Minor refinement to creature categorisation: 'Monsters' and 'Beasts'

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Simons Mith
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Minor refinement to creature categorisation: 'Monsters' and 'Beasts'

Post by Simons Mith »

I'm looking at Fate of a Princess and as a side effect I'm noticing a few quirks in the main game

Wesnoth has a variety of scary monsters to fight - dragons, hydras, giant scorpions etc.
And especially in UMC it's common to encounter more mundane animals - wolves, bears, horses, etc.
FoaP actually has 'Ungulates' which is biologically impeccable but probably too accurate for a fantasy game :-)

Lumping everything under 'Monsters' would make for quite a long monster list.
I propose 'Giant <anythings>' are monsters, as are dragons, hydras, mudcrawlers and so on
and everything more mundane should be classed as Beasts (or possibly Creatures).

This would require some reorganisation of the game unit tree, but would provide a place for Bears,
Wolves, Bison, Wild Boars, Unicorns and other critters of those types which segregates them from the
genuinely monstrous and supernatural unit types.

[Edit: This distinction (or lack of it) is most exposed to players in the Wesnoth ingame help manual, which
is where I noticed it]

Worth doing?
 
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Re: Minor refinement to creature categorisation: 'Monsters' and 'Beasts'

Post by Lord-Knightmare »

Simons Mith wrote: July 25th, 2021, 3:44 pm I'm looking at Fate of a Princess and as a side effect I'm noticing a few quirks in the main game

Wesnoth has a variety of scary monsters to fight - dragons, hydras, giant scorpions etc.
And especially in UMC it's common to encounter more mundane animals - wolves, bears, horses, etc.
FoaP actually has 'Ungulates' which is biologically impeccable but probably too accurate for a fantasy game :-)

Lumping everything under 'Monsters' would make for quite a long monster list.
I propose 'Giant <anythings>' are monsters, as are dragons, hydras, mudcrawlers and so on
and everything more mundane should be classed as Beasts (or possibly Creatures).

This would require some reorganisation of the game unit tree, but would provide a place for Bears,
Wolves, Bison, Wild Boars, Unicorns and other critters of those types which segregates them from the
genuinely monstrous and supernatural unit types.

Worth doing?
In the upcoming 1.16, there is a separate race for horses now, stemming off from monsters. If more units of a particular category get introduced, I speculate the "monster" race can become a collective with the use help_taxonomy=.
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Simons Mith
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Joined: January 27th, 2005, 10:46 pm
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Re: Minor refinement to creature categorisation: 'Monsters' and 'Beasts'

Post by Simons Mith »

OK, TIL. Organising under monsters and then making subcategories as needed makes good sense
 
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