Matrix Games Forums

It has probably been addressed somewhere and I have missed it, but why are the Zenox (an ancient feline race) in the rodent race family? Cats everywhere are rising up in horror.

Yeah I was furius about it when I get this game.
Why you can ask?
This is long story but I make it short.
On first nobody knows what races would be in game.
Of course some cats lovers ask for feline race. Nothing big, something like:"it will be nice if there will be cats". But I say nothing big.
I was excited about this game and I will buy it anyway with cats or without them. Game was known as easly customizable and because of that there was no problem.
Second. There was info about races. Slowly race for race were known.
And surprise.
We have Zenox marked as FELINE race by some mods. Yeah marked as FELINE.
Yeah I think great. Nice minor addition. Also I thinked that there is easy way to add or modified new family of races. Great.
Then I buy game and check this.
Yeah.
Zenox as rodent. And they were clameid to be feline.
The first thing I think was:WTF is this?
Seriusly wtf.
There is some problem with buying things that you cant see or check by yourself. In game industry this is standard issue.
Seriusly if I buy something(boots for example) and I was informed that this boots are black and they arrived in pink color you know what?
Yeah, guess it.
Anyway that was precius lesson. Seriusly bugs or even broken design panel dont scratch me. Bugs and shit happen. But that was frycking lie.

Burn Matrix burn!

wtf

Heh, furries.

Anyways, thats probably easily modifiable once they open everything up. Heck, you may be able to change it right now for all I know. Its not a big deal.

Actually no.
You cant change name of family races.
And you cant change relations beetwen them.

I think maybe the easier answer is just to change the label, so that it denotes some kind of furry mammaloid instead of rodents, specifically.

I'm wondering if they got lumped into rodents because there are no other feline family races?  Needed to lump them somewhere?  Just doesn't make sense from a story standpoint.

really? i mean really?
a) it doesn't matter
b) describing alien life in terms of Earth organism taxonomy, while perhaps convenient to quickly ascribing traits, is outright useless.

To an alien scientist, the difference between classifying a rodent and a cat would be unimportant.

Even on earth, these are titles of convenience that arbitrarily separate branches of the tree of life.

so essentially...

ORIGINAL: Arnir

I'm wondering if they got lumped into rodents because there are no other feline family races?  Needed to lump them somewhere?  Just doesn't make sense from a story standpoint.

They did. They need a family to have friends and enemies. Each family has three or four races.

Yeah, if you are a cat fanatic then you maight be bothered that the other rodents are your friends. It doesn't matter to me.

And yeah, they are all aliens. The "feline people" are not from earth. By their picture they could easily be squirrel people...or terrier dog people.

I thought they looked like terrier-dog people, myself. They're not Earthlings. One of them is less closely related to a cat or terrier-dog than you are to a mushroom.

when a pappa mouse and a momma cat love each other very much... you end up with a Zenox...

seriously though, they are clearly a cat-mouse hybrid... ASIAN cat-mouse hybrids... they are by far the coolest race ever conceived.

ORIGINAL: taltamir

when a pappa mouse and a momma cat love each other very much... you end up with a Zenox...

seriously though, they are clearly a cat-mouse hybrid... ASIAN cat-mouse hybrids... they are by far the coolest race ever conceived.

Yep, like squirrels ...or maybe ferrets. I like squirrels and cats. heh. One hunt little moving things and one hunts nuts.

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

ORIGINAL: taltamir

when a pappa mouse and a momma cat love each other very much... you end up with a Zenox...

seriously though, they are clearly a cat-mouse hybrid... ASIAN cat-mouse hybrids... they are by far the coolest race ever conceived.

Yep, like squirrels ...or maybe ferrets. I like squirrels and cats. heh. One hunts anything little moving things and one hunts nuts.

oh sorry... I meant ever conceived by human imagination ...

Naturally this is part of the reason that some of us have been asking for the ability to define new alien families, for example:

Feline
Canine
Avian
Cybernetic
Robotic
Silicon based
Gas Bags (don't know the scientific term)
Parasitic or Symbiotic (like Star Gate)

anyway, you can see a nice list of what I would add if I had the ability to do so (and after finding out the correct terms for some of them [;)] ).

technically it is impossible for an alien to be feline, canine, or avian.
because those merely describe membership in earth based families of species. Having wings and feathers does not make you an avian. Genetics has completely superseded appearance in the field of identifying and naming creatures decades ago.

Humanoid btw, distinctly implies that you are NOT related... humans are primates. Humanoid are non primates non earth creatures which kinda LOOK human but are completely unrelated.

ORIGINAL: astote

really? i mean really?
a) it doesn't matter
b) describing alien life in terms of Earth organism taxonomy, while perhaps convenient to quickly ascribing traits, is outright useless.

