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[Neonivek]

Ok if anyone is not doing Beetles and butterflys because I am... Please don't let me hold you back.

I am in somewhat of a rut and may not be getting to it for a while though I still plan to.

Though I highly doubt this is the case... if it is then this should cover it.

[Footkerchief]

General status report: we've made really good progress on Lizards, which should be pretty much done list-wise.  Birds are coming along well.  Amphibians still need a lot of work, particularly the organization of the frog section.  Bony fish and Insects are still very far from being complete, although we've made some progress.

I think the butterflies/beetles will still be waiting whenever you're back, Neonivek.  Plenty of other insect orders for us to work on.

Well done on Template:Ark, Footkerchief! I suggest that the creature's name and link be included in the template, so that the headers in the example would read "Cougar: (invalid status)", etc.

Thanks!  It was mostly cribbed from your stuff.  I didn't put the name/link in the template because 1) I wanted people to be able to paste it below the list entries we've got with minimal trouble, and 2) I wasn't sure where I'd put those parenthetical notes we have after a lot of the links.

Also, why did you put an empty table at the end?

Spacing.  Very ghetto spacing.

For everyone else's reference, you can see a demonstration of the wiki template here.  This is what we might be using for creature raws.

I'm working on the other two wiki templates for taxon variations and body stuff.

[Footkerchief]

Here's a more fleshed-out demonstration of how we'll edit raws on the wiki.  Any thoughts?

[Gorobay]

The VERTEBRATE variation will, I assume, include the male and female castes; is there some way to tell a creature to delete castes from a variation and make new ones, as we would want to do for naked mole rats?

Though unrelated to these templates, I need to say this: there are some tags, like [MUNDANE], [PET], [PETVALUE], [VERMIN], [PREFSTRING], [CREATURE_TILE], [COLOR], [GOOD]/[EVIL]/etc., and [WAGON_PULLER], that don't have obvious right or wrong answers. Before we start churning out raws, there must be some system in place that can standardize the use of such tags so we are consistent.

[Lancensis]

I think everything on the list is MUNDANE, and none of them can be considered GOOD or EVIL. Basically all real-world animals in vanilla are considered PET (except for some of the crocodiles, strangely), so I guess we can conclude that Dwarves are capable of taming most anything without assistance. I think the PREFSTRINGS are something that people can just go ahead and contribute to immediately, although ones that are too "knowing" should be used sparingly.

[Fieari]

Some may certainly be [SAVAGE] though.

[SethCreiyd]

We should find out if The Toady One intends to keep the [PET] tokens as they are in vanilla.  It may not always be the case that dwarves can take bears and alligators and turn them into creatures safe to be around.  The future critter genetics might complicate this, especially if individual animals have somewhat distinct personalities.

[Footkerchief]

The VERTEBRATE variation will, I assume, include the male and female castes; is there some way to tell a creature to delete castes from a variation and make new ones, as we would want to do for naked mole rats?

Yeah, we'll probably set up a special REMOVE_CASTES creature variation that will strip out any caste declarations and caste-specific tags.  That should be clean enough.  That'll go on some kind of "Utility Variations" wiki page, along with any others we end up using (REMOVE_VERMIN, REMOVE_BIOMES, etc).

Though unrelated to these templates, I need to say this: there are some tags, like [MUNDANE], [PET], [PETVALUE], [VERMIN], [PREFSTRING], [CREATURE_TILE], [COLOR], [GOOD]/[EVIL]/etc., and [WAGON_PULLER], that don't have obvious right or wrong answers. Before we start churning out raws, there must be some system in place that can standardize the use of such tags so we are consistent.

I think everything on the list is MUNDANE, and none of them can be considered GOOD or EVIL. Basically all real-world animals in vanilla are considered PET (except for some of the crocodiles, strangely), so I guess we can conclude that Dwarves are capable of taming most anything without assistance.

Yeah, all MUNDANE with no GOOD or EVIL is my instinct too.

As for PET, all the mundane terrestrial (and amphibious) creatures seem to have the tag in vanilla, but I don't think any aquatic ones do.  That seems like a decent rule for us.  PETVALUE... I have no idea.  I'd be happy to just stick something vaguely reasonable in the templates and ignore individual species for the most part.

