Metallophagus Update + Potentional Blog Name Change

First off, I've uploaded the updated Metallophagus Pack. The carrot should now be considerably less prolific and creatures now have more ways to interact with the seeds. It's available from the same link as before and therefore can be found on the Downloads page or the initial Metallophagus release post. You can also get it here.

Right, now onto a slightly more pressing issue.

Some of you are probably wondering why this blog is named what it is. Well, the name itself is also the name of a particularly good song made by a Newgrounds user. This song, to be exact. Since I liked the song and the feel of it suited what my blog was about, I decided to name the blog after the song as a homage. "Hole" in this case is referring to "hidey-hole." I suppose the name could be interpreted to mean "My own little world," which is the feel I imagine the author of the aforementioned song was aiming for. I know that was what I was aiming for with the blog's title.

However, it's the name of the blog that leads into a big problem. "Hole" has a bunch of other meanings, one of which is very, VERY inappropriate as far as this blog and the Creatures Community in general. Unfortunately, I recently found that one of the major traffic sources to this blog seem to be reading "Hole" with this alternate meaning in mind - the second biggest, in fact (it's apparently responsible for 12-13 hits a day). So I decided to read the title using that meaning of "Hole"... and suddenly the name doesn't sound quite so family friendly.


So I'm seriously considering changing the blog's name to something else that doesn't carry such an...undesirable alternative meaning and therefore keeping the traffic that has no business being directed here off. Therein lies another problem: I'm somewhat attached to the name since it's intended meaning is really fitting.

What do you guys think? Do you think that enough people are going to take the title as innuendo to make changing the name worth it, or do you think it's a non-issue? I suppose I could just be worrying too much, but the fact that this inappropriate site is the second largest source of traffic here is really, really bothering me.

Ark World: First Thing We Do, Let's Eat All the Food and Make Lots of Babies!

While this update was actually played out yesterday, I couldn't upload it since my internet whacked out (and today I had to take a bunch of finals...college life, yay). Also, fail Shakespeare reference is fail.

Ark World has certainly gotten a lot more hectic since the last update.

This segment of gameplay started off with another pregnancy. As you can see, most of the grendels who were running around downstairs in Engineering have migrated to the upper floors. Which means even more babies on the way.

Speaking of which, the pregnancy resulted in a little female. Unfortunately, you really can't see her well since the firstborn is obscuring her face a bit, but she features quite a bit in the other pictures.

At some point, the female on the lower floors finally joined the other two on the topmost floor of Engineering. Also, there was another pregnancy shortly before this picture was taken - I'm guessing it was the two on the right, but I don't quite remember.

The resulting egg hatched into another young male. Oh happy day.

As food has become increasingly scarce, the adult grendels have started to get around. Here, who I believe is the oldest grendel on the ship has joined up with the younglings on the upper floor. Also, the baby female gets a better shot taken of her (although she's still partially obscuring her face here).

The firstborn male eventually got crowded enough to go skydiving. While it probably wasn't too pleasant at first, his outgoing nature lead him to some delicious solar flower seeds. Also, I'm pretty sure the Mechanical Grendel's being on the ground floor was also his doing (it's normally sitting by the Egg Receptacle).

The mechanical garden gains another occupant when the little female follows her fellow youngster off the edge of the ledge (more unintentional rhyming, yay!).

This is about where I lost track of the pregnancies. The greenish male on the right is the newcomer - I'm not too certain who the parents are.

At this point in the run, the most popular place on the ship has become the Bridge. All the grendels seem to be cramping each other's styles, though. It was also about this time that I realized the grendels were running out of food - that female on the lower right was suffering from Eat Elevator Syndrome when this picture was taken (I really hate that bug).

Of course, not all the grendels favored the bridge. These two decided to retreat back to the bowels of Engineering. Since there's both genders of grendel down there (and the population is rapidly increasing as it is), I'm not too worried about either one not getting the chance to pass their genes along.





As the Gaius Plants and Botanoid inched ever closer to extinction, I decided that the time was now to reintroduce the Techno-Organic Carrot (updated so that it's not quite so prolific) to Ark World. Right away, the new patch attracted interest.

Right away, the patch drew hungry grendels in from far and wide. It seemed like the food issues had been resolved....

...Only for the grendels to completely wipe out the patch shortly afterwards.
I injected the carrot again, only to have all the seeds get nommed before they could sprout. Several attempts later, and I got patches established in their original growing place, the center of the corridor, and on several levels of Engineering.

Yet another baby male was born during all the carrot madness. Since I don't use a .cos file that disables season-dependent gender ratios, I figure that it must be a season that favors male birth. Either that, or the Grendels are channeling the spirit of Minimordor. One of the two.


Now that the carrot's been re-established, I expect the population to quiet down as they return to constant carrot grazing. At least the time when the carrot was not in the world managed to shake things up a bit.

In case you're wondering, I still haven't gotten around to patching the Metallophagus's .agent file with the updated carrot just yet. I'll make a post here when I get around to it.

Ark World: Grendels on the Move

After a bunch of posts concerning revamps, I think it's about time I resume posting about my Metallophagus Grendel feral run.

First off, the most notable update concerns the Techno-Organic Carrot. After seeing some V1 Metallophaguses attempt to push the carrot seed, I decided that an update for the carrot was in order. Among other things, I altered the seeds such that they no longer grow so readily, which more or less restricted the patches to one area unless helped along by hungry grendels. In addition, the seeds got updated with push and pull scripts - pushing or pulling a seed enough times will make it break. I'll update the pack with the updated carrot at a later date.

I was going to inject this updated carrot into the world, but I decided that the grendels weren't going to be very interesting as long as the carrot remained in the world. So instead of updating it, I completely removed the carrot. In between the botanoid and the Gaius plants, the grendels should have enough food to last them.

The results were profound. Deprived of an easily accessible source of food, one of the females in Engineering decided to head back up to the upper floors. Once there, one of the males caught her eye. Shortly afterwards, the first pregnancy of the run occurred.

The two grendels at the Bridge also were forced to start traveling when the carrot was removed. The female soon migrated down to the lower levels, seeking the food the Botanoids spat out.
The Chyme Plants you see here have also been altered to match the grendel's stims - just as Gaius gets stimmed differently from the unaltered Chyme Plant, these plants stim gadget-eaters differently. However, it's unlikely that the grendels will sample them.

The other two females in Engineering more or less remained where they were when the carrots were still present. They'll probably rejoin the main population sometime soon, or so I hope. If they choose to remain down there despite the drastic decrease in food, I'm probably going to grab them and forcibly re-integrate them.

Somehow, the laying of this egg escaped my notice. Must be a quirk of the Eggonicer to hide the "Egg Laid" event. As the current population in this world was well below the maximum of 20, the egg was promptly sent to the hatching area, where it hatched into the young male on the right. As there's nothing much left for him at the hatching area, I expect he'll bumble around until he matures enough to use the elevator.

This update ends with the bridge female finally snapping out of her food obsession long enough to kiss-pop. This picture was taken the moment she got pregnant. I'm assuming the father is the smiling male sitting to her left - the guy to the right seems to be trying to eat that botanoid sitting at the foot of the cheese machine. Botanoids are classified as machinery, but as they can't be picked up they're the biggest reason that the grendels get turned off machinery so quickly.

With the carrot gone, you can expect to see more frequent updates about Ark World now. Hopefully, it'll get more interesting from here on out.

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.

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!