Astote,
You may not care about sloppiness in this game, but I do. I can accept all the other concepts about taxonomy, etc, but this strikes me as poor workmanship. Many of the games like this have a prerequisite dog and cat race for whatever reason. I don't care if they do or not but if you are going to do it at least be CONSISTENT about it. If you are going to use Earth based concepts then use them in a manner that makes sense. Change the first line of the description to rodent instead of feline and then it is cool. This race thing may be WAD but it just rubs me the wrong way because it comes across as slipshod.

ORIGINAL: taltamir

technically it is impossible for an alien to be feline, canine, or avian.
because those merely describe membership in earth based families of species. Having wings and feathers does not make you an avian. Genetics has completely superseded appearance in the field of identifying and naming creatures decades ago.

Humanoid btw, distinctly implies that you are NOT related... humans are primates. Humanoid are non primates non earth creatures which kinda LOOK human but are completely unrelated.

Being that this is a science fiction game, I think trying to go too far into scientific fact is in fact counter productive...

Meaning, it doesn't matter....using the family types is a way to convey to your player a frame of mind when your player looks at the alien race...saying that the race is Feline, and being able to define feline with certain traits helps the player get an idea of how the species behaves.

When you think of a feline, most people automatically come up with the image of the domestic house cat...lazy, curious, at times aggressive at times mellow, independent and aloof. The family descriptors are therefor not for any scientific reason (since the chances of any alien sentient beings or fauna would likely develop in a way completely foreign to what we know), but rather setting a tone for the player so that they can imagine the alien species in terms they are familiar with.

We can imagine a lot, but many times fact is stranger than fiction...but in game terms, I prefer to describe my added in species in a way that allows players to visualize them in terms they understand, hence the reason I want to be able to add and describe new families.

Shark7,
Well said.  You hit the nail on the head about why we use those terms.

ORIGINAL: Shark7

ORIGINAL: taltamir

technically it is impossible for an alien to be feline, canine, or avian.
because those merely describe membership in earth based families of species. Having wings and feathers does not make you an avian. Genetics has completely superseded appearance in the field of identifying and naming creatures decades ago.

Humanoid btw, distinctly implies that you are NOT related... humans are primates. Humanoid are non primates non earth creatures which kinda LOOK human but are completely unrelated.

Being that this is a science fiction game, I think trying to go too far into scientific fact is in fact counter productive...

Meaning, it doesn't matter....using the family types is a way to convey to your player a frame of mind when your player looks at the alien race...saying that the race is Feline, and being able to define feline with certain traits helps the player get an idea of how the species behaves.

When you think of a feline, most people automatically come up with the image of the domestic house cat...lazy, curious, at times aggressive at times mellow, independent and aloof. The family descriptors are therefor not for any scientific reason (since the chances of any alien sentient beings or fauna would likely develop in a way completely foreign to what we know), but rather setting a tone for the player so that they can imagine the alien species in terms they are familiar with.

We can imagine a lot, but many times fact is stranger than fiction...but in game terms, I prefer to describe my added in species in a way that allows players to visualize them in terms they understand, hence the reason I want to be able to add and describe new families.

All I am saying is that its felanoid or caninoid rather then feline or canine.
just like a humanoid alien is not an actual human, but human-like-in-appearance...

btw... hybrid creatures? even if an alien looks exactly like us, you will have greater chance of impregnating a potato than one of them.

ORIGINAL: taltamir

ORIGINAL: Shark7

ORIGINAL: taltamir

technically it is impossible for an alien to be feline, canine, or avian.
because those merely describe membership in earth based families of species. Having wings and feathers does not make you an avian. Genetics has completely superseded appearance in the field of identifying and naming creatures decades ago.

Humanoid btw, distinctly implies that you are NOT related... humans are primates. Humanoid are non primates non earth creatures which kinda LOOK human but are completely unrelated.

Being that this is a science fiction game, I think trying to go too far into scientific fact is in fact counter productive...

Meaning, it doesn't matter....using the family types is a way to convey to your player a frame of mind when your player looks at the alien race...saying that the race is Feline, and being able to define feline with certain traits helps the player get an idea of how the species behaves.

When you think of a feline, most people automatically come up with the image of the domestic house cat...lazy, curious, at times aggressive at times mellow, independent and aloof. The family descriptors are therefor not for any scientific reason (since the chances of any alien sentient beings or fauna would likely develop in a way completely foreign to what we know), but rather setting a tone for the player so that they can imagine the alien species in terms they are familiar with.

We can imagine a lot, but many times fact is stranger than fiction...but in game terms, I prefer to describe my added in species in a way that allows players to visualize them in terms they understand, hence the reason I want to be able to add and describe new families.

All I am saying is that its felanoid or caninoid rather then feline or canine.
just like a humanoid alien is not an actual human, but human-like-in-appearance...

btw... hybrid creatures? even if an alien looks exactly like us, you will have greater chance of impregnating a potato than one of them.

Wow that came out of left field. Was that in response to me or what...didn't realize I'd even suggested such a thing.