I'm Being Followed by a Moon Shadow....

Today, the 22nd of July, is my birthday. I've finally hit 20, which means I can join the old people's club and wave my cane at young 'ems yelling "GIT OFFA MAH LAWN!" However, that is of minimal importance to this blog, or to the community in general.

I first started playing Creatures a long time ago - I forget just how long, but it was before I had access to the internet, and most likely 10 years ago. I'm amazed I've managed to stick with the series this long, but I don't regret a thing.

So I've decided to celebrate, but that doesn't mean I should be the only one having fun. I bet a release would definitely lift some spirits up, and I've got just the thing: a breed that's most definitely my finest work in genetics up until this point.

 Those of you who frequent CCaves might have noticed that I was working on something and that something would get released Sunday. The Moonshadow Grendels V2 - an updated version of a breed I made way back on Gameware - were that something.
These grendels hunt norns, but are dirty cowards who run away when slapped and are more frail than the standard norn. What makes them so dangerous, then? They have an agent that comes with them, and this agent allows them to become invisible - enabling them to attack norns with impunity.
A lot of work went into them (it actually took me days to finish them - only the Flesheaters are taking longer), but it was worth it. I was finally able to put all the things I learned about genetics to work.

Don't have the Banshee Pack? Don't despair - the Moonshadow Grendels V2 come in normal Grendel form, too. If you have C3, you're good to go.

Download the Moonshadow Grendels V2!

The Moonshadow Grendels were also the reason for the lack of Tevaela updates - they distracted me and at the moment I'm rather disinterested in continuing it (though I did play it a little - nothing much of interest happened, unfortunately). I'll get back to it at some point.

The Blog Name has been Changed + Current Projects

As some of you have already noticed, I've finally gotten around to changing the blog's name. "The Realm" was the first name I came up with, but I didn't change it immediately because I figured I could come up with something better. However, everything else I thought of either had the same implications as the last name, didn't fit the blog, or only fit the blog's current theme. So I settled on "the Realm." Yes, it is just "The Realm." Short and simple.

Now, why didn't I announce this immediately? Well, I was holding off on it since I was going to announce it and release something at the same time, but I reckon that everyone would have noticed the name change before I finished the release, so I just announced it now. Instead, here's a list of everything I plan on making/am working on at the moment:

C2 Genetic Breeds

 

Yes, I do have some things for C2 planned. I decided that Creatures 2 deserves a proper page instead of just being a link.

Canny Grendels: In a similar vein to the Canny Ettins of Amy from Flib Dat, these grendels will be based on the Akamai Canny Norns with altered stimuli, instincts, and poses to match the actual grendels. These are being made more as a basal genome for me than anything else - the default grendel genome is difficult to work with since there's a crap ton of issues with it, and the boney genome isn't much better.

Demon Norns: These norns were inspired by the spritemix of the same name created by Amanora. While they use the same sprite arrangement, their genome is completely different. These guys will be based on the Akamai Canny genome and are aggressive, heat-loving creatures with severe weaknesses to the cold and water.

C3/DS Agents

 

Glowflower: Another one of the plants I'm making for Mea. They're similar in appearance to the Iceflower, but increase the light level instead of reducing the heat level. These are actually mostly done coding-wise - they're in the process of being bug-tested and will probably be released soon.

Genetic Radishes: Yet another plant I'm making for Mea. These are similar to the C1toDS carrot in appearance and function, but have the chance to mutate into different colors as well.

The Sea Garden: This is a pack of aquatic plants + a critter to increase the amount of standalone aquatic plants and critters. It's actually going to be a bit larger than originally planned since many of the plants are getting additional varieties. I believe I already mentioned this in a past post, but it is a current project so I decided to mention it again.

C3/DS Genetic Breeds

 

Dendrobate Grendels: That release I mentioned earlier? That would be these guys. They're named after the traditional genus of the Poison Dart Frog, and have behavior to match. Notably, they require moisture (CA 3) to survive since without it they suffocate. They have most of my focus at the moment, and I plan on getting them out soon. Also notably, they'll be the first completely new C3/DS genetic breed I've made in over a year (the Metallophagus Grendels V1 were the last new breed before them).

Sea Monsters V2: Mentioned before, but I'm mentioning them again. These guys will be the proper second version of my Sea Monsters (V1 is available from my Norn Adoption Center page, and V1.4 is available from CU7). Unlike the previous versions, they'll use the Jungle Grendel sprites solely, but hopefully the digestive and brain updates will make up for that. I'm not certain when I'll finish them because I'm completely out of ideas for them outside of the base features of the previous two versions (peaceful, amphibious grendels that crawl around on all fours and need to be underwater to lay eggs).

