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[Dasleah]

Is it just me, or is that exclamation mark really obnoxious?

Anyway, we all know the plan is to eventually move everything possible into the raws, and to be fair, we've already got a lot to fool around with. But there's always room for improvement, and there's always things that are needed but rarely thought of. So, I've started this thread where we can all brainstorm some new raw tags, alterations to existing tags, or I suppose just general comments on modding.

So, here's a few of my own to get things started.

• [GROUPNAME:name] - this is one part flavour, one part clean up. In the unit list, we've all had pages and pages of spam, because it lists each unit individually. This tag not only gives a name to a group of animals (pack, herd, crash, flock, etcetera) but also allows for the grouping of wild animals in the Unit list. So instead of seeing 'carp - Wild Animal' printed ten thousand times, we instead have 'a murder of carp'. Zooming on this brings you to the average of their location. Creatures that are named, have the [LOOSE_CLUSTERS] tag, or are 1-creature groups are still listed individually.

• Not a new tag, but simply adding an existing one somewhere else - including the [TILE:] tag as a valid entry for ammo types would be nice. The default is fine for arrows and bolts, but some of us need different shapes to represent bullets and other fantastical things. [COLOR:0:0:0] would be nice as well.

• Whilst we're on the subject of colour, it'd be nice if that tag could accept standard RGB values as well. I know it's nice and retro to support terminal colours, but some of us need more variation, and DF would still look like a great low-fi game with more colours. Perhaps an option in the INIT file that allows you to choose between terminal and expanded colours, and so entries would require a new [COLORRGB:255:255:255:background] entry.

• Another one adding more flavour, a [SOLITARY:] tag would be nice. The arguments would be either MALE or FEMALE. This is to emulate the fact that some groups of animals expel their males from the group at a certain age. So, if the game ever generates a 1-creature pack of this animal, it forces it to be a particular gender (most often male).

• Related to the above, a tag like [HUNTERS:] would be nice, with the same arguments as above (MALE or FEMALE), to specify exactly which gender of the group does the hunting. It'd make that gender more aggressive than the rest of the group, who would loiter around until one of the hunters made a kill, and then they'd wander over there and hang around.

• Something like [SETTLEMENTNAME: DEFAULT:new] would be nice for entity entries. It would rename the existing default names for settlements - so instead of towns I could call them 'camps' or 'outposts' or something. Perhaps it could even take a population arguement, so it starts off a Camp, becomes a Village at X number of inhabitants, a Town at Y, and a City at Z.
  

So those are just a few off the top of my head. I look forward to everyone's suggestions about renaming Workshops  

[ricemastah]

[MATERIAL_PREF:MATERIAL_TYPE:SPEC_MATERIAL] It would determine the materials that civs would use in making their items. The spec material would be to give a specific material that they would use as opposed to just metal, wood, or stone.
So elves would have [MATERIAL_REF:WOOD:ANY] or something like that. Giving multiple tags should allow the civ to select from those materials. This would be really useful for modding new civs and giving them custom materials. I think it would allow more diversification of civs.

[Okenido]

[world_limit=?] would be nice.

[Neonivek]

Hmmm extra Tags? Well please don't judge them by their name... I should also warn that I don't know most of the existing tags.

-Bonecollector: The creature collects corpses and bones and drags it to their lairs.
-Fast healing: The creature heals faster then usual
-Regeneration: The creature can regrow lost bodyparts
-Leader(Creature): The creature can lead these beings. Doesn't refer to civilisations. (like how a Queen Bee leads Bees)
-Leadersize(#): The Size of the group, can override normal group sizes.
-Variable*Stat*(#): The creature can have altering stats such as size, speed, strength and Damlock.
-Alpha(t/f): Herd/groups of this creature will almost always be lead by an exceptional version of said creature.
-Alpha(Gender): If specified the Alpha will always be a specific gender.
-Alpha*Stat*(#): How powerful the alpha of a creature is compared to its kind.

UGH I am horrific... What ya think?

[ June 03, 2008: Message edited by: Neonivek ]

[Dasleah]

Regarding the above, how about allowing [CHILD:] and [BABY:] to accept creatures as arguments as well as age? So, if you wanted an ant-race to start off as Grubs, move on to Soldiers, and then upgrade to full Royalty, in the ANT_ROYAL's creature entry you'd have [BABY:ANT_GRUB:2] to signify it should be the ANT_GRUB creature for two years, [CHILD:ANT_SOLDIER:3] to tell it that it should grow into an ANT_SOLDIER creature, and then after that it becomes the ANT_ROYAL (whose MAXAGE is the time measured from its transformation into a Royal, not overall years starting from Grubs)

It'd be awesome for creatures who do undergo a metamorphosis in their lifespan, like Moths, Butterflies, or even some of the more fantastical creatures - start off with Eggs, move onto Wyrms, and then into full Dragons, for instance.

