Guess who? Yup! Patrick’s old enough to start mating now. At 1 hour, 20 minutes he started producing testosterone. Good for him!

When I checked on AppleJack, she was getting beaten up by the grendel! I debated getting an agent to stop him but managed to simply separate them.

I coaxed AppleJack off of the island and led her back home. She had other plans and decided to go to the top of the tree. She complained about being tired so I took her toys away and left to check on Patrick, who was asleep in the garden. When I came back, AppleJack was asleep, too! Hooray!

After they woke, it wasn’t long til they met up again. They started kissing right away and I got excited about having brand new baby norns from these two.

What followed was adorable. I herded them into the jungle floor area and they played with the beach balls that were there. They occasionally slapped each other but there was much more kissing than anything and certainly a lot of playing.

In just a few moments, AppleJack became an adult! When they saw each other, they kept kissing. One kisspop later… no pregnancy. They kept napping and kisspopping but I had limited success getting them to get pregnant.

After all that commotion, they seemed inseperable. They continued to take turns napping and seemed to want to play with the beach ball together. Now, Patrick couldn’t stop smiling but AppleJack complained about hunger.

They eventually parted ways and AppleJack headed to the house through the teleporter. Patrick ate herbs in the garden and soon, they were headed towards each other again. Soon, this happened.

Pregnant! Yay! It didn’t take long for this little egg to pop into Albion. I set it aside for later. AppleJack was pretty exhausted after giving birth and Patrick started to look for her again.

After some slapping and kissing, AppleJack decided she didn’t want to be bothered anymore. It seemed now like their roles have reversed.

Patrick was now exploring the islands. He isn’t the mama’s boy that he used to be! AppleJack on the other hand was now staying close to the incubator.

Little did I know what was about to happen! As I stoked the fire, AppleJack and Patrick got together again. I’d forgotten to pause the game and poof! Another little egg appeared! As it grew, AppleJack feasted on honey and it was time to call it a day.

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I don’t think I’ve mentioned it to any of you but I’ve been playing an aquarium sim game called Aquazone for about a year now. Don’t click away just yet! It isn’t that kind of aquarium sim!

This one has genetics!

While I have the option of creating pretty tanks that don’t involve breeding, I also have the option to create new strains of guppies, angelfish and discus! I’ll be focusing strictly on guppies for now and I’ll be taking full advantage of “Time Warping”. I don’t have the patience to sit and wait for weeks at a time for guppies to be born, you know!

Anyway, the manual actually comes with instructions if you’d like to start working with guppies. The first example it gives you is to try to stabilize a population of Red Tail guppies. The guppy packs don’t come ‘pre-settled’ so it’s important to have homozygous populations to work with before you start breeding.

I started by choosing a male closest to the color that I wanted. I bred him with F25, one of my females, and found that together they only produced one male that looked like this guppy.

As promising as 1 ideal male is, it still isn’t that good. Since I had so many other females to breed him with anyway, I decided to move on.

Attempt two, with F16 was much better. She produced lots of males (10 to be exact) and 4 were ideal. Since she only had 4 females, I have a much smaller testing population, but that makes it much easier to get what I want.

The male from this population that I chose is brighter than the original male but I think I prefer this more vibrant red anyway. Otherwise I wouldn’t have picked him. ;D

It was difficult to try to get him to breed with the available ladies but when it was finally said and done, I got this group of fry.

We still have some dark red guppies in the group but the numbers are still pretty good. This time, 4 out of 6 males came in the color we want.

This time, I’m going to see which female of the 8 I have available this time produces the most ideal males.

This is our new male. He’s much closer to the original male and all of the other ‘ideal males’ that I’ve chosen from this generation look just like him. The population is starting to stabilize.

This is the group born from our selected male and F1. I don’t think she’s the best choice.

The pairing with F2 was much more ideal but I’d love to see if any of the other 6 females yields a better result.

F3, unfortunately, doesn’t have a result. After an hour of trying, I couldn’t get my guppies to breed.

F4 produced these pink tailed guppies! As pretty as they are, I’d rather not deviate from what I started.

F5 yielded only 3 males and of the three, just 1 looks the way we want him to.

So. F6 yielded 0 ideal males. I think we can move on.

Now this is what I like to see. F7 produced 5 ideal males out of the 6 males that she gave birth to. Perfect! So far, she’s got a better ratio than any of the other females and I think this is about as good as it’s going to get.

At this point, I’ve been at it for about 5 hours and need to call it a break. Wish me luck!

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Get it? Jurassic Park? Anyone? No?

… Fine.

As it turns out, I’m far and away more stubborn than I thought. I hate not being able to blog because of things out of my control: getting sick because some jerk at the DMV didn’t cover his mouth when he coughed, moving to California away from my home in Okinawa, Japan for the hubby’s work and finally, the kicker, my computer giving up on me just before I started the next round of baby norns.

Still, I am incredibly stubborn so I found a way to get the blog on its feet. I nicked my husband’s small travel laptop (well, I asked him if I could use it and he said yes) and though Docking Station and Creatures 3 barely run on it, Creatures 1 still runs pretty well. On top of that, I’ve decided to feature another game. I don’t want to say what it is just yet, but I’ve got some work and research to do before I get started on it anyway.

Back to some Creatures 1, though! I’ve already installed the DDNA Analyzer and C1 Genetics Kit so I’m ready to go. I have a fresh world and the only agents (cobs?) I’ll be using are the Encyclopaedia Nornica and Hand Tickets. I don’t especially enjoy scooting around creating favorite places and I’m not very good at the whole teaching language thing. Not to mention I’d like my norns to be able to tell me how they’re feeling.

