[mainline] Fix inconsistent races

[beetlenaut]

The skeletal dragon is an "undead" version of a "monster", but I think the "undead" part is more important than the "monster" part.... Isn't the ogre a humanoid? I suppose you could describe it as a "monstrous" humanoid but it's still basically humanoid, isn't it?... I don't really see a problem with it having its own race.

I don't feel strongly about either of these, and your reasoning is fine anyway. If we can collapse the races a bit with a tree view, having a separate, root race for the two ogres would be less of a problem.

I think animals should exclude anything with a "supernatural" type of attack, so I would move these to "monsters".

I disagree. If you came from a world where no animals had flight, venom, or glowing body parts, those things might sound like supernatural abilities, but we see them as ordinary. By the standards of Irdya, where creatures have fire breathing, freezing curses, and fairie magic, cold body parts would probably seem pretty ordinary and not supernatural. The same thing goes for animals like the seahorse and rat that are larger than what we would consider ordinary. They are just animals in Irdya. Furthermore, bats are canonically non-supernatural. In the introduction of SotA, Ardonna studies them to find out how they absorb life forces, but discovers that their ability is just a natural consequence of the way they eat.

The monster crab clearly belongs under "bugs" since it's a crustacean.

I strongly disagree with this. There are crustaceans that almost everyone considers to be bugs (like pill bugs), but I've never heard anyone refer to a crab as a "bug". You may have been thinking that they belong together because they are all arthropods, but I still disagree. After all, horses, humans, and wolves are all mammals, but that doesn't mean they have to be in the same group.

By the way, is there a reason why the dustbok and tauroch are missing from your list?

I copied the list out of the main help screen. I forgot about those because they are in a campaign folder. The animals without riders could be moved out into wildlife though--assuming they are not meant to be specific to the era of two suns.

[Celtic_Minstrel]

I think animals should exclude anything with a "supernatural" type of attack, so I would move these to "monsters".

I disagree. If you came from a world where no animals had flight, venom, or glowing body parts, those things might sound like supernatural abilities, but we see them as ordinary. By the standards of Irdya, where creatures have fire breathing, freezing curses, and fairie magic, cold body parts would probably seem pretty ordinary and not supernatural. The same thing goes for animals like the seahorse and rat that are larger than what we would consider ordinary. They are just animals in Irdya. Furthermore, bats are canonically non-supernatural. In the introduction of SotA, Ardonna studies them to find out how they absorb life forces, but discovers that their ability is just a natural consequence of the way they eat.

Now I feel like you're being inconsistent with yourself…

By this reasoning, I don't think any of the units you placed in the monster category qualify to be there, with the possible exception of the Fire Dragon. If you're going to separate "monster" from "animal", I think there needs to be a clear distinction based on traits (not [trait] in the gameplay sense). Whether they have "supernatural" powers seems to me to be a natural division. The perceptions of the people of Irdya is more of an artificial division. We could use that as the division, but wouldn't that suggest that the Swamp Lizard or the Icemonax is also a monster rather than an animal? I think a natural division based on whether they have "supernatural" abilities is better, because it makes sense for "monsters" to have a lower resistance to arcane than "animals", doesn't it? Even if it's seen as "normal" for "animals" to breath fire or frost or whatever, that doesn't mean the residents of Irdya would consider that equivalent to what we know as a "mundane" animal, does it?

I guess I wouldn't mind the bat and the rat and the seahorse still being considered animals rather than monsters. (Even Dungeons and Dragons classifies the Dire Rat as an animal, not a magical beast.) But I still think the frost stoat and icemonax should be monsters. I could also see an argument that the yeti, roc, sea serpent, and maybe even wyvern shouldn't be monsters since they all only have physical attacks, though all of those are quite large so I don't think it's clear-cut. In particular, the wyvern's wings may not be able to produce enough lift to take off, so maybe they need to be a monster.

The monster crab clearly belongs under "bugs" since it's a crustacean.

