An Update for the New Year

To wrap up 2015 for the Realm, here's the yearly Chione update. Sadly it's yet again something pretty minor, and I won't blame you if you're getting annoyed at all these minor updates. However, you'll probably be happy to hear that this is the last infrastructure update. The next update, whenever it may be, will likely be much more substantial.

But for now, here's Chione V1.2 (it's occured to me that this should probably be version 0.X because the metaroom's technically unfinished, but meh). The biggest change this time around is the addition of doors to replace some of the Pillars of Teleportation. In accordance with my recent findings on CA links, this should make it easier for creatures to navigate around the room. I've also rearranged the remaining Pillars so that they're solely used in the caverns.

What's in store for the Realm in 2016? I'll make an update about that sometime in the future, but for now I'm feeling pretty burned out on Creatures and want to focus on other things.

Until the next one, folks. I'll see you in 2016!

CCSF 2015 Final Day: Touchdown

The CCSF 2015 is finally over. Despite everything, I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out, and I'm happy enough people submitted stuff that they did. I hope everyone else found it an enjoyable enough festival as well.

Go check out the final releases, and if I missed you for the Credits, please tell me!

While the CCSF is over, the Community Wolfling Run still has one more day to go. Tune in tomorrow at 5 PM US Eastern for its finale!

CCSF 2015 Day 6: Semifinal Hurrah

It's almost the end, beautiful friends. The penultimate day, the penultimate batch of releases...and also the start of the last two weeks before Christmas, although that's not particularly relevant to anything.

The releases are all up now, so go check them out!

Also worth noting is that it's the next to last day to participate in c1anddsaddict's Winter Wonderland Decoration event! Be sure to check it out and get your entries in soon if you're interested!

And finally, the Community Wolfling Run is still ongoing! It'll start each day at 5 PM US Eastern time, and keep going until all the original contestants are dead. This means it'll likely outlast the festival, but hey. Consider it to be a parting gift.

CCSF 2015 Day 5: The Home Stretch

Two days 'til touchdown, and the "X's in the Y" running gag has come to an end. That's sad, but hopefully all these nifty submissions will keep those frowns turned upside down!

Go check out today's releases, and stay tuned for the remainder! Also keep in mind that even this late in the festival that I'm still accepting late submissions. Got something you want to show? I'll take it so long as it isn't offensive. 

The Community Wolfling Run is still ongoing! To clarify, it'll be starting at 5 PM eastern each day until all of the original contestants have passed on. 

CCSF 2015 Day 4: Brain's in the Woods

These "X's in the Y" titles are starting to get difficult to come up with, but that's besides the point.

Today marks the halfway point of the CCSF 2015! It's hard to believe how fast it's flying by, even with the fact that it's only half as long as previous festivals.

All of today's releases are on site now, so go give them a look!

Also worth noting is that the Community Wolfling Run has started today! It'll keep going until all of the submitted contestants die off, so until then keep an eye on KittyTikara's Twitch channel for the stream.

CCSF 2015 Day 3: Summer's in Winter

Day 3 of CCSF 2015 is here, and with it comes a nice sampling of fun, useful, or otherwise interesting things. I've also went ahead and filled up the Downloads section so it's not empty, as well as created a gallery article so all the wonderful artwork has a place to itself (although it is kind of empty at the moment...). 

Go check out the Community Wolfling Run (hosted by KittyTikara) and Winter Wonderland Decoration (hosted by c1anddsaddict) events if you haven't already! The more entries the merrier, I say. And not just because Christmas is coming around the corner.

CCSF 2015 Day 2: Past's in the Future

The latest batch of releases is now up on the CCSF website! Go check them out if you haven't already.

The title will make more sense when you see the main release of the day. Or maybe it just makes sense to me because I'm often strange like that. Either way.

CCSF 2015 Day 1: About Time

It's been a while and a few headaches in the making, but the CCSF 2015 has finally started and is underway!

Day 1's submissions are already up on the website, so go check them out. And stay tuned for the submissions of later days too; this festival might not be the largest of the CCSFs, but I've still a few nifty releases I'm itching to share with you all.

Visit the CCSF 2015 website!

