This Silence is Boring.

By now, I can happily say that I'm not going to be on hiatus any time soon. I've finally gotten the state of the Creatures install on my new computer close to where it originally was on my old one. I just need to install the map editor and find some way to get the GIMP Plugins and MNG Tools working and I'll be golden as far as development goes.

Only problem: where the heck is the rest of the community?

None of the main blogs have gotten new posts in months, CCaves is dead silent apart from a few newbies and will probably remain so until the revamp goes online, and it doesn't seem CTopia is any closer to getting out of the rut it's been in for the last year or so. One would think summer would be the peak of activity in a community like this, and yet it's the opposite. Either this summer is particularly busy for some reason (I know there's some people who are moving), or everyone's enjoying the break while it lasts. I envy that latter group - not having a social life outside the internet hurts sometimes.

I've heard that the best way to encourage activity is to be active, so I might as well make this blog interesting for the CC members who are just as bored as I am. So, I've decided to take some suggestions.

Is there anything you would like to see happen here? Interested in seeing a wolfling/feral run get documented? A few tidbits about projects such as the Flesheaters? CAOS/Genetics tutorials? Or heck, even a genetic breed/agent (that doesn't require new sprites) you'd like to see made? I'm open to all sorts of ideas.

In case you're wondering about some projects, I'm holding off on doing anything about the Sea Garden until I get the GIMP problem fixed, since trying to use the Sprite Builder for this sort of thing is both tedious and tends to create rainbow spew, and I'm not too convinced about Edos being a worthy substitute. No, it's not cancelled. On the other hand, I've finally come up with some sort of direction for the Sea Monsters V2 beyond "generic amphibious grendel breed" (they absorbed some features of the Merrow Grendels, which I briefly mentioned in a past post). Stay tuned - I'll probably talk more about the sea monsters in future posts.

On Official Breeds and Messed-Up Body Data

While going to make female body data for the treehuggers, I noticed something that might be of interest to those of you who ever had messed-up body data for things like the C1toDS grendels or the Neko Ettins.

As it turns out, the official breeds (well, the norn breeds - I'm pretty sure the banshee grendels don't do this) not only install body data for the corresponding norn slot, but for the corresponding grendel and ettin slots (e.g. the treehugger norn agent installs body data for Norn H, Grendel H, and Ettin H). The extra BD isn't tailored for the grendels and ettins, either - it's a carbon copy of the BD the norns use.

The result? Any grendel or ettin who shares a slot letter with an official breed and lacks body data for any of the usual life stages (baby, adolescent, adult) will start using the body data the official breed installed when they hit that lifestage. Usually, that winds up making them look like this.

That junk BD is also part of the reason why automatic install from an egg agent isn't quite as reliable as installing a breed manually. When an automatic installer agent injects for the first time, it reads filenames, and if any of the files are missing it installs them to the correct folders. However, it only looks at filenames, and you can't tell the difference between two files by name and type alone if they share a name and type. So if the agent comes across one of the junk BD files installed by an official breed, it assumes that the file in question belongs to the breed it's trying to install and skips over it. Again, this results in grendels and ettins using BD meant for norns and looking very odd as a result.

Fixing it is relatively simple: Delete the body data for the breed slot in question, then reinstall the breed. With grendels and ettins that have typical proportions and lifestages, this means you can use the official agent again without repercussions as that agent will assume that the body data for the grendel or ettin breed is the same as the body data it's trying to install and skip over it.

However, for grendels and ettins that only have BD for one lifestage (the C1toDS grendels, for example), then you'll have to repeat this process every time you use the official norn breed agent whose slot has the same letter as the grendel's or ettin's. As such, it's a good idea to make copies of the one lifestage with original BD and rename them so they occupy the adolescent and adult lifestages as well, preventing the official breed agent from reinstalling the junk BD.

