Announcement and More Nurtured Norns

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Before I begin, I just wanted to make a small announcement.

I will no longer be covering Creatures 2. Until the existing issues with my computer are fixed (which will cost us some money) I can’t play the game due to stability issues. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

To make up for this, I’ve decided to schedule posts for Creatures 1 and Creatures 3/Docking Station to fill out the available days. Now, Creatures 1 coverage will be published on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays while Creatures 3 and Docking Station will be published on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Sunday is still a break day or a bonus day for non-creatures  games.

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bandicam 2015-04-01 19-21-53-050 copyThis poor ship! Look at all the norns it has to carry! This isn’t the first or last time so many norns got stuck in the ship, but it’s still a pretty funny sight.

bandicam 2015-04-03 10-36-06-927 copyWhile everyone crowded around the radio and pressed it again and again, Peri who’d wandered all the way to the kitchen, was relaxing by the fridge and grabbing a few bites to eat. This girl seemed to enjoy this luxury.

Back on the island, I noticed some norns on the bridge at the upper level! It seems when I swept through and tried to fix collision issues, I missed the blue umbrella. Stain and Aster seemed out of place up there and weren’t too impressed. They just wanted to get some coconut meat from the area by the radio, after all.

bandicam 2015-04-03 10-37-39-475 copyThe other island norns spent their time ridding the paddle boat back and forth but some were starting to get off and explore. Logic and Fidget snoozed in the swampy area to the right of the temple. Peri still lingered by the fridge and-

Oh dear. As I checked on everyone, I got a death notification. This time, Eve has passed away.

bandicam 2015-04-03 10-46-51-449 copyThe best comfort is knowing that she had some friends around her. Everyone seemed to really like Aster, so it was a big bonus to have such a well liked norn keeping her company in her last moments.

I moved everyone back to the garden for feeding since the paddle boat seemed to prevent some norns from eating. They just kept getting swept away before they could have a bite! Right away, many of the norns started munching on the available carrots and potatoes and I showered them with a little extra food for seeds and fruit. As a result of their high spirits there were, naturally, a lot of pregnancies.

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Islanders

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After exporting all of the “egg bombs” that I was using to store the excess eggs, the game wasn’t just running much more smoothly, but it was also easier to count the number of norns remaining in this world. With 15 norns to keep track of, goodness, I still had a lot of lives to watch after.

bandicam 2015-04-01 18-59-19-648 copyI did notice a problem right away, though! And it’s a pretty funny looking problem. I guess I just lack the old, pregnant sprite for this breed! Hah! Oh well. Despite lacking her entire torso, the missing sprite didn’t actually hurt her, so it was more funny than anything.

bandicam 2015-04-01 19-03-07-459 copySoon, everyone had started to separate into groups and the house group was larger than the others. It even included Marsyia, who soon passed away due to her old age. I actually had to separate her from the others in the group to get her picture! The kitchen in the house was so crowded with norns trying to get all sorts of food from the fridge.

Now, Flame and Eve were the only two by the carrots and most of the boys were by the lemons, eating the fruit and the potatoes that grew underfoot.

bandicam 2015-04-01 19-05-38-736 copyI liked watching all the norns break off into different groups. It gave me a pretty neat insight into how norns decide who to make friends with and what they liked to talk about. More than anything, they enjoyed talking about how much they like or dislike other norns (even with fixes) but even still, the other ways they interacted gave away who they liked and who they didn’t. It also affected who they chose to stay with. Slapping usually resulted in at least one norn leaving to join another group, for example.

bandicam 2015-04-01 19-17-19-379 copyEventually, I decided to move the entire population over to the island. Peri was the first to leave, though perhaps only to lay her egg, but she marched on towards the house. This group is made of a lot of homebodies!

bandicam 2015-04-01 19-19-05-298 copyAs I watched Peri heading home a death notification appeared. This time, it was Akuma. Towards the end, he became a talker and is the one who got everyone started saying “me like aster” in the first place. You can see above that he was surrounded by friends when he passed away. Nearly everyone left really liked his company!

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Creatures 2… Again.

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It was getting to be so easy for me to give up on Creatures 2 worlds. There were just too many problems with the gameplay and built in genetics. And then GimmeCat posted this awesome article on how to pull genetic files from eggs. Great work, GimmeCat!

Now, I was finally able to play with Nova Subterra norns like I’d wanted. Instead of creating a new world to play with and get to know norns, however, I wanted to play around with the genomes, like I often did with Docking Station. Just as with the Kannova, I decided to add instincts to eat other foods and to drink when thirsty. This set of genes missing just seemed very strange to me, especially given the problems with learning that the default genomes had. Then again, looking at the instincts, I also saw that there were 3 instincts to reward eating food and 3 for fruit. One food instinct and one fruit instinct for The Embryo, Adolescent and Adult stages. Uh. What?

Anyway, instead of replacing these, I instead added the new instincts for each of the three life stages used by the food and fruit instincts. To start with, I added the instincts to drink when thirsty. Why was this missing? Then, instincts to push dispensers when hungry. Finally, I added instincts to eat seeds, leaves and roots. Before too long, I had my first test norns.

bandicam 2015-04-01 23-03-50-718 copyThese two are some of the updated norns. I decided on the Bahama norn sprites only because I like them. I added more norns just like them to pad out the population a little and hopefully prevent extinction. Now I only had to wait to see what the eight of them would do.

They spent much of their time wall bonking, unfortunately. After a while, I moved them to the lower level near the swamp, where the carrots and potatoes were growing. I thought at the very least that the abundant food would be good for them. Unfortunately, a few died anyway. Perhaps I should add instincts to eat flowers? It was an idea, anyway. Another idea? I should probably take the time to teach these guys some lessons about life. This test group wasn’t doing so well. Eventually, the game crashed anyway.

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Fill The Survey at Discover Albia!

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Hey guys! I’m sure I’ve mentioned Discover Albia on my blog before, but I wanted to bring special attention to something that Jessica is doing now. I mean, Discover Albia is what got me blogging in the first place! Jessica has a survey open til the 10th of April and she’s using it to plan special community events and features for her blog for the future. If you have a few minutes and haven’t filled it out already, go fill it out!

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