Hiatus 2

Once again, interest in other games has dragged me away from Creatures for a while. I don't know when I'll get around to finishing all my projects - probably around 2 weeks or so. Note that this doesn't mean that I'll be absent from the community - I'll still be around. I just won't be contributing anything, which includes posts here.

On a slightly more distressing note, the name change not only failed to keep the bad traffic away, but the bad site is currently the one contributing the most traffic when it comes to links (as far as whole sites go, Creatures Caves is thankfully in the lead by a significant margin). I'm wondering if the name had anything to do with why such sites were linking here in the first place. Do any other bloggers have issues like this, or am I just unlucky?

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/

Metaroom Review: Ostrova

After reading the responses to the previous post, I've decided that the name is staying the same for now. However, I do plan on changing it in the future once I can come up with something that can't be interpreted...in an unexpected way. Anyway, moving on.

I've been considering doing metaroom reviews for a while now, but held off on it for some reason (I don't think my initial review of the Lost Cave managed to hit all the points I wanted to make - it was never published). However, this blog shall be a decent testing ground for this potential new series.

My first published review will be of one of the few third-party metarooms one has to pay for - Ostrova, by Chaos Development. So let's get down to business.

Upon injecting Ostrova, you're greeted with this. Having an introduction screen is always a nice touch, and it's also nice that there are several help screens to let players know what's what (although I do admit I missed the snowball teleporters completely when I initially injected the room despite the big honking sign).

Yet another help screen. Clicking on these gets rid of them, since most players are unlikely to want them sticking around long after their purposes have been served.
From this picture, you can already see one of my gripes about the area: it's quite barren initially, and since the entire metaroom is mostly Air + Indoor Corridor, there's not much you can do to customize it outside of stuff like the Gaius plants (which won't benefit most creatures anyway).

 Graphically...well, I wouldn't call this metaroom a work of art. The background itself is rather well done apart from the completely white floor of the upper level - in particular, the parts taken from C3 (the stars and some of the walls) blend in with the original graphics quite well. However, most of the original graphics haven't aged well. Look at this picture, and then look at the Biodome or Devil's Reef, then look back at this picture. Compared to some recent metarooms, the images here look like they were made by someone who was an utter newbie at modeling.

Some of the agents do look nice, though. The penguin and trees are the standouts in this picture.

That "wall" to the left can actually be walked through. Oversight, much?

Ostrova's layout is one of its strong points. It's quite easy for creatures to get around, and there's no places where they could get stuck.
This pond has nothing in it initially besides a rather large egg, but that's easily fixed. The egg is part of a puzzle, in case you're wondering - yet another one of Ostrova's strong points.

As I mentioned earlier, Ostrova is really barren initially. The developers, however, decided that more lifeforms could be added to the room via these tubes. This tube creates 3 caterpillars that will (or rather, could - I've never seen them complete their lifecycle) become butterflies. Unfortunately, there's only three of these tubes, and they really don't do much to add to the room.

This is what the pond looks like when both of the tubes above it have been activated - you've got fish, bugs, and a plant. The rightmost tube needs to be activated multiple times before the sponge can take root - and even once it gets planted it rarely lasts long.
There's another problem with this room, and that is a lot of its coding isn't original. Everything in this picture is based on a C3 critter (the fish are based on clownfish, the bugs are based on aquamites, and the sponge...is based on a sponge), and besides having different images they're completely identical to their official counterparts, right down to the sponge spores and bugs not being edible and everything requiring salt water to live in (although this pond is salt water, so that latter point isn't much of an issue).

Allow me to reiterate one of my complaints from before - Ostrova is incredibly barren, especially the upper level. These fruits are the only thing that don't require a vendor to be obtained on the upper level - actually, everything that grows naturally is classified as a fruit. It's not a particularly good metaroom for your creatures if you don't plan on interacting with them much.

The only other source of food on the upper level is the snowman, who will occasionally spit out a hunk of cheese when pushed. It usually vends toys, though - although that does mean your creatures won't be that bored.
Also, I forgot to mention that the DS version gets a mini empathic vendor injected into it at the start. Another testament to how little this room has in the way of food items.

  The lower level is probably the best place for most creatures in terms of food. The stocking vends both lemons and carrots in addition to the cheese from the snowman, and there's a soup vendor. The reddish fruits are classified as manky and are quite alcoholic. This is probably one of the better designed areas in Ostrova, in my opinion. Also, that radio plays some cool (no pun intended) tunes when clicked on.

While this little issue can be forgiven given how long Ostrova's been around, there's no CA emitters to be found in here, and the levels are not linked. This means that creatures in Ostrova won't use the elevators intentionally and will often find themselves huddled in the corners. Some of the agents do emit CA - albeit the wrong ones (the snowballs from the launchers emit starch smell for some reason).

While this more a nitpick than anything else, the developers weren't very creative with their naming scheme. In fact, a lot of the names range from odd to stupid. The sponge is in the odd category - can you even pronounce that? I know I can't.

Ostrova does come with its own grendel breed, the Yeren Grendels. Design-wise, they're actually pretty neat. However, like a lot of other things in this room, they reek of laziness. They have sprites for the childhood and adolescent stages, but the adult and old lifestages are just copy-pasted from the adolescent lifestage. It doesn't help that they have body data issues upon becoming adult (although I'm planning on fixing this). They also don't have a unique genome to back them up - they just use the Banshee genome with a different appearance. 

In short: Ostrova is a decent - but not great - metaroom. It has a good layout, some original concepts, and is mostly instinct friendly. Creatures can survive and thrive in here, but they'll need support from the hand in order to do so. However, it's bogged down by only decent to mediocre graphics, lack of CA, and lack of overall originality in coding. Some things about the room and its corresponding breed just look like laziness and/or a desire to just get the thing done.

Final Score: 5/10

One final note: Like I stated earlier, Ostrova isn't free. You have to buy it from Chaos Development's current website. It's not cheap, either - it costs $12.50 in U.S. money. For comparison, you can buy Creatures Exodus from GOG.com for less than half of that. As you can probably guess from the score I gave it, I don't think it's worth that much - if it's worth anything at all. I really think Chaos Development really needs to look at the current state of the CC, since that price tag suggests they aren't aware that we're still around.

And so concludes my first metaroom review. I'd like feedback on how well I did - do you guys think it's fair, or do you disagree?

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.