Wednesday, October 10, 2012

An Interesting Fact + Another Status Update

As I've stated multiple times, I've made a lot of stuff over my time as a Creatures developer. In particular, I've drawn attention to the fact that I've made over 100 genetic breeds (counting the breed I'm making for the CCSF, which is indeed a grendel, 70 of those are C3/DS grendel breeds). Out of curiosity, I decided to calculate just what percent of C3/DS grendel genetic breeds were mine.

Counting in my stuff from the Norn Adoption Center and the breedlist at CU7, there are 112 total grendel genetic breeds. I didn't count "spritemixes" (such as Angelneko's Little Sea Monsters), and I didn't count full breeds (such as the Dusky Grendels), but I did count updated versions of previous breeds (e.g. the Waterfall Grendels V1, V2, and V3 were all counted as separate breeds).

Calculating it all up using the percent formula (70/112 * 100), I figured out that roughly a whopping 62.5% (rounded up) of C3/DS grendel genetic breeds were my work. Granted, I imagine this number is a little lower since there's bound to be a few undocumented breeds I didn't catch, but still. I've made over half the genetic grendel breeds available to the community. Talk about leaving one's mark.

Now, the percent of all genetic breeds that are mine is probably a lot lower than the factoid I just posted, but that's a calculation for another time.

Okay, enough boasting about my achievements - time for a mini-status update. The mini-hiatus mentioned in my previous post is over now, and I've gotten to work on my CCSF releases. I've completed the Aquanornia update (it just needs to be sent to Jessica now) and the Gumin Grass for the Garden Box (which I would consider to be the best plant I've coded yet), as well as fixed a few things that bothered me about the GB Sponges. I still need to complete the genetic breed (if you want to help me by dropping a suggestion or two in this CCaves topic, it would be much appreciated), and I've only started converting a few AC agents. Next in line after the genetic breed is the Past Seas update, and after that I'll finish up the GB conversions.

On top of that list, Mea and I started another metaroom collab. I wouldn't count on this one being out for the CCSF, since it only got underway a few days ago, but I'll post a preview of it here once I get it in-game, as well as revealing what exactly it is (provided Mea doesn't post it on her blog once she's done with it).

So far, so good. Apologies about the picture-less posts; I swear my next post will have some sort of image in it.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Status Update

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I've gone back to being on hiatus again, for the usual reasons (lack of interest, reality's getting in the way, etc.) As such, I feel I should probably say something about the state of my projects.

First off: The Sea Garden. I'm sorry to say that, due to a combination of various factors, that it's not going to be done in time for the CCSF. Shades of Past Seas and the 2010 CCSF, I guess. Instead, I'm planning on getting it out for Christmas at the latest.

The pack of genetic breeds that was supposed to go along with it is getting canned. In their place is a single genetic breed that follows the same theme. The replacement breed is in fact almost done; I just need to add one more feature to them and color them in.

In place of the Sea Garden, I've two metaroom updates planned.

One of them is for Past Seas. I've found the lift doesn't tell creatures using it to wait. While this isn't a really big problem since the lift only has two stops, I figured I might as well fix it to stop creatures from pushing/pulling the lift multiple times upon reaching their destination. In addition, I also want to fix the Eelgrass (again) to remove instances of the teleporting plant bug. Finally, I'm also planning on buffing the lifeforms so that they reproduce faster when their populations are low.

The other one is for Jennie's Aquanornia. While we do have Devil's Reef and Past Seas for non-swimming creatures, the former is a bit too thematic and the latter's rather small. Aquanornia, on the other hand, is both sizable and pretty generic for an aquatic area. As such, I've taken it upon myself to fix a few problems with it; such as the lack of CA/CA links and especially the fact that it didn't work with DS standalone (you'll still need C3 installed to use it, though). I also removed most of the C3 life that was originally in it, so now it's essentially an aquatic Biodome. I'm more or less finished with this one - I just need to compile the agent file and it's ready to go.

The final project is a few aquatic Garden Box agents, especially the Gumin Grass conversion that I originally lacked ideas for. In addition, I'm planning on converting some C2 stuff, some lifeforms from Aquatilis Caverna, and all the Past Seas lifeforms.

Apologies to anyone who expected the Sea Garden, but hopefully everything else that I'm releasing should help mitigate that issue somewhat.