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[Levity]

Fantastic idea for a mod! You could go the extra mile and give each breed their own personality facets?

[brolol.404]

After the first version release I plan to give them personality traits. I'm not sure what actual in game effect or impact this will have though.

[brolol.404]

I added different life expectancies to each breed.

Also, penetration % and recovery time seems to work pretty well for balancing each breeds combat ability.

The breeds can loosely be grouped into three categories: hunting, protection and working. Generally, breeds in the protection category are better in combat than the hunting and working groups (even if they are smaller in size). Hunting dogs are generally better at ambushing, observation/detection and swimming. And, working dogs are generally a middle ground between the two other groups. The goal is to be able to find value in all breeds with no “overall best” option for every situation.

I have added about half of the breeds so far

[Meph]

Hey.

I gave it all a look, and I think making some little doggie sprites could be fun. It's 31 dogs, 31 puppies, 31 zombies, and X hunting/war trained versions. If it should make use of all features for the upcoming Steam/Itch.io tileset, it would also include corpses and maybe some animation frames, like wagging tails.


Here are 3 example sprites from the Meph set and the ones Mike Mayday made for the official upcoming tileset. If we go with something like the latter, we could only use them on premium DF; while the first style would work well with my current tileset. Any preference? (Mine are simpler, sideview sprites; Mikes have more character, but also use the full 32x32 space, making the dogs appear quite large)



Edit: Test.

Bloodhound, Coonhound, Foxhound, Labrador, Retriever, Poodle, Beagle, Terrier. What do you guys think?

[FantasticDorf]

Animals can have personalities and personality preferences, you just need to add the relevant raw strings to them regardless of whether they are sentient or not.

That way you can taper important things like bravery/cowardice into the approriate breeds with differing levels of deviation depending on how strong it is in the [PERSONALITY:Trait:Lowest:Median:Max] but obviously a dog's literary appreciation isn't really represented.

[brolol.404]

Those look awesome Meph. You are really fast. 

I plan to incorporate the personality traits with the initial version. I'll post a spreadsheet once I get the numbers figured out for you guys to look over and make suggestions.

[Egan_BW]

What do you guys think?

D'awwwww

[brolol.404]

I have started on the personality traits for each breed and will be using the following:

loyalty, family, friendship, power, decorum, cooperation, independence, stoicism, self control, tranquility, harmony, merriment, martial prowess, skill, sacrifice, competition, perseverance, leisure time and peace.

These are the personality trait average values for the bloodhound. The actual values for each dog in the breed will range from +/- 20 of the values below (max 50).



As you can see, the average bloodhound: greatly prizes loyalty, values family, thinks friendship is important, doesn't find power particularly praiseworthy, greatly respects those that observe decorum and maintain their dignity, sees cooperation as very important in life, treasures independence, doesn't see much value in being stoic, finds moderation and self control to be very important, strongly values tranquility and quiet, strongly believes that a peaceful and ordered society without dissent is best, doesn't really value merrymaking, does not really value skills related to fighting, believes that a mastery of a skill is one of the highest pursuits, values sacrifice, sees competition as wasteful and silly, greatly respects individuals that preserve through their trials and labors, doesn't think one way or the other about leisure time and values peace over war.

Let me know what you think.

[Enemy post]

You're putting way more detail into these dogs than I would have thought to. I'm impressed.

[Meph]

Shouldn't all dogs have a loyalty value of 100/100?

Edit: Is the Pinscher dog a Doberman Pinscher dog?

[brolol.404]

@enemy post: thanks.  my goal is to make every dog to feel unique, real and not mechanical

@Meph: yeah Doberman. I thought about making all of the breeds loyalty 50 (max), but I figured each breed and dog should have a bit more personality. For example, from above, the lowest value any bloodhound can have is "values loyalty" (15). So, there will never be a bloodhound that isn't loyal to it's owner, but some dogs will be extremely loyal and others will just be loyal. I am willing to change any of the values (and anything else in the mod) though if anyone feels strongly about it.

[Meph]

First 17 dogs from your list. from bloodhound to dalmation. (Edit: Ups, overlooked the german shepard and boxer, make that 19)



Edit: No pugs, no dachshund? Those seem to be perfect for comedic effect. Any plans to increase the amount of dog breeds, or are the 31 atm the final version?

[brolol.404]

Those look awesome. I'm open to adding more breeds and I'll add the pug and daschund to the list.

by the way, I meant for the sheepdog (when you get to it) to be an old english sheepdog.

[brolol.404]

I am considering adding the [CAN_LEARN] tag to the breeds. This has a few apparent benefits and consequences that I would like opinions on. If the [CAN_LEARN] tag is applied, dogs will he able to improve their skills (biting, swimming, etc.) in fortress mode and adventure mod (once pets are added). This will allow players to train their dogs and see benefits from veteran dogs in combat, patrol, hunting, etc. It will also allow for specific dogs to really shine if they reach legendary status. [CAN_LEARN] would require dogs to eat, drink and sleep which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing. It would add a bit more of a challenge to decide how you are going to feed a dog army if you decide to dogslopsion. It also makes the dogs feel a little more human in the sense that they eat, sleep and drink like the dwarves. [CAN_LEARN] does prevent dwarves from butchering them from their un-modded ethics. This doesn't seem illogical because dwarves do have strong ethics and I can see them considering dogs intelligent creatures that shouldn't be butchered. One other consideration (that I have not tested yet) is that the [CAN_LEARN] tag may allow for though ts and preferences to show up in fortress mode and adventure mode. This would allow you to see your dogs personality.

thoughts?

[brolol.404]

[CAN_LEARN] would also allow for [SKILL_LEARN_RATE] so some breeds could learn swimming faster than biting and others wrestling faster than observation, etc.