An Ambitious Idea

Well, I suddenly found my motivation to replay Creatures surging some days ago. Now I'm finding it relatively easy to at least run a wolfling run and play around with genetics again. I don't know what happened, but it's something.

Anyway, some days ago Xan created a new breedlist, since all of the old ones have either gone down, are no longer updated, or just incomplete. It's quite comprehensive.

However, it only covers full breeds. Which got me thinking: There should probably be an equivalent for genetic breeds, shouldn't there?

I loved CU7's breedlist, when it was still online. It had practically every breed, genetic or otherwise, that had ever been created on it, complete with a picture, description, what sprites it used, and where it could be found, even if that website had gone down. Some of the pictures were quite nice, too. Alas, now it's gone, never to return. It can't even be browsed with a web archive (-arg- robots.txt. Seriously, -arg- it). 

But that's not to mean something like it can't be recreated, as Xan proved. With my specialty in Creatures development being genetics, I've been thinking of taking a stab at it myself. A full list of genetic breeds, still available and extinct alike. 

If a breed was no longer available anywhere else, it'd be hosted on the list. Even if the creator stated that they didn't want it hosted anywhere else. I'm well aware of why someone wouldn't want their creations hosted, but at the same time these breeds are likely to be extremely old and their creators no longer available to be contacted. 

As far as I'm concerned, it's better to archive them somewhere so that present and future Creatures players would be able to enjoy them. If by some stroke of luck one of those creators came back and expressed displeasure at a breed being hosted, then I'd oblige (albeit with the request that they put it up for download themselves). 

But what about the breeds that can no longer be found and that nobody has lying around? Well, genetic breeds aren't that difficult to create. In the event I could not find a lost breed, I'm thinking I would recreate that breed and host that instead (albeit with a CFE-based genome as opposed to a vanilla genome). It might not quite be the same breed, but it'd probably give present and future players an idea of what that breed was like. 

All this said...the effort all this would require is monstrous, and I have no idea if my current burst of inspiration's going to last long enough for me to get the list started and recreate all the breeds that need recreation. Chances are I'd give up before I got halfway.

My final thought, as such, is not trying to do this alone. Surely I'm not the only one who'd want to see such a list, and I'm not the only geneticist in the community either. Perhaps a group could be assembled to hunt down all the breeds that could be hunted down, and remake everything that couldn't be found. 

Let me hear your thoughts: Is this something you'd like to see? Would you be willing to help me out somehow? 

Until the next one, folks.