For WAGON_PULLER, PACK_ANIMAL, etc., I'd go with historical precedent.

For VERMIN stuff... like I said before, we can establish a rough size cutoff and make exceptions as needed.  It won't make sense to establish that cutoff (or guidelines for exceptions) until we've seen how vermin behave in the next version.

Some may certainly be [SAVAGE] though.

Don't think so.  I couldn't find any SAVAGE real-life creatures in vanilla.

We should find out if The Toady One intends to keep the [PET] tokens as they are in vanilla.  It may not always be the case that dwarves can take bears and alligators and turn them into creatures safe to be around.  The future critter genetics might complicate this, especially if individual animals have somewhat distinct personalities.

I think it's safe to say that PET and other similar tags will be replaced by more specific stuff later on, but they're what we've got for now (and the next several versions AFAIK) so we'll use them.

I think the PREFSTRINGS are something that people can just go ahead and contribute to immediately, although ones that are too "knowing" should be used sparingly.

Yeah, prefstrings are kind of troubling.  They're fluff, but they have a disproportionate impact on the game's flavor.  Also they don't work well when you have lots of similar creatures.  We can put the generic ones in templates (e.g. "rough skin" for sharks) and others on specific creatures, I guess.

[Footkerchief]

Status report time!

I went through frogs to round out the ones we've had since the beginning of the project (added by Lancensis?).  This makes the amphibian list more or less complete, which is awesome.  We may have an excessive number of frogs now, especially the Australian/Australasian frogs in genus Litoria and family Myobatrachidae -- if someone wants to prune those, go for it.

Bony fish are still far from completion.  I'll probably be working in this section again now that amphibians are done, but I could use some help.

Snakes aren't in terrible shape, but a couple sections need expansion, especially family Colubridae, which in real life contains two thirds of all snake species.  Ours only contains... five.

And finally, the bird list is coming along, but not done yet.  Birds mostly bore the crap out of me, personally, so don't make me do those.

edit: oh yeah, and insects need work as usual.  Neonivek has laid claim to Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) and Coleoptera (beetles), but there are plenty of other orders that haven't been touched yet.

[Aqizzar]

Birds bore the crap out of me as well.  I'll take the snakes though, if no one else does it first.  Should I post what I compile straight to the wiki, or put it here like we were doing before?

Oh wait, you put instructions in the first post.  Nevermind, I got it.

[Lancensis]

You can keep them fish. I'll do some birds

[Rainseeker]

I wonder if we can put in a temporary-fix to get birds to fly less.  Cranes, geese and other waterfowl obviously prefer to hang out in water, and many other birds forage on the ground, or roost on trees.

Also, It would be kind of cool if birds traveled more realistically where they flew in flocks (or "V" formations) and only when scared or for an other good reason.  I wonder if formations could be applied to flocks and herds once Toady gets military formations put in.

Semi-unrelated note:  Should undead birds really be able to fly?  *stir, stir, stir*  <---trouble

[Footkerchief]

I wonder if we can put in a temporary-fix to get birds to fly less.  Cranes, geese and other waterfowl obviously prefer to hang out in water, and many other birds forage on the ground, or roost on trees.

I think birds (vermin-size ones, at least) do hang out at ground level a lot, so it shouldn't be too bad.

Semi-unrelated note:  Should undead birds really be able to fly?  *stir, stir, stir*  <---trouble

Haha, the next version should actually handle this pretty elegantly.  The bird needs to have its flier body parts, which in turn need their functional tissues intact -- that might mean bone, muscle and feathers, or some subset of those.  We shouldn't have to worry about it much, since we'll be using standard materials/tissues for the most part.

[Rainseeker]

So what you're saying is that skeletal giant eagles aren't a fortress-ending threat any more?  Hmmm....

[Gorobay]

I think birds (vermin-size ones, at least) do hang out at ground level a lot, so it shouldn't be too bad.

Do you mean small birds should not be given FLIERs?

I just added a whole bunch of obscure creatures like sponges, worms, and xenoturbellids, when I noticed that Osteichthyes contains all tetrapods. And *gasp*: we have put them on the same level! Should I rearrange the pages to be taxonomically correct, or just leave well enough alone?