Where I've Been

Well...despite the optimism of my last post here, that round of discouragement was still enough to put me off playing the game for the majority of the year. I've just been doing non-Creatures related things of varying productivity within that time. But I'd actually like to submit something to the CCSF 2024, and that's coming up pretty quickly, so I'm going to need to get my butt in gear.

There is one Creatures-related thing I've been doing off and on since then, and that's running a grendel wolfling run. It's nothing spectacular; the grendels are plain CFE grendels and the world's just the base DS world with the Jungle Ruins added in. But it's been entertaining enough to watch and gives me a good idea of what the issues with the CFE grendel genome are, so it's been good for somewhat maintaining my motivation in that time. 

As of right now, I think my plan is basically to do what my initial plan was before I started messing around with the 2017 genome: take the CFE genome, fix the outstanding issues with it in a manner that remains compatible as possible with previously existing genomes, and just use that as my base going forwards. 

One genome I find particularly inspiring is CosmiSynthetic's Placid Ettins. The short of it is that they're the base C3 ettins, but with the biggest issues with the vanilla ettin genome tuned down while still maintaining the essence of ettins and more importantly done so in a manner that retains crossbreeding compatibility with the original ettin genome. I do have some issues with it (particularly that it's still based on the vanilla ettin genome as opposed to the CFE ettin genome), but it's still a genome I like a lot. So I'm planning on doing something similar for my grendel genomes.

As is usual with me, I have no clue if I'll actually get anywhere with this before the CCSF hits, but maybe if I write it down it'll help. Stay tuned.

On a less happy note, I recently turned comment moderation on. Most comments I get here are positive or at the very least constructive, but there's been some garbage recently and I decided I'd rather not subject anyone browsing the blog to it. I guess some people just have nothing better to do with their time.

Not Out for the Count Yet

I haven't really tried to mess with RAS since the debacle over them getting stupid for no apparent reason, mostly out of lack of will and partially out of lack of knowledge. Considering the original 2017s also had a similar problem, my best guesses are either the CFF Fullness Lobe or the wide variety of instincts RAS possesses messing with their decision making process somehow. Or maybe it's just one of my regularly used agents not being as creature-friendly as I thought it was. 

But after a while of mulling it over, I don't think I'm willing to give up Creatures entirely over it. There's other projects I could possibly pursue in the meantime. 

I still have my attempts at Gizmo-based and CFE-based RAS genomes lying around. If the issue lies with the 2017 base, there's two other options that might have a higher chance of success right there. In particular, there's the idea I had right at the beginning, which was to start with a CFE base and fix as many issues as I could while still maintaining compatibility. Though I'd be focusing on my personal bugbears, which are mostly that base CFEs eat too much, breed too much, and can suffer from irritating lactate-based mutations killing their muscles. 

I've had a particular thought about remaking the Enhanced ChiChi genome with a CFE base, implementing everything they tried to do in a manner that actually works. I've especially thought about doing this with a CFE Grendel base instead of a ChiChi base, because in all honesty I'm really tired of working with norns and want to start messing around with my preferred species. 

And if these Enhanced CFE Grendels work out, I'll have a nice base for future grendel breeds. Then maybe I'll think about taking another crack at base norn and ettin genomes. 

Stay tuned, folks.

A New Base Genome: Discouragement

 Right when I thought I was ready to go ahead with making the rest of the RAS genomes, I get a testing report stating something to the effect that the latest test release has problems feeding themselves (more specifically, that they have a tendency to go to the brink, but starvation deaths are rare). 

So I figured that was likely an issue with RAS's ability to learn from the Disappointment stim. Considering I've seen something to that effect even in my own testing, I figured it was probably best to revert that change. 

Not long after that, I hit on the idea of privately journaling a wolfling run world, inspired by an old post of Aiko's. I figured it'd be a nice break between finishing the RAS ChiChi genome and moving onto the next RAS project. For the run, I decided to make a quick, RAS-based Grendel genome; in the process of making it, I found that the eat stims in 2017-based genomes have the secondary hunger stim silenced. I figured that might also have something to do with the earlier observation, and changed that for this grendel genome. 

With the world set up, I hatched a batch of grendels and went...only for the population to forget how to eat and start starving to death en masse before making it past gen 1, in a manner much more akin to my observations about vanilla creatures than anything CFE-based or beyond. This was in C1toDS and I had just ripped out the original elevators and replaced them with elevines, so I figured maybe that had something to do with it.

So I restart the run in a mostly-vanilla DS world, with some food sources added to the hub and workshop. Once again, the mostly first-gen population forgot how to eat and started starving to death; specifically, their hunger for fat was consistently getting maxed out, according to the medical monitor. So it was definitely something wrong with the genome. 