As you can see, it's a long list, and I don't intend on working on it nonstop. After the Dendrobates and Glowflowers are done, I'll probably take a break before working on anything else on this list. And on another note, this marks the 25th post I've made. Only 75 more posts to go before I've made 100. \o/

Incubi Grendels for Creatures 1

No, I'm still not done making the C3/DS Downloads page yet. However, I'm making considerable progress with it.

In the mean time, I made another C1 Grendel Breed for you to enjoy. It's not any of the ones mentioned at the topic at CCaves, though:

The Incubi Grendels are friendly and social - just as well, considering that they feed by absorbing the slaps and pushes of their fellow creatures. If they get hungry, they'll try to encourage other creatures to make physical contact with them - they don't have instincts to eat normal food, although they can digest it and benefit from it just as any other creature would.
They didn't take very long to make, but I think they came out well enough.

Download the Incubi Grendels!

Miscellaneous Stuff

I noticed there was a bug with the Edible Gadgets agent included with the Metallophagus Grendels - there was a typo that could affect the edibility of some gadgets. I've fixed this - it should be available in the initial release post, but you can also get the new agent file here. Just use the Remover to get rid of the old version and then inject this version to update your world.

I've also made a version the agent that works with Geats - specifically Gaius - and is therefore tailored to the stims they use. It was made by request of Ghosthande. Download this agent here, but do note that I haven't tested it very thoroughly - just enough to know that Gaius can use it effectively. 

And that's that.

Feral Run: Ark World

So in my last post, I finished up and released the Metallophagus Grendels V2. Unlike the Waterfall Grendels, the Metallophagus Grendels didn't get a wolfling run. Part of that was because the grendels themselves were working perfectly fine while I was running around coding their agents. However, I also wanted to run a feral run featuring the breed. In my time testing them, they quickly earned their place as one of my favorites (which is a big improvement over the quickly made breed V1 was).

So after three posts of nothing but releases, I resume my regular posting with details of my Metallophagus Grendel feral run, Ark World (a pun on "Arc Words" - yes, I hang around TVTropes too much). This initial post just contains details of how I set up the world. Later posts will be about the grendels themselves.

This is a single-metaroom run, but as opposed to using Annex's Hub (a great place for the Metallophagus Grendels if you're making a general purpose world), this coder went with something completely different:

I went with the Bridge + Engineering from Creatures 3 - okay, maybe this place isn't that much different from Annex's Hub. It's certainly a lot larger, though.

Why did I explicitly refer to myself as a coder? Because this isn't a docked world. I went right ahead and just made a .cos file that injected only the Bridge, Engineering, and the Corridor connecting them (as well as a few agents, namely scenery and the airlock).

The bridge is where the grendels will hatch. By the picture, you can see that there's a bunch of Techno-Organic Carrot patches (which grew up on their own - techno-organic carrot patches tend to separate if left alone. And no, that rhyming was not intentional). There's also the solar flower from the Gaius pack, edited to match the grendels' genomes (Gaius uses the "deactivate" stimulus to get nutrition from gadgets. The Metallophagus Grendels use the "I've eaten something (general)" stimulus instead). You can also see a Whirly, whose code was left untouched.

Here we have a better shot of the bridge's underbelly, including a whole  bunch of whirlies, the airlock, and the potion vendor.

The potion vendor is mostly there for flavor - as usual, no bacteria get injected when I make a new world, rendering its main purpose moot. It and the cheese machines have been edited to not require bionenergy (since this is DS where the stuff doesn't exist).

The corridor is more or less there to provide passage between the bridge and engineering. Those "doors" aren't actually doors, but fancy CA emitters. Like I said, this isn't a docked world - the doors would crash the game if used if they were real. The only other thing to note is the radio from the Portal pack - it's not the only thing from that pack that was injected, nor is it the only radio on the ship. Now that I think of it, I have an idea for a sound change....

Engineering has gone under a complete revamp. The creator, replicator, and gene splicer are no longer here. In their stead are the quasimechanical plants from the Gaius pack, making the entire area look like a jungle. It's pretty awesome, I say.