I strongly disagree with this. There are crustaceans that almost everyone considers to be bugs (like pill bugs), but I've never heard anyone refer to a crab as a "bug". You may have been thinking that they belong together because they are all arthropods, but I still disagree. After all, horses, humans, and wolves are all mammals, but that doesn't mean they have to be in the same group.

Even though they may not be thought of as "bugs" in normal conversation, they have more in common with other creatures in the "bug" category than they have in common with the creatures in the "animal" or "monster" category. Treating crabs as bugs is also precedented in other game systems, such as Dungeons and Dragons, probably for exactly this reason. Remember that the choice of category implies that everything in that category has a common base, but crabs have almost nothing in common with everything else you've placed in the "animals" category, which are all vertebrates. Even if you didn't want to categorize the crab as a "bug", in this context it also makes no sense to categorize it as an "animal" either. (Remember, in a scientific sense, everything in the "bug" category is also an "animal", so it's not like being an animal is the sole condition to categorize it there.)

[Helmet]

I think monsters should be scary.

The icemonax is not scary -- the description compares it to a squirrel -- so it's not a monster.
The monster crab is simply a big crab -- but it can lop off your head with it's powerful organic scissors -- so it is a monster.

If the icemonax is supposed to be scary, change the description so it doesn't sound like something children feed in the park.

[egallager]

I dunno, there are a lot of non-scary monsters... Pokémon, Digimon, the monsters in Dragon Quest: Monsters... a lot of them are rather cute, actually. I think the icemonax counts as a monster in the sense of a generic term for a JRPG enemy

[beetlenaut]

Now I feel like you're being inconsistent with yourself…

I was confused about this for a while, but maybe you mean that a creature actually found in the real world wouldn't be called a monster, which is a fair point. I have different suggestion at the end.

Remember that the choice of category implies that everything in that category has a common base

Since when? "Monsters" has always been just a catchall since BfW 1.0.

crabs have almost nothing in common with everything else you've placed in the "animals" category, which are all vertebrates.

I wrote this post offline over a couple days, and I did, in fact, have all the insects and arachnids in the "animal" category until the last minute. The category was just getting long, so I looked for a subgroup with enough members to pull out. You do seem to be thinking of arthropods here, because you are leaving out the cuttlefish. However, "arthropod" is at a higher taxonomic level even than "vertebrate," which makes it kind of useless as a sub-category. Besides, we are not writing a modern science textbook here. I would consider "herpetile" or "fish" to be other valid choices for Wesnoth if we had enough of them, even though they are taxonomically meaningless.

Monsters... a lot of them are rather cute, actually. I think the icemonax counts as a monster in the sense of a generic term for a JRPG enemy

This has never been a cute Japanese RPG though. I wouldn't consider a "monster" to be any creature that is vulnerable to arcane magic as CM defined it either. It seems that "monster" is ambiguous and has too many definitions, so maybe we should retire the category and be more specific. I propose Megabeast as a sub-category for holding the dragon, sea serpent, roc, yeti, tentacles, and so on.

(This idea has some code behind it now on GitHub, so it seems like more than an academic discussion.)

[doofus-01]

We can argue over the precise placement of each thing later, I think the general idea should be implemented, then we can take this step-wise:

1. octalot's PR
2. Major Divisions - Animals, Monsters, Beasts, Elementals, Dwarves, Humans, etc.
3. Minor Divisions - Dunefolk, Wood Elves, Nudist Dwarves, etc.

As far as who should be "monster" vs "animal" - I'm on the raw power side. The land of Wesnoth has elves, mages, and trolls, it's clearly not Earth. Some of the Wesnoth animals can directly access magic, just like some Earth animals can directly access electricity (eg. eels and stargazers) and magnetic fields (eg. fish, birds, maybe even insects). Categories are lines we draw, nature doesn't care about categories, The help guide is written from the viewpoint of someone in the world of Wesnoth, it can be slightly wrong as long as it is consistent enough. If there is significant disagreement for some unit, the fluff can justify the placement.

