Print

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

[BurgomeisterBog]

Heres a few I think should be added to the list.

I'm going to put a little asterisk next to some animals that I haven't really specified a species for.


Birds:
Sandpiper \ wading bird
Great Blue Heron \ wading bird
Sandhill Crane \ wading bird
Ibis \ wading bird
Geese* \ water fowl
Swan* \ water fowl
Mallards \ water fowl
Coot* \ water fowl
Ostrich \ flightless
Emu \ flightless
Barn Owl\ owl
Great Horned Owl\ owl
Turkey \ land fowl
Chickens \ land fowl

Reptiles:
Monitor Lizard \ lizard
Arboreal Iguana\ lizard
Marine Iguana \ lizard
Cottonmouth \ snake

Mammals:
River Otter \ mustelid
Sea Otter \ mustelid
Wolverine \ mustelid
Badger \ mustelid
Ocelot \ feline
Bobcat \ feline
Capuchin \ monkey
African Wild Dog \ canine

Amphibians:
Japanese\Chinese Giant salamander
Hellbender \ salamander

Marine Fish:
Kingfish
Tarpon
Wahoo
Ballyhoo
Mullet
Mahi Mahi
Pompano*
Parrotfish*
Humphead Wrasse
Grunion
Triggerfish*

Freshwater Fish:
Silversides*
Red tailed Catfish 
Blue Catfish
Walking Catfish
Channel Catfish
Pacu*
Piranha*
Crappie*
Largemouth Bass
Smallmouth Bass
Peacock Bass
Bluegill
Guppy
Minnow

Lots of birds and fish! This probably hints towards my south floridian roots.

[kenji_03]

I have compiled all info I can think of for the sea turtle, I will make more turtles later.  Explanation below the code!

[CREATURE:TURTLE]
[NAME:Sea Turtle:Sea Turtles:Sea Turtle]
[TILE:151][COLOR:2:0:0]
[VERMIN_FISH][FISHITEM]
[POPULATION_NUMBER:25:50]
[AMPHIBIOUS][SMALL_REMAINS][NO_WINTER]
[SPEED:3300]
[PETVALUE:10][NATURAL][PET]
[NOT_BUTCHERABLE][HASSHELL]
[CLUSTER_NUMBER:1:1]
[PREFSTRING:beauty]
[DIURNAL]
[BIOME:ANY_OCEAN]
[STANDARD_FLESH]
[SWIMS_INNATE][SWIM_SPEED:2500]
[POPULATION_NUMBER:250:500]
[MUNDANE]
[CREATURE:TESTUDINE]
[CURIOUSBEAST_EATER]
[DAMBLOCK:2]
[MATUTINAL]
[NOCTURNAL]
[FREQUENCY:42]
[liTTERSIZE:0:2]
[MAXAGE:60:80]
[MODVALUE:1]
[PENETRATEPOWER:1]
[PETVALUE:0]
[PREFSTRING:shells]
[PREFSTRING:amphibious nature]
[PREFSTRING:flippers]
[SIZE:5]
[SWIMS_INNATE]
[SWIM_SPEED:2500]
[UNDERSWIM]

