Revival of an Old Idea

As far as my getting back into Creatures goes: I wound up falling out of it again, mostly because as it turns out validating the Steam version of C3/DS not only fixes bugs (which I did to get the Genetics Kit working again) but also changes any file replacements back to their original versions. Which includes the changes to the .cos files I made and to 99% of .cos files made by the community. After that I uninstalled it and have yet to try again. 

But every now and again I think about picking it up again. Not only that, but I think about making something for it again. I figure that it'd be nice to bring a proper closure to my Creatures development journey with something spectacular. I've thought about reviving my old Flesheater Grendel project (grendels that can properly serve as population control without completely wiping out the norn population as regular grendels are wont to do), or a big pack of four genetic breeds (two grendel, one norn, and one ettin).

But ultimately, I think the best candidate would be an outright full breed: the Kraken, one of my oldest ideas. 

After all this time their Creatures Wiki page is still there, mostly the same as I wrote it back when I was a dumb teenager who didn't consider that creating a whole new page for an idea probably wasn't the best decision. Back then I wanted them to be geats who ate other creatures.

Now? Well, it seems like people have mostly figured out what causes the Wasteland Glitch, but there's still enough other problems with geats that I don't think I'd like to stick with that. And the idea of them eating other creatures is also not a great idea as I've long since learned how prone creatures are to cannibalism if you give them that ability (especially if you're using a genome that has better learning capability like the CFE). 

So as the page also mentions, present-day me would want to make them grendels, who genetically would likely just be pretty standard aquatic grendels of the kind I've made dozens upon dozens of before (if more aggressive than what I usually liked to do). I do think it'd be interesting to give them traits reminiscent of actual cephalopod behavior to set them apart from other such breeds.

It's their appearance I've put the most thought into. Over the years I've come to appreciate more simple designs, and I've also been putting a lot more thought into speculative evolution. So rather than going with the description I initially came up with, I figured something more evocative of a cephalopod that evolved into the shape of a grendel, with four of the arms moving further on down the body to become the arms and legs. The remaining arms would remain around their face, and the tail instead would have fins reminiscent of squid. 

If you're familiar with Splatoon, imagine a grendel version of an Inkling and you probably won't be too far off. Just instead of tentacle hair it's a tentacle beard (for both genders, I might add; I'm not sure what I'd do to make the genders visually distinct, but it'd definitely be something more naturalistic).

However, I've also had another thought. It just so happens that everyone's favorite C Monster Borland has a body plan that's much like a grendel's already, and converting Borland wholesale to C3/DS might be a bit of a pain due to how wonky his sprites are. The idea of just making outright Borland Grendels sounds really fun, but combining Borland with the ideas I already talked about is another option, both bringing the Kraken's design more in line with the mythological beast they're named after and to reference the greater Creatures mythos. 

Everything else on their page? Still something I'd want to include with them. I just love the idea of the Kraken bringing their own ecosystem along with them, be that in the form of a metaroom or just an agent pack. And that toy ship still sounds cute. 

But...have I made any progress towards getting past the roadblock that kept me from making them long ago? That being, the graphics? Well...no. I have picked up some skill in photo manipulation courtesy of learning to edit RPG Maker's default resources, but I don't think I'm at the level where I could make all the frames necessary for a breed that way. Far from it, in fact. And my other visual art skills are still horribly lacking and my brain still woefully unsuited for the process of learning. 

There has been an exciting development for breed development in the form of GeneForge, which to my understanding eliminates a lot of the tedium of making breeds and brings them in line with the official breeds to boot. However...that still requires a 3D model which I can't provide. So ultimately, I'd still need someone to handle that part while I handle the genetics and coding.

And also I'd have to overcome a f-argh-ton of inertia from not playing the games for so long and having to remember all the basics. And I'd also want to make a suitable base genome for the breed before anything else, which would take a while. 

So...is there hope for the Kraken to finally become reality after all this time? Definitely not right now. But maybe someday. Maybe even sooner rather than later?

If nothing else, I can at least do a concept sketch. My art skills may be unsuited to for the breed proper, but I think I can do that much.

In any event, I needed somewhere to dump my thoughts, and my blog was as good a place as any. For now, back to silence I go.

Development Wishlist

While I don't have much enthusiasm for Creatures anymore, as people have probably guessed from my last post, there are still some things I'd like to do for this game. Sadly, they're all hindered by either my aforementioned lack of enthusiasm, the fact that I can't do them at all due to lack of skills/still active and willing people able to provide said skills, or both. But I figured I might as well make a list of them. Maybe it'll inspire me to actually do them, learn how to get the skills I need to do them, or get someone who'd be willing to help me do them.

