Hoping for girls!

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Moving overseas is always difficult. My husband and I are finally getting things finalized for our move. Our dogs have appointments, and they’re going to be flying for their first time. Our stuff is going to be picked up in a week and a half and we’ve got lots of packing to do. Well. I would be packing, but the hubby’s yet to bring me boxes to put our things in.

In the meantime and while I still don’t have internet, I’m going to play Creatures.

I apologize in advance for any weird structure in my post today but I’ve got the internet company on the line (I’ve been on hold for 15 minutes) and I’m still waiting to be helped. I sure miss the internet already.

Anyway.

We last left our Creatures 3 world with 8 new norn eggs in the world. The Norns did a great job of not playing favorites this time. Sour Drink hid up in the upper right corner of the Terrarium, away from the boys who were crowding around the bottom level.

Flawless Color felt lonely in the Meso by herself and I started to feel a little bad about separating her from the other grendels. She spent most of her time pushing elevator buttons, though. I decided to leave her alone for a little while longer, though.

Impartial Relation on the other hand was still a Youth. This cheered me up a little. I checked on the other four Grendels and they all seemed to be fine. I figured it was a good time to hatch two more Grendel eggs.

Meet Elite Cap and Clear Glass, both boys. This was a little upsetting. I was hoping for a girl to replace Flawless Color in the genepool.

I hatched two more eggs, hoping for the best.

One was Wide-eyed Payment, the daughter of Obese Bomb and Earthly Giants. She gave me the hope I needed for the next generation. I only hoped she didn’t have an aging disorder.

Next was Gifted Waves. I was pretty happy that these two turned out to be purebreed creatures. It’d make it easy to check them for mutations and if they were clear, I would have a more stable population as a result. A quick look at Wide-eyed’s profile says there’s no mutation, though. Lucky me! Clear Glass, on the other hand..

His poses, pigments and pigment bleeds are all slightly different from the default. That’s all there is to say about his Appearances.

Instincts

Unsure – 500 2 0 You B MutDupCut 128 0 [03: stim] [Cell 31 (Grendel home)] + [Brain Lobe 255] [Cell 0] + [Brain Lobe (254)] [Cell 0] and [Comfort] => Cell 4 (come); unknown = 0.

The difference here is in the Brain Lobe number (originally 255). Without internet, it’s difficult to look up the information I need. In the Gene kit, there’s no visible difference, though it looks like Grendels just approach the Grendel home when they need comfort and they learn to do that at the Youth stage of their lives.

Grendel Eggs

Obese Bomb

Thin Desire

Norn Eggs

Five Cheese

Scandalous Laborer

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EGGS!

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I definitely wish I was quicker on the draw now. When I logged in, Thin Desire wished me a Merry Christmas! Hooray!

At this point, I now had three adult norns, Lowly Adjustment, Loving Wren and Scandalous Laborer. It was good news to me but I still wished the other two girls were adults.

Five Cheese, who was actually the first Norn introduced to the world did finally creep into adult hood at an hour and 14 minutes old. I can honestly say that I was expecting this because of her Bondi genes, but I did start to get a little antsy. I want Norn eggs.

Just as I uttered my wish, Scandalous Laborer and Lowly Adjustment became pregnant with two eggs. I set the mother to be away from the others to lay her eggs and out popped two little eggs, just as expected. It was quiet again for a little while (but only because I have Creature Voices turned off) so I set about planting more bramboo.

Before long, Lowly Adjustment was at it again! This time, he’d gotten Five Cheese pregnant with two eggs! After Five Cheese laid her eggs, I sent her off to join the others. I divied up the eggs into groups and waited for the next couple. It looked like Loving Wren and Sour Drink were going to be the next couple but Sour Drink was still just in the Youth stage.

You might remember that I have population control options set up (Visit Naturing :: Nuturing) to only allow adult creatures to breed to help keep things manageable.

With nothing else for me to do but add Crobsters, I decided to check on the grendels to see how the next generation was progressing.

At only 18 minutes old Flawless Color was an adult. I didn’t pick up on this in her genetics and, in fact, wouldn’t know how to check her aging related genes. I was impressed with how large she’d grown but I wasn’t sure whether she’d live on to pass her genes. (Yeah, I learn later that this is just a Boney Grendel thing.)

Impartial Relation, on the other hand, seemed to shrink! He was still just an Adolescent at 21 minutes old, though. To prevent any problems, I moved Flawless Color to the Norn Meso to keep her odd fast-ager genes out of the population. She will be available for download.

