Happy New *Arg*!

The holiday period has finally reached its end (more or less). I hope you all enjoyed spending time with your families, opening presents, eating delicious food, and whatnot. I know I did, anyway. 

To wrap up the holidays and 2013, how about I release a couple things?

Inspired by (among other things) Clohse's Sea Monkey Marina and Angelneko's Little SeaMonsters, Reef Gliders are amphibious norns who gain the ability to swim at adolescence (as well as a slightly carnivorous diet). They're not overly complicated, but I'm pretty happy with them. 

Download the Reef Gliders!

Next up is a fairly big update:

What? The Deep Abyss again? Yes, but this time with more stuff - this release comes with the plants, finally giving your deep-water-dwelling creatures something to munch on. Make sure to read the readme before installing this version, however - there's important information for those updating from V1 in there.

Download the Deep Abyss!

That's all for big releases, but I also have two smaller updates for you. 

First off is a Chione update. I've updated the mapping a bit - the ice over the lake is now "air" instead of "drained soil" (meaning plants can no longer grow there), and the space right before the surface cave (where the door is) is now "drained soil" instead of "air." Nothing particularly noteworthy, but it does set the stage for future updates (when the ecology starts coming in at last). 

Download the Chione update!

The final thing on the list is an update to my swimming agent. It should help your creatures swim better with less incidences of them being unable to reach objects. Just in time for the release of the Reef Gliders, huh? 

Download the Swimming Agent update!

Finally, here's an update about the blog. I know I haven't been updating it recently despite the fact that I am still playing Creatures right now (and making stuff for it, to boot). The fact of the matter is that I simply haven't had much to say lately. That being said, I might decide to document the grendel wolfling run I've been doing here (for something a little more informative than my bibbles over at CCaves) or maybe even a reboot of Tevaela, since I do still have quite a lot of time off before I have to go back to college. 

For now, just enjoy the releases! I'll see you all in 2014.

Another CCSF come and gone

Disclaimer: This post is a bit blunt. Do know that I mean no offense towards any participants, and that I believe that everyone did their best.

Today marks the final day of the CCSF 2013. To be brutally honest, I found this year to be really underwhelming. Don't get me wrong; it wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination. However, nothing about it was anything to write home about. The releases were mostly genetic breeds and agents, with only three metarooms (one of which was mine) and no full breeds. Furthermore, none of the other happenings really got me hyped.

However, I will say that I really like Clohse's Sea Monkey Marina, particularly how it blended the sea monkey stuff with original stuff. I don't know if I'll ever get around to making a world around it (might try to make a personalized version of it first), but it is quite fun to just watch. Furthermore, it did help me get my motivation to finish the Deep Abyss back.

With my thoughts out, I do think it's time to post my own releases here, yes?

My breed release consisted of the standard Colorful Grendels. They're extremely simple by my standards; they're based on the ChiChi genome with a few edits to make them more grendel-esque, and they're colorful. This initial pack consists of five colors picked at random by the egg agent.

Download the Standard Colorful Grendels!

That's not all I have that's related to the Colorful Grendels, however. As I stated on the website and in the readme, I plan on making more color variants and even sub-breeds as time goes on. To end the festival, I decided to make and release the first color pack for the Standard Colorful Grendels.

This second pack will let you hatch five new color varieties with the Standard Colorful Grendel egg agent in the initial release. Not much else to say here, really. 

Download the Standard Colorful Grendels Genome Pack 2!

My other release was the yearly metaroom: the initial version of the Deep Abyss.

I apologize for the lack of an ecology, playthings, or even basic food sources. Alas, my mental issues got in the way and I wasn't able to complete those in time. Hopefully, the basic room will give you enough to play with while I'm finishing it up. 

When will the final release be out? I would like to get it out by the end of the year, but at this point you should know that my word on when things will be out holds no value. It really depends on when Mea gets all the necessary sprites done, and when/if I can force myself to work on it. Do know that it's going to be a while. 

Download the Deep Abyss V1!

And that's all for now, folks.

Woah, What happened?