• Artemia Sea Update: This room's gotten a bunch of updates already, yet I'm still not entirely happy with it. I guess as the product I've been most pleased with I'd like to make it the best it can be.
• Mapping update: Some of the upper crags have narrows that are too tight for creatures. And that tunnel separating the left and middle areas of the room is a pain to navigate for both creatures and critters. Sadly, this requires editing graphics, which I can't do.
• Doors: I've been playing around with the Past Seas doors in Artemia Sea, and I've found that doors are great for getting creatures to spend some time in the upper areas of the room rather than sitting near the bottoms. So I figure it'd be nice to have the room have some doors of its own. Alas, I can't make sprites, and I just don't want to reuse the Past Seas doors. 
• Coding update: I'd like to fix some of the critters so that they're less likely to fly above the water's surface or just made more efficient in general. Maybe make it so they make detritus for detritus-eating creatures.
• Chione Update: This room could really use some native ecology, if not some native toys and a few flavor touches. Again making entirely new sprites is out of my expertise, and mea's both not been very active and has been having computer troubles as of late.
• Sadly, this does mean Chione's not getting an update this year; there's no more changes I can think of that the infrastructure would need, and I can't make sprites for entirely new stuff. 
• Past Seas update: This room could really use a coding overhaul, since I've learned a lot in the time since I've first made it.
• Aquatilis Caverna V5: For a while I've had the thought of giving this room a coding overhaul (among other things, the critters and plants could stand to be fully interactive). The full idea I had was to give both AC1 and AC2 an overhaul, and then make it so that you could inject either room's ecology into the AC Pod. 
• Plus, it'd be nice to give AC some doors as well, since it's even more expansive than Artemia Sea, and not only would doors give swimming creatures more reason to fully explore the rooms, it'd help non-swimmers get around them too. Alas, this would need new sprites that I can't provide.
• It'd also be nice to make up for the lack of certain food items (there's almost no "food" in either area; in fact, I don't think there's any "food" at all in either room. The supply of "fruit" is also severely limited), or maybe just adding some new stuff to freshen them up. Again, my lack of spriting ability gets in the way here.
• While I'm thinking of metarooms, a brand new freshwater-themed metaroom would be nice. This is even more of a pipe dream than updating already existing metarooms, though; I can't sprite, and furthermore I don't know if I have in me to code a completely new metaroom and associated ecology from scratch. 
• Flesheater Grendels: I called this project my magnum opus back when I first talked about it, and it'd be nice to actually finish them and release them before my time in the CC is up. However, I'd probably have to remake them from scratch since their current genome is horribly outdated. I've also learned that the stimulus for hitting creatures also applies to hitting everything (e.g. a creature who gets food from hitting creatures will also get it from hitting a gadget). 
• Learning to make copy-paste metarooms: Copy-paste metarooms are things like Past Seas and the Grendel Hideout. Out of all types of metarooms, this is the kind I'd probably be most adept at making. Alas, there's no good tutorials for making this kind of room (the old tutorial from CCSF 2006 just says 'this is easy' without explaining anything). 

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.

Creatures 3 In Docking Station

After a really long hiatus and after running around in circles to fix a really strange error with my DS, I think I'm ready to go back to playing Creatures. And lo and behold, I have something that isn't a release that I think is worth posting about!

The above picture looks fairly normal at first glance (apart from being maximized on my computer's crazy huge resolution). However, look a little closer. Where'd all the favorite place icons go? Why is the DS welcome screen showing up in C3?

Well, in my usual insanity, I decided to see if Docking Station could load an undocked Shee Ark, as an extension of an old project to get C3 to load with DS's engine. In the past, such an endeavor was attempted by replacing C3's engine.exe file with Docking Station's, which was woefully unsuccessful (the result was an unpassable catalogue-related error).

For this approach, I decided to mess around with .cos files instead of .exe files. So I ripped a completely unmodified "001 World" folder from my Creatures Trilogy CD (for those of you who don't know, that's the folder that holds all the files for the agents of a C3 standalone world at startup). Then I did the following things:
1. Applied Vampess's fixes to it.
2. Compared it to the "010 Docking Station" (DS's equivalent to the "001 World" folder). Any C3 .cos file that had an equivalent in DS (for example, "creatureBreeding.cos" and "DS creatureBreeding.cos") got deleted and replaced with the DS counterpart.
3. DS also had a few improved scripts for C3 agents (such as the Creator) for use in docked worlds. I took these scripts and replaced the originals in the C3 .cos files with them.
4. Made some alterations to DS's Welcoming Screen to account for the differences between C3 and DS.
5. Finally, I renamed the altered "001 World" folder to "010 Docking Station," replaced the original "010 Docking Station" folder with it, and made a new DS world.

Unbelieveably, instead of some error complaining about invalid map positions or catalogue errors, the result was a completely functional C3 world using the DS engine. All the C3 agents work as they do in C3 standalone. Even the bioenergy feature works.