CCSF 2015 Community Wolfling Run Details

News about the Community Wolfling Run is in!

It will be hosted by KittyTikara, and will be a mixed species run for C3/DS.

Please send all creatures to kittytikara(at)yahoo(dot)com.

As for eligible creatures, here's what KittyTikara's own words are on the subject:

I'd prefer no one send in any super breeders, violent creatures, immortals, or Geats. Besides that people can send whatever creature they want. If they don't have any creatures to send in, I'd be happy to create one for them.

CCSF 2015 Delayed...Again

Due to technical difficulties (read: Grendel Man is a horrible slacker and also needs a crash course in how to set up a website), CCSF 2015 sadly needs to be delayed one more week.

The new start date is Sunday, December 6th. There will be no more delays after this.

Do note that this doesn't mean the Flashmob is delayed - that will still take place on November 29th at 5:00 PM Eastern - that is, tomorrow.

CCSF Crunch Time and Event Announcements

There's only one week before the CCSF 2015 officially begins, and this time around I'm not delaying the event any further if I can help it. Basically, if you're planning on submitting something yet haven't already, now would be a very good time to get on that.

On that note, I've finally decided on a time for the CC Chat Flashmob. It will take place on

November 29, 5:00 PM Eastern

Let's keep at it, guys.

To Elevator or Door: A Matter of Distance

Lately, I finally settled on a setup for Chione that meshed with me. In doing so, I figured out something about CA links that might be something enterprising metaroom developers may want to keep in mind when making a room, as well as anyone who sets up a lot of CA links while setting up a room.

In the Chione Readme, I mentioned a bug with the area pictured to the right. Namely, that despite the presence of an elevator this CA link made creatures want to push a door instead. At first glance, there doesn't seem to be a reasonable explanation. My first guess had something to do with how close this particular link was to the edge of the metaroom.

As it turns out, Chione isn't the only room with a "buggy" link like this. The Biodome has a similar issue with the area pictured to the left.

If you compare the two images, you'll notice something similar about both. Namely:
A. There's an area not enclosed in a room between both areas, and
B. There's a lot of space between the linked areas.

My new theory, therefore, is this: If the area between two rooms is very large and there's an area of non-room space between the two rooms, a CA link between them will make Creatures want to seek out a door instead of an elevator.

So far, it seems to hold water. Let's look at a different area of Chione:

Creatures see these links as "elevator" links; this elevator arrangement therefore works more or less as expected. If you compare this to the other area of Chione pictured above, you'll notice the distance between the links is fairly short. So despite the presence of non-room areas between the linked rooms, Creatures still want to use an elevator here.

This area is from Veridia. While there is a large distance between these two links, creatures will still want to use an elevator here. The most likely reason is that there are no non-room areas between the two connected rooms.

And one last example: here is the elevator area from Past Seas. It looks pretty similar to the earlier Chione area, but creatures see this as an elevator link. Again, it's a matter of distance; the space between the Chione links up above was very large, while the distance here is very small.

I am not entirely certain that CA links actually work this way, but everything I've seen so far seems to support it and I've yet to see a major exception.

To sum all this up:
A. Use doors for linked rooms separated by a long distance and one or more non-room areas.
B. Use elevators for other sorts of linked rooms.

If you're not sure, a good test is to connect the linked rooms with both elevators and doors and watch which means of transportation creatures prefer to use.

To wrap all this up, there's one more thing I should point out: when a CA link linking two areas of the same metaroom makes creatures want to use a door, they'll be looking to reduce their "enter" drive as opposed to their "exit" drive. I actually thought this drive was completely unused up until this point, but apparently not.

Most third-party doors available don't reduce this drive upon use, so you'll often have creatures bouncing back and forth between two rooms connected by doors. Now that I know that the enter drive is, in fact, used, chances are I'll be making an agent that rectifies this sometime in the future.

More CCSF News

Good news regarding the CCSF: turns out I won't be needing to relinquish coordination duties after all.

However, I have also decided to delay the CCSF 2015 for both the original circumstances and because I'm just so horribly lazy that everything wouldn't be ready by the original start date.