I end this first look into the world with the grendel hatching area:

 Instead of an Ovicidal Agent (which could easily get taken apart by hungry grendels), I decided to use Balor's Eggonicer. Actually getting it to work was a pain - it won't handle grendel or ettin eggs if you inject it into a standalone world - but I have to say that I like how it injects one egg at a time. Helps avoid the psychopathy that plagued Gardenia Falls. As you can see, it's already at work - however, I forgot to note an exact genome for the eggs (by default, the .cos file I use to inject them just uses random genomes beginning with "gren") and as a result got a bunch of "normal" (I wouldn't call a GoM an example of a "normal" grendel) grendels. They're all getting exported once they're done hatching, and will probably be destined to wind up a part of my next splicing spree.

The Portal Cake and Spook's Ploopa Vendor both provide food for the young grendels. The cake won't last long, but the Ploopa Vendor will definitely have a use. I was going to use the vendor sprite for "gadget fountains" that spit out lightmodules and lightboxes (two otherwise useless gadgets), but the sprite is apparently buggy if you try opening it in SpriteBuilder or GIMP with the Creatures Image plugins.

Setting up this world made me realize that there's a dearth of general gadget agents. If nothing else, some more variety with the mechanical plants would have been nice. Another potential project for another time, I guess.

Hide your gadgets....

...Because they risk getting nommed otherwise.

These are the second version of my Metallophagus Grendels, ready to roam your ships and eat your gadgets and machinery - this time literally. With the included agent, they can actually eat any gadget that they can pick up - that includes things like the Anti-Bacterial Spray, so you might want to lock up your important gadgets before setting a group of these guys loose.

In addition to actually eating gadgets, V2 also ages slower and is more heavily benefited from Heavy Metals (they can even use it as an emergency food store). While they're generally inoffensive, don't let your norns harass them. If attacked, they will retaliate quickly and painfully.

In addition to the agent that lets them eat gadgets, the Metallophagus Grendels V2 bring along a special food item with sprites helpfully donated by Mea.

The techno-organic carrot, a strange blend of plant and machine, grows in inorganic areas. It provides all the nutrition your Metallophagus Grendels need, so expect to see them wherever a patch of techno-organic carrots is found. Normal creatures can also eat the carrot, but I wouldn't let those eat the rusty or rotten carrots....

Download the Metallophagus Grendels V2!

To wrap things up, I'm also uploading V1 of the Metallophagus Grendels since originally they were uploaded on Mediafire. I released these over a year ago (I thought these were a recent breed - hey, time flies).

V1 is similar to V2, but obviously less refined. Unlike V2, V1 doesn't need a special agent to feed - they can just hit the gadget to obtain nutrition. They're also generally peaceful all around.

Download the Metallophagus Grendels V1!

(You can also download these at Seeyou7.net if you wish)

You might have noticed that the pictures look a bit different. With some help from Firebug, I replicated the image style from Naturing :: Nurturing and Jessi's Creatures Documentations. I think the photograph-like style fits, but of course your mileage may vary.

Grendels and Waterfalls and Mushrooms - Lots of Mushrooms.

It's time for another release, and this time it's a fairly large one.

I'll start things off with the pack for the Waterfall Grendels V3:

The third version of the Waterfall Grendels is a callback to V1 since I wasn't happy with V2. In addition to all the things about V1, V3 will usually know when it's time to get out of the water and has a more varied diet. In addition, this breed is the first of mine to have the updated digestive process of the Gizmo Norns - to breed, they need to eat.

They come with the Waterfall and Waterfall Mushrooms, both of them updated heavily. The waterfall now has fantastic new sprites courtesy of Mea, and can be picked up and moved to wherever you want it (in addition to actually looking like a waterfall), and the mushrooms come with a dispenser for their seeds in addition to a faster growing cycle.

Download the Waterfall Grendel Pack V3!

If you need more mushrooms, there's also the Watercup Mushrooms, whose colorful presence will certainly liven up a dull room as well as providing even more food for your creatures to munch on.

 

 Download the Watercup Mushrooms!

The final release of today is also the largest. Remember that collab that I kept mentioning I was working on with Mea? It was no small agent:

It was a metaroom. This is Silence Falls, the native home of the Waterfall Grendels. The massive waterfall in the center provides the area with its lifeblood. While it comes with both the Waterfall Mushrooms and the Watercup Mushrooms, it is quite open to customization in a similar vein to the Biodome and Veridia.
Mea offered to make a metaroom background for me in response to my posts about Gardenia Falls, and for that I thank her. We both put a lot of work into making this place (Mea even had to get help from her fiance to help render some of the plants), and the result is awesome.

Download Silence Falls! 

If you run into any bugs, drop them in the comments. I hope you'll enjoy all the new releases!