**this creature is cold blooded, please add an according [HOMEOTHERM:] value, may need to use the [SPEC_HEAT:] values**

Sea Turtles are herbavores, turtles in general do not move fast at all (it takes over 20 minutes for them to crawl up a 15 foot beach to lay eggs...adult size) so I am bumping the speed from 2900 up to 3300 (I hope to change all values that high), they are NOT pack animals (cluster 1:1), the scientific name for the lot is a "Testudine" (creature type), it will eat anything it can find (although it'd take them a long time to get even into your fortress food storage) [CURIOUSBEAST_EATER], it has a shell so [DAMBLOCK:2] to reflect that natural protection, most turtles are actually nocturnal (they bask in the morning/evening sun) so [MATUTINAL] (active during dawn) & [NOCTURNAL], while they are 'endangered' in our world, I'm going to list their frequency of appearing at 42 for fun as their babies have a 0.01% chance of making it to sea (I sh*it you not),  since this turtle is a sea variation I am going to give it [GRASSTRAMPLE:0] for uniformity with it's cousins, considering the low chance of survival from the multitude of eggs that a turtle lays (50-250), we are going to give it a low birth rate of [liTTERSIZE:0:2], sea turtles are speculated to live up to 80 years, for fun again we are going to list the value of 'sea turtle' crafts at times 1 as they are not that rare in the DF universe, we are going to give turtles a [PENETRATEPOWER:1] as their beaks can break some things, unlike other turtles the seaturtle cannot be a [PET] so it has no [PETVALUE:0], dwarves like sea turtles for their shells and amphibious nature and flippers[PREFSTRING:shells][PREFSTRING:amphibious nature][PREFSTRING:flippers], sea turtles are actually kind of big, not as big as a human or a human-midget (dwarf) but very close so I'm going to mark them as [SIZE:5] for 1 size under a dwarf, sea turtles swim, hence the [SWIMS_INNATE] trait, considering that all things can move faster in water (single strong muscle pushes propel better) but also considering that turtles are still slow moving I am going to set turtles swim speed to default instead of slower than fish, sea turtles can indeed swim deep into the water (not bottom level but deep) so they are getting the [UNDERSWIM] trait, while sea turtles are not pack animals they are social animals so the [VERMIN_MICRO] tag is being applied when more than one is on the map.

**debate** since sea turtles are so big, should we not let them be caught? [VERMIN_NOFISH] tag is in question**/debate**

edit: btw, if you want to know my license preference, it's "use it but thank me in the credits" (does DF even have credits?)

[3]

You'll need to remove the old creature ID (CREATURE:TURTLE) and replace it with the new one (CREATURE:TESTUDINE). As it's set up currently, the game will read the block as two seperate entries.

A lot of those tags are unapplicable to vermin - vermin don't take damage as such, so DAMBLOCK is useless; I find it unlikely that CURIOUSBEAST_EATER does anything - the tag you're looking for is VERMIN_EATER. PETVALUE:0 essentially means that you'll be able to buy loads of them from the elves for free. 0 as a LITTERSIZE value is a bit weird and I'm not sure how the game'll handle it (stray sea turtle has given birth to null?).

SIZE is also useless to vermin - all vermin are size 1 and handled completely differently to other creatures, so you're probably better off making them a full-blown creature.

Finally, and this is a bit of a nitpick, try not to use capitalised names. None of the stock creatures have them.

Besides, a lot of this is going to be irrelevant by the time the next version comes out. It's probably better to plan as much as you can now, get as many concepts down in the raws, leave out the details and fix them up next release.

[Raminagrobis]

I just love how everybody ignored my questions... Even if you think it's horseshit, tell me, I can take it.

[Footkerchief]

I just love how everybody ignored my questions... Even if you think it's horseshit, tell me, I can take it.

These questions about breeds for domesticated animals?  Well, okay, they're horseshit in the sense that neither the current version nor the next version will support breeds in any satisfying way.  If you implement breeds as castes, they can't have different biomes and the breed of offspring will bear no relation to the breed of the parents (it's determined by caste birth ratios for the creature in general).  If you implement them as separate species, then they can't interbreed.  Toady actually talked about the problems of implementing breeds in the very recent creature raws mini-podcast.

Basically, it'll be a cool thing if/when it's feasible, but it won't be for a while, and it's arguably outside the scope of this project anyway since it's just focusing on a few species that this project wouldn't otherwise touch.

[Captain Alchatron]

I think you're right in that we should include draft horses and separate them from riding horses.  With the whole breeding thing I'd say it'd be okay to have them technically count as different species, because presumably the dwarves that bred them into two different breeds will want to keep them two separate breeds and won't let them breed together.  It's a bit sketchy, but hey. (Geddit? 'Hay'? )

Then again I'm inclined to agree with Footkerchief, since at the moment we don't really need to distinguish draft horses from riding horses anyway.  All they do at the moment is mull around and serve as meat and pets - they neither serve to ride upon nor to draw ploughs or what have you, so with the current technology available to dwarves there'd be no point in embarking with any specific horse, or even breeding a specific horse to do a specific job, because there aren't any jobs for them.

Come to think of it, since DF is mainly set in a medieval setting, wouldn't they -only- use draft horses - and probably not even have bred riding horses?  Since at the time they would have used basically draft horses (except possibly stronger and bigger) for riding, since a modern riding horse wouldn't be any use in battle, with a knight on top.  I realise our history is somewhat irrelevant to dwarves', but I don't see the point in dwarves breeding riding ponies when they've got better things to do.  Like drinking, or starving to death, or engineering goblin death chambers.

