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.