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[Neonivek]

Actually, you need the [STANDARD_FLESH] (?) tag, otherwise leather produced from the animal will be ungodly heavy.

Yep because their flesh will in fact be made of dark matter.

Though I wonder if that glitch will persist to the next version.

[SethCreiyd]

What makes something vermin?

The dictionary says:

1.    noxious, objectionable, or disgusting animals collectively, esp. those of small size that appear commonly and are difficult to control, as flies, lice, bedbugs, cockroaches, mice, and rats.
2.    an objectionable or obnoxious person, or such persons collectively.
3.    animals that prey upon game, as coyotes or weasels.

The game appears to go with the first definition.  I guess faeries are disgustingly noxious to dwarves.

[Fieari]

In DF, to my understanding, vermin is defined as anything cats like to hunt, and are small enough to be unable to damage normal creatures, and spawn spontaneously in the environment without breeding.  In the current version, vermin also have no defined bodies, though that's changing in the new version. On the other hand, in the new version, I don't believe the body parts are USED except for templating larger critters.

[Rainseeker]

In regards to the vermin issue:  I would like to see vermin no bigger than rats or snakes in general.  I feel we could have squirrels and middle-sized birds (crows, parrots, etc.) that are not vermin.  However, I insist that we re-make elephants to be vermin.  Have you ever had an elephant living in your basement?  IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of!

[Thursday Postal]

Rainseeker, what could you possibly be doing with an elephant in your basement?

[Shoku]

In DF, to my understanding, vermin is defined as anything cats like to hunt, and are small enough to be unable to damage normal creatures, and spawn spontaneously in the environment without breeding.  In the current version, vermin also have no defined bodies, though that's changing in the new version. On the other hand, in the new version, I don't believe the body parts are USED except for templating larger critters.

When have they ever hunted flies?

[Rainseeker]

Rainseeker, what could you possibly be doing with an elephant in your basement?

Well, you know how elephants can walk down stairs, but not up?

...besides, how else would I open my beer?

[Footkerchief]

Gorobay's questions first.  For the questions that I didn't address in this post or the next one, I agree with Lancensis.

What about differences in biome?

Consider making a more generalised creature, and giving it extra biomes. Some biomes, like mountains, deserts and tundra need all the variety they can get, however.

If the only significant difference is biomes, then yeah, I'd just do a generalized creature.  But if they have other differences, different biomes would definitely factor into the decision.

Terrestrial versus arboreal?

? I'm not sure where this would be an important distinction.

It doesn't matter in DF yet, but it's a big enough difference IRL that I'd take it into account.

Should extinct creatures be considered [MUNDANE]?

Hmmmm. Up for discussion. I would say no, though

I'd say yes.  The only creatures that don't have it (in vanilla) are fantasy creatures like gnomes and beak dogs.  Extinct animals aren't particularly fantastic.

Should parrots have [UTTERANCES]?

Heh. Well, wild parrots wouldn't know human speech. They could be given [SLOW_LEARNER] however, and they would slowly devolop conversationalist skills

Yeah, it would be fun to give them SLOW_LEARNER and CAN_SPEAK.  I think the current version supports conversations between dwarves and talking pets.

Can a creature variation delete certain body parts? I know it can swap existing parts (like QUADRUPED with HUMANOID in the example), but can it swap a part with nothing? This would be useful with legless lizards, so they can [APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:LIZARD] and then delete the legs.

I think they can, yes

I'm doubtful.  If they can't, though, it's not a really big deal -- you can just remove the BODY tag and add it back from scratch.  It isn't ideal from a templating standpoint, but hopefully we won't have to do it often.

Where will we keep the new [BODY] parts that there surely will be?

Just in a new body.txt file

Yeah, although we'll need a little infrastructure in the wiki to facilitate that -- taxonomic groups and creatures will need the ability to define new bodies alongside their template variation and raws, respectively.

This also touches on the broader question of how we're going to approach anatomy.  Broadly speaking, we should probably aim for anatomical accuracy on par with the creatures in vanilla DF, but the specifics will be tricky.

How will we assign symbols for so many creatures?

Convention is just the first letter of the animal's name. Vermin tend to have their own symbols.

There's another convention of using vaguely taxonomic symbols, e.g. F for feline.  I think that'll work out much better for us, both for ease of identification and ease of assigning the symbols (since we can do it in a template), but there'll be problems either way.  ASCII wasn't really meant for this.

How do genetics work? Are there dominance, codominance, and carriers?