Although as you can see I do think draft horses are important, I'm not so much a fan of your ideas on breeds for other animals, Raminagrobis.  Wouldn't dwarves only embark with / breed dogs that are useful, as in big tough dogs or small fast ones, like greyhounds - both for hunting or killing?  I think you could encompass all breeds of dogs dwarves use or see as one general 'dog', because although dwarves adopt them as pets, they were bred as killing machines (or to be eaten, if you're that way inclined), not as poodles or what have you.

And a lot of the breeds we see today are products of our societies and cultures, and because we've had rather a large time to breed them in.  The hairless pig you'll see in an abattoir today is (or, uh, 'was', rather, if it's in an abattoir) a descendant of the olde worlde wild boar, but dwarves won't have had time to breed things like that in peace.  I don't think we can use all, or even many, of the real-world breeds of animals in Dwarf Fortress because they're sort of irrelevant.

[Randall Octagonapus]

Although it would be cool if we could have Clidesdales

[Fieari]

Well, the RAWs we've been told about do have capacities for variations within the species.  So you theoretically could specify the range of variations of different breeds and have it work out that way. It would even be realistic!  You just couldn't have different names for the different breeds.

[Neonivek]

I sould state that Stationary animals are probably not a great idea to be adding to the list at the moment. As they are better simulated as plants and trees then as animals (at least for now)

[Aqizzar]

Well, I know what I'll be contributing to this great effort.  Crabs crabs crabs galore.  The new body definitions should allow much smaller "complex" creatures as opposed to vermin.  But that raises the question of whether only vermin-type creatures can still be fished, like it is right now.

At any rate, I'll be making crabs, and in the Dwarf Fortress tradition of specificity, I'll make several species.  Red, blue, king, and horseshoe all make sense, but I suppose unfamiliar names like opilio and bairdi can be omitted.  Since lobsters are basically just crabs of a different shape I'll probably make those too.

I'd love to throw in some other outre sea creatures.  I see someone else is already making octopi, but I'll take a crack at them too.  Other stuff might be a bit experimental, like representing anemone colonies as a single diffuse mass or something.  Then there's prehistoric stuff like sea scorpions, opabinia, hallucigenia, and other oddballs from the Cambrian Explosion all scaled up for proper threateningness.

If the Ark is going to branch out beyond just "real" creatures, I'll try to make the wackier members of my old crab mod work, along with related beasts.  Cave octopoids, Dire Starfish, and the dreaded Cyclobster.  Pity it'll probably all be underwater where no dwarf will ever see them except on coastal human artwork.

[Neonivek]

What is interesting is the Horseshoe Crab is pretty much related to the crab in name only

As for where the Ark should go next it is to me between: Pre-history and Fantasy as far as I can guess

Though the issue with fantastical creatures is that some are REALLY tied to the style and mythology of a location and some really cannot be done correctly as the game is.

So seperating the "killer" monsters from the "Doesn't kill" and "Doesn't kill dirrectly" may be tricky. How do you reflect "Teach you a lesson" creatures in the game?

Plus then there are the mythological creatures that have mixed mythos such as Medusa, Tunuki (Spelling?), Fairies, and heck Gargoyles

So Id go with the Prehistory creature ark first.

[Zaloran]

What about dinosaurs? IŽd love to fight a T-Rex barehands.

[Neonivek]

What about dinosaurs? IŽd love to fight a T-Rex barehands.

Dinosaurs are outside the scope of this project since they basically died off before humans came to be.

[Raminagrobis]

Footkerchief and Captain Alchatron, thanks for your answers.

[NewoTigra]

On the subject of aquatic life, sea snakes. They are some of the most venomous things alive, but do not usually bite unless provoked (benign tag?)

Also, regarding giant ground sloths (I can't remember the scientific name), they have a layer of bony platelets underneath either their fat layer or skin, providing them with what is ostensibly a permanent natural chainmail coat.
Yeah, they are pretty damn awesome, what with being slightly larger than most modern-day tanks, and roughly as dangerous as one, due to the rather large claws on their hands which they use to strip leaves, but could just as easily disembowel you with, each being the same size as a regular one-handed sword. Benign though