List of Random Breed Ideas

The hiatus I mentioned in the first post is slowly coming to a close. I say slowly because, while I'm playing the game, I'm not actually doing any development. It'll probably be at least another week before I can be bothered to finish up everything.

Anyway, this is just a list of ideas I've come up with over the course of several months or so. Now that my knowledge of genetics has been expanded immensely, I'd like to have something to make with it. Unfortunately, my initial bleed splurge back when I first got into development seems to have expended all of my original ideas.

As an additional note, this is just a one-time thing - I'm not updating this on a regular basis. 

New Breeds:

•  Ceratioid Grendels: The name comes from Ceratiidae, a family of deep-sea Anglerfish known for their odd sexual dimorphism. The Ceratioid Grendels are terrestrial unlike their namesakes, but they do share their sexual dimorphism: Females are mostly a more robust Jungle Grendel, but males need to constantly mate in order to feed once they come of age. A bit like a less complex Grendel of Minimordor, in some respects.
• Eldritch Grendels: The first member of this species was to be the predator for my Devil's Reef survivor run at CCaves. Unfortunately, I never did get their genome right and as such I wound up cancelling the run. However, I still plan on making these someday. I think their name says a lot about what they're going to be like. If you can't guess, just know that they're going to be a bit odd compared to a normal grendel.
• LotF Pack: A norn breed and a bunch of agents based on the novel Lord of the Flies. Since it's been a while since I've read that book, it's likely I'll never get to these (and it's not likely I'd be able to finish them - most of their agents require completely new sprites, and I'm overtaxing mea as it is).
• Merrow Grendels: An aquatic grendel breed whose behavior varies depending on gender - females are friendly, social, and mostly carnivorous swimmers, males are solitary, aggressive bottom-feeders.
• Tidal Grendels: A breed who normally lives at the water's edge. They're not amphibious, though - instead, they'll go underwater to get a critter or something and then promptly run out. I'm out of ideas beyond that, though.
• Unda Norns: An aquatic norn breed that's pretty generic beyond looking rather like a land-living norn. These guys need a revamp concept-wise.
• Wolfling Grendels: A grendel breed designed for wolfling runs whose behavior contrasts that of the Flesheaters - instead of seeking out norns like the Flesheaters do, the Wolfling Grendels are generally friendly grendels who only become aggressive if harassed.

Breed Updates (Own):

• Moonshadow Grendels: I didn't implement the invisible/visible system very well in these grendels, and as such the agent often glitched and made them become invisible permanently. Besides that, there are a bunch of other things I want to do with their genome (such as making them infertile in the light). I did make a new agent for them, but that's about as far as I got.
• Sea Monsters: The first ever breed I made and released to the general public (or attempted to). They were my favorite genetic breed back when I first made them, but now they're REALLY outdated (by that, I mean that they have things like a reaction that turns comfort into nothing. Back then, I didn't know what the "Do not express" checkbox did). They do have a V2, but that's also very outdated (and I wasn't very happy with them to begin with).
• Carnivorous ChiChi Norns: The sole reason I made this breed to begin with was to go with the Edible Snotrock .cos file I made shortly beforehand. While they came out nice besides that, I think I can do better with their genome than I did the first time around (that, and the Edible Snotrock .cos needs updating as well). 

Breed Updates (Other):
First off, let me state what I mean by "Other." I'm referring to breeds who were originally made by someone else, but have their concept revamped and their genetics improved by me. The Potamogeton Grendels are the biggest example of this - their original version, the Pond Weed Grendels, was made by Grendel_Slayer, not me. I'll also say that I base these updated versions on a fresh genome and not the ones that were already made.

• Water Ryuujins: This breed was originally made by Grendelgirl_88. They're amphibious grendels tweaked to be slightly friendlier and rest around Creature Eggs. I plan to make them fit their name a bit more ("Ryuujin" means "Dragon Lord"). However, the Waterfall Grendels do resemble these guys a bit, if only in spirit.
• Mermaid Norns: A simple aquatic breed created by Nina of Yggdrasill. They were simply amphibious Bengal Norns who changed color as they aged, but I loved them and always had a crew of them in my Aquatic Terrarium a while back. Their revamp details a change in diet as well as making them more social (among other things). 
• Vicious Norns: KC11's flagship breed whose main feature was the ability to "eat" grendels (I'm not quite sure how she did that without an "eat creatures" agent, and to be honest I still don't).  I did have a list of features for their revamp, but I've lost that and overall forgotten what I was going to do with it. Ah well, it'll come back to me someday. 