The new start date for the CCSF 2015 is Sunday, November 29. Hopefully, the extra month should be enough for both me and everyone else who wants to contribute to the CCSF 2015.

In addition, I am looking for someone else to host the CCSF Community Wolfling Run, as I'm a bit overloaded as it is and unable to stream it even though I would like to. If you're interested in taking up the task, please contact me at ccsf(dot)2015(at)yahoo(dot)com.

CCSF 2015 Needs New Coordinator

As promised, here is some more CCSF 2015 news. Unfortunately, it's not good news this time.

Crossposted from Creatures Caves:

So guys, I've got some bad news. It turns out I'm getting surgery a few days before the CCSF's due to start. While it's not all that major, I don't know if I'll be able to handle running the CCSF as a result.

So chances are I'm going to have to pass the reins to someone else. Truth be told, I was rather doubtful of my ability to coordinate to begin with (case in point: details for the community wolfling run and CC Chat flashmob should have been released at the beginning of the month yet I haven't posted anything about them since the polls ended). This is just sealing the deal.

Since it's not for another two weeks I'll still be able to receive submissions and maybe work on the website if it's ready before then, but I likely won't be able to actually make daily posts for the website, run the wolfling run, or basically anything that requires daily attention.

I hate to be such a downer, but sometimes real life is just a *arg*. If you're interested in taking over coordination, please e-mail me at (ccsf(dot)2015(at)yahoo(dot)com.

CFF?

For once I'm posting about something that isn't CCSF news. There'll be more coming soon enough though, don't you worry. 

Instead, I'd like to talk about what's probably an unpopular opinion of mine, and it concerns a certain breed update that seems to be rapidly becoming the new standard: the CFF. In the time since I last posted about that, the CFF genome was finalized and released with a bunch of new features. 

What does this mean for future breeds from me? Nothing. While there are some edits from the CFF that I like and have already incorporated into my most recent breeds, otherwise my breeds will never be full CFF.

The reason for this? Quite simply...I just don't like the CFF.

It's partially because I see most of the CFF edits as fixing what isn't broken. I'm easy to please as far as my creatures go. As long as my creatures can take care of themselves I'm happy, and I don't see most of the CFF edits as really necessary to meet that goal. For instance, I'm not bothered by my creatures not having a lot of curiosity, or the fact that they don't freak out if they're drowning or otherwise low on a vital chemical. 

While I do admit that some of those edits do help (why else would my breeds have some of them?), the CFF just don't meet my definition of "mandatory upgrade." That's something their predecessors, the CFE, match much better. Their edits are a massive improvement upon the base genome: they're much better at taking care of themselves than the base genome, and they can't become immortal to boot. The changes the CFF bring to table, in comparison, are cool but not really a must-have.

Which brings me to the main reason I don't like the CFF: a little pair of phenomena called Hype Aversion and Hype Backlash. 

I may not see the CFF as a must-have. However, it seems everyone else does. The most adamant supporters constantly post stuff like "the CFE are stupid compared to the CFF! Use CFF!" whenever something like a wolfling run or a breed project is brought up. It's irritating as all *arg*.

Making matters worse, I can't help but be a little worried that my breeds won't be as popular for the simple fact they aren't full CFF when everyone else is using CFF. I've always been a little slow to embrace new standards (hence why my grendel breeds weren't full CFE until recently), but I'd hate to have my breeds judged for something that, again, I see as ultimately optional.

I won't judge anyone who really does think the CFF are a must-have. What they do with their games is really not my concern. I just don't think the CFF are really all they're cracked up to be, and really hate all the shilling they're getting.

CCSF 2015 Event Planning

And yet more CCSF news because I have some ready.

I didn't have any ideas for the CCSF 2015 Community Wolfling Run despite it being the number 1 favored event on the final planning survey. So I decided to ask the community's thoughts on the matter through another survey!

CCSF 2015 Community Wolfling Run Survey

This survey will be open until October 1st, so take it while you can!

Next order of business is the CCSF CC Chat Flashmob...and what do you know, I made a survey for that too. It's handy and not reliant on any one website.

CCSF 2015 CC Chat Flashmob Survey

The final order of business is the CCSF 2015 Adoption Sampler. 

