C2 Anemones for the Garden Box

So I've been in a bit of a development rut lately, which is a very bad thing considering my birthday's coming up and I need to make a breed for that, and I'm also trying to make four breeds for the CCSF. This all on top of having a ton of unfinished projects (such as the Coral Reef ChiChi Norns).

This release is an extremely simple one, but it's an attempt for me to get out of that rut. If nothing else, it'll help liven up your oceans.

The anemones from Creatures 2 are now available for use with the Garden Box. They're classified as "plant," and will amuse any creature who decides to play with them. Beyond that, they're pretty much living decor for any saltwater area.

Download the C2 Anemones for the Garden Box!

Aquanornia Revamp Update

After spending some more time with Aquanornia Revamped, I decided to do some remapping to increase navigability. There's been no CAOs or catalogue changes with this one, but you should at least have less incidences of having teleporting creatures, unreachable food items, and the like.

The update is available at the same link as before - you can download it on the C3/DS Downloads Page or here.

An Old Release

So Draggy's recent experience with Creatures Village reminded me that I actually did some development for that game. Granted, it wasn't a whole lot, but it did make playing the game a little more interesting.

This little update will double the maximum size of your Creatures Village population (from 4 to 8), in addition to giving you more eggs to start with and letting the females lay more eggs. There are some side effects to this (the extra population bubbles sometimes obscure a detail or two, and sometimes your norns will lay an egg that can't be messed with until someone dies), but I found it did improve my experience with the game quite a bit. Maybe other CV players will find it useful.

Download the CV Population Update!

Idea Dump Post Mk. II

I'm having trouble focusing again as far as Creatures goes. I keep thinking I'll make something, but then I get bored in the middle of making it, and eventually it gets to the point where I go "screw it" and lurk on TVTropes or Smogon or something instead of doing anything related to Creatures. This isn't anything new for me, but dear Banshee does it blow.

So I figured I'd make an idea dump post and see if I can get my thoughts in order. Nothing here is guaranteed to get made.

• An aquatic grendel breed that's similar to the Aqua Grendels, but never feels homesick underwater (as in, if they get homesick dropping them in the sea gets rid of it). Might have GoM-like sexual dimorphism (fast-aging males that live to breed; normal aging females). 
• A grendel breed based on mosquitoes - the males are friendly and have a normal diet, but females can feed by slapping around other creatures, and might need to in order to breed. Might also start out aquatic and become land-living as they age.
• A vampire breed that can lengthen its lifespan by hitting other creatures, and will lose life when slapped itself.
• Dragyns - a series of grendel breeds with draconic traits that use Draconian Norn sprites, with features tailored for a variety of environments. 
• An ettin breed of some sort
• Chameleon Grendels: Grendels that look like norns, presumably so that they can blend into a norn population. 
• Potamogeton Grendels V2: An update to my Potamogeton Grendel breed, which are themselves an update of Grendel_slayer's Pondweed Grendels (updateception?). The original Potamogeton Grendels lacked some CFE edits (for example, they can still become immortal) and the homesickness reduction trait didn't work the way I intended it to.

Also in the "things I want to do" list: Do a feral run involving land-living grendels (thank you KittyTikara for making me want to do this). This is easier said than done for me since my taste in agents is really, really finicky.

Not certain if I'll get out of this rut any time soon (though I did manage to mostly complete a norn breed, so that's something). I seriously need ADHD meds or something. x_x

Screwing around with Starter Families

Most players of C3/DS are aware of the Welcome Screen that greets you whenever you create a new world. One of the options on this screen gives you two adult, pre-trained norns to start off with. This was fine and dandy back in the day, but now with all the improved genetics running around, the default genomes the starters use is really outdated.

So I decided to look into the possibility that the starters could be messed with. This sounds simple, but the starter families use a unique file type (.family), which I wasn't certain could be edited. However, changing these files around is not difficult at all - the way the .family files are composed is almost identical to the way normal .creature files are composed.

