Status Update

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I've gone back to being on hiatus again, for the usual reasons (lack of interest, reality's getting in the way, etc.) As such, I feel I should probably say something about the state of my projects.

First off: The Sea Garden. I'm sorry to say that, due to a combination of various factors, that it's not going to be done in time for the CCSF. Shades of Past Seas and the 2010 CCSF, I guess. Instead, I'm planning on getting it out for Christmas at the latest.

The pack of genetic breeds that was supposed to go along with it is getting canned. In their place is a single genetic breed that follows the same theme. The replacement breed is in fact almost done; I just need to add one more feature to them and color them in.

In place of the Sea Garden, I've two metaroom updates planned.

One of them is for Past Seas. I've found the lift doesn't tell creatures using it to wait. While this isn't a really big problem since the lift only has two stops, I figured I might as well fix it to stop creatures from pushing/pulling the lift multiple times upon reaching their destination. In addition, I also want to fix the Eelgrass (again) to remove instances of the teleporting plant bug. Finally, I'm also planning on buffing the lifeforms so that they reproduce faster when their populations are low.

The other one is for Jennie's Aquanornia. While we do have Devil's Reef and Past Seas for non-swimming creatures, the former is a bit too thematic and the latter's rather small. Aquanornia, on the other hand, is both sizable and pretty generic for an aquatic area. As such, I've taken it upon myself to fix a few problems with it; such as the lack of CA/CA links and especially the fact that it didn't work with DS standalone (you'll still need C3 installed to use it, though). I also removed most of the C3 life that was originally in it, so now it's essentially an aquatic Biodome. I'm more or less finished with this one - I just need to compile the agent file and it's ready to go.

The final project is a few aquatic Garden Box agents, especially the Gumin Grass conversion that I originally lacked ideas for. In addition, I'm planning on converting some C2 stuff, some lifeforms from Aquatilis Caverna, and all the Past Seas lifeforms.

Apologies to anyone who expected the Sea Garden, but hopefully everything else that I'm releasing should help mitigate that issue somewhat.

The Blog Name has been Changed + Current Projects

As some of you have already noticed, I've finally gotten around to changing the blog's name. "The Realm" was the first name I came up with, but I didn't change it immediately because I figured I could come up with something better. However, everything else I thought of either had the same implications as the last name, didn't fit the blog, or only fit the blog's current theme. So I settled on "the Realm." Yes, it is just "The Realm." Short and simple.

Now, why didn't I announce this immediately? Well, I was holding off on it since I was going to announce it and release something at the same time, but I reckon that everyone would have noticed the name change before I finished the release, so I just announced it now. Instead, here's a list of everything I plan on making/am working on at the moment:

C2 Genetic Breeds

 

Yes, I do have some things for C2 planned. I decided that Creatures 2 deserves a proper page instead of just being a link.

Canny Grendels: In a similar vein to the Canny Ettins of Amy from Flib Dat, these grendels will be based on the Akamai Canny Norns with altered stimuli, instincts, and poses to match the actual grendels. These are being made more as a basal genome for me than anything else - the default grendel genome is difficult to work with since there's a crap ton of issues with it, and the boney genome isn't much better.

Demon Norns: These norns were inspired by the spritemix of the same name created by Amanora. While they use the same sprite arrangement, their genome is completely different. These guys will be based on the Akamai Canny genome and are aggressive, heat-loving creatures with severe weaknesses to the cold and water.

C3/DS Agents

 

Glowflower: Another one of the plants I'm making for Mea. They're similar in appearance to the Iceflower, but increase the light level instead of reducing the heat level. These are actually mostly done coding-wise - they're in the process of being bug-tested and will probably be released soon.

Genetic Radishes: Yet another plant I'm making for Mea. These are similar to the C1toDS carrot in appearance and function, but have the chance to mutate into different colors as well.

The Sea Garden: This is a pack of aquatic plants + a critter to increase the amount of standalone aquatic plants and critters. It's actually going to be a bit larger than originally planned since many of the plants are getting additional varieties. I believe I already mentioned this in a past post, but it is a current project so I decided to mention it again.

C3/DS Genetic Breeds

 

Dendrobate Grendels: That release I mentioned earlier? That would be these guys. They're named after the traditional genus of the Poison Dart Frog, and have behavior to match. Notably, they require moisture (CA 3) to survive since without it they suffocate. They have most of my focus at the moment, and I plan on getting them out soon. Also notably, they'll be the first completely new C3/DS genetic breed I've made in over a year (the Metallophagus Grendels V1 were the last new breed before them).

Sea Monsters V2: Mentioned before, but I'm mentioning them again. These guys will be the proper second version of my Sea Monsters (V1 is available from my Norn Adoption Center page, and V1.4 is available from CU7). Unlike the previous versions, they'll use the Jungle Grendel sprites solely, but hopefully the digestive and brain updates will make up for that. I'm not certain when I'll finish them because I'm completely out of ideas for them outside of the base features of the previous two versions (peaceful, amphibious grendels that crawl around on all fours and need to be underwater to lay eggs).

As you can see, it's a long list, and I don't intend on working on it nonstop. After the Dendrobates and Glowflowers are done, I'll probably take a break before working on anything else on this list. And on another note, this marks the 25th post I've made. Only 75 more posts to go before I've made 100. \o/

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.