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[i2amroy]

Awesome Progress! 340 down only 58,760 more to go! At 10 a day that's only 22 more years! Yeah!

On the more serious side though I love that you're doing this as it certainly saves me a lot of work. Keep up the good work and I'll be cheering for you. (BTW if you manage to get 11 done every day it will only take another 14.6 years to finish, that's about 7 years less work to do, where as 12 compared to 11 only nets you about 1.5 years worth of work, so you might want to consider trying to get 11 done every day instead of 10) Best of luck for the mod, I'll be watching as you go along!

[Roses]

Hahaha, yeah it's a lot of creatures. Gonna try to get most of the common/large creatures in first, then go back and add the bajillion vermin type creatures that there will be.

[Roses]

MAJOR UPDATE!!!

While perusing the internet in search of good websites for information on creatures I happened across this gem http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/index.html

After using it for awhile I started to realize that the entries were all formatted in similar ways, and the web address' were all very simple. So I started thinking about a way to automate my creation of creatures and BANG! The creatures just started rolling in.

Currently I am still doing checks to make sure what I want is there and that there are no error messages, but expect a release in the next couple days of about 5,000+ creatures. This first release will have appropriate body sizes, biome tags, litter sizes, max ages, frequency, and pet value (the formula I am using for generating frequency and pet value may need to be changed).

Currently planned in this huge release:
All Mammals (1500 species or so)
Chunk of Reptiles (1000 species give or take)
Chunk of Amphibians (another 1000 species or so)
Chunk of Birds (another 1000)
Chunk of Fish (about 500 I'm thinking)

Check back in and I'll keep you all posted!

[Morwaul]

Wow, you just knocked a serious mud hole in that 22 year estimate.

As I ask these next questions please understand that I know very little about how the game really works.  Will all these new creatures slow down the game? Also, I assume that the game randomly picks which animals are going to come wandering through the biome.  If this is true then with 5000 creatures we will likely never see the most of the creatures.  This is great for diversity and realism but terrible for my Dragon Raptor and Hell Hound Army.  Is there a way to increase the likelihood of certain creatures in certain biomes? 

BTW.  Awesome that you would undertake such a project.  I'm sure the whole community appreciates your work and I know I do.

Thanks

[Roses]

You can choose frequencies of biomes and general frequency. I'm not sure how such a large number of creatures will affect the speed, but I am planning on adding a feature that will limit the number of creatures if it does turn out to be to many.

[Roses]

EDIT: Please note that most of the numbers are from the ADW website so if they are wrong I am sorry, I tried to make sure I didn't get any frogs that were bigger than Elephants. Also PETVALUE and FREQUENCY numbers may need to be changed. Further testing is required.

NEW INFO:
Using http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/index.html I have written a script that goes through all of their available pages for Reptiles, Amphibians, Mammals, and Birds and extracts the information they have for them. It then compiles them all together, and using some 30 basic creature templates (e.g. DOG_TEMPLATE, ELEPHANT_TEMPLATE, MONKEY_TEMPLATE, etc...) that I have taken from the raws it puts them all together in readable creatures for DF! Unfortunately there were less pages then I was hoping for on the ADW site, and I only got about 2000 creatures out of it, and many of those creatures have names like 'African bullfrog' or 'Darwin's frog'. Eventually I will go through and either change the name of or remove the creatures that have references to our world, but until then you can think of any of the creatures with peoples names as being people from your DF world, and any place references as being places in your DF world.

Because a list of 2000 some creatures would be to big, I have just included the break down below;
Amphibians: 127
Birds: 437
Mammals: 1277
Reptiles: 103

If you would like a list of all the creatures included I could put that in too, just let me know.

NOTE:
Currently all of the creatures are in one large file, I will be breaking this up into more manageable and readable files as time progresses, but I thought I would at least get this out to you all now.

ALSO INCLUDED:

• Also included with this file are most of Deon's fantasy creatures from his mod Genesis
• Tomitapo's leather and scale tiers (also used from Genesis)
• 4 Levels of Golems that I use in my own games, each one has several dozen castes of each rock/metal/gem and each level drops a different type of golem essence (Note: I haven't included any of my reactions for processing the golem essences, I can if you want, but I thought individual people would have different ideas with what to do with them, and really they are more for the next release)
• 4 Levels of Dragons, each with 10 unique castes.
• SOULS!!! - Each creature drops a soul (only the ones in creature_normal right now). Similarly to the golem essences I haven't included reactions for them, but have been thinking up some fun things to do.

[Pokon]

Hey, I am having issues with your dragons. It seems that they have no icon, and are a black blur. It seems to me like they are supposed to have individual caste tiles, but are missing them. Did I miss somthing?


Also, on souls: it depends on how horrific you want the players to be,realy.

Want to eat souls? Sell them? Use them to spike toys?

How about them using them to create powerful armor if they are used as a alloy? A bunch of dwarves with armor made from soulsteel created from the souls of elves just sounds dwarfy to me.
Of course, not every soul is equal. Naturaly, a soul harvested from something like a elf is not as powerful as one harvested from a high dragon. Wild beasts, such as wolves and such, would have weak souls or none at all. Evil races, such as goblins, may be able to make sets of armor completly out of souls.
Titans ( and FBs and HFS,) could be handwaved for not having souls by saying that there body and soul are the same, hence why they are so wierd in apperance.

[Roses]

Hmm, I'll have to check out the dragons, I think I might have included the not up to date version.

As for souls, currently I am thinking of something like soul steel or possibly making an even stronger form of adamantite. Maybe depending on the rank of the soul.

