Thoughts on Favorite Games

A while back, a CCaves member named Harlequinade posted a thread about how they thought Creatures 1 was a better game than Creatures 3 and Docking Station. While I never posted in the thread, I remembered it while browsing and, in need of something to do, decided to address the subject here.

Like I said back in my first post, Creatures 3 and Docking Station are my favorite games in the series. Yes, I do own Creatures 1 and 2, and I do enjoy them. However, C3/DS are the only Creatures games I play on a regular basis - I only play C1 occasionally, and C2 pretty much exists to be torn down for parts now (for all the atmosphere and beauty it has, function outweighs appearance, and C2 does not function well even with updates). With all the other people that say C1/C2 are "superior" to C3/DS, one is probably going to be asking why that is.

Part of it is probably due to nostalgia. While I've had all three games for a very long time (I got Creatures Trilogy for my birthday sometime before fourth grade), Creatures 3 was my first Creatures game. However, there's certainly more to it than that.

I'm one of those people who believes that one's choice of game really depends on their playstyle - that despite the numbering, none of the games are superior to the others. From my observations, most people in the CC are the "nurturing" type of player. They want to get attached to their creatures and want real challenges so that taking care of them is rewarding. This is one of the biggest areas where C3/DS gets bashed - the games are "too easy." Norns can take care of themselves too well, the player can inject unlimited amounts of things with little repercussion (or none in Docking Station), all boiling down to "the game plays itself."

I'm not one of those people. I am a naturalist and a scientist when it comes to Creatures. I'm not one for mollycoddling my creatures - if I have to constantly interfere with a creature's life just because it doesn't grasp the concept that elevators are not edible, more often than not I'm just going to get annoyed. I prefer to customize environments, hatch some creatures, and set them loose to see what they do. So in essence, I actually like the fact that the C3/DS creatures are usually good at taking care of themselves (the occasional bonehead who insists on eating plant when he should be eating seed and Eat Elevator Syndrome aside). It means I have more time to watch them.

Since I like customizing environments, I also appreciate that C3/DS actually have non-creature, fairly realistic ecosystems (however flawed they were in the initial release). In C1, there's no ecosystem. Birds fly around doing essentially nothing but add decor. Same goes for the fish in the oceans. Those carrots in the garden are never going to become extinct unless you add the Albian Carrot Beetle (and even that gets thwarted if you install the Carrot Variation). Nothing in the game by default has a real life cycle. Creatures 2 addressed this somewhat, but it's still ultimately the same deal. The critters are more decor than actual parts of the world. C3/DS throws this out the window more or less entirely (although it does need fixes to completely achieve it). There's a real ecosystem and food web going on - in the Aquatic Terrarium, for example, the clownfish eat the aquamites and are in turn eaten by the rainbow sharklings and man-o-war. So in the event I don't want creatures running around, a "zen garden" containing a fully functioning ecosystem is a real possibility.

Speaking of atmosphere, C3/DS are also bashed for their graphics. Fans of C1/C2 say the ships look artificial and dull compared to the bright, vibrant colors of Albia. I say the spaceships are what give the game their charm. Just as the ancient Shee labs in C2 contributed immensely to that game's atmosphere, the hallways of the Ark contribute to C3's. It's an abandoned spaceship - no matter what the detractors might say, it's just as possible to get lost in there, staring off into the background wondering about the history of the place and how it got into its current state. Go out to the tip of the bridge and stare through the glass, and then tell me a spaceship isn't as good a backdrop as a planet is. While the Capillata isn't as atmospheric as the Ark is, the feel is still there. One can easily start musing over if there's anything lurking in the swamps of the lower Meso.

Finally, C3/DS also appeals to me as a developer. It's relatively easy to develop for C3/DS thanks to how modular it is. Unlike the past games, the default agents have their own files in their own folder rather than being lumped with the rest of the world, and these files can simply be opened with Notepad to see how they work. It's easy to add extra areas to either game without compromising too much, when in C1/C2 one often needed a whole new world. It doesn't hurt that C3/DS also happens to be the most documented of the main trilogy. C1 and C2, as a whole, are much less receptive to developers - to make a COB in C1, one can't just give it a classifier like "2 10 7" (which translates into "simple object, critter, fish") and leave it like that. To even inject it, one needs to figure out to turn that number into something like "102143." To this day, I still haven't figured that out. Nothing so confusing is required for C3/DS development.

I think that about sums up my thoughts on C3/DS. Like I said, though - the choice of game really depends on what sort of person the player is. The people who want cute furry pets that they can adore and have fun raising are probably better off with C1 and C2. Naturalists and developers, like me, will probably have the most fun with C3/DS.

Lack of Blog Activity...