This is the most I could find: "Right now it'll do dominant-recessive stuff with the color variables, and it can also do that with the appearance variables or do averaging. It's pretty simple at this point, but what's there now could be used to, say, breed your dogs toward certain colors and body dimensions, as well as whatever facial features there end up being (though the colors and patterns would be limited to whatever is in the raws)."

[Footkerchief]

I believe it does it from the source.  However, does anyone know if the game assigns values to the creature, or do we?  As you know, some bones are more valuable than others.

You can assign value as a material property now, which means it'll be really easy for us to work with.

The most fun in the Ark Project isn't just the animals themselves, but also capturing them or making stuff out of them. They should drop some funky stuff, have you guys included the thought of "spotted hyena" leather, etc? Or does the game generate the names itself from the source?

Huh? You can tan the hide of animals by default, unless you give it a certain tag (I can't remember which). You don't have to specify that it can be made into leather goods.

Actually, you need the [STANDARD_FLESH] (?) tag, otherwise leather produced from the animal will be ungodly heavy.

STANDARD_FLESH is gone in the next version, since we have materials and tissues instead.  If you want to produce leather from a creature, you just add a leather material to its material list.

What makes something vermin?

That's one for the philosophers, I suppose. It's a very pertinent question actually, and I'll have to think about that myself.

In DF, to my understanding, vermin is defined as anything cats like to hunt, and are small enough to be unable to damage normal creatures, and spawn spontaneously in the environment without breeding.  In the current version, vermin also have no defined bodies, though that's changing in the new version. On the other hand, in the new version, I don't believe the body parts are USED except for templating larger critters.

Vermin CAN damage normal creatures, though, at least by injecting them with poison (e.g. cave spiders in the current version).  It's not clear yet how much the new version has blurred the line between vermin and creatures, like whether they can use the new poison-oriented stuff like secretions and gas clouds.

So yeah, it's going to be tricky to draw the line between creatures and vermin, and it'll depend somewhat on how vermin behave in the next version.  If worse comes to worst, we can establish a numerical cutoff for size, allowing some leeway for vermin-sized animals that would work much better as full creatures.

[Lancensis]

Vermin CAN damage normal creatures, though, at least by injecting them with poison (e.g. cave spiders in the current version).  It's not clear yet how much the new version has blurred the line between vermin and creatures, like whether they can use the new poison-oriented stuff like secretions and gas clouds.

So yeah, it's going to be tricky to draw the line between creatures and vermin, and it'll depend somewhat on how vermin behave in the next version.  If worse comes to worst, we can establish a numerical cutoff for size, allowing some leeway for vermin-sized animals that would work much better as full creatures.

Robber/coconut crabs should definately be full-sized creatures though. With the Curiousbeast tags. There are stories of them carrying off cooking stoves. Maybe Cane Toads too. Releasing a flood of [VERMINHUNTER] toads to wipe out the local vermin would be a fun option.

Incidentally, the paralytic venom of vanilla Cave Spiders is permanent (!)

[Neonivek]

You use the Vermin tag when their body doesn't matter.

So if being stepped on by a person would kill them... Then Vermin they be.
-or rather... Smaller then a Fox? Smaller then a box? Smaller then an ox? Then Vermin you be
--Or rather they are soo small that their body doesn't matter (So being hit by a club for example could reasonably shatter their whole body)

In the the original DF Foxes were the smallest Non-Vermin creatures

So Squirls, Chipmonks, most crabs, most turtles, and walking severed hands are all vermin... albiet impressive vermin.

[Footkerchief]

FYI: Briess, the awesome DF Wiki admin, just created a new "Modifications" namespace, as I requested.  So I went ahead and moved all our pages over there.  The new namespace doesn't really support subpages, so this might be a good time to switch to using categories instead (although we could ask Briess to enable subpages for that namespace).

[Lancensis]

So if being stepped on by a person would kill them... Then Vermin they be.
-or rather... Smaller then a Fox? Smaller then a box? Smaller then an ox? Then Vermin you be
--Or rather they are soo small that their body doesn't matter (So being hit by a club for example could reasonably shatter their whole body)

In the the original DF Foxes were the smallest Non-Vermin creatures

So Squirls, Chipmonks, most crabs, most turtles, and walking severed hands are all vermin... albiet impressive vermin.

You could easily kill a fox by stepping on it. Just got to raise your foot high enough. It is kinda wierd how cats are a size up from foxes in DF, though.

So how does this new thing work, Foot? Is it like a mini-wiki of our own?

[Footkerchief]

So how does this new thing work, Foot? Is it like a mini-wiki of our own?

It's like a separate section of the wiki for mods.  It doesn't mean anything drastically different for us -- mainly, you've got your user talk page back again.

[Gorobay]

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