Whether or not anything on this list comes to fruition remains to be seen (I hope to at least do the Mermaid Norn revamp if nothing else), but I hope there are at least some people who like at least some of the ideas listed here.

Gardenia Falls: Gluttons and Thugs

So I started the Wolfling Run shortly after making my last post. The tribbles being able to breed like rabbits? Didn't help them much - they were extinct in literally less than a minute (read: when only three grendels had hatched). The grasshoppers soon followed them after everyone had hatched. However unviable those two were, at least they showed that the grendels' diet was working right.

The next thing the grendels did? Being generally friendly, you'd think they would choose to play with plants or something. No, what happens instead is that half of them decide that beating the everloving crap out of the others was the most fun thing to do. The first hour of the run was filled with the sounds of noms being consumed and grendels being whacked. The slapping got to the point where I just said "Screw it" and altered the hit script to punish anyone who tried slapping another creature.

I know baby creatures are supposed to be curious, especially when they're running CFE edits, but it does not make sense that they'd decide to be sociopaths within the first few seconds of life. It's ridiculous.

After that, I decided that the grendels could make it through the night and left the game running and went to bed. When I got up in the morning, anything that could have gone extinct, did go extinct (excluding the grass and the Square Root). The only food sources left were the stuff that replenished itself (the pumperspikel seeds, the chili pepper pot, etc.). Since there was a dearth of food, the grendels were focused on trying to find it instead of breed - there were also no eggs to be had, although the general population was around Generation 2.

To rectify this, I injected a bunch of food sources that wouldn't go extinct (including one of the original Gardenia plants), plus the tubas. That fixed the lack of food sources, and got them breeding again. So I left for my morning classes. Nothing much had changed when I got back, leading to the current state of the run:

I'm probably going to tweak the grendels' genome a bit based on current experiences - for one, they shouldn't have decided to engage in beatdowns shortly after hatching, and I also plan on reducing their hunger a bit so that they eat what's necessary and leave everything else alone.

Ultimately though, I should have just went with a different metaroom. Gardenia is a bit on the small side, meaning that it was way too easily depleted. I'll probably leave this run go on for another few days, then restart it with the updated grendels in a larger area (though I have no idea what area at the moment).

On a positive note, the pests and weeds are doing their jobs.

Wolfling Run: Gardenia Falls

Before anything else, you might notice the blog looks a bit different. Thanks to some (read: a lot) of help from Jessica, I was able to add some HTML/CSS elements to this blog to make it look a bit nicer than it was at launch. The most noticeable changes are the transparency and the centered header image, in addition to the centered post titles. The background is also a little less grainy looking thanks to an artistic effect I applied to it in GIMP (and I still had to reduce the quality of it a bit - bloody 300kb limit).

Enough about the blog - it's time I told you about the first WR I'm documenting on this blog. This is a breed-testing run for the Waterfall Grendels V3. The world is called what it is to both note the room it's being held in plus its primary feature once I was done meddling with it.

 I ruminated on what metaroom to use for the run for a while before finally settling on Gardenia. I thought about the Biodome, but it's a bit buggy. I also considered Norngarden 1, but the lifts would need to be recoded a bit to fit grendels, there's a pond they could drown in (the baby Waterfall Grendels lack fully-functioning hydrophobia), and there was no real place to put the water. Gardenia (by zareb) fits the theme, is small enough to customize easily and rather quickly, and to top it all off there's a nice rock structure in the center to set up the waterfall. So, Gardenia it was.

However, the room needed some serious renovation before it was ready for customization. For one, its terrain by default is actually set to "Outdoor Concrete." If I wanted to use the default Gardenia life, I could have left it that way, but I didn't. So I had to change a bunch of room types. Now, the room is mostly Normal Soil, with the fallen tree over on the left being Boggy Soil and the top of the rocks remaining as Outdoor Concrete.

While I was at it, I changed the room's otherwise sloppily implemented CA system. Now, the light and heat change depending on the time of day, and there's a waterspout (invisible agent that spits out other invisible agents that produce water and nutrient CAs) in the room's center. I also tweaked the weather system a little bit (although it was mostly fine as it was). I plan on fully revamping the room's coding at a later date, but for now it's suitable for a Wolfling Run.

