Tuesday, November 28, 2023
A New Base Genome: The Starting Point
Friday, November 24, 2023
Let's Try This Again
After...what, a year?...I found myself looking at Creatures stuff and decided I wanted to try playing the Steam version of C3/DS again. I'm starting from scratch again with the game almost as it is (so far the one big edit I've done is adding the Activate 1/2 split from Vermidia's Agent Pack Big and Tiny slightly edited to be compatible with the Grendel Upgrade, and the only third party stuff I've added are the CFE breeds and Advanced Muco).
My advice to anyone else using the Steam version: Do not outright replace files in that version. If you need to validate the files for any reason, Steam will replace your replacements with the original versions and undo all your hard work, making you have to remember everything you changed and do it all over again, potentially making you forget what it was you changed in the first place, completely kill your motivation for playing the game, and decide to stop playing completely.
To make sure that doesn't happen again, I'm instead opting to make use of the Patches folder in the Steam version's bootstrap for .cos file edits. Sure, editing old third party .cos files so they're compatible with that change is going to be a little tedious, but the futureproofing's worth it.
Now that I have a gameplan, the next trick is figuring out all the changes I actually want. I've already decided I'm not using the TWB/TCB breeds for the most part. They're an absolute marvel of genetic engineering, for sure, but they're really not compatible with the game as it is and also with all the mods (especially metarooms) created before them that don't account for them. I'm sticking with the CFE instead; they're more compatible with all that stuff while still being a massive improvement over the vanilla genomes.
So that just leaves fixing stuff that's outright broken in the vanilla games. The Steam version patches a ton of stuff just out of the metaphorical box, which as far as I can tell the Community Patch Guides on the Creatures Wiki don't account for. So figuring out what those do and don't fix is going to be a bit of a pain (it doesn't help that those .cos files crash the CAOs Tool; fortunately I can open them up in Notepad+ instead, but that's yet another inconvenience to deal with).
Which, beyond just allowing creatures of the same sex and creatures of different species to have friendly interactions with each other (seriously, C1 and C2 got that right...well, mostly right, C1 still had the thing where grendels always hit even if they try to be friendly, but still. It's something C3/DS should've had out of the box), is...uh. Um. I'm...not actually sure. Fixing the ecology? Giving a bunch of things navigable CA that should've had them to begin with (though I'm kind of reluctant to do that seeing as most patches for them just feel a little clunky to me. Might just be neurodivergency-induced stubbornness, though)?
Well, I do think I should add a Water Eggs patch. And a fix for the death script in DS so you don't need to scroll the camera over dead bodies to make them vanish (vital for me, who's normally a pretty hands-off player). And also change the Birth/Death/Near Death music in DS to the C3 music, because the DS versions suck.
After I figure that stuff out, the next trick is to grab all the agents, breeds, rooms, etc. I want. And there's been a lot of them released since I last stopped playing frequently (special shoutout to the Angler Grendels, who are straight out of younger me's dreams).
And after that...? It may be high time I got back into developing stuff. Maybe. While my motivation lasts. But those plans are for another post.
How long will this Creatures kick last?...I don't know. Knowing me, I give it a week at most. But in a way, it does feel like coming home.
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Revival of an Old Idea
As far as my getting back into Creatures goes: I wound up falling out of it again, mostly because as it turns out validating the Steam version of C3/DS not only fixes bugs (which I did to get the Genetics Kit working again) but also changes any file replacements back to their original versions. Which includes the changes to the .cos files I made and to 99% of .cos files made by the community. After that I uninstalled it and have yet to try again.
But every now and again I think about picking it up again. Not only that, but I think about making something for it again. I figure that it'd be nice to bring a proper closure to my Creatures development journey with something spectacular. I've thought about reviving my old Flesheater Grendel project (grendels that can properly serve as population control without completely wiping out the norn population as regular grendels are wont to do), or a big pack of four genetic breeds (two grendel, one norn, and one ettin).
But ultimately, I think the best candidate would be an outright full breed: the Kraken, one of my oldest ideas.
After all this time their Creatures Wiki page is still there, mostly the same as I wrote it back when I was a dumb teenager who didn't consider that creating a whole new page for an idea probably wasn't the best decision. Back then I wanted them to be geats who ate other creatures.