There's not a whole lot to say about this, really. Just send your lovable, interesting, or downright weird creatures to ccsf(dot)2015(at)yahoo(dot)com and see them featured in a daily showcase! Creatures from all games are accepted; so long as it's functional and non-offensive it will do. 

That's it for now; let's make this CCSF a good one.

CCSF 2015 Finalized

The CCSF 2015 planning process is now over. Thanks to all who contributed!

CCSF 2015 Survey #3 Results

The final festival will look something like this:

• CCSF 2015 starts Sunday, November 1st.
• It will last for One Week unless enough submissions are sent in to justify making it longer.
• It will be hosted on its own website. 
• The themes are Community Endurance/Longevity, Ecology, and Seasons.
• The coordinator-hosted events are:
• Community Wolfling Run
• Creature Adoption Sampler
• CC Chat Flashmob

Further information about those events will be here in due time. For now, I hope this gives people some idea about what to expect. 

As for me, my workload just increased by a lot. Wish me luck.

Finalizing the CCSF 2015

I haven't been using this blog for much other than announcing CCSF news lately; didn't even bother to announce my birthday this year. I've just been completely uninterested in playing Creatures lately, and certain events around the community have been hurting my interest even more.

But ignore all that. There's a CCSF that needs planning, and the latest poll just closed. Let's get on with that, shall we?

CCSF 2015 Survey #2 Results

And here's the next survey. This one will finalize the theme and events of the CCSF 2015.

CCSF 2015 Survey #3

I've decided not to put the date, length, and location in this survey and just decide on those myself based on personal judgment and the results to Survey #2. 

Sunday, November 1st will be the start date of the Festival. I've decided on this mostly because of tradition and because it'd give people the maximum amount of time to prepare. 

The festival will last for one week, unless enough submissions are sent in to justify a longer festival. Pretty self explanatory here. Given how sparse the last two CCSFs were in terms of submissions, I felt a shorter festival would be best in this case. 

CCSF 2015 will have its own website. My reasoning for this is because Creatures Caves has been attracting quite a bit of negative publicity lately and the atmosphere just wouldn't be able to support a CCSF. Coupled with my previous misgivings about Creatures Caves, I've decided an independent CCSF website would make the greatest amount of people feel comfortable about the CCSF 2015 and therefore actually contribute to it. 

Because of that last one, I'm looking for graphics designers and website coders to help me prepare the CCSF 2015 website. My own HTML skills have kind of degraded since I stopped adjusting this blog's design, and while I can make graphics the CCSF deserves better than what I can make. If interested, contact me at ccsf(dot)2015(at)yahoo(dot)com.

For everyone else, submissions are still open! Send those to ccsf(dot)2015(at)yahoo(dot)com as well. Feel free to use the following form to do so, though you don't need to adhere to it as long as your submission is adequately described. 

Author(s):
Name of submission:
Game (C1, C2, C3, DS):
Type (Agent/Cob, breed, drawing, fan-fiction, etc.):
Description:
Any special requirements?:

CCSF 2015 Survey #2

It's been long enough since I first posted CCSF 2015 Survey #1 that I feel it's time to move on to the next stages of planning for CCSF 2015.

Here are the initial results for CCSF 2015 Survey #1. As a reminder, you can still submit responses to Survey #1 if you wish; it'll remain open throughout the planning process.

CCSF 2015 Survey #2 is now ready to go! This is the more standard one that asks about themes and whatnot.

Furthermore, I've decided to officially open submissions for the CCSF 2015. Please send those to ccsf(dot)2015(at)yahoo(dot)com.

I have my own set of thoughts about the themes and other things about the CCSF 2015, and I'll post those here (copied from the Creatures Caves topic):

"I'm in favor of the traditional November date. It's worked out well enough for the past however many CCSFs, and it'll offer a decent amount of time for people to work on contributions from now until the festival's start. However, I am open to the idea of changing the festival's length; in the past, the distribution of the submissions throughout the festival sometimes got pretty thin. Having a bunch of more tightly packed releases over, say, one week could possibly make for a better CCSF than a bunch of sparsely distributed releases over two.