The list of agents that I used, organized by general, injected with the Agent Injector, and injected via the CAOs Tool:


General

• A.S.K. (Arimeides Starter Kit) Corpse Cleaner: Gets rid of dead bodies so that I don't need to scroll the camera over them to get rid of them. As I don't plan on watching this run all the time this will be extremely useful.
• Advanced Autosaver: Keeps frequent backups of the world in event of a crash.
• All-Creature Autonamer - Names all un-named creatures. This particular autonamer is one I altered myself, and has the bonus of working in C3 standalone.
• Hand Hider - So the grendels don't obsess over the hand while I'm watching them.

Agent Injector Agents:

• Amber Stump: A very slow source of food and source of entertainment.
• Awkwood Creeper: These normally inject into the Meso, but I moved them in here courtesy of Amaikokonut's Magic Words. Food source.
• C1toDS Bad Plants: These are here to challenge the grendels. If they're stupid enough to try the weeds, then they deserve the shot of toxin they'll get.
• C1toDS Carrots: Another food source that's very good at keeping its population up.
• Chili Pepper Pot: A source of fruit, and a reason to encourage the grendels to go up to the top of the rocks (the room's small, so I decided to let them go up on top of the rocks in the event the floor becomes too crowded). Also provides flowers for the butterflies.
• Elevines: Allows the grendels to go up on top of the rock structure to avoid overcrowding on the ground floor.
• NG Eggplant. Yet another food source (and a flower for the butterflies).
• NG Eastertribble: Edible critters that breed like rabbits. Waterfall grendels love critters, so one that won't die out easily is perfect. Their eggs kinda mess with the egg management system, though. 
• NG Trasherplant: A source of food, but something needs to be fed to it before it yields. Mostly in here for the atmosphere.
• TP2DS Munchroom Vendor: A food item that can be any sort of edible depending on its surroundings. One of the most useful food items there is.
• Waterfall: The thing that gives the room its name, and also gives the grendels a cool and wet place to call home.
• Waterfall Mushroom: A source of food, seeds, and possibly entertainment. Since these things leave a lot of seeds around, they're also good for feeding tribbles.
• Yummy Seeds (Square Root): A source of fruit and seeds. 

CAOs Tool-injected Agents:

•  Butterflies: From the Norn Terrarium. Make the room look pretty in addition to being a food source (the Waterfall Grendels also love eating bugs). 
• Grass and Grasshoppers: There's really no need for more seeds thanks to the Waterfall Mushroom, but the grass is in here to feed the Grasshoppers, who are another edible bug to keep pressure off the butterflies.
• Mossie Flies: A pest to challenge the grendels. 
• Pumperspikel: Yet another source of seeds. 
• Stingers: They're listed in here because, like I mentioned back in my description of my main world, they don't inject by default into my DS worlds. Another pest to give the grendels trouble. 

The Evo Avo by Vampess was in here at one point, but it's apparently gone extinct.

Now, you're probably wondering about the Radio Box attached to the Egg Finder. That's part of the world's (Creature) Egg Management system.

This is the rest of the system. This setup of gadgets, called the Ovicidal Agent, was initially created by Minisauron to monitor the population of his Grendels of Minimordor. The idea behind it is to have older eggs constantly destroyed, so that only the best breeders get to pass on their genes. It definitely works for that purpose, but the main reason it's implemented in this run is to keep the generations moving. If it wasn't in place, then eggs containing gen 2 grendels would be hatching when the general population was somewhere around 7. This setup, by constantly destroying older eggs, ensures that the contents of the eggs are at a similar generation to the living population.

For those of you interested in setting up one of these, I'll detail the process in a later post. Their creation is beyond the scope of this one.

Now, to introduce the grendels themselves.

The original Waterfall Grendels are one of my personal favorites of the breeds I've made. As their name suggests, they're based on organisms that would normally be found living around a waterfall. To this end, the Waterfall Grendels enjoy cool, moist areas - hot, dry areas reduce their immunity, while cool, moist areas increase it. They also live a bit longer than most grendels (and most norns - their lifespan is comparable to the Bondi Norns). They can also hold their breath for a long time (about 5 minutes).

To be honest, I don't think the creation of the Waterfall Grendels V2 was necessary. However, I felt compelled to make them when I updated the agents included with the originals (the aforementioned Waterfall and Waterfall Mushroom). Their differences from V1 were mainly the fact that they were amphibious, scared of norns, and were more susceptible to being slapped to death. Due to the fact that I perceived them as unnecessary, I never truly liked them - to the point where I included the V1 grendels in the download.

V3 is an effort I'm very happy with (the male up there is an example of a V3 grendel). In most aspects, they're closer to V1 than to V2. In terms of features exclusive to them, the only major thing that differentiate V3 from V1 is that V3 can't last quite so long underwater, and will get scared if they start drowning (in an attempt to get them out of the water when that happens).