I'm still around, yes. In fact, I'm actually rather active over at Creatures Caves. However, you wouldn't know that by looking here, judging by the lack of posts for roughly two months. 

I don't think I need to say that it was the result of a hiatus. However, this hiatus was a particularly nasty one; not only was my will to do anything Creatures-related sapped, my will to do anything productive was sapped. But fortunately, I'm working on getting myself out of this rut and will hopefully get my motivation back soon. 

Unfortunately, the timing of the hiatus couldn't be worse considering that the CCSF is just around the corner. What I originally intended to do was make four genetic breeds (two grendels, a norn, and an ettin) and a metaroom. What actually got done was one extremely simple genetic breed and a metaroom without flora or fauna. For what's probably the biggest event of the Community, you'd think I would be more driven to actually get this stuff done in time.

However, while my actual submissions to the CCSF may be a little disappointing, that may not be the whole story. If I can manage to get all my ducks in a row by the time the CCSF starts, I may release a thing or two here over the course of the CCSF. That is a very big if, however - it's just as likely I won't get around to making anything more than I've already made.

On a final note, I really need to be more realistic here. Seriously, how many times I said I'd do something on this very blog and then have absolutely nothing come of it? Too many. 

Metaroom Review: Veridia

After a month and a half hiatus, I'm back at college but ready to get back to Creatures. I'm trying to set up a wolfling run, but I've found that my taste in both agents and metarooms has gone completely OCD and therefore I'm finding it extremely difficult to come up with something I'm satisfied with. So rather than mess with that, I decided to review one of the most popular metarooms around: Veridia, by Soliloquy and Liam (and quite a few others).

When Veridia is first injected, two things immediately jump out: the place is gorgeous, and the place is very empty.

I'll comment on the presentation first. Veridia, graphically, is very beautiful. Apart from some smudging around the walkways taken from C2, it's one of those places you can stare at for hours and not get bored. I wouldn't say it's as atmospheric as Aquamind or the Oasis, but if you're looking for beauty you'll certainly be satisfied here.

The graphics have the bonus of making the task of finding appropriate agents for the room a little easier. At the very least, there's plenty of background flora to put patch plants on.

Now onto the emptiness. Soliloquy had the intention of making Veridia a large, customizable expanse not unlike the Biodome. For the most part, it was a success. Veridia's one of the best rooms to use with the Garden Box, due to all the background flora for patch plants and wide expanse for other plants.

However, my main criticism with this room ties into to the fact that there's nothing in there to begin with (besides CA emitters, elevators, etc.).

These walkways are certainly pretty and help fill up what would otherwise be empty space, but for practical purposes they might as well not be there. The only level in the room that is actually fertile is the lowest level. Couple this with the fact that the Garden Box patch plants and a ton of third-party potted plants tend to just fall past the walkways, and creatures in here have absolutely no reason to go up into the canopy. Sure, you could cover the walkways with vendors and toys, but why should a creature go up a floor to use a vendor when it could stay on the ground level and find food without any extra effort? It doesn't help that the elevators are derived from the C2toDS elevators and therefore lack pull scripts (and therefore tend to confuse the heck out of creatures), and that there's no CA links to start with (though that's rectified with Amai's Magic Words Room Edits).

As a result of all this, I really don't find myself enjoying Veridia as much as other people. I do like the place, don't get me wrong, but having only one level that's really open to customization is a bit of a turn-off.

Summary: Veridia is a great metaroom. It's beautiful, creature-friendly (despite the elevators), and goes hand-in-hand with the Garden Box and Magic Words Room Edits. However, its attempt to be a customizable metaroom really falls flat when you consider the fact that it has one fertile level. Your creatures will enjoy being in here, but don't expect them to want to go up to the upper levels anytime soon.

Final score: 7/10

Aquanornia Update #2

So I decided to run a Maraquan Grendel wolfling run to enjoy my recently-created fixes...and found out the hard way that they, and presumably other norn-bodied grendels, have trouble navigating the lowest floor of Aquanornia Revamped once they're adults. In light of this, the metaroom has been updated again.

It's available from the C3/DS Downloads page as usual, or you can get it directly here.

Two posts in one day, whoo. \o/