My number 1 goal with RAS was to create creatures who can take care of themselves pretty well, so that they're interesting to watch. If they're having this much trouble surviving in a mostly vanilla DS world, something is very, VERY wrong. 

But...I'm at an impasse here. I have no idea what's causing this, nor any idea on how to fix it. I do know it was a problem extending back to the original 2017 genome; it was why they only had one instinct relating to each type of hunger, and probably why the aforementioned eat stim change was made as well. So was it just because my base was flawed?

I don't know. But what I do know that this has basically shot any motivation I had to keep playing Creatures in the foot, at least for right now. It feels like every time I just want to play the game to relax, this kind of s-argh- happens and just makes me resent the game (this isn't even the first time I've had mass stupefying happening to CFE-based creatures).

So...this is to say that progress on RAS is being halted for the time being. I just don't have the knowledge necessary to get past this brick wall, nor the patience to keep bashing my head into it. 

And as much as I'd like to keep doing things for Creatures in the meantime, chances are that I'm not and this blog's going to fall back into silence once more, unless I have some kind of epiphany.

A New Base Genome: Tentative Conversion Plans

 I've been taking somewhat of a break from Creatures in the days since finishing the RAS ChiChi genome. I guess my brain's tired of thinking of dev and wants to do other things for a while. But nevertheless I'm still having thoughts about where to go from here and what to tackle next. 

In my breakdown of the final RAS ChiChi genome, I mentioned wanting to do a full set of RAS conversions for the official breeds. In this time of indecisiveness, I figured I might as well talk about what my plans would be for each breed. Maybe in the process I'll figure out where to go from here. 

First and foremost: when I first spoke about what my plans for RAS ettins were, I mentioned I'd be basing them on the RAS ChiChi genome as opposed to porting all the RAS changes onto the 2017 Ettin genome. Well, it's not just the ettins I'd do that for; it's my plan for all of the official breeds. It might be a bit more work, but in this way I can design the RAS versions as I see fit, avoid some of the pitfalls the original genomes made, and perhaps give them their own unique flair. 

 For the former mall breeds in particular (Bondi Norns, Hardman Norns, Treehugger Norns, Toxic Norns, and Banshee Grendels), I'd also put special focus on replicating their behavior from their respective chapters in the DS story and making sure they can make use out of all the agents in their respective packs. 

As for each breed individually....

Genetic Mysteries: The Case of GrM0262

 

Ten years ago (why am I so old?), I was running a series of grendel wolfling runs with the goal of reaching generation 1000, after which I'd take the final result and use it as a base genome for a new genetic breed. I still have that goal of reaching generation 1000 on my own someday, but alas generation 300 was as far as I got. Nevertheless, I shared three packs of grendels, one for every 100th generation milestone. 

On the approach to generation 300, the run was suddenly stricken with an epidemic of sliders (creatures who lack pose genes and thus can't move; if you try leading them with the hand they "slide" along the ground, hence the name) and other such maladies. And among the individuals in the run was GrM0262 (a clinical name given to him by Kezune's Wolfing Autonamer, which I used to track generations in the time before I made my Wolfling Nametagger). 

All of the genomes I used to start the run and continued to add new generation 1 creatures from were CFE based and included all of their immortality preventing edits. Yet somehow, GrM0262 was immortal; he was going on 17 hours of age for genomes that died under the five hour mark. I naturally exported him as soon as I realized and set about trying to figure out what went wrong.

At the time, I never did, and the best anyone else could figure out was that he was extremely vulnerable to injury and basically all of his organs were dead. Ten years later, I came to a realization about what the cause could've been...and not only was it figured out, but it lead to the discovery of yet another oversight with the vanilla genomes.

A New Base Genome: The End is Never the End is Never the End is Never the End....

 After I posted the breakdown of the supposedly-final version of the RAS ChiChi genome, Dragoler offered up a criticism of it. Specifically, she pointed out that the way RAS consumed muscle tissue when breeding probably wouldn't be all that effective in adding a cost to creature breeding without also adding in a gene that prevented breeding outright in creatures who weren't taking care of themselves. 

As it was, RAS creatures can just keep kisspopping and laying eggs even when their muscle tissue is at 0, and not actually suffer all that much for it considering amino acid (and thus muscle tissue) isn't actually used for all that much by default; mostly the production of prostaglandin and also as an emergency backup should glucose levels be low but amino acid levels be higher (this setting aside the fact RAS also uses prostaglandin to heal wounds, which in my experience is a more frequent occurrence than just organ injury). 

Now, the reason I didn't stop RAS creatures with low muscle tissue from breeding to begin with was partially out of concerns over compatibility, but also partially because the levels of muscle tissue in RAS are much less stable than they are in TWBs. I monitored the levels of a group of first-gen RAS ChiChis with the Biochemistry Kit to double-check this, and sure enough they commonly had levels of muscle tissue below the levels that would prevent breeding in TWBs.