...has been due to there being nothing to talk about. I've stopped running Gardenia Falls since there was really no point to continuing it since I'm going to restarting the run with new blood in a completely different room anyway, and I'm not really in the mood right now to work on the Flesheaters (they're one of those "on-off" projects...that's mostly the reason why they're taking so long).

With that said, I'm still hanging around the CC and watching the recent burst of activity at CCaves and the developments occuring in the worlds at Naturing :: Nurturing, Discover Albia, and other Creatures blogs that aren't this one.

I also have a few releases planned. One of them somewhat obviously consists of the Waterfall Grendels V3 - I still need to make a few tweaks to their genome and patch up their agents (which are also getting new sprites courtesy of mea of Caos of the Creatures Realm) before I put them up.

Speaking of mea, I'm also helping her with a few of her projects as well as a collab (at least, that's what I'm calling it). The projects being worked on are mostly agents, but the collab is on something pretty major. I'm not going to say what it is, though - you'll see when it comes out.

I don't plan on editing the blog's design any further at the moment - I'm pretty happy with it as it is. I might mess with the background later if I can find a decent graphic that's under 300kb and large enough so that it doesn't repeat.

Gardenia Falls: Gluttons and Thugs

So I started the Wolfling Run shortly after making my last post. The tribbles being able to breed like rabbits? Didn't help them much - they were extinct in literally less than a minute (read: when only three grendels had hatched). The grasshoppers soon followed them after everyone had hatched. However unviable those two were, at least they showed that the grendels' diet was working right.

The next thing the grendels did? Being generally friendly, you'd think they would choose to play with plants or something. No, what happens instead is that half of them decide that beating the everloving crap out of the others was the most fun thing to do. The first hour of the run was filled with the sounds of noms being consumed and grendels being whacked. The slapping got to the point where I just said "Screw it" and altered the hit script to punish anyone who tried slapping another creature.

I know baby creatures are supposed to be curious, especially when they're running CFE edits, but it does not make sense that they'd decide to be sociopaths within the first few seconds of life. It's ridiculous.

After that, I decided that the grendels could make it through the night and left the game running and went to bed. When I got up in the morning, anything that could have gone extinct, did go extinct (excluding the grass and the Square Root). The only food sources left were the stuff that replenished itself (the pumperspikel seeds, the chili pepper pot, etc.). Since there was a dearth of food, the grendels were focused on trying to find it instead of breed - there were also no eggs to be had, although the general population was around Generation 2.

To rectify this, I injected a bunch of food sources that wouldn't go extinct (including one of the original Gardenia plants), plus the tubas. That fixed the lack of food sources, and got them breeding again. So I left for my morning classes. Nothing much had changed when I got back, leading to the current state of the run:

I'm probably going to tweak the grendels' genome a bit based on current experiences - for one, they shouldn't have decided to engage in beatdowns shortly after hatching, and I also plan on reducing their hunger a bit so that they eat what's necessary and leave everything else alone.

Ultimately though, I should have just went with a different metaroom. Gardenia is a bit on the small side, meaning that it was way too easily depleted. I'll probably leave this run go on for another few days, then restart it with the updated grendels in a larger area (though I have no idea what area at the moment).

On a positive note, the pests and weeds are doing their jobs.

Wolfling Run: Gardenia Falls

Before anything else, you might notice the blog looks a bit different. Thanks to some (read: a lot) of help from Jessica, I was able to add some HTML/CSS elements to this blog to make it look a bit nicer than it was at launch. The most noticeable changes are the transparency and the centered header image, in addition to the centered post titles. The background is also a little less grainy looking thanks to an artistic effect I applied to it in GIMP (and I still had to reduce the quality of it a bit - bloody 300kb limit).

Enough about the blog - it's time I told you about the first WR I'm documenting on this blog. This is a breed-testing run for the Waterfall Grendels V3. The world is called what it is to both note the room it's being held in plus its primary feature once I was done meddling with it.

 I ruminated on what metaroom to use for the run for a while before finally settling on Gardenia. I thought about the Biodome, but it's a bit buggy. I also considered Norngarden 1, but the lifts would need to be recoded a bit to fit grendels, there's a pond they could drown in (the baby Waterfall Grendels lack fully-functioning hydrophobia), and there was no real place to put the water. Gardenia (by zareb) fits the theme, is small enough to customize easily and rather quickly, and to top it all off there's a nice rock structure in the center to set up the waterfall. So, Gardenia it was.

However, the room needed some serious renovation before it was ready for customization. For one, its terrain by default is actually set to "Outdoor Concrete." If I wanted to use the default Gardenia life, I could have left it that way, but I didn't. So I had to change a bunch of room types. Now, the room is mostly Normal Soil, with the fallen tree over on the left being Boggy Soil and the top of the rocks remaining as Outdoor Concrete.

