Modification:Ark Project/Guides

What makes an animal worth including

• Notability: the animal is widely recognized, has cultural importance (such as a role in mythology) and/or has interesting differences (morphology, behavior, habitat, diet, etc.) from others of its kind. If a group contains many species with uninteresting differences, consider lumping them into a single generic creature.

• Non-extinction: if the animal has been extinct for more than (roughly) 1000 years, it belongs in one of the extinct sections. Dinosaurs and Ice Age animals are not a major focus of this project, but you're welcome to add them.

• Size: the animal is large enough for a dwarf to take notice of it. This rules out microorganisms and other very small animals.

How to add animals to the list

1. If you don't already have one, create an account on this wiki.
2. Find an unfinished section of the animal list.
3. Use an online source such as Wikipedia to find lists of animals. The WP page for a particular taxon (biological grouping of organisms) usually has a "Taxonomy" or "Classification" section containing links to smaller subgroups, or a taxonomic diagram on the right side.
   • For example, on the WP page for the class Amphibia, the Taxonomy section links to the subclass Lissamphibia, which in turn links to the amphibian orders Anura, Caudata, and Gymnophiona.
4. Work down to more specific groups of creatures, generally at least to the family level. Use the inclusion guidelines above to decide how many representatives each family should have. Sometimes one is enough, and sometimes every species should be represented.
5. Make sure the creature's name doesn't contain a proper adjective (such as "African"), a proper noun (as in "Fraser's Dolphin") or any reference to Earth geography (such as "Northern"). If possible, use an alternate name for these animals to avoid throwing off the mod's flavor.
   • For example, we used the alternate name "gray shark" for the Greenland shark and we got "bear devil" from the Tasmanian Devil's taxonomic name.
   • The naming issue is often tricky, so feel free to ask for advice in this thread. If you're unsure about a name, mark it with an asterisk (*) so it can be reviewed.
6. Edit the relevant section of the creature list. Include the creature's name and a link to its Wikipedia page. Please use American English spelling in the creature name -- we're hoping to automatically generate a British English version of the mod, but we need a standardized starting point. If the creature is already present in vanilla DF, put "(already included)" in boldface after the link.
7. If a taxon is large (with more than a dozen-ish notable animals), or if its sub-taxa have major differences, consider creating new subsections for the sub-taxa.
   • For example, for the tree frog family Hylidae, we created new subsections for its larger genera: Litoria, Hyla, and Pseudacris. We also used a section called "Other Hylidae" for creatures from smaller genera that didn't warrant their own subsections.
8. Post in Bay 12 Forums thread to brag about your contributions! (optional)

Tips

Increasing section depth

If you need to increase the depth of a large section and don't want to add in hundreds of equals signs, here are find-replace regular expressions that will do it for you in a sufficiently advanced text editor such as Notepad++:

Find	(=+)([^=]+)(\1)
Replace with	\1=\2\3=