For the place for hosting it...I would rather not host the CCSF 2015 on Creatures Caves if I have a better option. Although 2014 at least tried to stand out more, the two CCaves CCSFs had massive trouble differentiating themselves from the rest of the site and they suffered for it as a result. Furthermore, one of the replies to Survey #1 made a very good point: hosting it here made the CCSF look like a feature of Creatures Caves when in reality it should be an event that spans the entire community. It's the sort of event that absolutely needs its own website.

Where would I put it instead? I'd love to have it be at www.creatures.org.uk, the traditional hosting place of the CCSF, but sadly I'm not sure how feasible that is. Worst come to worst I can put it on Blogger ala CCSF 2012, since that festival was, at least to me, one of the best, but if anyone has a better idea then say so in the survey.

Finally, the theme. I have an idea of my own I've been pondering ever since I chose to take the task of coordinating: the will to survive.

No, this isn't Darwinism or any other scientific related thing. I'm talking about the community's will to survive. The will that, long after the demise of Creatures Labs, keeps us playing this series, finding new things about it years after its release, and forging new addons for it when it could have died so long ago. We're still talking about it, sharing our findings and the fruits of our labors, and showing off all that we've done with and for it. Years after we've practically been abandoned, we're still alive and refuse to die.

This is the will that the CCSF is a testament to, and ultimately celebrating."

Artemia Sea Update #2

It's only been one post since the last Artemia Sea update, and here I am with another. Okay, in reality it's actually been a while since the last Artemia Sea update, but given how infrequently I've been posting it certainly looks recent. 

This update is considerably more substantial than the last one:

• All the flora and fauna will now fall down slightly after being picked up and dropped. This is because they stop functioning completely when picked up, and when one put them in the inventory or some other vehicle they'd unrealistically keep floating.
• Dead organisms will now adjust their falling speed depending on if they're in water or not. Previously, their floating speed depended on where they died; they'd drop like rocks if they died due to drowning in air or slowly fall down if they died of natural causes underwater, regardless of their current room type. 
• The adult jellyfish are considerably less toxic, making them slightly less dangerous to creatures.
• If for some reason a shark dies (normally they can only die when the hand manually changes their attributes and drags them above water), it won't "revive" if pushed or pulled. 
• The seahorses will move a little faster when trying to get to a plant or a mate, and are also less likely to go above the water's surface. 

As always it's available from the Metarooms page of the C3/DS Downloads section, or you can save yourself some clicking and just get it here.

I'm also working on updating the Deep Abyss, but it's not quite ready yet. I'm actually planning on trying to have it completely finished by the time CCSF 2015 rolls around. Whether or not I manage to release anything else then is still up in the air (on top of my usual laziness, I've also got the task of coordinating it to worry about).

Until the next one, folks.

CCSF 2015 Survey #1

So...funny story. Given the massive lack of talk about the CCSF 2015, I considered just hosting a "Creatures Appreciation Week" here instead. However, when I got the idea to have other people send stuff in for said week, I started wondering how it'd be different from a traditional CCSF apart from the length.

At that point, despite my "grumpy old man" philosophy towards the past couple of CCSFs, I decided that it'd be best if I just tried coordinating the CCSF. And so here I am!

I've created the first of several surveys for the CCSF 2015. Unlike the first surveys of past CCSFs, this one is mostly looking for thoughts on the tradition as a whole, what it's doing right, and what it could try to do better. The standard questions are being saved for future polls.

CCSF 2015 Survey #1

Let's see what we can do with this thing.

Artemia Sea Update

Here is a small update for Artemia Sea. I received a report that it was being laggy. Upon looking into it, I left out a line of code in the Sea Gooseberries that might have made them tax the system a little more than intended.

While I was at it I also attempted to fix the issue where the sharks and reef fish could be played with by creatures whilst in the middle of their turning animation. Unfortunately I don't think it worked, but try it and see?

You can get the update from the link on the Metarooms page in the C3/DS downloads section, or here.

Until the next one, folks.

It's Evolution.... Just Evolution....

The Realm now has 100 posts. Only took me over two years to do it. No matter how long it took, I do think it's something worth celebrating. And I have just the things. 

