bandicam 2014-12-04 22-44-43-672 copyBoba tea anyone? Well, none for me but her name reminded me of the drink.

Anyway, this is Boba. She is another one of mea’s Zombie creatures. Like Bihia, she is missing roughly half of her genes, including the genes that would normally make her age to the next stages.

In fact, my best guess as to why she’s alive at all is because the gene that would normally cause a norn to die if they have low energy is also absent in her. This might also be true for Bihia.

Unlike Bihia, however, Boba can’t seem to walk properly and walks in a tight circle back and forth. Also unlike Bihia, Boba seems more interested in pacing and looking around than Bihia. I added a dispenser to see if Boba would be as dispenser happy as Bihia but, sadly, she doesn’t seem like she has the same potential to be a good vending machine bot as Bihia.

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All it took was finding the bees, apparently. She scooped up a honey pot and started chowin’ down. I was glad to see she was finally going to be OK!bandicam 2014-12-02 00-51-44-706 copy Look at that smug smile. It just says “I knew I’d be OK all along. Hah! Made you worry for nothing.”

As for Aidan, I don’t know what was wrong. My best guess is that something happened to his drives when he got sick. A closer look at the Norn genes showed that this sort of thing shouldn’t happen. Poor guy. I wish I could help him.

bandicam 2014-12-05 00-03-40-517 copyHe did manage to settle down long enough for a nap, though. That was a good consolation.

Meanwhile, Bobby and Lydia were playing near the jukebox. I eventually shut the thing off myself but they were otherwise just fine. Opal and the grendel were in the underwater observatory and our grendel friend was saying “food”. The empty honey cans gave me an idea what he wanted. Also, he’d apparently named himself “bpbp”.

Soon enough, I had another pregnancy notification. Even though she was nearly 7 hours old, Lydia showed no signs of slowing down when it came to laying eggs. Ths was good news. A 6th egg would be great to have in case a plague wiped out this population. That wasn’t likely with everyone spreading out the way they were, but a backup plan is always a smart idea.

bandicam 2014-12-05 00-30-55-454 copySpeaking of smart, I wanted to communicate better with my norns, so I got the Encyclopedia Nornica and visited each norn with each book. Strangely, visiting Aidan with the book seemed to cheer him up!

Somehow, Gavin became sick with Antigen 1 and, naturally, Babs didn’t want to leave his side . Gavin wouldn’t be separated from her to feed or to quarantine. He stubbornly stood his ground and eventually got Babs sick too, despite my best effors to prevent it, including using the sky tram.

They both coughed and cried in the company of the grendel, who also managed to make his way up to the bees nest. It seemed like there wasn’t much I could do. Even surrounded by honey they didn’t eat. Despite my best efforts, including slaps when Gavin got desperately ill, he wouldn’t eat. His health dropped to 7%.  When it dropped to just 6%, he passed away.bandicam 2014-12-05 00-40-57-599 copybandicam 2014-12-05 00-45-23-800 copyAfter that, I wasn’t in the least optimistic about Babs. I didn’t have time to mourn Gavin when I was trying to feed Babs who was difficult about eating anyway. Then, out of the blue, Opal became pregnant. I prepared myself as Babs’ health dipped to 9%, 8%, 7%, 6%, all the way down to a paltry 2% and then she said “sleep” and passed away. Eerie last words.

I suppose a macabre consolation to this is that she died doing what she loved – ignoring my pleas with her to eat food.

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I guess tampering is a good word for what I felt like doing today. See, the thing about learning CAOS (from my experience) is that you can’t learn everything about the way the game works from reading the documentation. That’ll teach you how the various codes work, yes and that’s perhaps one of the most important parts of learning how to develop for the games. However, if you’re trying to modify the game, it’s important to learn how the systems in place work.

A good place to start is to check out !DS_game variables.cos. I’ve opened it in Notepad.

bandicam 2014-12-03 09-45-27-075 copyThe last time I opened up this document was to play around with an edited Creature Breeding script I was playing with but since my game got corrupted and I had to reinstall, I had a brand new !DS_game variables.cos file to play around with.

Opening up the file and taking a look at the different variables did get me thinking about some things I could be making or doing with the game to make it more interesting. For example, if you look at the “Twinning” variables, you can edit them to make twins, triplets, etc. more common. You could also edit the way creatures behave. Since creatures are just agents, you could adjust them so that they aren’t interactive at all. You could even adjust bhvr so that creatures can’t hit each other. I’m not sure of the consequences of this but it’s something worth experimenting with in the future.

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Opal still had a long pregnancy going and Babs and Bobby were due to have an egg of their own soon. Eventually, I had to C-Section Opal (for my own sake) and then I could focus on her recovery.

bandicam 2014-12-02 00-21-50-635 copyBeing the father of so many unhatched eggs couldn’t have been easy, though. Gavin was easily beating out Aidan and he almost seemed very proud of this fact.

I checked on Aidan and found him in the trees, where I’d left him over an hour ago. His health hadn’t dipped or anything so I hadn’t needed to check on him specifically. I did lure him down and he was soon among the population again.bandicam 2014-12-02 00-25-57-005 copyHopefully, he would add to this collection of colorful eggs. They almost look like trinkets, and Lydia like their guard (or hoarder).

bandicam 2014-12-02 00-27-28-825 copySince I was checking on the boys anyway, I found Bobby by the deadly Death Cap mushroom. I quickly got him out with the lift but he insisted on playing with the lift to go back down anyway. Once he left on his own, I felt safe again.

I did have to divert my attention again, though. Babs refused to eat since laying her egg. Her health dipped into the upper 40s and I started nagging her to eat. She only stubbornly stomped back and forth below the waterfall. After stomping around more, she finally settled in the computer room where she napped. She still had her cheese with her but seemed to refuse to eat it.

I eventually gave up.

Aidan was faring much better, however. He’d hardly moved from his spot but was still doing fine. I guess staying still doesn’t take much energy at all. Our grendel did walk up and slap him as he passed, though. Entertaining though that was, it wasn’t very nice and it didn’t seem to do much at all to help Aidan get ambulatory again.

Unfortunately, it seemed like his body just froze. He could still grab things but the science kit showed that his drives hadn’t changed at all for a while. Restarting the game didn’t work but, somehow, a quick slap on the butt got him sorted. How odd!

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