A little background info first: Compiling a .creature file uses PRAY, just like .agent files do. However, the way the file's set up looks quite a bit different from an .agent file:

"en-GB"

inline GLST "001-mist-jru57-bwdgq-xp8h2-65prp.glist.creature" "001-mist-jru57-bwdgq-xp8h2-65prp.glist.creature"

inline CREA "001-mist-jru57-bwdgq-xp8h2-65prp.creature" "001-mist-jru57-bwdgq-xp8h2-65prp.creature"

inline GENE "001-mist-jru57-bwdgq-xp8h2-65prp.genetics" "001-mist-jru57-bwdgq-xp8h2-65prp.genetics"

inline PHOT "001-mist-jru57-bwdgq-xp8h2-65prp-2.photo" "001-mist-jru57-bwdgq-xp8h2-65prp-2.photo"

group EXPC "001-mist-jru57-bwdgq-xp8h2-65prp"
  "Creature Age In Ticks" 552
  "Creature Life Stage" 4
  "Exported At Real Time" 1367289044
  "Exported At World Time" 8007
  "Gender" 2
  "Genus" 2
  "Pregnancy Status" 0
  "Variant" 4
  "Creature Name" ""
  "Exported From World Name" "Engineering"
  "Exported From World UID" "ship-6v34z-wncpq-65jll-srkjr"
  "Head Gallery" "A40a"

I'm not quite sure what GLST and CREA are supposed to do - I'm guessing the former has something to do with life events, but the latter just seems recursive (considering the finished file is a .creature file). GENE and PHOT are the creature's genetics and photographs, respectively. This particular PRAY file came from a C3 standalone creature, so there's probably some additional information in the PRAY files for a DS creature.

What exactly all this means isn't important at the moment, however - what's important is how this relates to .family files. As it turns out, .family files also use PRAY and are compiled almost identically to .creature files:

 "en-GB"

inline GLST "001-time-6rja3-nmfrr-hsfgz-ubtj2.glist.creature" "001-time-6rja3-nmfrr-hsfgz-ubtj2.glist.creature"

inline CREA "001-time-6rja3-nmfrr-hsfgz-ubtj2.creature" "001-time-6rja3-nmfrr-hsfgz-ubtj2.creature"

inline GENE "001-time-6rja3-nmfrr-hsfgz-ubtj2.genetics" "001-time-6rja3-nmfrr-hsfgz-ubtj2.genetics"

inline PHOT "001-time-6rja3-nmfrr-hsfgz-ubtj2-4.photo" "001-time-6rja3-nmfrr-hsfgz-ubtj2-4.photo"

group SFAM "001-time-6rja3-nmfrr-hsfgz-ubtj2"
  "Creature Age In Ticks" 856
  "Creature Life Stage" 4
  "Exported At Real Time" 965732356
  "Exported At World Time" 1357
  "Gender" 1
  "Genus" 1
  "Pregnancy Status" 0
  "Variant" 3
  "Creature Name" ""
  "Exported From World Name" "Training ground"
  "Exported From World UID" "ship-hd4jj-kfwpp-7ts2c-3qxay"
  "Head Gallery" "A00a"

Literally the only difference between .family files and .creature files is the fact that the PRAY group for .family files is SFAM rather than EXPC. Which means that if you take the PRAY file of a normal .creature file, change EXPC to SFAM, and recompile the file, you get a file that the game can use as a starter parent.

And here's how you do that:
1. Export a creature of your choosing.
2. Decompile the .creature file into its component parts somehow (REVELATION works extremely well, and I believe the PRAY Decompiler at TCR can also break it down. Jagent can't handle .creature files as well as it can .agents files, unfortunately, so I wouldn't recommend using it in this case).
3. Find the .ps file and open it up (if you're using Windows, Notepad can open it and edit it without issues)
4. Find the line that begins "group EXPC..." Change EXPC to SFAM.
5. Now grab all the parts that decompiling the .creature file gave you (.creature, .glist.creature, .genetics, and .photo) in addition to to your altered .ps file and recompile it (I used PRAYBuilder for this - considering Monk's difficulty decompiling .creature files, I'm not sure if it'll work for compiling them).
6. You'll get a .agents file. Change the extension to .family (ignore any warnings your OS might give you about doing this).
7. That's it! You can now put the .family file into your "My Agents" folder (though I recommend replacing one of the default .family files - I haven't gotten around to testing what happens if you just drop it in there). When you create a new world, select the Starter Parent option and one of the creatures that gets dropped in should be the one you exported earlier.