While I was at it, I changed the room's otherwise sloppily implemented CA system. Now, the light and heat change depending on the time of day, and there's a waterspout (invisible agent that spits out other invisible agents that produce water and nutrient CAs) in the room's center. I also tweaked the weather system a little bit (although it was mostly fine as it was). I plan on fully revamping the room's coding at a later date, but for now it's suitable for a Wolfling Run.

The list of agents that I used, organized by general, injected with the Agent Injector, and injected via the CAOs Tool:


General

• A.S.K. (Arimeides Starter Kit) Corpse Cleaner: Gets rid of dead bodies so that I don't need to scroll the camera over them to get rid of them. As I don't plan on watching this run all the time this will be extremely useful.
• Advanced Autosaver: Keeps frequent backups of the world in event of a crash.
• All-Creature Autonamer - Names all un-named creatures. This particular autonamer is one I altered myself, and has the bonus of working in C3 standalone.
• Hand Hider - So the grendels don't obsess over the hand while I'm watching them.

Agent Injector Agents:

• Amber Stump: A very slow source of food and source of entertainment.
• Awkwood Creeper: These normally inject into the Meso, but I moved them in here courtesy of Amaikokonut's Magic Words. Food source.
• C1toDS Bad Plants: These are here to challenge the grendels. If they're stupid enough to try the weeds, then they deserve the shot of toxin they'll get.
• C1toDS Carrots: Another food source that's very good at keeping its population up.
• Chili Pepper Pot: A source of fruit, and a reason to encourage the grendels to go up to the top of the rocks (the room's small, so I decided to let them go up on top of the rocks in the event the floor becomes too crowded). Also provides flowers for the butterflies.
• Elevines: Allows the grendels to go up on top of the rock structure to avoid overcrowding on the ground floor.
• NG Eggplant. Yet another food source (and a flower for the butterflies).
• NG Eastertribble: Edible critters that breed like rabbits. Waterfall grendels love critters, so one that won't die out easily is perfect. Their eggs kinda mess with the egg management system, though. 
• NG Trasherplant: A source of food, but something needs to be fed to it before it yields. Mostly in here for the atmosphere.
• TP2DS Munchroom Vendor: A food item that can be any sort of edible depending on its surroundings. One of the most useful food items there is.
• Waterfall: The thing that gives the room its name, and also gives the grendels a cool and wet place to call home.
• Waterfall Mushroom: A source of food, seeds, and possibly entertainment. Since these things leave a lot of seeds around, they're also good for feeding tribbles.
• Yummy Seeds (Square Root): A source of fruit and seeds. 

CAOs Tool-injected Agents:

•  Butterflies: From the Norn Terrarium. Make the room look pretty in addition to being a food source (the Waterfall Grendels also love eating bugs). 
• Grass and Grasshoppers: There's really no need for more seeds thanks to the Waterfall Mushroom, but the grass is in here to feed the Grasshoppers, who are another edible bug to keep pressure off the butterflies.
• Mossie Flies: A pest to challenge the grendels. 
• Pumperspikel: Yet another source of seeds. 
• Stingers: They're listed in here because, like I mentioned back in my description of my main world, they don't inject by default into my DS worlds. Another pest to give the grendels trouble. 

The Evo Avo by Vampess was in here at one point, but it's apparently gone extinct.

Now, you're probably wondering about the Radio Box attached to the Egg Finder. That's part of the world's (Creature) Egg Management system.

This is the rest of the system. This setup of gadgets, called the Ovicidal Agent, was initially created by Minisauron to monitor the population of his Grendels of Minimordor. The idea behind it is to have older eggs constantly destroyed, so that only the best breeders get to pass on their genes. It definitely works for that purpose, but the main reason it's implemented in this run is to keep the generations moving. If it wasn't in place, then eggs containing gen 2 grendels would be hatching when the general population was somewhere around 7. This setup, by constantly destroying older eggs, ensures that the contents of the eggs are at a similar generation to the living population.

For those of you interested in setting up one of these, I'll detail the process in a later post. Their creation is beyond the scope of this one.

Now, to introduce the grendels themselves.

The original Waterfall Grendels are one of my personal favorites of the breeds I've made. As their name suggests, they're based on organisms that would normally be found living around a waterfall. To this end, the Waterfall Grendels enjoy cool, moist areas - hot, dry areas reduce their immunity, while cool, moist areas increase it. They also live a bit longer than most grendels (and most norns - their lifespan is comparable to the Bondi Norns). They can also hold their breath for a long time (about 5 minutes).

To be honest, I don't think the creation of the Waterfall Grendels V2 was necessary. However, I felt compelled to make them when I updated the agents included with the originals (the aforementioned Waterfall and Waterfall Mushroom). Their differences from V1 were mainly the fact that they were amphibious, scared of norns, and were more susceptible to being slapped to death. Due to the fact that I perceived them as unnecessary, I never truly liked them - to the point where I included the V1 grendels in the download.