However, the base used for V3 is what sets them apart from the previous two. In addition to having all of the non-ForF edits of the CFE, they also have the digestive process ripped from Darcie's Gizmo Norns. That is, they can't last forever without food. An unaltered C3 grendel will last for an hour or more after hatching if left unfed. The Waterfall Grendels V3, along with all the other breeds that will share their base, last for a mere 11 minutes from hatching if they don't eat something. Given that they won't become adult for a little over an hour, they need to eat in order to breed (this does wreck their chances at the standard IQ test, though).

I'll end this post with a little bit of a cliffhanger:

These are the eggs of the initial population. The population limit is set to 10, as that's how many I think Gardenia can support at once. I'll also say that I'm not documenting the lives of the individual grendels. I'll probably leave the run going when I'm not actively playing the game (or even at the computer), and post updates here about the trends of the general population.

Project: Flesheater Grendels

An adult male Flesheater

If you frequent CCaves/Ctopia and pay attention to the Development Board, you may have noticed a thread about these guys. However, beyond "more realistic predatory grendel" I've never really given them an official description. Now that I have this blog, it is as good a place as any to give the laydown on the Flesheater Project.





The Flesheater Grendels are my magnum opus - the most complex and polished breed I ever plan on making. As can be expected, I'm taking my time in making them and constantly testing them after each change I make. It's the most amount of work I've ever put into a genome, and I hope that it pays off.

The Flesheaters are designed as an answer to a particular problem about the normal grendels - as a wolfling run hazard, they're hit or miss. If you use the standard (Jungle) grendel as a hazard, they'll either do nothing or kill all your norns within a short timeframe. It's rare that you'll get grendels that actually serve the purpose as a check to the norn population.

The problem with the normal grendel is in their anger levels and aging process. Standard C3 grendels age really fast - hatch a norn and a C3 grendel at the same time and the grendel will be an adult in a fourth of the time it takes for the norn to get to that lifestage. As well, C3 grendels get angry for the most trivial things (such as running into walls). The end result? An angry, adult C3 grendel can easily end a wolfling run before any of the norns get a chance to breed. Even worse is if one decides to hatch a breeding pair - the C3 grendels will be having babies by the time the norns actually start wandering around.

Banshee grendels aren't much better. While they don't start hunting norns until adulthood, when they hit that age they're every single bit as remorseless as the standard grendel - to end an adult's killing streak, the grendel itself needs to die or all the norns need to die.

If you want an example of what I mean, read this topic about a wolfling run where the Banshee Grendels were given the aging process and breeding speed of the standard C3 grendel. It didn't end well, to say the least.

Another problem is that the standard norn really doesn't stand a chance against a grendel. In a normal world, the hand could just teach the norn to hit the grendel, but in a wolfling run a norn won't know to do that. Better yet, even if they did know that they could hit the thing, it would likely get them nowhere - normal and banshee grendels are relentless when attacking. 

This problem is what the Flesheaters aim to fix. Where a normal grendel's relationship with a norn is akin to that of a serial killer's with his victims, the Flesheaters and norns have a relationship more like that between a lion and a zebra. The Flesheaters will get angry and will kill norns, but they know where to draw the line and won't kill more norns than is explicitly necessary. They also have an altered aging and breeding process to ensure that they don't get the jump on norns if they're hatched at the same time as their prey.

Flesheaters also are being designed so that the normal norn has a chance against them. Their flight-or-flight genes are edited so that a healthy grendel fights back when attacked, but grendels in high amounts of pain will turn tail and run. Basically, a norn merely has to slap a Flesheater enough to get it to run away. If the norns have access to education, they then could pass down their knowledge to the next generation, possibly ensuring the species's survival.


This is more an introduction to the breed than anything else - the breed will get covered in more detail in future posts. So for now, I'm leaving it at that. I do want to know, however - is there anyone who's actually interested in a grendel like this? My past attempts at hosting a public beta test for them ended in dismal failure. While the files I put up are getting downloads, I'm not getting any feedback on them even though I explicitly asked for it. So I'm wondering if there's an actual need for a grendel like these.

For those of you interested in testing the Flesheaters: You can get the genome and a breeding pair for v0.5 (the latest public revision) here. They're a bit outdated, but they're still a good example of what I'm aiming for.

Current Development World

For a first non-introductory post, I decided that I'd showcase my current development/general gameplay world, which has the exactly same name as this blog. While it might not be that interesting to some of you, others might like to know what I do differently as a Creatures player.

