Saturday, December 29, 2012

Introducing the Freak of the Week

For the new year, I decided to take a page from Alien and her Weekly Freaks and introduce a new feature to this blog: the Freak of the Week!

At the start of each week, I'll post a new genetically edited creature for you to download. These creatures aren't quite as in-depth as my genetic breeds, but nevertheless are built around concepts that may or may not become full breeds in the future.

If you want to share a genetic experiment of your own, then drop me an e-mail and you just might see your darling become the next Freak of the Week (but see the archives page for more details on this).

The first Freak of the Week is the ChiChi/Deep Norn cross Tianna, who requires specific living conditions for survival. Click her picture under the Freak of the Week to download her!

Edit: Apart from the Freak of the Week, I've also added my contact information right above the Fish Tank. Granted, my e-mail is included in the readmes of all my genetic breeds, but I figured I'd post it here as well so people wouldn't have to download something to get at it.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Doomsday

Right, this place has gone unupdated for a little too long, I daresay. My absence wasn't so much due to a hiatus or anything - it was because I was planning on releasing Chione for my new 50th post. However, I promised to release it only after Survivor filled up, and that's taking a freakishly long time.... Hence, lack of updates.

Where did the Oasis review go? Well, I deleted it mostly for the sake of my own sanity. It was a rant moreso than anything worth leaving up; just my disappointment at finding out how useless the room was for keeping creatures in. It sure as heck wasn't worthy of being the milestone 50th post. I'll post a far more fair review of the room at a later date.

Second thing: It's been a long while since the CCSF 2012, and I've just been plain lazy with putting my stuff up on my own website. So I'm going to take care of that now.


My main contribution to this year's CCSF was this redone version of Jennie's Aquanornia. It's a lot emptier than the original, but that's because I took most of the C3 stuff out of it. It's now more or less an aquatic Biodome, and you can set it up how you please for your aquatic creatures' comforts. 


Second thing: the redone Aquatic Terrarium plants for the Garden Box. For the CCSF they were all in one .zip file, but here I'm packaging them separately. The sponges have had some bugfixes since the last release, but they're otherwise the same as last time. The Gumin Grass behaves somewhat differently from its original counterpart; it throws out fully formed seeds as opposed to growing them first, and will throw out fully developed sproutlings instead of seeds should the population get low. The seeds also go dormant if creatures outnumber the plants and seeds. These ones have been updated slightly since their release at the CCSF; they no longer throw out their seeds so quickly and the seeds themselves stick closer to the bottom.

And now, we move on to the completely new stuff. As you might now, today was the widely predicted date of the end of the world. Predictably, jack squat happened. So, in celebration of the world's continued existence and the upcoming holidays, here is a crapton of releases!

 I know I said I wasn't going to release Chione V1.1 until Survivor started. That's taking forever, and my patience is wearing thin. So instead, I'm releasing it as an early Christmas gift for the CC. 
It's still empty of native flora and fauna, but now the room has teleporters and elevators, plus a weather system and some mapping fixes (no more stuck baby creatures!). I also moved it so that it no longer conflicts with the Biodome (though it might still overlap some other metarooms; I didn't bother to check to see if there was any in its new location). 

Next up: a new genetic breed! These guys aren't the same breed I was going to release for the CCSF, but they're pretty similar in concept to that breed. You can consider them a belated addition to my CCSF releases. 
The Aqua Grendels are pretty much generic amphibious grendels - they're amphibious, have a diet skewed towards critters and bugs, and heavily resistant to coldness. They're more placid than normal grendels, but that doesn't mean they're entirely norn friendly - they're still likely to attack your norns, only they'll do it out of crowdedness instead of anger. 

Baby Aqua Grendels go for bugs by instinct - they won't start going for critters until adolescence. However, there aren't that many (edible) aquatic bugs to go around. With permission from Moe, I decided to change that....
These here are Shrimpton - the cute little water bugs that normally swim around in the waters of the Oasis. Since the originals weren't really receptive to creatures, I gave them some new code. They still behave similarly to the originals, but they're now classified as "bug" instead of "critter", and your creatures can play with and eat them. Make sure you have some plants lying around, though - they need them to lay their eggs.
Thanks to Moe for letting me rip the Shrimpton from the Oasis, and thanks to Ghosthande for making the Vendor sprite (as part of the Biodome Pack - there's some interesting stuff in bd-launchers.c16...).

This next release still ties into the Aqua Grendels, though it isn't as necessary for their comfort.
This update to the Aquatic Terrarium lowers the floor above the right entrance to the fish nursery, preventing baby creatures from getting stuck there and making the right tank navigable for non-swimming creatures. If you want a place for your non-swimmers to roam, but lack the space for a new metaroom, then this update might be for you.

Finally, I release a pack containing a look into the past....
This here is a large pack of C2 and C3/DS genetic breeds that I completed and zipped up, but for whatever reason didn't see fit to release before now. Most of it's pretty old, but don't that let that discourage you. Take a look; maybe there's a breed that tickles your fancy in there.

Yeah, a lot of stuff here. Hopefully, this will satisfy everyone's desires for a Christmas release (the Sea Garden, again, is nowhere close to being done and probably won't get released until sometime next year). Happy Holidays from Grendel Man, y'all!