The official breeds only install BD for the male, as the female usually uses the same body data (although this practice causes issues on its own accord - try hatching a female treehugger in C3 standalone after installing the Gecko Norns, and you'll see what I mean). For this reason, it's more likely that you'll see messed up males than females, as it's the male slot that gets filled with garbage and not the female.

Why CL made it this way is beyond me. My best guess is that it's a failsafe should the original norn BD get deleted and the norns have to rely on grendel/ettin body data, but if that happens simply hatching another egg should fix it. As it is, the "extra precaution" wound up causing nothing but inconviences.

Hopefully, this little tidbit of info should help those of you who can't get their C1 grendels, Micro Grendels, and other grendel and ettin breeds to look right after installing them!

We are the Heart of Darkness....

Three release posts in a row - I seem to be on a roll here.

Anyway, I found that it has been a long while since I've made a properly new norn breed (the ice dragons were the latest norns I released, but those were made when the Gameware Forums were still up, which should tell you how old they really are). So, this latest release of mine shall remedy that:

These norns have nothing to do with the vampire romance series of questionable quality, so don't worry about that. :P
The Twilight Norns are a night-themed breed - they are resistant to cold, take less naps than normal norns, and can play with beasts, pests, and weeds with no impact on their well-being.
They're also loners, so watch them around your normal norns...they don't react well to crowds.

Download the Twilight Norns!

For those of you wondering about Ark World, it's been called off - it was on my old computer, and I really don't feel like restarting it on my new one. To make up for that, I might detail my plans for my scenario world (which I'll start once the Garden Box gets publicly released).

Yet another release (and an update)

First off, here's an update to the C2 Flying Creatures COB. I found that it had an error whenever a flying creature went underwater (it was supposed to kick them out if they fell in - instead it threw an error about an "infinite loop").

Secondly - I have a new release, and this time it hasn't come out of the blue:

The glowflower is a variation of the iceflower that increases the light level as opposed to decreasing the temperature. Its flowers are notable for their calming effect when eaten, and for their tendency to emit the home smell of the species they detect the most of. The plant only sprouts at night, in low light areas, or when there aren't many other plants around.
This was yet another plant I made for Mea as part of our "sprites for agents" deal. That's one more thing knocked off the projects list...

Download the Glowflower!

A bunch of recent happenings on the internet drew my interest away from Creatures for a little while, but rest assured that this case is not a full-blown hiatus. I'm still playing Creatures, and I've still got a few things in the works. Do know that half the things in the project list post aren't coming to fruition, however (about the only things I'm sure are going to get done at some point are the Mea collabs).

Oh hey, a release!

First off, an update about the blog: The name change has finally paid off. No more bad sites are contributing to the traffic here (although not all the current traffic sources are Creatures-related...the new non-Creatures source seems to be inoffensive, though). Also, I've changed the background again (the old one looked weird on my new computer, since its resolution is crazy high compared to my old one), and am now completely happy with the blog's design. I wouldn't expect any major design overhauls in the near future.

Now, for the main point of the post: I've actually finished a release! Unlike the grand majority of my past releases, though, this one is for Creatures 2:

This COB will allow creatures of all ages to fly, provided they have a sufficient concentration of chemical 218 (which is also used by the Angel Norn COB - don't use both in the same world, lest you have issues). On the surface, it's not much different from past flying COBs. However, this one brings along some extra scripts that give flying creatures control of their vertical velocity - no more grounded fliers!

This is the first C2 COB I've made and released - not exactly the most typical of first COBs, but I'm very proud of it. I plan on making a Swimming COB that makes use of the extra scripts to allow swimming creatures to control their vertical velocity as well - my first attempt didn't go over so well, though.

Download the Flying COB/Scripts!

As for other projects...well, I've been having trouble focusing. I've been having major trouble trying to stay focused on one project without getting bored/frustrated and moving on to another. The lack of focus is the main reason for lack of activity right now since the other reasons for the hiatus are now a non-issue. Hopefully, I can get to work on some of my older projects (*coughseagardencough*) sometime soon.