADRUPED_FLIER:TAIL:2EYES:NOSE:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:SKULL:4TOES_FQ:4TOES_RQ:MOUTH:GENERIC_TEETH_WITH_LARGE_EYE_TEETH:RIBCAGE]

[Shurhaian]

Many thanks to you both (though, Eldrick, I think some CODE tags are in order there - some of the tokens are getting parsed as BBCode! ). I'm sitting down to take a look at it now and pull up the Wiki, and see if I can't make some sense of it; but between the tissues (which were my next worry) and the body plan, I think I have something to work with here.

[Eldrick Tobin]

Many thanks to you both (though, Eldrick, I think some CODE tags are in order there - some of the tokens are getting parsed as BBCode! ).

Yeah sorry about the mess. When it passes about 84 in this room my brain starts shutting off features. Had modding loaded not posting.

I'm sitting down to take a look at it now and pull up the Wiki, and see if I can't make some sense of it; but between the tissues (which were my next worry) and the body plan, I think I have something to work with here.

Help is always available... especially the modding workshop thread. lovely feature.

[Shurhaian]

Well, with input from you both and some tweaks on my part, I've hashed together plans for the red and black drakes. Just tacking 2WINGS on threw errors in the log (as did NOEAT and NODRINK; needed NO_EAT and NO_DRINK), so I used the altered body plan, and that genned just fine. I'm still waiting for some input on details - black drake venom, specifically; trying to learn the structure of the syndrome token, since the Wiki lacks information on the timing properties - and I need to sprinkle biomes in here and there, but if all goes well I should be able to flesh it out some more, and have a release on DFFD for testing in not too much longer.

So I haven't forgotten about this again, I was just somewhat delayed. Thank you for the helpful information!

ETA: Edited the first post to reflect new version. Now found on DFFD, with the red, green, blue, black, and brown drakes so far. It generates successfully, but testers would be greatly appreciated to see how the little beasties actually perform; my test embarks haven't found any in world (although green drakes, as domestics because of how easy they are to breed, can be purchased at embark), and I don't know if this is because of luck, or because the creature tokens keep them from actually spawning. I especially would like to know how nasty black drake venom is against dwarves or whoever else, so I can tweak either the syndrome or the description or both.