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[Sulvor]

Disregarding the fact that one probably already exists in this thread, I decided to make an armadillo creature.

Nobbins, the point of this mod is to make creatures for the upcoming version.  And we're not to the making-creatures stage yet.

By the way, armadillos are definitely not SPEED:1000.

[Fieari]

Speaking of that, we should probably decide on a couple of standards for where there aren't any clearly defined.  Benchmarks for translating speed into mph and such.  Not so that we define a rigorous conversion rate, but for organization and making sure that at least relative rates are reasonable.  Likewise for size.  Dwarves are 6000, we know, but how shall we convert that?  (And height alone won't cut it, since size seems to cover volume more than distance)

[Footkerchief]

Dwarves are 6000, we know, but how shall we convert that?  (And height alone won't cut it, since size seems to cover volume more than distance)

Size actually has something resembling units:

Size is formerly arbitrary, now it is cubic centimeters I think.  I used weight <-> water <-> volume for most of the animals, since volumes are harder to find.

But yeah, it'll be useful to have some posted guidelines for stuff like speed.

[Aqizzar]

Dwarves are 6000, we know, but how shall we convert that?  (And height alone won't cut it, since size seems to cover volume more than distance)

Size actually has something resembling units:

Size is formerly arbitrary, now it is cubic centimeters I think.  I used weight <-> water <-> volume for most of the animals, since volumes are harder to find.

But yeah, it'll be useful to have some posted guidelines for stuff like speed.

While it is enormously helpful to think that SIZE actually denotes a specific measure, however rough, that doesn't actually work.  A 150 pound person (about average) is roughly 70 kilograms, or 70000 grams, which would be 70000 cubic centimeters of water.  So to put that in line with the likely size of humans being 7000 (1000x what they are now, same conversion as dwarves apparently), either SIZE needs an extra zero or the cubic-centimeter thing needs to be divided by ten.  Which gives some good wiggle room I suppose.

Obviously, this metric falls apart for creatures of unusual density like Iron Men or Jellyfish, but as long as you another water-ish density creature to compare it to in size that shouldn't be a problem.  I hope the new version makes chopped up creature parts have weights based on their materials instead of just size like now.

[Footkerchief]

It's actually a lot simpler than that -- 6000 was the wrong number.  The SIZE of an adult dwarf is 60,000.

[Aqizzar]

I stand corrected.  That preliminary raw thing is a little hard to read, and I just remembered a really old quote where Toady said he was arbitrarily multiplying the SIZE scale by 1000.  That works fine then.

[Footkerchief]

I added several dozen rays and skates.  The only cartilaginous fish left are the chimaeras, hardly any of which look very noteworthy.

Also, the list page is starting to get ungodly huge.  Is anyone against the idea of creating separate pages for mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, cartilaginous fish, bony fish, and arthropods?

[Aqizzar]

Well, I kind of am.  As long as it's all still cross-linked it doesn't really matter how large the page is.  It's a list of all species noteworthy enough to include, it's going to be long.

I can chop out the family names of crab groups if that would reduce some space.

[Footkerchief]

Well, I kind of am.  As long as it's all still cross-linked it doesn't really matter how large the page is.

I have to hit Page Down like three times just to see the whole table of contents.  If the TOC had columns or something, that'd probably suffice, but I couldn't find a feature like that in the MediaWiki docs.  Aside from that, I don't know why it's considered important to keep the entire list on one page, except to show off how huge and awesome it is.  That defeats half the purpose of a wiki (breaking info into separate pages that link to each other), and it's not like people need to look at reptiles and mammals at the same time. 

Basically, every single person who interacts with the page is currently forced to scroll past lots of stuff they don't care about.  This could easily be made less of a problem for everyone, with no drawbacks (none that have been mentioned anyway).

I can chop out the family names of crab groups if that would reduce some space.

The family names could probably be removed in favor of some higher-level grouping, but they're a very minor contribution to a problem that's going to keep growing regardless.

[Aqizzar]

Hey, if you're the one going to the trouble anyway, feel free.  As long as it's still navigable there's no complaint.

[Footkerchief]

Does anyone else who's been using the page (i.e. Halmie, Gorobay, Lancensis) object?

[Halmie]

No, not at all. In fact I created a little (tiny) test page on it. 

http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Ark_Project
You never really have to ask my opinion on anything to do with this mod becuase I'm a small time contributer.

[Gorobay]

Splitting it up is definitely a good idea. Also, I think the list should be at "Ark Project" rather than "User talk: Lancensis".

[Footkerchief]

Splitting it up is definitely a good idea. Also, I think the list should be at "Ark Project" rather than "User talk: Lancensis".

The main problem with adding it like a regular article is that it'll show up in wiki searches and stuff.  I'm not very experienced with wikis but I think the best solution is to get Briess (known here as Locriani) to add a custom namespace for mods, but I don't know if he'll go for that.  I'm PMing him now.

edit: okay, I PMed him and wrote on his talk page.  Hopefully he's around.

[Neonivek]

Alright so I am collecting animals that are extinct and I am wondering what the cut off point is.

For example I have the "Dire Wolf" here and it went extinct around 8000BC meaning humans and this animal existed at the same time.

So what is the cut off point?

1) Post-Historical animals
2) Post-Humanity Animals
3) AD animals

Or basically is the cut off point
20,000 BC, 10,000 BC, 1000 BC, or 0?