[Eagleon]

quote:Originally posted by Dasleah:
<STRONG>Regarding the above, how about allowing [CHILD:] and [BABY:] to accept creatures as arguments as well as age? So, if you wanted an ant-race to start off as Grubs, move on to Soldiers, and then upgrade to full Royalty, in the ANT_ROYAL's creature entry you'd have [BABY:ANT_GRUB:2] to signify it should be the ANT_GRUB creature for two years, [CHILD:ANT_SOLDIER:3] to tell it that it should grow into an ANT_SOLDIER creature, and then after that it becomes the ANT_ROYAL (whose MAXAGE is the time measured from its transformation into a Royal, not overall years starting from Grubs)

It'd be awesome for creatures who do undergo a metamorphosis in their lifespan, like Moths, Butterflies, or even some of the more fantastical creatures - start off with Eggs, move onto Wyrms, and then into full Dragons, for instance.</STRONG>

Better yet, make it so you can have any number of stages by putting one MATUREFORM tag in each creature type pointing to the next stage of development. That way you can have eggs, hatchlings, drakes, dragons, wyrms, great wyrms, ancient great wyrms, and finally kittens, if you wish, which would then grow into cats. The cats/any other fertile form would still have the BABY tag pointing to the first stage of development for their offspring, so the thousand year old terrifyingly skilled Great-Wyrm-Become-Cat (hunted by countless adventurers throughout the ages but now too cute to finish off) would still have kittens. You could also make a cyclic creature, like a phoenix or something even stranger.

Or just being able to simulate aging for mortal races that way would be pretty cool. Also, baby fortress. 'Nuff said. Muahaha.

[ June 04, 2008: Message edited by: Eagleon ]

[Captain Mayday]

[USEMOUNT:creaturename] - entity token allowing this entity to use this specific creature as a mount.

[KNOCKBACK:X] - Attack tag. I'm not totally sure how knockback is handled at the moment, but this would effectively make it always occur and X could be a size mod to affect the calculation.

[ARMOR:X] - on body parts. Adds to that body part's Block.

[LEATHER_BLOCK:X] - Increases block by X for clothing made from this leather.

[ARTIFACT:X] - Item tag. Likely best used on weapons and armour. Will cause X named artifacts to be created and distributed amongst members of its Entity throughout Worldgen. Would also give the artifact a Legend entry which tracks who wielded it, who was killed by it, etc.

[GAZE] - On attacks. Replaces the default message, i.e. instead of "The Gorgon stares at you in the left leg with its right eye. You feel sluggish" it would be "The Gorgon stares at you. You feel sluggish."

[REGENERATE:X] - On body parts. Will grow back from being severed. X is a multiple of normal regenerative speed.

[REGENERATES:X] - Like the above, but is a Creature token and applies to the creature as a whole. Body token supercedes this token.

Revision of (creature token) [FLIER] to require all [FLIER] body parts be working. I may be wrong but it seems like I can fly with just one wing.

[EXTRACT_NAUSEATE] - obvious effect.

[MALE]/[FEMALE] - Body tokens, enabling relevant body part by gender. I'm thinking horns here, and antlers.

[FAST_LEARNER] - opposite of slow learner. Useful for short-lived races.

Site types: AQUATIC_CITY, AQUATIC_CAVE, AQUATIC_RUINS, AQUATIC_CAVE_DETAILED

Overland movement changes: Oversea travel for Fliers and Swimmers. Overmountain travel for fliers. Party members incapable of following are left behind on their last valid tile.

[ June 04, 2008: Message edited by: Captain Mayday ]

[ June 04, 2008: Message edited by: Captain Mayday ]

[Neonivek]

Hmmm maybe some tags that make a creature's leather, meat, fat, bones, and skull more valuable.

Or at least something that makes its leather stronger.

(Once again... no idea if that is already in... I should check)

[Dasleah]

[LEATHERNAME:name] to change the name of its 'leather'. We already have the [CHITIN] tag, but it'd be nice to specify this on a per-animal basis (and the default would be 'leather') So we could have Pig Skin Armour, Snake Scale Bags, Bear Hide Hats, etcetera.