More testing remains to be done concerning this subject (particularly if the choice of starter parent can be randomized), but the fact that it can be changed at all can make the early game a little more interesting. Let me know what you come up with!

Edit: So I just decompiled a .ds.creature file, and turns out PRAY files for those look a bit different:

 "en-GB"

inline GLST "001-star-tnhhf-mp5aj-nq88u-suksv.DSEX.glist.creature" "001-star-tnhhf-mp5aj-nq88u-suksv.DSEX.glist.creature"

inline CREA "001-star-tnhhf-mp5aj-nq88u-suksv.DSEX.creature" "001-star-tnhhf-mp5aj-nq88u-suksv.DSEX.creature"

inline GENE "001-star-tnhhf-mp5aj-nq88u-suksv.DSEX.genetics" "001-star-tnhhf-mp5aj-nq88u-suksv.DSEX.genetics"

inline PHOT "001-star-tnhhf-mp5aj-nq88u-suksv-2.DSEX.photo" "001-star-tnhhf-mp5aj-nq88u-suksv-2.DSEX.photo"

inline PHOT "001-star-tnhhf-mp5aj-nq88u-suksv-7.DSEX.photo" "001-star-tnhhf-mp5aj-nq88u-suksv-7.DSEX.photo"

group DSEX "001-star-tnhhf-mp5aj-nq88u-suksv.DSEX"
  "Creature Age In Ticks" 712
  "Creature Life Stage" 4
  "Exported At Real Time" 1367291960
  "Exported At World Time" 450487
  "Gender" 2
  "Genus" 1
  "Pray Extra Tint_Blue" 128
  "Pray Extra Tint_Green" 128
  "Pray Extra Tint_Red" 132
  "Pray Extra Tint_Rota" 128
  "Pray Extra Tint_Swap" 128
  "Pregnancy Status" 0
  "Variant" 4
  "Creature Name" ""
  "Exported From World Name" "Crystal Cave"
  "Exported From World UID" "dock-y8fwb-r7knm-65q4j-dja5a"
  "Head Gallery" "a40w"
  "Last Network User" ""
  "Native Network User" ""
  "Pray Extra Birthday" "29 Apr 2013 23:18"
  "Pray Extra Moniker" "001-star-tnhhf-mp5aj-nq88u-suksv"
  "Pray Extra Pregnant" ""

And here's what DS .family files look like:

"en-GB"

inline GLST "001-aqua-hgru4-5fevv-aaz32-7npj8.DFAM.glist.creature" "001-aqua-hgru4-5fevv-aaz32-7npj8.DFAM.glist.creature"

inline CREA "001-aqua-hgru4-5fevv-aaz32-7npj8.DFAM.creature" "001-aqua-hgru4-5fevv-aaz32-7npj8.DFAM.creature"

inline GENE "001-aqua-hgru4-5fevv-aaz32-7npj8.DFAM.genetics" "001-aqua-hgru4-5fevv-aaz32-7npj8.DFAM.genetics"

inline PHOT "001-aqua-hgru4-5fevv-aaz32-7npj8-3.DFAM.photo" "001-aqua-hgru4-5fevv-aaz32-7npj8-3.DFAM.photo"

group DFAM "001-aqua-hgru4-5fevv-aaz32-7npj8.DFAM"
  "Creature Age In Ticks" 1196
  "Creature Life Stage" 4
  "Exported At Real Time" 995030875
  "Exported At World Time" 1698
  "Gender" 1
  "Genus" 1
  "Pregnancy Status" 0
  "Variant" 7
  "Creature Name" ""
  "Exported From World Name" "Space camp"
  "Exported From World UID" "dock-rszby-82syq-c4an3-xpapx"
  "Head Gallery" "a00d"
  "Last Network User" ""
  "Native Network User" ""

Now that's a more significant difference than the C3 versions. I haven't tried making a DS .family file yet, but it's lesser priority for me since DS gives you the option to just go into the game, but I'm going to give it a shot eventually. If you want to give it a shot yourself, let me know what comes of it!