Sounds like a proper project.
Keep in mind that Toady is adding 50+ animals in the next DF version.
I guess you're using genitalia tissue, the genitals, and my tuned-for-combat tissue bleeding & pain numbers?
Do you have a master chart of animal movement speeds, with birds at the top? Weight(size) and littersize and clustersize are easy compared to assigning a single speed to a species.
How detailed animal bodypart colors are you doing?
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I know Toady is adding a lot of animals, and I will probably use some of them as basis, but right now I'm trying to get as many different species as I can in the game (grouping them by Class, Order, Family, and Genus). I am planning on doing a couple different run throughs of the creatures, my first is giving them accurate descriptions, biomes, speeds, sizes, and littersizes. My next run through will be giving them proper clustersizes, population numbers, and any unique traits that may fit that particular species, and finally giving them properly colored body parts (snow leopards different from clouded leopards different from normal leopards etc...) with the proper ratios for genetic variants (white lions, black jaguars, etc...)
Currently I am done with my first run through of the Mammalia of the Carnivora order (felines, canines, bears, weasels, seals, etc...) which is about 140 species or so (I dropped all animals with great in their name so that I can create great variants later that are actually great in size, and I dropped all animals that are named after people, like the Geoffrey's cat, and all animals that are named after places, like the Iriomote cat, and changed the ones I could, like the Chinese Mountain Cat, became the Mountain Cat).
Right now I can get about 20 to 30 species done with the first run through a day, which means it will only take me about 10 years to get all the species done!