Feature Monster part data

Monsters have an arbitrary number of arbitrarily named body parts. These have had some very minor gameplay impacts since they were introduced, which was presumably around christmas 2008.

The kolwiki has impressively well populated data on monster body parts:
http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Category:Monsters_With_Specific_Parts

Recently some more part related mechanics have been introduced, and one of them - Hogtie - is quite relevant to ascension gameplay. The possibility of further body part related mechanics in future seems relatively high.

I think the following is a comprehensive list of current gameplay mechanics relevant to body parts:

They determine what parts a reanimator can collect from a monster. The relevant parts are head, arm, leg and wing
He can also collect weird parts. I'm not sure if this can be done by default, or if it requires the monster to have a named part that is not one of the above named parts.

They determine if some combat skills become available:

They determine the effectiveness of some combat skills and items:

Technically this wouldn't be difficult. It could be another value in monsters.txt, possibly with a Parts: prefix or something. That could easily be available as part of the data for each monster, stored internally probably as a List<String>.

Practically speaking, it's a lot of effort to update the data file, even if we assume that the wiki has perfect information to start with. After an initial rush, I expect that monster part data will trickle in for new monsters. Is this something that belongs in mafia, or in a script?

Possibly a reference library for other scripts to use?

Yeah, I don't think this belongs in Mafia any more than damage formulas (which are in BatBrain).

heeheehee said:

Yeah, I don't think this belongs in Mafia any more than damage formulas (which are in BatBrain).

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I think its a lot more comparable to monster phylum.

But I can certainly understand any misgivings toward adding and maintaining the data, for the reasons Lostcalpolydude mentions.

Well, monster phylum barely needs any spading. Tongue depressor once per enemy (or check manuel, if that's a thing you have), and that's done. Monster part is so incredibly niche, and it's possible the wiki has both false positives as well as false negatives.

By large, the problem with the wiki is the same complaint that I remember re: using wikipedia as a source: anyone can edit it, so there's no guarantee on quality or correctness of information. Granted, that's not the actual reason why citing wikipedia is a bad idea, but there's so few actual sources for claims on the kolwiki that I don't trust them unless I know and trust the corresponding contributor.

heeheehee said:

By large, the problem with the wiki is the same complaint that I remember re: using wikipedia as a source: anyone can edit it, so there's no guarantee on quality or correctness of information. Granted, that's not the actual reason why citing wikipedia is a bad idea, but there's so few actual sources for claims on the kolwiki that I don't trust them unless I know and trust the corresponding contributor.

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That's generally a fair observation and a good reason not to blindly trust wiki info. However, the wiki part data has been populated as a concerted effort by a small number of reliable editors.

I would trust this bit of the wiki enough to tolerate the occasional report of incorrect/new parts. Hell, I'll maintain the library myself if someone would be kind enough to write up the initial version.

From scraping the wiki, I came up with the attached list.

If this is implemented, it would be great if mafia could pick up on "missing" parts on monsters when one of the part-identifying messages is shown, so the list could be updated. Most of the ones I've added to the wiki has been through the mouse skull, but there are a number of things that will point out parts.

You could just have a relay or custom combat script parse the messages...

PeKaJe said:

If this is implemented, it would be great if mafia could pick up on "missing" parts on monsters when one of the part-identifying messages is shown, so the list could be updated. Most of the ones I've added to the wiki has been through the mouse skull, but there are a number of things that will point out parts.

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This would require knowing which messages contain parts. That's another list to create and update.