Print

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

[Rainseeker]

Personally I would like to see the game choose some of our animals to make giant.  "Oh, NO!  A Giant PINK-HEADED DUCK!!!  Curse you, Ark Project!!!"  I just need to hear that once from somebody.

EDIT:

Also, who woudn't want their fort invaded by a giant...



MOUNTAIN QUAIL?!?!

[Lancensis]

Sigh. Rainseeker and his Quails.

On a less SILLY note, is "Sandwich" a person-specific name, or has it become part of the english language?

[Cheddarius]

Wow, actually, the normal work seems like I can do it. So I just pick an undone section and fill it in with name/link of important species?

[Rainseeker]

Sigh. Rainseeker and his Quails.

On a less SILLY note, is "Sandwich" a person-specific name, or has it become part of the english language?

How is the sandwich question not sil- oh, you said LESS silly.  Sorry.

Oh, wait, no, that's serious.  Sandwich is fine, in my opinion.

[Footkerchief]

Wow, actually, the normal work seems like I can do it. So I just pick an undone section and fill it in with name/link of important species?

That's the basic idea, yeah, although you'll also need to add subsections to keep things organized -- the OP's guidelines on subsections were a little vague, so I revised them just now with some helpful examples etc. (it's item #6 under "How do I add animals"). 

Oh yeah, and "sandwich" seems fine to me too.

[Lancensis]

Oh yeah, and "sandwich" seems fine to me too.

In that case, don't mind if I do.

I got about four orders of birds ready, but haven't posted them all yet. I fileshed out the auks/gulls section, the proper name of which escapes me at present.

Before I forget, I know we're going for a fair few recently extinct animals, but are these a bit much?
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/05/mekosuchines_2009.php

[Rainseeker]

Those crocs look cool to me!  Especially the blue one.  Put em in!

[Thursday Postal]

  So there's a chance we'd see stuff like "Giant anteater titan," or worse, "Giant giant anteater."

MANTEATER

I laughed at that for a good minute.

[Footkerchief]

Why not allow names of the form "giant __" (e.g. anteater,  tortoise, clam, and deer), since they would be unambiguous? Currently, most of these are marked with asterisks.

I guiltily PM'd Toady to ask whether it's an issue

Toady's reply:

Hey, another Ark Project question, hopefully the last for a while:

There are a lot of Earth creatures with "giant" in their names, e.g. the Giant Anteater.  Is this likely to cause problematic names for the titans, like "titanic giant anteater" or "giant giant anteater"?  I guess this is really two questions:

1) Do randomized titans draw from the creature raws, or are they likely to in the near future?

2) If so, does it generate a name/description by sticking "giant"/"colossal"/"titanic" on the front?

They don't draw from the creature raws now, and I'm not sure they will later.  The hardcoded templates they are using now don't have an analog like raws, but they could end up something like variations.  Names are one of the things that need to be handled in parts -- none of the hardcoded templates interact poorly with their random uses (as far as I know).  That will change at the time when it needs to change.  For now, it won't cause any problems.

So I guess we can include giant whatevers all over the place.  I'm a little bummed that we won't see giant hairy purple versions of random beetles, but at least that's one less naming problem.

[Cheddarius]

It'd be kind of weird to have something like "giant miniature ostrich" or whatnot, though.

[Footkerchief]

It'd be kind of weird to have something like "giant miniature ostrich" or whatnot, though.

The upshot of Toady's reply was that we don't have to worry about that (or "giant giant ostrich" either) since those would only exist if someone went and created a raw entry for them.

[Cheddarius]

Ah.

[Rainseeker]

This is what Toady said to me about giant creatures, it's not that different from what he told you, Foot:

Giant animals?  They are all done explicitly in the raws.  Like giant
rats and stuff, that's about it.  Footkerchief sent me a similar
question about titans and name conflicts.  The titans use hard-coded
templates, so there won't be interaction problems at this point.  We
might have to jiggle the adjectives later on, but it shouldn't be a
big deal.

Tarn

[mendonca]

Looks good except for one thing -- use equals signs (=, ==, ===, etc.) for the section headers, not bold text (''' ... ''').  This makes them show up in the table of contents, and it'll help our raws generator understand the taxonomic tree.

Wonderful ... I see the difference now. Thanks.

The Ken Loach joke made me laugh, but it had to go.  I also asterisk'd "coolie loach" just in case, although I don't find it too problematic.

Of course ... at least it raised a laugh ...

I also made a note that family Cyprinidae may need further representation -- I glanced through and saw a few large genera (with common names) that weren't represented, and "minnow" should probably be diversified.

All in all, though, it looks pretty close to ideal, so thanks!

Great, thanks for that. I'll have to grab some more sections in the week.

[Pizdzius]

I have this is mind too:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/photogalleries/new-species-flying-frog-pictures/index.html

There are some new species discovered almost every day, most of them are insects or small "vermin" creatures