Combat messages and mechanics to accommodate snake and seal anatomy

[Galgana]

I had an encounter with a snake and the following happened:

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(000000):56gg:[T]{029E05F7}      | The snake hisses at you.
(000000):56gg:[S]{029E05F7}      | Snake flees.
(3C5A98):56gg:[:]{029E05F7}      | You begin sneaking.
(143270):56gg:[#]{029E05F7}      | Aiming Zone: Head
(000000):56gg:[Y]{029E05F7}      | You try to kick the snake.
(000000):56gg:[Y]{029E05F7}      | You execute a skilled kick.
(000000):56gg:[Y]{029E05F7}      | You land a solid hit to its skull.
(3C5A98):56gg:[:]{029E05F7}      | The snake seems to have fallen unconscious.
(000000):56gg:[Y]{029E05F7}      | You try to kick the snake.
(000000):56gg:[Y]{029E05F7}      | You carry out a perfect kick.
(000000):56gg:[Y]{029E05F7}      | You land a solid hit to its skull.
(000000):56gg:[Y]{029E05F7}      | You try to kick the snake.
(000000):56gg:[Y]{029E05F7}      | You carry out a perfect kick.
(000000):56gg:[Y]{029E05F7}      | You land a solid hit to its abdomen.
(A80000):56gg:[!]{029E05F7}      | The snake hisses in pain.
(000000):56gg:[S]{029E05F7}      | Snake rises back on its feet.
Unless the UnReal World takes place in a prelapsarian Eden, snakes of course do not possess feet.
For a snake-specific set of rise and fail to rise messages, I suggest:

• The snake rears its head.
• The snake coils defensively.

Seals also don't have conventional legs so much as flippers, so I think it would be appropriate to provide them with special bodypart definitions: "foreflippers" and "hindflippers".
For the rising messages, I suggest:

• The grey/ringed seal rises on its trunk.
• The grey/ringed seal struggles to raise itself.

I also have some ideas for how to make the movement behavior of seals on land more specific to their anatomy.
One way to go about it is to implement a directional restriction to prevent a seal from rotating 180° within a single turn. Something like how spirit NPCs aren't supposed to show their back to the player, though I'm unsure about the specifics of their AI regarding mobility.
To balance this rotation nerf, a seal could strafe in its relative left-right directions somewhat faster than its forward land speed as a way to simulate rolling to the side (and perhaps gain speed from rolling downhill, like how it happens in this video with an elephant seal; the seal uses its hindflippers to propel down the grade around the 21-seconds mark.)

It's been a while since I've observed seals in-game, so I can't remember if their ability to climb onto skerries and ice has a foreleg injury check. Breaking their front flippers definitely should impair attempts to haul-out, though I've seen elsewhere that moving along a relatively flat surface does not always require using all the flippers (example: the seal closest to the camera in this video), and forward undulations on land generally don't depend on the back flippers anyway (see this PDF of "Kinematics of terrestrial locomotion in harbor seals and gray seals: Importance of spinal flexion by amphibious phocids").

[ineedcords]

You are obviously right when pointing out the mismatch between messages and anatomy of a snake. Ideally all messages would fit perfectly to each animal.

Unfortunately as you know this game's dev team is very small (i.e.: 2 men) but project ambitions are not small in any way (as per link below).
Development List / DevPlans: https://www.unrealworld.fi/urw_development.html

Due to the resource mismatch, I, for one, am happy to overlook the "Snake rises back on its feet" message without investing any more dev time on it as it is cosmetic only and clear enough to understand what's occurring in the game world at that point in time.

Personally I would prefer the very valuable & limited dev time being invested on other things in the DevPlan list - a few randomly picked examples are 'Blacksmith NPC', 'sheep rearing, breeding, animal husbandry', 'horse-pulled carts' etc.

I acknowledge people have different immersion thresholds and priorities but this is just my opinion - I hope more people contribute with their opinions...

[Galgana]

I wouldn't be opposed to the possibility of modding animals, or NPCs in general. Perhaps creature data structures could get entries for flavor text that are meant to take priority over the generic messages.

Now I'm thinking it would be hilarious to make humans swear in different languages; it's already possible to add {sound effects} to messages, but even better would be to have "Perkele!", "Helvete!", or "Zaraza!" and other words being flung in combat with members of certain cultural groups.