Remember that wolfling run I mentioned last post? Well, I had a bit of an ulterior motive for running it beyond just my amusement....

Meet the Darwin Grendels, named after the famed Charles Darwin and created from the results of the wolfling run. They are very robust and can live in all sorts of environments short of a toxic world or underwater. They also breed very quickly, making them ideal if you want to just watch a population in action. 

At long last I feel I've satisfied my desire to make my own GoM-like breed, and I have to say I'm pretty happy with the final result.

Download the Darwin Grendels!

That's not all I have, however. The Darwin Grendels had to have come from somewhere....

The Garden Grendels are the forerunners of the Darwin Grendels. Their genome (or genomes, rather) were taken straight from the Grendel Garden and composed into an egg agent, and they're offered alongside six grendels from the population at the end of the wolfling run. They aren't as refined as the Darwin Grendels are, but they should prove to be just as capable as their descendants. 

Download the Garden Grendels!

And that's still not everything. This last release is only tangentially related to the Darwin and Garden Grendels, although it was tested and eventually became part of the wolfling run. 

The result of my latest collaboration with Mea, this acorn patch plant will add a much-needed seed to the Garden Box. The acorns themselves are fairly unremarkable, though your creatures will likely find them delicious. 

Download the Garden Box Acorns!

Phew, that was a fair few releases. Actually, there would have been even more had I not burned myself out towards the end (though chances are the stuff I had planned will be created and released at a later date). 

At any rate, I hope you enjoy the new releases! Until the next one, folks.

The Grendel Garden

Recently I managed to set up a wolfling run world, in order to start up a new project. I could just post a picture and a description, but that'd be a bit boring. So instead, have a video:

It's a wolfling run world (well, technically a feral run, but I don't interfere all that often) set in Veridia. I wasn't aiming for anything in particular with the room setup, other than maybe encouraging the grendels to move around more.

Most of the food sources come from the Garden Box. There's four permanent patches; three large patches on Veridia's lower level (apples on the right, explodonuts on the left, and carrots in the middle), and a small patch of mushrooms growing up in the egg hatching area. There's also a number of seasonal patches. In addition to the Garden Box, there's also a few potted plants and vendors scattered around, mostly in the upper level. There are no non-permanent food sources.

The participants are grendels, based on the ChiChi Norn genome. Every ten generations or so, I export a sixth of the population (six males or six females, depending on which gender has the majority at the time) and replace them with fresh firstgens that have additional genes I'd like to add to the main population.

At first, the population only had some edits to make them more grendel-like, but currently I can say that they breed rather quickly and have the same aging rate and lifespan as a banshee grendel. At the time this video was recorded I was trying to breed in resistance to crowding, but so far I'm not certain how that's working out.

Their appearance is a mixture of standard C3 Grendel, Banshee Grendel, and Mask Grendel sprites. I did try introducing Zwergbunt Grendel sprites, but they didn't seem to have stuck.

The max population is 24, and an Ovicidal Machine keeps the amount of eggs around that limit as well. I plan on continuing the run until generation 100.

Since recording a video like this really isn't a problem for me, I'm thinking there'll be more videos like this eventually. However, most of them won't be as long as this one. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd like to hear them.

On a completely unrelated note to all of this, I'm almost to 100 posts on this blog (took me long enough). I may or may not have something special planned for the 100th post....

Until the next one, folks.

P.S.: The music in the video is Agniratha, Imperial Capital, from Xenoblade Chronicles. It's a great game with a great soundtrack; if you have a Wii and come across a spare copy, I highly recommend picking it up.

We'll Drink a Drink a Drink....

So today I had a hunch to make something, and so I did. It's nothing really spectacular, but it seems like a good first release of the year.

This is a conversion of Steve Dismuke's Medicinal Compound for C3/DS. It is most efficacious in every case, whether it be helping a sick creature get better, or for healthy creatures looking for a quick way to get smashed. Might not want to let that latter category overindulge themselves.

All credit for the original Medicinal Compound goes to Steve Dismukes. It was one of my favorite C1 COBs, and I hope he doesn't mind the fact that I've converted it over to C3/DS.

Download the Medicinal Compound!