And regards to the above, [MODVALUE:X] increases the value of items made from the animal, but it would be nice to supply extra arguments to that to specify exactly what is valuable, and to make some parts more valuable than others. Something like [MODVALUE:LEATHER:3] to make the leather three times more valuable, or [MODVALUE:SKULL:2] to make the skull (and any products made out of it) twice as valuable as normal? That'd be nice.

Oh, and super-agree on the suggestion to make entities bias towards certain materials. That'd be awesome, and would really introduce a lot of 'flavour' into DF.

[Kholint]

Hope this hasn't been mentioned a billion times before, and I think it's sort of relevent to the current discussion- whilst it's not a bunch of tag suggestions, it *does* pertain to the kind of suggestions that should be made.

A concern: right now there is, to my knowledge, little or no normalisation in the raws (or support for features such as inheritance).

Tags like [LEATHER_BLOCK] and [EXTRACT_NAUSEATE] will only lead to inconsistencies, paradoxes and increasing difficulty to modify/maintain the raws. They should have tags such as [LEATHER] and [EXTRACT] that point to individual leather and extract entities themselves. This means that any animals with the same (or similar) leather or extracts will all be getting their data from one entity- making it easier to update all in one go, and reducing the amount of space needed for the raws (the former, dealing with easy of maintenence being more important than the latter, to be fair).

Right now just perusing through the raws for birds, I can see that multiple bird species have many of the same stats (such as [FLIER], [SPEED:400] and [NOT_BUTCHERABLE]- redundant data that could be done away with by making all bird types inherit their basic stats from an overarching bird type. Anyone whose done any OO programming will be more than familiar with the idea.

Consider adding a new animal, "black cat". Similar to the regular cat, only *more* unlucky (if that's even possible?). Most of its various stats and numbers will be set equal to the vanilla cat. If you then decided to go back and modify the normal cat's stats (such as making it easier to butcher/destroy en masse), you'd then have to update all the same entries in the black cat's entry (and any other possible cat species you may have added). If the black cat could be set to inherit its characteristics from the cat type, this wouldn't be a problem at all. (This can be applied just as well to the bird species, only I wrote this paragraph before the last one- plus it's nice to have variety).

Extra, quick note: old school flat file-style database is gross, XML is much much better.   :p

[ June 04, 2008: Message edited by: Kholint ]

[Neonivek]

How about the ability to give creatures a natural ranged attack other then Flame breath?

[Glowcat]

I'd like some form of [MATE] tag to allow different creatures the ability to reproduce with each other. Perhaps include an argument for the child's creature type as well. This would produce not only half-*** creatures, but allow slightly different variations (races) to reproduce. Also, the tag would allow [GENDER] tagged creatures (e.g. harpy) to start civilizations.

I know it might be difficult (even impossible) with the way DF works at the moment, but I felt the need to chime in.

[Dasleah]

How about a [OBJECT:CREATURE_TEMPLATE] system? So that you can define base templates for creatures that can be used for things like Skeletal and Zombie variations of creatures - and then more beside. So, the Skeletal template would have [NAME:Skeletal], [BODY:ALL:SKELETON] to show that the body should only be made up of the base creature's skeleton tagged parts, and the usual [BIOME:] and extras like [NOBREATHE], [NOBLEED], etcetera.

Zombies would have [BODY:ORGANS:HURT] and [BODY:LIMBS:HURT_MAJOR] or something to show that its organs should start off a little bit hurt, and the limbs should be severely damaged - even missing.

And since it's moddable, you could have all sorts of interesting templates - Half-Dragons, Hybrids (perhaps specify what creatures can't have the template applied, otherwise the game may generate Dwarf-Dwarf Hybrids), things possessed by Daemons, etcetera.

[Mephansteras]

I'd like to see the ability to tag creatures as having multiple possible body parts. Mostly for Demons and the like. So, we could have a demon set with the possibility for having 4 arms, or giant crab claws, or maybe one with a stinger tail.

Not sure exactly how this would work. Maybe body blocks that allow for multiple options. Although I suppose that might mess up other areas, like attacks.

A simpler way might be to just allow for multiple definitions of a given creature, and let the game randomly pick one when it spawns.

Sorry, not very well thought out right now.  But maybe it'll provide some inspiration.

[Techhead]

Can I vote to have much of the damage-related weapon raw data added to ammo's damage editable raw data?
Cross-bow bolts: Crit boost 1, fired from crossbows
Superheated re-bars: Crit boost 5, also fired from crossbows (This is a example/joke)
You just can't do that sort of thing with the current system.