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[Rainseeker]

I personally am not laying claim to any of these animals, I'm just listing animals that I think should be included.  It's a good place to start.  It probably doesn't make sense to start claiming animals this early on.

I would like to claim the bears, personally :3

I think we can come up with some rules for "adopting" an animal.  Let me think about this...

[Mel_Vixen]

Well iirc we have talked some time ago with toady about inheritance of traits, modifiers and stuff. Iirc we discussed too the possibility off sub-breeds emerging from worldgen and player actions - which actually would mean that we dont need to include all sub-breeds of a species especally not the domesticated ones because dwarfes will come up with there own variations.

So actually we dont need the entire families of animals especally because many are attuned to a very special ("real world" geography and timewise) environment that in df is very unlikely to come up therefore some very common variations would be sufficient to create a good bunch of diverse animals.

oh and dont forget this dev-item:

Dev log of the 15.12.2009

Giant critters and the animal peoples are popular, at least in my own mind, and their numbers are still growing even as the underground update continues, so I set up some handy tools for adding them that people will be able to use. You can tell a creature to copy its raw tags from another creature entry, then tell it to add, remove or swap out lists of tags, and these can be set up in templates ("creature variations"). The swap can be restricted to a leading tag list (say, BODY:HUMANOID) to avoid some problems. You can apply multiple templates to a creature and they'll modify the raw tags in order.
           
So far I just have the "giant" and "animal person" templates that swap, add and remove tags to turn critters, including the little vermin ones, into their appropriate relatives. I put in a few special sizing tags so that sizes don't have to be entered manually. Pretty much all it needs for most of them are new name strings. Certain examples like slug/snake men that don't have legs (vs snail men who do) need to be specially treated.
           
Things like various birds are much easier to add, since you'd only need to specify their differences, like the name, size, biomes and colors. You could set up a base "bird" template and then just add the desired information on top of it. There could also be templates for things like the common tags shared by all "element men". All sorts of things could be done with this later, and it might allow more of the later sphere creature modifications to be in the raws. If you don't want to mess around with templates, you can still use the copy power to do some things quickly.

edit: dibs on the Maned Wolf - which infact isnt a wolf at all and a survivor of the Pleistocenes Mega-fauna.

[Neonivek]

I should state that no natural animal can be a megabeast as evident by the Whale Shark which is a size 20 creature who is not a megabeast (Which would put it on par with the Hydra and stronger then the Titan)

Megabeasts have something extra then just being huge (though they indeed seem to need to be huge, as evident by other creatures)

Also one main goal of this project should be towards getting as many unique animals as possible, to an extent. I am noticing a lot of repeat animals.

Alright so here is a question that likely needs to be answered: What should be done about animals with Metagame names? for example like the Californian Condor or with purely scientific names? I realise some versions could be done by using the Caste system (For example the difference between the Horseshoe Crab and Japanese Horseshoe Crab)

Some animals like Dinosaurs at least somewhat justify being called by their scientific names because for the most part (with some exceptions such as the Brontosaurus) we adopted their names into common usage.

[Footkerchief]

Alright so here is a question that likely needs to be answered: What should be done about animals with Metagame names? for example like the Californian Condor or with purely scientific names? I realise some versions could be done by using the Caste system (For example the difference between the Horseshoe Crab and Japanese Horseshoe Crab)

We talked about this some on the first page.  Unless the species are different in important ways, just pick a generic name that encompasses both of them, e.g. "horseshoe crab" and "condor".  Most of the monkeys/lemurs I posted are stand-ins for an entire genus, and some of the rodents are stand-ins for an entire family (due to the lack of interesting variations and/or the need to keep a lid on the number of creatures).  You can avoid a lot of the inconvenient names this way. 

[Neonivek]

So like calling the larger Capybara a "Greater Capybara"? (it is only 40% larger)

[Sizik]

This thread gave me an idea that renders this project somewhat useless trivial redundant something you don't really need to do.

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=46852.0

[Chariot]

I intend to fully convert zoo mod to the new version. Given that my reason for making zoo mod in the first place is pretty much the same as this project(though on a smaller scale), I'd have no problem merging them into this.

[BradB]

Gila Monsters and Komodo Dragons should be made by somebody, they'd be good first venomous animals for somebody to learn with.

[Footkerchief]

Gila Monsters and Komodo Dragons should be made by somebody, they'd be good first venomous animals for somebody to learn with.

Nobody's tackled the task of making a lizard list yet.  When someone does, though, those will definitely be on it.

[Supermikhail]

Now, I hope everybody realises that currently the standard for displaying critters in DF is ASCII set. Actually, I think only letters are used. If this stays the same for the next version I clearly see happy outpost overseers checking every second if this "m" prowling closer is some kind of a mouse or a carnivorous mastodon.

On a different note
Fish
Rays - just for scenery and an exotic meal to a dwarven food stockpile. Edit: and for authentic eastern swords in DF world.

Carnivorans
Meerkat - Small, highly social and very lovable critters who live in large colonies in savannah.
 
Rodents
Lemmings - notorious for their massive and devastating migrations, would be especially cool with world map populations movement for critters.

[Pyro]

Hay guys I could cover the Hyaenidae family
I did the spotted hyena and dire hyena for my gnoll mod.
Wasn't able to get the graphics to show up in game though which is a bugger...



Files are downloadable from here: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=1587

I shall have to add:
- Striped hyena
- Brown hyena
- Aardwolf

[Toady Two]

Kakapo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY

Be sure to add [CORRUPT_INTENTIONS]

[Timst]

The OP list is already quite specific, while there's a lot of very common animals (rabbit, ducks...) that doesn't exist in the game. I know some people modded them in, tough.

[penguinofhonor]

I remember something about a kobold riding a giant ground sloth in one of the ASCII art reward stories, and Toady saying he liked them or something.

I won't be satisfied until we have at least the most iconic dinosaurs (tyrannosaurus rex, triceratops, realistic velociraptor, stegosaurus, brachiosaurus, apatosaurus). And some dinosaur-related animals like pterodactyls and plesiosaurs.

They'd all probably be underground animals, though. But imagine finding a few plesiosaurs in your local underground river, or breaking into a huge underground cavern only to have some pterodactyls soar out and eat a dwarf to signal to you that there's more dangerous dinosaurs to come.

[Organ]

Brilliant project, Rainseeker, this is the kind of thing that will bring life to the DF universe. I don't know the first thing about the new raws, but I'm excited to learn so I can contribute.

I remember something about a kobold riding a giant ground sloth in one of the ASCII art reward stories, and Toady saying he liked them or something.

I won't be satisfied until we have at least the most iconic dinosaurs (tyrannosaurus rex, triceratops, realistic velociraptor, stegosaurus, brachiosaurus, apatosaurus). And some dinosaur-related animals like pterodactyls and plesiosaurs.

They'd all probably be underground animals, though. But imagine finding a few plesiosaurs in your local underground river, or breaking into a huge underground cavern only to have some pterodactyls soar out and eat a dwarf to signal to you that there's more dangerous dinosaurs to come.

Nothing against fantastic creatures, but there is a difference between fanciful and plain illogical. I mean, sighted fliers in underground caverns? Realistic cave ecology has more than enough variety and wonder on it's own, I think.