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[Glanzor]

Nope.  I'd need to see a save for that, and even that might not help.  Getting it to reliably reproduce is the best way.  If all that's already on the bug tracker it'll just take time to get there.

Sometimes creatures get notable without getting a name. This affects civilized creatures without [CAN_SPEAK] and the merchants' animals in Fortress mode when they are killed.
The game treats them like they have a name, however and this produces ugly " , "" "-entries in the creature list in legends mode similar to the unnamed region and civilization problem you just solved.
I think this causes the problem Shonus is talking about as well.

[Lord Shonus]

It is. I suspected that the problem might stem from the same source as the cavern issue (that was mentioned as being fixed), and that fixing one would fix the other. It's a minor issue in any case, and I'm not pressing it. I was just curious.

[Captain Mayday]

I have a question, partially regarding the problems grazing animals have right now with starving to death so easily

How do Grazing, Hunger, and grass growth work alongside each other?

To be more specific, I can see that the GRAZER:X token allows X hunger to be removed for every unit of grass eaten.
What determines the rate at which hunger increases? Is creature size a factor?
Is a 'unit' of grass simply 1/4 the maximum amount that is growing on a space?

If creature size is a factor in determining rate of hunger, why is there such an enormous difference in how much hunger is removed?

First, Limegreen, not Green.

Second, one unit of hunger is added every frame, regardless of creature speed.  The average creature gets 1 turn every 10 frames, and one of those turns has to be used moving, so any creature with Grazer:19 or less cannot feed itself. An elephant, which only removes 12 hunger per eating of grass, is on a countdown to starvation the instant that hunger is in place.  I'm told they generally starve within a season regardless of anything you try to do, short of butchering them immediately.

Third, creature size is only a factor in how Toady hand-coded the raws.  I'm assuming hunger coding involves simply iterating a hunger counter for every hunger-tracked creature every frame, and creature size will only have an impact on how much they need to eat at once.  You can manually recode Elephants to eat as little as rabbits if you so chose. 

Fourth, creature size is such an enormous difference because the creatures have such enormous differences in size.  Toady clearly simply started with 60,000,000 and divided by creature size to find the grazer value.  No other factors of creature metabolism or attributes or individual animal size difference compared to the average of the species or even the age category are as yet implemented (although Toady's recent response implies that is coming), so this is purely a function of size alone, and you're comparing a 5-metric-ton elephant to a .5-kilogram rabbit.  Hence, rabbits eat 1/10,000 as much food as an elephant.  (Only technically not, since a rabbit would starve before it got to 120,000 hunger, anyway.  This intermediate-stage hunger thing lacks sanity checking.)

I was concerned that perhaps the rate at which hunger increases is also linked to size, in which case creature size would be affecting it twice.

[NW_Kohaku]

I was concerned that perhaps the rate at which hunger increases is also linked to size, in which case creature size would be affecting it twice.

I don't think so - this seems to be based off of a iterate-each-frame method, so that all creatures starve after the same period of time with no food (when the unsigned integer hits its maximum value at 65535), they simply eat more (or lose less hunger when eating the same amount) to compensate for size at this moment.

To do otherwise would require a system where all the units on the map weren't iterated through every single frame.  You can't add 1.25 to an integer for a creature 1.25 times normal mass, after all.  That's not to say that Toady couldn't overhaul the system so that hunger was only added on every 10 frames or so to give some room for a "fraction" of a hunger per turn, of course, but that's just not the system we have right now.

[Captain Mayday]

I was concerned that perhaps the rate at which hunger increases is also linked to size, in which case creature size would be affecting it twice.

I don't think so - this seems to be based off of a iterate-each-frame method, so that all creatures starve after the same period of time with no food (when the unsigned integer hits its maximum value at 65535), they simply eat more (or lose less hunger when eating the same amount) to compensate for size at this moment.

To do otherwise would require a system where all the units on the map weren't iterated through every single frame.  You can't add 1.25 to an integer for a creature 1.25 times normal mass, after all.  That's not to say that Toady couldn't overhaul the system so that hunger was only added on every 10 frames or so to give some room for a "fraction" of a hunger per turn, of course, but that's just not the system we have right now.