However, adding new agents to this world isn't quite as easy. As can be expected, the C3 Creator looks for C3 agents, not DS agents. Even though this is technically Docking Station, the stuff that shows up in the Creator are C3 agents. This isn't a big problem, but trying to inject one of these agents can cause problems if it has a separate .catalogue file for both C3 and DS (for example, the Grendel Upgrade) and the DS version of the agent was previously injected into a DS only world.

So the Creator also needed to be modified to look for DS agents instead, and that proved to be another surprisingly simple task. When reading agents, the C3 creator looks for the PRAY chunk "AGNT," which indicates a C3 standalone agent. DS agents, meanwhile, are indicated by the PRAY chunk "DSAG." Getting the Creator to read DS agents was a matter of replacing all mentions of "AGNT" with "DSAG" in its .cos file.

And just like that, the Creator loads DS agents.

There's further complications involved in this process, however. Apparently, the animation routine some DS agents use is different from C3 agents. When the Creator tries to read one of these agents, the result is this:

Considering the Agent Injector can read these .agents files just fine, I think fixing this is possible; just look at how the Agent Injector handled it and fix the Creator likewise.

Even after that, there's still a few things here that make this whole affair awesome, but impractical in the long run:

1. Most agents (including my own) that are compatible with both C3 standalone and DS use the "gnam" command when determining where to place an agent. In Docking Station, this usually means placing the agent in one of the DS areas (like the Meso). This world, while only having C3 areas, is still a DS world. So the "gnam" command interprets it as a DS world and tries moving the agent into a nonexistent DS area. You can probably guess what happens afterwards.
Unfortunately, fixing this means fixing loads upon loads of agents to determine placement through other means, and ultimately I don't think it's worth the effort.

2. C3 standalone, obviously, has no online functionality. The same is true of this world. While I could move some things concerning the online functionality over without causing issues, most of DS's online is focused in the Comms Room and Workshop. Trying to find a place to put online stuff onto the Shee Ark is again more trouble than its worth (since it involves extra spritework, among other things), and copying it over whole-cloth creates "invalid map position" errors. So worlds created in this manner cannot get online, or at least not completely. Granted, this doesn't matter so much now with the lack of a functioning DS server, but if one of those projects to bring DS back online ever succeeds, it will matter then.

3. This probably goes without saying, but making docked worlds with the new Bootstrap folder in place is a seriously bad idea. If the result isn't outright errors, it's at least going to create loads and loads of duplicates. Granted, this is just guessing; I actually haven't tried to do this since changing the folders, but I certainly don't want to.

This was a fun little experiment, though; I'm probably going to make a few proper worlds in this manner. I might even share the new bootstrap folder if I manage to fix the Creator error mentioned above (and change a few things around with the DS welcome screen so that the other options work properly).

Before anyone asks, I have no intentions of trying to do this the other way around (that is, trying to get C3 standalone to load the Capillata). DS can run anything C3 has coded just fine; however, C3 cannot just run any DS agent just fine as DS has a lot of CAOs commands that are exclusive to it, and these need to be replaced with a C3-friendly equivalent for use in C3 standalone. Furthermore, I just don't see the point - the Meso is really the only area that might be useful in C3 standalone; the Comms and Workshop are completely useless thanks to C3's lack of online functionality. It'd just be a lot of work for too little reward.

Dear Metaroom Developers....

Please stop making walls like this. Your baby creatures will thank you, and personally I'll be much happier.

Sincerely,

Grendel Man

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/

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.

Lack of Blog Activity...

...has been due to there being nothing to talk about. I've stopped running Gardenia Falls since there was really no point to continuing it since I'm going to restarting the run with new blood in a completely different room anyway, and I'm not really in the mood right now to work on the Flesheaters (they're one of those "on-off" projects...that's mostly the reason why they're taking so long).

With that said, I'm still hanging around the CC and watching the recent burst of activity at CCaves and the developments occuring in the worlds at Naturing :: Nurturing, Discover Albia, and other Creatures blogs that aren't this one.

I also have a few releases planned. One of them somewhat obviously consists of the Waterfall Grendels V3 - I still need to make a few tweaks to their genome and patch up their agents (which are also getting new sprites courtesy of mea of Caos of the Creatures Realm) before I put them up.

Speaking of mea, I'm also helping her with a few of her projects as well as a collab (at least, that's what I'm calling it). The projects being worked on are mostly agents, but the collab is on something pretty major. I'm not going to say what it is, though - you'll see when it comes out.

I don't plan on editing the blog's design any further at the moment - I'm pretty happy with it as it is. I might mess with the background later if I can find a decent graphic that's under 300kb and large enough so that it doesn't repeat.

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.