I’ve already taken the time to fix the norn genomes to allow them to die of old age and prevent anti-oxidants from increasing their Ageing chemical.

I picked out an egg from the hatchery and put it into the incubator. Next thing I knew, this cute little boy was crawling right out of the house and into the garden.

I’ve decided to name him Patrick (probably coz I was watching Spongebob at the time).

Receptors

231  40   0 Emb   B MutDupCut   2*Antigen5 + 1*Glucose => 1*Antibody5 + 1*Hotness; half-life = 88

Normally, the half life is 80 (5 minutes).

What the change here means is that this reaction should take place more slowly. 88 means that the chemicals will decay from max to 0 in about 10 minutes. What it means for this particular gene is that little Patrick will recover more slowly from Antigen 5. I don’t know whether this’ll also translate to his sickness being less severe when it happens but we’ll see.

I tended to his education by giving him each Encyclopaedia and once he’d learned his words, he was off. It didn’t take him long to make his way to the carrots. He started eating them right away and while he did, I installed a bridge across the ocean.

He didn’t take long to start making a beeline for the herb garden. He complained that he was hot and I successfully talked him into eating some feverfew! Hooray for me! Unfortunately, it didn’t take him long to decide to eat the Pyrethium next to it. I was glad he had some starch but I wasn’t happy about the pain and hunger he must have felt after eating it. Neither was he. He stomped in front of the elevator and made his way below. While we were there, I decided to encourage him to play with the helicopter toy that was there and that seemed to cheer him right up.

He decided to stay below for a while playing with the toy and eating the carrots that were planted there. I encouraged him to push food and he was happy for a little while. When he started to express how angry he was he took the elevator back up and before I knew it, he met his first grendel.

Sadly, this grendel wasn’t particularly friendly. When they met, he started slapping poor Patrick! I slapped the Grendel for him and it didn’t take long for Patrick to obey “run Grendel”.

After his retreat, he was exhausted and kept running from me and food alike. I kept asking him to sleep to no avail.

He stayed in the house now, though and before I knew it, he was 30 minutes old. Not wanting to keep him out of the sexual race, I decided to hatch him a little girlfriend.

Meet AppleJack! Oddly, there were no mutations in her whatsoever! Good for her! I do appreciate that kind of genetic stability(appearance aside).

It didn’t take long to get her lessons out of the way and when she and Patrick met, they were kissing right away. Patrick still complained about feeling hot but he was excited to meet his new friend.

Neither of them would eat so I used the elevators and teleporter to get AppleJack away to the garden. Once there, I punished her for eating a weed, praised her for eating herbs and praised her again for eating lemons. She was angry, probably from eating the weed since Patrick had the same reaction. Pain and hunger don’t make me happy either, after all.

It wasn’t long til she was marching her way up to the tree. She took the elevator down to the deathcap mushroom but didn’t even spare it a glance. She travelled up to the top of the tree and I took the chance to check on Patrick. I used the teleporter to move him to the garden where he ate some honey before complaining about how tired he felt. Soon, AppleJack was tired too but neither of them would sleep. I toggled between them asking them to sleep for a while when I was met with a pleasant surprise.

Patrick was sleeping! When he was done, he was so happy it was like I was dealing with a different norn! Look at that big happy smile!

He was feeling bored now but I guess he’d rather be bored than exhausted. I convinced him to play with the helicopter toy and suddenly he was angry again. I can’t figure it out, either.

When I checked on AppleJack again, she was no longer a baby! Not only that, she was trying to get some shuteye in the cave. I asked her what she was doing then left her to her nap.

It didn’t take long before there were Zs popping up through he submarine. When she woke, she decided to take a quick ride under the ocean to visit the island.

Patrick decided to stay by the helicopter toy and the carrots. He was easily less adventurous than AppleJack. He developed a cough but the observation kit said he was fine. Soon, he was napping again.

AppleJack, on the other hand, was busy exploring the island. While I was there, I checked on the Grendel below and fed him parsnips.

You probably know by now that I don’t have anything against Grendels and actually prefer them over norns sometimes. Creatures 1 doesn’t exactly make caring for Grendels practical in a vanilla world, though so I tend to let them do their own thing. I’ve decided not to name him, either. He seems harmless enough, though.

Soon, AppleJack was on the boat headed back home and I was done with the island for now. I checked on Patrick again to find him in the Garden, getting ready for a nap. He ate a carrot, grabbed a lemon and fell asleep with it in his hands. I’m starting to think he’s a bit of a Mama’s boy. It wasn’t long til AppleJack needed a nap. Like last time, I tried to give her some space to fall asleep. I checked on Patrick to find that he was sleeping again! He’s developed a real love for naps. When he woke up, I gave him a toy to play with and went back to AppleJack.  Whatever it was she was looking for, she decided sleep would have to wait til she found it.

Lucky me, I put her on an elevator for a short ride and she took the opportunity to nap.

By now, Patrick was an hour and 17 minutes old and AppleJack was behind him at 47 minutes. With Patrick becoming an adult soon, it was time to take a break and called it a night.

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Well. My computer finally gave up the ghost. I’ve lost a lot of files and projects with this computer crashing not including my Creatures projects. I’ve also lost Petz breeds that I’ve made, mods that don’t exist anymore for my favorite game ever, Morrowind, and all of my website data and programming efforts.

I’m more than a little upset but I’m hoping I can take the hard drive out of the case and load all the old data into a new machine. Whenever that may be. The good news is that all the creatures have been saved to my dropbox account! I don’t have to start from scratch where the creatures themselves are concerned and they’re all safe online.

I don’t know what I’ll do about the blog now but it looks like we’re stuck waiting until I can get a new computer up and running.

Sorry guys. It’s just one thing after another.

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