You can modify the maximum hunger though, by doing that. Especially if the hungry, very hungry, starving states are based on percentages.

[Quatch]

Doing that would require a lot of math (percentages, multiple if statements) every creature, every frame. You might be able to just bump hunger by a different amount by creature|size|diet, which would be similar in effect, but simpler.

All in all, its obviously a placeholder, which means we'll probably have it for a while until it gets fully detailed. Shame about the elephants though.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Are the hardcoded "fire breath", "fireball toss", "dragon fire breath", and "shoot web" behaviours considered complete, or placeholder? I ask because breath attacks and secretions with associated materials have been added. The glittery balls of fire that fire imps toss look pretty, but they don't appear to do anything in arena mode, even if you get hit by dozens. Back in 0.28.181.40d, those balls could be lethal, so the code appears to outdated. Do you intend to merge the hardcoded breath weapons into the material breath system?

[Sowelu]

The glittery balls of fire that fire imps toss look pretty, but they don't appear to do anything in arena mode, even if you get hit by dozens.

Just wanted to verify, do you have temperature turned on?

[Areyar]

Do dwarves (et al.) have the ability to extinguish small fires on themselves by simply swatting at it (expending a single tick-cycle or so) or by rolling frantically on the round (being totally distracted, etc)?
Do dwarves on-fire go out after running around panicked and aflame for a while?

If not, it seems unfair.

[Greiger]

From my own experience with creatures that are immune to the heat fire gives off, fire will eventually burn itself out.  Well after a dwarf would have already died in the heat through.

Depending on clothing materiel alone, a fire can take between about 10 days to half a year to go out without the application of water.  (And if you aren't fast enough even water won't help as the fire can get hot enough to flash boil it to steam before touching the fire.) I don't know what materiel goes out fastest, I just know it has an effect.

[Urist Da Vinci]

The glittery balls of fire that fire imps toss look pretty, but they don't appear to do anything in arena mode, even if you get hit by dozens.

Just wanted to verify, do you have temperature turned on?

Just tested, arena mode, 1 elf vs ~60 imps. I ran the elf around to stay just out of melee range of the horde. "You are caught in a cloud of flames!" 19x, and "You are struck by a ball of flames!" 26x. Temperature was on. Nothing happened. However, dragon breath did cause the elf to bleed/melt to death.

[Captain Mayday]

The glittery balls of fire that fire imps toss look pretty, but they don't appear to do anything in arena mode, even if you get hit by dozens.

Just wanted to verify, do you have temperature turned on?

Just tested, arena mode, 1 elf vs ~60 imps. I ran the elf around to stay just out of melee range of the horde. "You are caught in a cloud of flames!" 19x, and "You are struck by a ball of flames!" 26x. Temperature was on. Nothing happened. However, dragon breath did cause the elf to bleed/melt to death.

Were you naked? If you were, you didn't have any clothes to catch alight.

[Untelligent]

Were you naked? If you were, you didn't have any clothes to catch alight.

In other words yeah, fireballs and fire in general need a fair bit of work yet.

[NW_Kohaku]

Were you naked? If you were, you didn't have any clothes to catch alight.

In other words yeah, fireballs and fire in general need a fair bit of work yet.

The problem is that there are only two numbers that matter - what point something burns at, and what point something melts at.

Real creatures are harmed by heat and cold for reasons other than their flesh actually being so hot it melts off.  Homeostasis isn't really modeled that well.

[G-Flex]

The problem is that there are only two numbers that matter - what point something burns at, and what point something melts at.

You're forgetting the HEATDAM_POINT and COLDDAM_POINT, which are useful for things like bodily tissues, which suffer structural/chemical damage well before melting or being set on fire.

Real creatures are harmed by heat and cold for reasons other than their flesh actually being so hot it melts off.  Homeostasis isn't really modeled that well.

Very much true. There's something wrong when your insides can get to such a temperature that your brain burns, without you losing consciousness, much less dying.