A New Base Genome: RAS ChiChi Breakdown

After I made my last post, I decided to make what I intended to be a temporary version of the 2017 ChiChi genome so I could get to making actually interesting breeds. I took the first released version of RAS as my base, replaced the old disappointment-gained activase with a "Muscle Energy" used emitter....

...And then I realized that maybe that rather than trying to reinvent the wheel as far as this biochemical balancing goes, maybe I should work with what the 2017s already had. That line of thought lead to more tweaking, and at last I reached a point with the biochemistry I could call myself happy with. 

Then one thing lead to another from there, and next thing I knew what I had intended to be just a temporary base had turned into what I'd call the final version of the RAS ChiChi genome. Funny how things work out sometimes, huh?

Of course, then it took me a couple weeks to muster up the spoons to write this post. You win some, you lose some. 

As with RAS Test Version 1, I'll be breaking down all the changes I made. If you just want some norns to play around with, you can check them out on Creatures Caves here and here (the first pack is missing some of the changes described here, since I was still waffling on whether or not to include the changes in question). 

Without any further ado, let's get started. 

A New Base Genome: A Different Approach

 When I first started playing around with the 2017 genome with the intent of turning it into my new base genome, I figured there wouldn't be much I had to do to turn it into something I'd be satisfied with. In my own words: "The 2017s feel about right to me. With any luck, figuring out their digestive system shouldn't be too big of a hassle, and everything past that point should be smooth sailing."

Ha. Ha ha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

A month after I initially made that post...I'm still not at a point where I'd consider myself satisfied with their biochemical balancing. As it turned out, my initial test version of RAS was a lot more prone to heart attacks then I'd like, something I only really found out when I figured I was happy with that version and started working on my ettin genome based on it. 

And my frustrations with that got to the point where two weeks ago I decided to ditch working on the 2017 genome and base RAS on a CFE Gizmo genome instead. That didn't work either. Sure, the Gizmos had a lot of biochemical balancing done already...but they clearly didn't account for fixing the nonfunctional anabolic steroid emitter, because after I did that the result was norns with too little adipose tissue. And often too little muscle tissue on top of that. So I took a brief detour to experiment on a normal CFE genome instead. Once again: too much adipose tissue, AND too much muscle tissue too.

So ultimately I wound up back with the 2017s. Going off a hint from Verm that chemical reactions scale with the amount of the reactant chemicals involved in them, my new plan was to have activase (generated from a fixed version of the "muscle energy used" emitter in addition to the activity stimuli, removing the activase from the disappointment stim entirely) react with glucose/triglyceride to produce anabolic steroid as opposed to just getting consumed outright, in a way that didn't feel as "cheaty" as the way default 2017s just consume adipose tissue and glycogen outright.

...Once again, too little adipose tissue AND too little muscle tissue. Though at least this time heart attacks still feel possible, and it also feels like creatures are actually doing things, unlike the last time I tried biochemical balancing in 2017s. So it's an improvement...but is it enough of one? Or is it just a prelude to further frustration as I continue to bash my skull against a brick wall, all for something I'm not sure is even going to matter to the average player; I'm not even sure if the average player would even understand anything I just said.

The worst part about all this is that it's outright keeping me from working on the breeds I WANT to be working on. I'd much rather be working on, say, a new aquatic breed. Or maybe a RAS version of a breed that's otherwise TWB/TCB only. Or even just my base grendel genomes. But nope; I can't work on any of that while these stupid dumb boring -argh- ChiChi Norns have their biochemistry this out of whack. 

So...it's clear that my current approach to working on this genome just isn't working. I'm getting extremely frustrated, and I'm going to burn out and drop the game for months if not years on end again if things keep going this way. So...what can I do instead? 

Well, first things first, I definitely need a break from working on RAS. Maybe not necessarily from playing Creatures outright, though; I'm not sure I'd come back if that's my last experience prior to the break. So for a little while at least I'll just play the game normally and check out some cool breeds and other mods that I haven't really looked at before.

My other thought is that I'm trying to rush things. My original base genome was made over the course of years, as I made changes and added features from other breeds that I liked. I'm thinking maybe that's an approach worth taking again, if I can find a base genome that I feel comfortable working with that also won't need a ton of work to get back to the spot where my old one was. 

I still feel the 2017s feel mostly right to me, biochemical weirdness aside. However, I've also considered going with the CFF genome instead. The reason, weirdly enough, is that the CFF go with the vanilla's way of handling hunger while still having the other fixes I'd want. At this point, I feel like trying to balance the amount of hunger from the original trace emitters and stimuli would be easier than the 2017s' way.

In any event...hopefully my next post about all this is a happier one. Until then, folks.