Before I say anything else, this post is very image-heavy with some very big images. I apologize to anyone with a slow connection.

I'll begin my world description by showing off my current Favorite Places list. Besides the default metarooms (as you can see, this is an undocked DS world), I also added the Hub by Annex (with some alterations - I'll get to those), the C3-in-DS Norn, Jungle, Ettin, and Aquatic Terrariums by Emmental, and C1toDS by a heck of a lot of people. I'm planning on adding more at some point, but as I can't think of any metarooms worth adding that aren't big empty expanses this line-up will do for now.

Speaking of big, empty expanses, here's a glimpse at my Norn Meso. There's nothing in here due to the fact that, since I like to run a lot of single-room wolfling runs and most of those runs are not in here, I removed most of the .cos files that would otherwise inject agents into here (such as the food vendors, the stinger pod, and the tuba). The only Meso-exclusive agents in this room are Muco, the Commedia, and the HLM. As this emptiness is typical of the rest of the default DS area, I won't spend much time on it.

Now for Annex's Hub. If there's anywhere that has a lot of altered code, it's this place. Let me list all the things that were changed:

• The room's been remapped slightly (the bottom of the lift shaft was originally two rooms - I replaced those with one, singular room to add CA links).
• The lift's gone and replaced with Amai's Elevines. The default lift is really, really buggy (among other things: click on it wrong and it'll trap creatures when it stops and won't carry them when it moves). The elevines themselves have been slightly recoded, as well - before, creatures who had just used an elevine would sit there looking at it due to getting stimmed to wait AFTER getting stimmed with "traveled in elevator."
• The doors now tell creatures to wait before transporting them. Without that stim, creatures would repeatedly push the door and wind up triggering it again when they reached the other side, usually winding up back where they started. 

Besides the above alterations, I've also added Aquashee's Botanoid and Ghosthande's Chyme Plants (from her Gaius pack) to prevent Eat Elevator Syndrome. As you can see, it's actually quite a popular hangout even for naturally-inclined Apple Norns.

Now for the C3-in-DS metarooms. Since I've injected all four of the main C3 areas, I took it upon myself to re-add the doors linking them (that is, the ettin accessways and the norn-to-grendel door), and I've also applied Vampess's fixes to the lifts (note to self: Add Creatures Heaven to the links section).

The Norn Terrarium has Vampess's fixes to the wildlife applied to it and had the heat turned up to keep the carrots around, but apart from that it's pretty much the same room as it was in C3.
I'd also like to note the creatures in the picture. The two norns, Menrik and Seyon, were adopted from Discover Albia's CreatureLink, and had their starts in the scenario world detailed there. Unfortunately, neither of them has bred yet (I doubt Seyon's going to breed before she dies from old age. There's still hope for Menrik though, as he went to join the Apple Norns in the Hub shortly after this picture was taken). The fittingly-named Rampant Motion also seemed to be suffering from EES in this picture - I'll snap her out of it once I get back to playing.

Abundant Self, along with Rampant Motion, came from the Ettin Egg Layer. I'm not quite sure what genome she's using - she's definitely not a normal ettin, I can say that much. I originally thought she was a Lungfish Ettin, but she has normal sleeping patterns (Lungfish Ettins fall asleep constantly if they're above water).
Another random quirk about the world: The grendel and ettin egg layers typically produce grendels and ettins instead of other species with genomes beginning with "G" or "E," as the default layers do.

The Ettin Terrarium underground is decorated with Gaius's Spigot Plants and Chyme Plants. The geat himself is nowhere to be seen, though.

Okay, there's not a lot to say about this area. I just snapped this picture to show off the flora. Since there's nothing of major note about the Aquatic Terrarium, I'm moving on to C1toDS.

Godly Blood (interesting name) is a default C3 grendel from the egg layer. The only thing worth nothing about him is that he has learned to play with toys and eat birds. He didn't come here on his own - I dropped him onto the island after he attempted to attack Seyon (he didn't actually manage to hit her).

To wrap things up, I'll describe what I did to the Western Ocean. To accommodate Melted Example and Handsome Baby (a Hydrolisk and a Banshee Hydrolisk, respectively), I added the sponges and gumin grass from the aquatic terrarium (who have edible seeds thanks to my meddling), as well as the Kyutai whales, recoded so that creatures call them norns. They're pretty much there as punching bags for the grendels. Melted Example is the grendel who posed for the blog's current banner, by the way.

This'll probably be the last expository post. My next post is definitely going to be about something development-related.