A Sci-Fi add-on that explains this all logically would be great, but we (core development team) don't need to worry about it for now.

[Celtic_Minstrel]

Since when? "Monsters" has always been just a catchall since BfW 1.0.

That's fine as long as it really is a catchall, but this proposal appears to be about making it not be a catchall anymore.

I wrote this post offline over a couple days, and I did, in fact, have all the insects and arachnids in the "animal" category until the last minute. The category was just getting long, so I looked for a subgroup with enough members to pull out. You do seem to be thinking of arthropods here, because you are leaving out the cuttlefish. However, "arthropod" is at a higher taxonomic level even than "vertebrate," which makes it kind of useless as a sub-category. Besides, we are not writing a modern science textbook here. I would consider "herpetile" or "fish" to be other valid choices for Wesnoth if we had enough of them, even though they are taxonomically meaningless.

Well, the division between "animal" and "bug" isn't really based on taxonomy. I would classify a snail as a bug, but an octopus as an animal, even though both are molluscs. Pretty much all arthopods would be classified as a bug, but a lot of other invertebrates would also fall into that category, for example worms. All vertebrates would be classified as animals, but some invertebrates (like cephalopods at minimum) would also be classified as animals. It's not a scientific division but sort of based on "feel". If it's a "creepy-crawly" type of creature, it's a bug. There are probably a great many invertebrates that don't really "feel" like they belong in either the bug or animal category, but this isn't really something to worry about unless we decide to add one of those to the game.

As an aside, we don't have anything in the game that would fit it right now, but there could also be a "plant" category which would contain motile plant creatures.

I wouldn't consider a "monster" to be any creature that is vulnerable to arcane magic as CM defined it either. It seems that "monster" is ambiguous and has too many definitions, so maybe we should retire the category and be more specific.

I think that if we keep "monster" as a category, it should be distinguished from "animal" and "bug" by its differing arcane resistance. In essence, a "monster" could become equivalent to a "magical beast".

If we want to retire the "monster" category, then I don't really mind, as nearly everything in there makes sense as an animal as well. The only question then would be whether it makes sense for the fire dragon to be an animal.

I propose Megabeast as a sub-category for holding the dragon, sea serpent, roc, yeti, tentacles, and so on.

Hmm, I suppose there's some sense to this; if we want to retire the monster category, and everything we haven't already decided fails to qualify as a monster is huge, then "megabeast" does fit.

[egallager]

Monsters... a lot of them are rather cute, actually. I think the icemonax counts as a monster in the sense of a generic term for a JRPG enemy

This has never been a cute Japanese RPG though.

Anime-style Konrad & Li'sar would say otherwise. Also a lot of the spritework used to be a lot cuter, although that seems to be getting replaced nowadays. Also the game was based on "Master of Monsters", which was a Japanese SRPG. Also people continue to compare the game to Fire Emblem due to similarly-styled sprites

[Helmet]

I like the term "monsters."

Maybe we should put all the non-humanoid creatures on a huge map and let them fight it out. After half of the units are dead, the dead ones will be classified as animals, and the ones that devoured the other half are monsters.

[Straff]

I've always been bothered by the term monster, I prefer the term megabeast. Monster fits for something like Viktor Frankenstein's Creature.

[Lord-Knightmare]

The term "megabeast" doesn't really fit Wesnoth-ian theme, IMHO.

I think monsters should stay as the name of the parent category.

[doofus-01]

The term "megabeast" doesn't really fit Wesnoth-ian theme, IMHO.

I think monsters should stay as the name of the parent category.

I agree. Megabeast = Megadeth + Superbeast. Might be cheesy, might be cool, tastes vary. But it's not Wesnoth.

[pipapopinguin]

I remember when I was still new to Wesnoth and I also thought the monster "race" was kinda off. I think some changes should be done, but not too large ones. I think we should keep this simple and so try to make "a complete newbie" not a bit confused by the monster type as well as not have something as "Megabeast", which already sounds kinda ridiculous.