Now? Well, it seems like people have mostly figured out what causes the Wasteland Glitch, but there's still enough other problems with geats that I don't think I'd like to stick with that. And the idea of them eating other creatures is also not a great idea as I've long since learned how prone creatures are to cannibalism if you give them that ability (especially if you're using a genome that has better learning capability like the CFE).
So as the page also mentions, present-day me would want to make them grendels, who genetically would likely just be pretty standard aquatic grendels of the kind I've made dozens upon dozens of before (if more aggressive than what I usually liked to do). I do think it'd be interesting to give them traits reminiscent of actual cephalopod behavior to set them apart from other such breeds.
It's their appearance I've put the most thought into. Over the years I've come to appreciate more simple designs, and I've also been putting a lot more thought into speculative evolution. So rather than going with the description I initially came up with, I figured something more evocative of a cephalopod that evolved into the shape of a grendel, with four of the arms moving further on down the body to become the arms and legs. The remaining arms would remain around their face, and the tail instead would have fins reminiscent of squid.
If you're familiar with Splatoon, imagine a grendel version of an Inkling and you probably won't be too far off. Just instead of tentacle hair it's a tentacle beard (for both genders, I might add; I'm not sure what I'd do to make the genders visually distinct, but it'd definitely be something more naturalistic).
However, I've also had another thought. It just so happens that everyone's favorite C Monster Borland has a body plan that's much like a grendel's already, and converting Borland wholesale to C3/DS might be a bit of a pain due to how wonky his sprites are. The idea of just making outright Borland Grendels sounds really fun, but combining Borland with the ideas I already talked about is another option, both bringing the Kraken's design more in line with the mythological beast they're named after and to reference the greater Creatures mythos.
Everything else on their page? Still something I'd want to include with them. I just love the idea of the Kraken bringing their own ecosystem along with them, be that in the form of a metaroom or just an agent pack. And that toy ship still sounds cute.
But...have I made any progress towards getting past the roadblock that kept me from making them long ago? That being, the graphics? Well...no. I have picked up some skill in photo manipulation courtesy of learning to edit RPG Maker's default resources, but I don't think I'm at the level where I could make all the frames necessary for a breed that way. Far from it, in fact. And my other visual art skills are still horribly lacking and my brain still woefully unsuited for the process of learning.
There has been an exciting development for breed development in the form of GeneForge, which to my understanding eliminates a lot of the tedium of making breeds and brings them in line with the official breeds to boot. However...that still requires a 3D model which I can't provide. So ultimately, I'd still need someone to handle that part while I handle the genetics and coding.
And also I'd have to overcome a f-argh-ton of inertia from not playing the games for so long and having to remember all the basics. And I'd also want to make a suitable base genome for the breed before anything else, which would take a while.
So...is there hope for the Kraken to finally become reality after all this time? Definitely not right now. But maybe someday. Maybe even sooner rather than later?
If nothing else, I can at least do a concept sketch. My art skills may be unsuited to for the breed proper, but I think I can do that much.
In any event, I needed somewhere to dump my thoughts, and my blog was as good a place as any. For now, back to silence I go.
Friday, January 21, 2022
It Lives...?
Truth be told, I wasn't expecting to ever come back. I just wasn't getting a whole lot of fulfilment out of the community at the time, at least compared to the other communities I was a part of. Then my life suddenly took a nosedive for reasons I'd rather not get into publicly, and I found myself in search of a new internet home.
As of this post it seems the community in general is as quiet as when I initially left, but maybe that's just because the hotspots are in places I haven't thought to look? There's definitely still stuff going on, but it doesn't seem like Creatures Caves is that active anymore.
Sunday, March 21, 2021
The End
There's a lot of people that I've enjoyed talking to and working with over the years, to the point where I honestly can't remember them all off the top of my head. However, there are two people in particular I'd like to give a special thanks to:
Mea, for helping so much with the artwork that I'm lacking in. Without her, a lot of my crazy ideas would have never come to life. I only wish I could have given more back to her; I do feel like I asked a lot of her without offering much back in return.
For everyone else, I wish you the best of luck in keeping the spirit of these old games alive. Who knows? Maybe someday one of these attempts at a new game or a spiritual successor will actually come to fruition, and you'll be the reason why that person had enough determination to see it through.
Well, I think this goodbye's gone on long enough. Farewell, folks.