Progress on my base ettin genome has been a little iffy, as I briefly touched upon in my last post. I've been making changes, even figuring out a couple things I've since backported to my norn genome, and some of them seem to be working out. Others, not so much. In particular I've been having a lot more problems with heart attacks than during the testing of the norns, and also having problems getting them to approach each other and thus breed, even when they get lonely (to a lesser extent this has been a problem with the norn genome too; it's something Arnout noted was a problem even in the original 2017 genome).
One part of me wants to keep pushing forwards with the ettin genome, another part of me's wanting to put the ettin genome on the backburner for now and move on to the grendel genomes...yes, grendel genomes; I'm planning on making two versions, which I'll detail the how and why of in a future post. And then there's a third part that's saying "All this activase and these heart attacks and these dumb creatures that won't approach when lonely are annoying; let's throw everything out and restart with the CFE instead of the 2017s." Maybe it's just the tiredness as I write this speaking.
In the meantime, I'm just going to dump a ton of miscellaneous thoughts and future plans I hope to accomplish. Will any of it happen? Not making any promises. I know me.
- First and foremost: aquatic creatures. 2017s, and thus RA Standards, have a gene that gives a creature that's underwater an increasing desire to go up (that is, call an elevator to go up), and like their CFF ancestors possess a stimulus gene that makes them afraid when they start drowning (as I briefly touched on in my last post). Fortunately, it's not difficult to make them amphibious and happy underwater; it's just a matter of muting the aforementioned up drive gene and setting the air emitter to permanently active, after which they're as happy underwater as any non-CFF based amphibious creature.
- Swimming, however, is another matter. Previously I just took the easy route for swimming creatures and set an emitter to always emit chemical 63, plus adding the swim bladder edits to allow female creatures to lay eggs. However, thanks to Lurhstaap's musings about his Abyss Dragons, I've hit on the idea of making the production of 63 tied to the creature's nutrient intake, particularly of muscle tissue (which tends to be in excess in 2017-based creatures). On top of the realism factor, it's also a nice way of circumventing the issue with swimming creatures having trouble interacting with things; if a swimming creature is having enough trouble that it can't feed itself, it'll stop producing 63 and thus eventually stop swimming. Then it can interact with things as normal, and hopefully get full enough to start swimming again. The issue is balancing the consumption of muscle tissue with the activase system, since RAS creatures generally produce less of it than their 2017 ancestors.
- Of the future breeds I'm hoping to make, I must give special mention to Jesseth's and CosmiSynthetic's remastered conversions of the C2 Bulbous and Boney Grendels, and also the Worker Ettins. They have some goobers here and there, but all in all they simultaneously scratch my itch for C2 aesthetics in C3/DS while matching C3/DS's style much better than the previous conversions. The Bulbous Grendels in particular have been something of a mainstay during my RAS feral runs; I added Bulbous Grorns to the norn run while the grendels proper make for good "dither" grendels (that is, grendels that can bring out defensive behavior while being mostly harmless, taken from the aquarium hobby term dither fish) for the ettin run. Naturally, they're all getting RAS versions, and I'm also thinking I might even use them to convert some C2 genetic breeds like Frimlin's long-lost Amphibigrendels and my own Great White Shark Grendels (which I'm going to rename "Shark Boney Grendels").
- Other breeds whose general aesthetics I greatly jive with are Dragoler's Basilisk Norns (who I keep wanting to call "Uglee Norns," probably confusing them with the grendel breed that uses their sprites) and PapuBuntu's Carna Norns. Both of these breeds have TWB/TCB-based genomes at the moment, though the Carna Norns also have a CFE-based version at last report. So I'm also hoping to give them RAS versions, though they might not be exactly like the original versions (for the RAS Basilisks at least, I'm planning on giving them the ability to "eat" creature eggs by picking them up, similar to how my Metallophagus Grendels V1 "ate" gadgets and machinery by hitting them).
- Also on the list: Cyborg's Angler Grendels. Despite their problems (adult females crash the game without a Bigger Sprite Allocation patch and are also too big to fit in the Swimming Agent's vehicle), they're a breed I've absolutely fallen in love with. They already have a 2017-based genome, but I'd like to give them a RAS version that doesn't require the Sensorimotor Lobe script. I'd likely give my version the name "Ceratoid Grendels," after one of my older ideas for a similarly behaving grendel breed.
- Then there's revamps of older genetic breeds, whether they're my own or not. One big plan are a sort-of revamp of Trix's Shark Grendels; the originals are just colorful, amphibious jungle grendels right down to the "children make you old" gene, but nevertheless I remember enjoying them a lot in the days before I started gengineering myself. My planned revamp would combine them with my own Shark Grendel breed to become colorful, aquatic predators based off the Rainbow Sharkling...which is confusing because I've ALREADY made a breed based off rainbow sharklings, via screwing around with CRAG all that time ago. As it turns out it is possible to make a CRAG based creature capable doing things other than sit there, as Verm's Nurse Bots and GAIA prove, but I don't think that's something I want to mess around with right now. So the new Rainbow Sharkling Grendels would be a typical genetic breed that uses the C3 grendel sprites like the original Shark Grendels, but I'm hoping they'll be fun anyway.
- I'm also thinking of redoing the Potamogeton Grendels/Pond Weed Grendels V3. Knowing what I do know, I'm thinking I could do some fun stuff with their genome to make them even more plantlike.
