The End of an Era

I've got good news and I've got bad news.

Let's get the good news out of the way first: with help from Crabcat at Creatures Caves, I've managed to remember and recover all of my downloads from Creatures @ CU7. Not only that, but I've also backed up all my Norn Adoption Center breeds as well; while that website is currently still up, I felt it was better to be safe than sorry. Now you should be able to find everything I ever made right here at the Realm, in the appropriate Downloads section.

Well, except my Norn Adoption Center adoptions. I suppose I could put those here too if enough people want them, but for now I don't think they're high priority for me.

And now, onto the bad news: I've decided to officially retire from Creatures development.

The thing is that my interest in actually playing the games has been completely abysmal for a while. My tastes in video games have changed a lot since I've started this blog; these days, I'd much rather be playing something with a good story and characters, or failing that at least fun combat and bosses. Creatures just doesn't cut it anymore.

Furthermore...I've said it a million times before, but I'm going to say it again. The community just isn't what it used to be. A lot of the old timers, including a lot of the community's best developers, haven't been around in ages and may never return. What's left just doesn't seem to display the same kind of spirit. It's not overly motivating, to say the least.

This isn't to say I'm abandoning the Creatures Community. Even if I don't intend on developing any more, I still like being a part of the Community and will do my part to support it. Heck, for all I know someday I'll find a way to reinvigorate my passion for this game and start churning out stuff once more. It's just looking really unlikely I'll ever make another addon for this game, or even update this blog much after the fact.

...Well, I do have one last surprise in the works. I don't know when I'll finish it, but hopefully it'll be up soon. Keep an eye out for it!

A Long Overdue Update

The first post of 2016, and it's halfway into April. I really need to get my priorities in order.

First things first: Let's get my stuff from the CCSF 2015 up here.

Inspired by CCaves member Lavendel, the Lavender Grendels are a peaceful, flower-loving breed. They come with their own flower agent to make them feel right at home.

Download the Lavender Grendels!

The All-Creature Autonamer and Wolfling Nametagger go hand-in-hand. The former agent is based on the default DS autonamer and uses the same catalogue file, but as the name says it works for all creatures instead of just norns. It also removes the generation-based naming scheme to give you a much greater variety of names right from gen 1, and works with C3 standalone (but I don't know how much that means to anyone).

The Wolfling Nametagger, when paired with Amaikokonut's Creature Nametags, lets you see the generation of a creature at a glance without the need for the Creature History. It's useful for keeping track of a progress of a long wolfling run. 

Download the All-Creature Autonamer!

Download the Wolfling Nametagger!

Now onto some less-rosy news. As most of you are aware, Creatures @ CU7 has gone down. This leaves me in a very awkward situation, since much of my past work was hosted on that website. To make things even more awkward...I don't even remember what all was hosted there!

Eventually I'll try to rustle everything up and put it up here, but until then if you want a CU7 download just contact me somehow (information should be part of the right sidebar) and I'll see if I still have your desired items around. If someone could give me a list of everything I was missing then that would be even better. 

My own interest in playing Creatures is currently at an all-time low; I have been working on one project or the other, but I just haven't been motivated to really finish any of them so there's no telling when they'll be finished and released. Part of the reason for this is just because I've been finding other things more interesting or pressing (like dabbling with hosting RPs on other sites or trying to come up with a way to earn money). 

There's another reason for it, however, and that reason is that the community is not very well off right now. The wounds left over from that schism last year still haven't healed, and we're losing a bunch of formerly stable websites. Furthermore, there's a decisive lack of developers in the community. Considering the Creatures Community is primarily based on mods, that's a very bad thing. 

On the bright side, Grandroids is making good progress (or so I've heard; I haven't been following it very closely). There's also Creatures Family, but I wouldn't get my hopes up for that one. 

So what do we do? I think the best idea, not only for myself but for the other developers in the Community, is to increase the knowledgebase. As I said before, the Creatures Community is primarily mod-based. The old mods are fine and dandy, but we need people constantly making new ones. 

Those old tutorials aren't going to be around forever, and when they're gone it's going to be much more difficult for newcomers to learn their way around developing for Creatures. So what we need are some more tutorials, not only covering the old ground but also touching upon things the old tutorials never covered. 

To that end, I'm planning on creating a Tutorials page here eventually, covering everything I know about genetics and CAOs. It'll cover the basics, but also go into more advanced topics (for example, receptor-reaction pairs). It's probably going to be a while considering how lazy I naturally am, but if I can ease the frustration of potential newcomers and keep the CC alive that much longer than I think I'll do my best. 

That's all for now. Until the next one, folks.

I'm back, baby

...Well, kinda.

I've decided against retiring - as annoying as some people can be, I enjoy being a member of this community, and I enjoy contributing to it. Sure, sometimes I get a little bored, but as far as I'm concerned I'm going to be a part of this community until I die or until there isn't a community to be a part of. On top of that, Creatures is my favorite franchise; sometimes I get a little bored with it, but ultimately I've been playing the games for almost, if not over, ten years and I see no reason to stop now. Yes, there will be hiatuses, but you won't have to worry about my departure.

So what's the best way to celebrate this decision? Well, how about a genetic breed release? This one isn't quite as fancy as some of my more recent works - actually, it's quite a simple breed - but it was a nice way to ease back into development, and the previous version of it sorely needed an update anyway. So, without further ado, I present...

Not a whole lot to these guys: they're exactly what it says on the tin. They're banshee grendels that are (mostly) nice to your norns and aren't angry all the time. They feel at home in the norn home (though they still enjoy the grendel home, mind you), and have the same sort of camaraderie with norns as they do with other grendels. They're great if you like the banshee's appearance, but not their anger issues.

Download the Friendly Banshee Grendels!

It'll probably be a while before I get back to work on the Sea Garden and the breeds going with it (in fact, I might not get them done in time for the CCSF - I have a backup plan in that case, however). In the mean time, this release should hopefully tide you over for a while.

C3/DS Downloads Page Now Up

As the title says - I've finally finished formatting the C3/DS Downloads page and you can now access it. It looks quite a bit different from the C1 page (and C2 page if you actually count that) thanks to the fact that most of my work was made for C3/DS (and considering how many things I've made...yeah). I'm pretty sure I've gotten everything I've released on the blog onto the download pages, but if I'm missing something please let me know.

As of this typing, this is the shortest blog post I've written so far. Nothing special - I just thought you'd like to know. :P

Edit: Oh yes, I forgot to mention that I've disabled comments on the Download pages. This is just to make them look more professional rather than to shut anyone down. If a download link gets borked, just post here, message me on CCaves, or e-mail me.