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[Misterstone]

Hello,

I was wondering: are there plans to have world generation create random species of creatures or plants?

I'm not saying that it should build every species up from scratch.  Just that it should take some basic creature templates, create the name for the new species, the kinds of products they produce when processed/killed, the biomes in which they live, etc.

Just a handful of such creatures would really vary the product a great deal... and I imagine that it wouldn't be too hard to add.

For example:

During world gen a new species called the "giant waggle-frog" is created.  The game would base this creature on a "giant brachiopod" template of some kind.

In terms of most statics (size, attacks, body parts, etc.), it would be the same as the current giant toad.  But the game might decide that it lives mainly in cold areas, that its bones are prized by carvers, or that its skin is mega-valuable, etc.  Or, it could be a very common and annoying creature with little or no economic value.  The idea is to diversify the economy of the game and create more fun things to discover.

Same thing could go for plants... some randomly created plants/trees being valuable, producing various products, or growing more quickly/slowly than others, etc.

In order to keep the player from getting too confused, the game could offer an "encyclopedia" of common knowlege about living things... after all, if waggle-frogs are common in the world, your character/dwarfs should be expected to know what they are.

I guess that Toady had already envisioned something like this anyway, judging from other stuff that he's written in the forums, but I didn't see this specifically mentioned in the development lists.  I just wanted to say that I have longed for something like this.  Sorry if this is redundant!

[dav]

This would need to be programmed very, very carefully to prevent Oland Rothtul, the common red-breasted nuthatch, the size of a dragon with tentacles, which is common in every zone and appears in packs of 12-15.

It could be done easily with very small numbers of variables, but for something really random, precautions would be needed for the average player.  I wouldn't mind an Oland Rothtul, but many people object to sudden death.

[Toady One]

Armok I was heavy into this.  There were body forms ("humanoid") and then type templates ("mammal") that it would combine to create random creatures, and there was a lot of detail to it.  It also generated plants this way.  Eventually I want to get back to this, just... not quite as extreme as you'll see if you open up some of the files in the editors in that program.

[Misterstone]

quote: This would need to be programmed very, very carefully to prevent Oland Rothtul, the common red-breasted nuthatch, the size of a dragon with tentacles, which is common in every zone and appears in packs of 12-15.

It could be done easily with very small numbers of variables, but for something really random, precautions would be needed for the average player. I wouldn't mind an Oland Rothtul, but many people object to sudden death.  

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting that the game should generate radically new types of creatures.  Just that the generator could, say, create a critter that is exactly the same as an elk in all respects, except that it is a different color, has a new name, and that the products it produces (leather, bones, horn, milk, etc.) might differ slightly in value or quantity.  I was thinking more in terms of making the dwarf mode economy more fun and varied, not breeding weird critters for you to struggle against in adventure mode.

On the other hand, it would be kind of cool to have a world teeming with deadly monstrosities.  Has anyone read Jack Vance's _The Dying Earth_, or Michael Shea's _Nifft the Lean_?  If so, you can readily imagine what that would be like.  If the world gen ever allows players to set parameters, then it would be fun to set the nastyness level of the local fauna to max.

Like you said, though, this would be tricky to balance and implement, so I wouldn't expect it to be an immediate priority or anything.

Keep up the good work, Toady!

[Misterstone]

I wanted to bump this out here again... since we can now change world gen parameters or the like, it would be nice if the game made a few unique species to go along with the world that is created.  For instance, for "Forest World" you get some kind of special ape-like critters, or maybe giant tree-rodents, for desert world, more lizards or giant bugs, etc.  I just think that it would make the game a bit more fun if each world had say a dozen or so unique critters that were custom fit to the nature of the world in question.

[Toady One]

This was actually going to be a surprise for Megabeast Week, as the world parameters were a surprise at this stage, but I missed it by a day.  My original thoughts were to start with either vermin or fossils, as far as random critters go, but then we were like, well, random megabeasts would be fun too, and they'd have such awful names, it would be exquisite.  I don't know when I'll get a chance to come back and pick this up, but it's sort of bubbling near the top now, anyway.

[Misterstone]

Whoa, I think I just had a seizure.  Kick ass!

[Aqizzar]

You do realize what kind of can of seven headed worms you just opened there don't you?

Oh, I can't wait to see the new raws for this.  You are a magic man Toady, one astounding surprize after another.

[Neonivek]

*Marks down Fossils as "As good as added"*

Anyhow one way to balance random creatures is to have two secret bars or values that derive from the same pool of points.

1) All the stats combined

2) Reproduction rate and group numbers

So a really powerful creature would have a small pool for reproduction and group size and thus would have small numbers.

Semi(Mega)beasts kinda couldn't use that... seeing as they have little-no reproduction rate anyhow and when they do they probably won't do such in the same respect that other creatures reproduce.