Template talk:Creaturelookup/0

Alternative arguments

Hey, Loci and other editors. I noticed that the game uses intestines while this template uses intestine. Also, gizzard in DF is called gizzard_stone in this template. Based on this page, it looks like alternative but identical arguments can be implemented like this:

{{{arg1 | {{{arg2|default}}} }}}

I would go in and edit it, but I'm not as experienced with this template and I'd probably miss something or break the template. Also, editing it has a nasty tendency to clear categories like this, so I'm reluctant to make a change like this myself. Do you think we should allow alternative arguments like this or just keep the template the way it is? --Lethosor (talk) 22:09, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

That certainly seems reasonable, and it would help make the template less "fiddly" when people try to add butchering returns. Unless anybody objects feel free to add this in, or I can make this change the next time I modify the template. I would like to note, however, that "gizzard" and "gizzard_stone" are two different things: a gizzard stone is a piece of rock stored in a gizzard (organ) for grinding food or ballast. Not all creatures with gizzards will have gizzard stones, so those two should be kept separate. --Loci 19:59, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Category suggestions

These are a few ideas I had for categorizing creatures, which could probably be implemented in this template (but I'm not exactly sure how). I'll leave them here in case someone else has better ideas on how to implement them. I'm putting these in their own section to make it easier to add new ones. --Lethosor (talk) 02:14, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

The problem I have with adding categories that depend on /raw information is that they will turn out exactly like Category:DF2012:Flying; that is, mostly empty and non-functional. I specifically did not create categories for my recent additions to creature attributes because I believe non-functional categories reflect poorly on the wiki. That being said, creating an administrative category for incomplete butchering returns shouldn't cause any problems. A "quick-link" to creature variations is an interesting idea, but significantly more difficult to implement. I will try to think of an acceptable way to handle variation information. --Loci 20:32, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

About the quick-links for variations - I thought of searching for [APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION], but I'm not even sure if it would be visible to a template - see the aardvark man raws, for example. If it's possible, a creature with that tag would provide an easy reference to the base creature (but it wouldn't be so easy to look up creatures that inherit from the base creature). --Lethosor (talk) 21:29, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I tried making a rudimentary page at Template:Creature/variation links. My idea was to extract the name of the base creature (since no creature variations that I know of change base names), using this template as an example, but it seems that this wiki doesn't support #invoke (or several other useful parser functions). I intended to have the template parse out the creature name, then include a secondary template which would simply display the links. Do you happen to know of any alternatives for string processing like this? --Lethosor (talk) 22:57, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I was apparently mistaken about butchering returns. The Creaturelookup template uses logic to disable butchering returns for intelligent creatures, which is determined by processing the /raw values. That means the incomplete butchering returns category automatically includes those creatures which should have been excluded as non-butcherable. Adding "contrib=no" to these creatures will still remove them from the category, but that's a lot of extra work for no appreciable gain. --Loci 20:39, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

My original thought was that, because animalmen inherit the NOT_BUTCHERABLE tag from their base creature, it wouldn't show up when searched for, but nightwing, a normal creature, appears in the category. Another interesting observation: the raws on aardvark man are different than the ones on DF2012:Aardvark man/raw - the latter includes the inherited tags. I honestly don't know why, since the gamedata template doesn't seem to call #df_raw anywhere. In any case, it turns out creatureinfo is what places contrib=yes pages into a category. This is even more confusing, since it looks like the category should only be included when the contribution message appears, which is not the case with aardvark man. --Lethosor (talk) 21:20, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

On second glance, it also turns out that you added that category, so I guess you would know about it. --Lethosor (talk) 21:29, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I managed to track down Template:Variation raw, which uses no_decode to prevent expanding creature variations. I guess that's a relief, since it means both the un-expanded and expanded raws are accessible. --Lethosor (talk) 21:36, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Suggested categories

• Pages missing butchering returns entirely: there isn't an easy way to find all pages that lack butchering information. Most "tattered" creature pages don't have butchering returns, but some do, and some that don't have it are rated higher than "tattered". Of course, this category shouldn't include animalmen, or other creatures that can't be butchered. It seems like checking for a single body part would do the trick, but jackals don't seem to produce hearts. Rabbits only produce a skull (which might work, but a few creatures might not even produce that - I'll have to check).
• My feeble attempt on Category:DF2012:Hermaphrodite could use a little work (if you're wondering, they're basically creatures without a male and female caste, so they can't reproduce). I know there are more than the 2 I bothered to mark, and if we integrate it here we could delete the template I created to cover it.
• This is probably unrelated to attributes, but quick access to creature variations (giant, animalman, etc) could be useful in some cases. They're hard to find in the creature template, and it's especially hard when the base creature is a vermin (although in that case it uses vermininfo instead, which makes it a lot harder to set up links between creatures since they use different templates. Using a separate template to look up creature variations given a creature name could work, similar to Template:Tame attrib proc.)
• Adding a category for creatures with contrib=yes would make it easier to track down pages that need more information (this is probably the easiest, just adding a simple {{#if:{{{contrib}}}| {{Category|Incomplete butchering returns}}}} should do the trick, but I'm not sure if it should be added on this template or under creatureinfo. Also, while I would prefer to use the category template to split the category into namespaces, using a link might be preferable in a few cases which I have yet to discover).