V3 is an effort I'm very happy with (the male up there is an example of a V3 grendel). In most aspects, they're closer to V1 than to V2. In terms of features exclusive to them, the only major thing that differentiate V3 from V1 is that V3 can't last quite so long underwater, and will get scared if they start drowning (in an attempt to get them out of the water when that happens).

However, the base used for V3 is what sets them apart from the previous two. In addition to having all of the non-ForF edits of the CFE, they also have the digestive process ripped from Darcie's Gizmo Norns. That is, they can't last forever without food. An unaltered C3 grendel will last for an hour or more after hatching if left unfed. The Waterfall Grendels V3, along with all the other breeds that will share their base, last for a mere 11 minutes from hatching if they don't eat something. Given that they won't become adult for a little over an hour, they need to eat in order to breed (this does wreck their chances at the standard IQ test, though).

I'll end this post with a little bit of a cliffhanger:

These are the eggs of the initial population. The population limit is set to 10, as that's how many I think Gardenia can support at once. I'll also say that I'm not documenting the lives of the individual grendels. I'll probably leave the run going when I'm not actively playing the game (or even at the computer), and post updates here about the trends of the general population.

Project: Flesheater Grendels

An adult male Flesheater

If you frequent CCaves/Ctopia and pay attention to the Development Board, you may have noticed a thread about these guys. However, beyond "more realistic predatory grendel" I've never really given them an official description. Now that I have this blog, it is as good a place as any to give the laydown on the Flesheater Project.





The Flesheater Grendels are my magnum opus - the most complex and polished breed I ever plan on making. As can be expected, I'm taking my time in making them and constantly testing them after each change I make. It's the most amount of work I've ever put into a genome, and I hope that it pays off.

The Flesheaters are designed as an answer to a particular problem about the normal grendels - as a wolfling run hazard, they're hit or miss. If you use the standard (Jungle) grendel as a hazard, they'll either do nothing or kill all your norns within a short timeframe. It's rare that you'll get grendels that actually serve the purpose as a check to the norn population.

The problem with the normal grendel is in their anger levels and aging process. Standard C3 grendels age really fast - hatch a norn and a C3 grendel at the same time and the grendel will be an adult in a fourth of the time it takes for the norn to get to that lifestage. As well, C3 grendels get angry for the most trivial things (such as running into walls). The end result? An angry, adult C3 grendel can easily end a wolfling run before any of the norns get a chance to breed. Even worse is if one decides to hatch a breeding pair - the C3 grendels will be having babies by the time the norns actually start wandering around.

Banshee grendels aren't much better. While they don't start hunting norns until adulthood, when they hit that age they're every single bit as remorseless as the standard grendel - to end an adult's killing streak, the grendel itself needs to die or all the norns need to die.

If you want an example of what I mean, read this topic about a wolfling run where the Banshee Grendels were given the aging process and breeding speed of the standard C3 grendel. It didn't end well, to say the least.

Another problem is that the standard norn really doesn't stand a chance against a grendel. In a normal world, the hand could just teach the norn to hit the grendel, but in a wolfling run a norn won't know to do that. Better yet, even if they did know that they could hit the thing, it would likely get them nowhere - normal and banshee grendels are relentless when attacking. 

This problem is what the Flesheaters aim to fix. Where a normal grendel's relationship with a norn is akin to that of a serial killer's with his victims, the Flesheaters and norns have a relationship more like that between a lion and a zebra. The Flesheaters will get angry and will kill norns, but they know where to draw the line and won't kill more norns than is explicitly necessary. They also have an altered aging and breeding process to ensure that they don't get the jump on norns if they're hatched at the same time as their prey.

Flesheaters also are being designed so that the normal norn has a chance against them. Their flight-or-flight genes are edited so that a healthy grendel fights back when attacked, but grendels in high amounts of pain will turn tail and run. Basically, a norn merely has to slap a Flesheater enough to get it to run away. If the norns have access to education, they then could pass down their knowledge to the next generation, possibly ensuring the species's survival.


This is more an introduction to the breed than anything else - the breed will get covered in more detail in future posts. So for now, I'm leaving it at that. I do want to know, however - is there anyone who's actually interested in a grendel like this? My past attempts at hosting a public beta test for them ended in dismal failure. While the files I put up are getting downloads, I'm not getting any feedback on them even though I explicitly asked for it. So I'm wondering if there's an actual need for a grendel like these.

For those of you interested in testing the Flesheaters: You can get the genome and a breeding pair for v0.5 (the latest public revision) here. They're a bit outdated, but they're still a good example of what I'm aiming for.