My thoughts for ranks of souls is that there would be the lowest rank for natural beasts (wild and domestic animals), then a rank for humanoid like creatures (humans, elves, dwarves, etc...), then a rank for supernatural creatures (ogres, trolls, pegasus, etc...), a rank for semi-mega beasts, and finally a rank for mega beasts (with the possibility of a different "special soul" for each mega beast. That way you could have a high dragon imbued steel sword, and as Toady adds more features it could be expanded to give special benefits and such.

Also, I may included a leveling up system for weapons and armors to go along with the souls, so for instance you bring a steel sword and 10 lesser souls and you get a level 2 steel sword, then you bring the level 2 steel sword and 10 lesser souls and 5 normal souls and you get a level 3 steel sword, etc... (can you tell I've been playing a bit of Dark Souls). This way you could not only make a soul steel sword, but a level X soul steel sword.

[Pokon]

Ah, okay. Also, the level-up system, if you can get it to work, would be epic!

" Now, I just need to kill about 100 more semimegabeasts before I can make a sword that can kill a dragon. Oh, well, genocide, here we go!"

[Pickerel]

I can't help but think that the soul system will be subject to an immense amount of outside modding, you don't necessarily need to do it...
I was thinking of perhaps a use for it because of the fantasy genera cliche of binding souls to all sorts of things, including (and usually) gems.  I was thinking, maybe make a use for those large gems: one large gem + one soul = 1 large soul gem (same material, different modifier 'item')... Or a new item, from an unmodified gem... OR to make sure that something is unmodded, specify only cut gems to be used, to make the item 'soul gem', which would then be used to make a reaction like that used for cut gems for use in decorating, giving a higher modifier... or the gem could have other uses, like the aforementioned in this thread soul steel or such.  Or for one of the multitude of magic mods that now exist... Or for an alchemy system... and so forth.
They're dwarves.  It doesn't matter what it is, they will make stuff with it.  Why I saw a dwarf craft pure fore into a legendary coat of flaming cloth!  He's dead, of course - couldn't take the heat.

This large gem is made of onyx.  It menaces with spikes of gold.  It is lined with rings of adamantine.  It menaces with spikes of groundhog soul.  On it is an image of a groundhog and a dwarf in cat leather.  The groundhog is cowering.

[Roses]

That was kind of the point, people could mod what they wanted for the souls, but as I will also be using this I might as well include what I I've done which right now is let all armor and weapons be upgraded to level 5 (i.e. iron level 5 short sword, steel level 5 buckler, etc...) and a couple unique metals and gems made from souls, including something that imbues iron with souls to make it closer to steel, for those maps that lack a lot of flux. All of this, plus some general creature modifications (none of the creatures have common domestic in the current release), will be in the next release (just have to finish writing a paper first).

Also, looking down the line it might be fun to make special weapons for special souls (thinking megabeasts should have their own special soul). Then you could get something like an adamantine drake slayer short sword, or some such.

Lastly, I'm taking suggestions for creatures that may not have been included in my processing, and am also taking suggestions of other modders to ask about including creatures (and giving them souls, so you don't have to). Right now all I have asked is Deon, because his is the mod I use most.

[Pickerel]

I hope it isn't rude of me, but I'd like to make a request.
Vanilla creatures, modded to have souls as well.
I would do it myself, but every attempt I make with creatures becomes a disaster, and currently my attempt to incorporate souls into vanilla creatures is giving nothing but errors, and I lack the time to do it... so yeah, if you could make copies of the standard files and mod them to have souls like your own, and include them, that would be completely awesome.

Admittedly I am not using the large quantity of natural creatures, and for that I appologize, but I AM using the golems and dragons, and the lesser golems I gave a civ and behavior.  They bring caravans ^.^  They sell stones ^.^

I look forward to the release you mentioned wherein you have the golem essence stuff for us to use as well ^.^

[Roses]

I hope it isn't rude of me, but I'd like to make a request.
Vanilla creatures, modded to have souls as well.
I would do it myself, but every attempt I make with creatures becomes a disaster, and currently my attempt to incorporate souls into vanilla creatures is giving nothing but errors, and I lack the time to do it... so yeah, if you could make copies of the standard files and mod them to have souls like your own, and include them, that would be completely awesome.

Admittedly I am not using the large quantity of natural creatures, and for that I appologize, but I AM using the golems and dragons, and the lesser golems I gave a civ and behavior.  They bring caravans ^.^  They sell stones ^.^

I look forward to the release you mentioned wherein you have the golem essence stuff for us to use as well ^.^

That's a good idea. The natural creatures aren't as polished as I would like them yet, and so having vanilla creatures with souls would be a good compromise for people that aren't comfortable with all 2000 creatures. It wouldn't be hard, I'll just write a quick script to do it, that way if any are added it will be easy to change. I will include this in the next release.

For future reference all you need to do to add a soul to the creature is add the body part SOUL in their body (I put them after the HEART but I don't think it matters). And add;
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:SOUL_TISSUE_LAYERS]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:SOUL:SOUL_TEMPLATE]
   [USE_TISSUE_TEMPLATE:SOUL:SOUL_TEMPLATE]
      [TISSUE_MATERIAL:INORGANIC:SOULGEMONE]
That should work just fine.

[Jakob]

Is there any way I can get a version of this without souls and Genesis? I would prefer just the new and awesome sounding creatures.

[Putnam]

Can you put all the modded files into non x_default files to maximize compatibility?

EDIT: NVM, figured out why the default files are there

but also

there's no genitalia_template at all, so every time I start the game crashes and my errorlog balloons to over a megabyte. I fixed the problem, but:

Do you just expect everyone who uses this mod to use genesis?