Bay 12 Games Forum

It's no secret that Dwarf Fortress counts a great multitude of nerds among its playerbase, so it is not entirely surprising that, when one Rami Luisto decided to write a mathematical paper in the form of a novelette, he depicted a world forged on Armok's anvil. As he himself puts it: "The specific format of this text is not a derivative work of the game Dwarf Fortress, but DF has had a large effect on this work, which we gratefully acknowledge."

Will Urist McMapmaker succeed in mapping a world in which space itself has been shattered? Will the necromancer's terrible curse ever be lifted? To find out, you'll have to read A Non-Euclidean Story Or: How to Persist When Your Geometry Doesn't, available from any well-stocked caravan.

Currently, randomized creatures are impossible to create, via raws alone. Understandably, Toady wishes to cross this bridge when he comes to it.

That said, there is a simple change to the raws that would work as a nice prelude to more complex or convenient randomization, without upsetting anything.

The APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION tag allows for the inputting of arguments, allowing for variability with a single variation. If the arguments could be randomized, so could the creatures. I imagine the syntax could work like this: [APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:MENDELSSOHN:1;2;3:YES:blue;black;red:NOFEAR|NOPAIN;NOTHOUGHT;CRAZED]
Where a group of semicolons indicates a set of equally possible choices for an argument.

This implementation would of course be somewhat clumsy, but it would open up a lot of possibilities, without the need for recourse to hackery, thus allowing for greater ease of use, and of distribution.

So, I figured out a way to add as many tags as I want to most (if not all) procedurally generated creatures (removing tags can also be done, albeit in a more limited way.) However, it seems so simple, that I find it hard to believe that I'm the first to find it, and I don't want to generate a kerfluffle in vain. Is this common knowledge?