As soon as I’d set Flawless Color down, I got two more pregnancy notifications.

Five Cheese was pregnant again and this time, it was with Uptight Kettle. These would be Cheese’s last pair of eggs and she was exhausted.

Just when I thought I’d finished, Loving Wren and Scandalous Laborer were going to be parents! Two more pregnancy notifications popped up and I set up the mother to be to make the eggs easy for me to catch and sort. These would also be Scandal’s last two eggs. With her last eggs laid, she also took a well deserved nap.

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to mark my now-infertile creatures as such since, with large numbers, keeping up with who can have babies and who can’t could get very tedius. I could just move them to the Norn Meso but that wouldn’t provide very much room for them. I decided to sleep on it and checked on Flawless Color while I had time.

When I arrived at the Norn Meso, she was butting into the force field trying to reach the Holistic Learning Machine. The thing seems to be addictive so I tend to make it impossible to reach. Before too long, she gave up and started to tell me how bored she was. I set her next to the robot toy and she hit it a few times before being distracted by the door. She munched on seeds and I started to wonder whether to let her in with the other grendels again. At 30 minutes old, she was still an adult, but only a minute ahead of her, Impartial Relation was still a Youth!

Now, all the Norns were adults and I was about to have my hands full again. With two of the females already rendered infertile, though, I guess I didn’t have to worry too much. The only female who hadn’t laid eggs yet was Sour Drink. The only two males available to mate were Loving Wren and Uptight Kettle with 2 eggs left in each of them. It seemed like I was going to have a very diverse group of norns!

It was long past my bedtime and I didn’t want to wait at this point so I closed the game and hoped I would get my internet back the next day.

Grendel Eggs

Obese Bomb

Thin Desire

Norn Eggs

Five Cheese

Scandalous Laborer

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Internet’s back!

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[Images are very large!]

With the arrival of these two (and my internet going down Christmas day) I’ve made time to sketch and check out the genetics of my two newest grendels.

GeneCompare kept crashing on me and I had no internet to look up how to fix the problem. A bit of a pickle. I did use the DDNA Analyzer, though.
It seems to have worked but I needed to have at least two copies of the C3/DS Genetics Kit open to help me through. Naturally, one was for the creature in question and the other was for the Banshee or Boney Genome. I went ahead and created a check against Banshee and Boney grendel genetics to check for mutations that deviated from both genomes. Anyway, onto the genetics.

Be warned, I’m probably going to get a lot of things wrong. I don’t have access to the internet as of writing this and am forced to just wing it and rely on previous experience (though I don’t have much of it).

[A little Aside: Apparently, DDNA Analyzer swaps Nominal and the Chemical ID. Lesson learned. When GeneCompare works again, use it.]

Impartial Relation

Receptors

Unsure – 472 2 51 0 Chi B MutDupCut Stim# 128 causes sig=0 GS neu=95 int=0, , , => 240*<NONE> + 0*Reinforcement + 0*conASH + 0*PunishmentEcho

This gene is actually different from both the Banshee and Bone versions. The difference is the GS neu(?) value, which is set to 94 in both of those genomes.

When I opened this up in Genetics Kit, I found that the stimulus was different. In the banshee and boney genomes, the stimulus is “Travelled in lift” and in Imp’s, it’s “Travelled through external(meta) door”. Otherwise, all the variables are the same. The Up, Down and Wait drives are reduced by 1, and Fear is increased by .016. That’s all I know. Just looking at the sliders tells me that the Boney and Banshee genomes treat it so that travelling in a lift relieves all drives related to lifts and for Imp, travelling through an exernal door does the trick. I’m hoping he doesn’t fail to learn to use the elevators when he needs to ascend or decend. I’m not too worried since he isn’t able to see any doors, anyway and food is readily available on all levels of the terrarium. If this becomes a serious problem, he’ll be moving to the norn meso.

Pigment

318 3 0 Emb B MutDupCut Intensity of color 255 is = 1

Not much of a mutation, but this color is drifting up a little. This only means he’ll be more blue but you probably wouldn’t be able to notice.

Flawless Color

She seems to have come off pretty mutation free. I know this can’t be right. I’ve checked her against both ‘parent’ genomes and she comes up pretty clean.

This is good news, but she still looks very strange. More later if I can get Gene Compare working!

I’ve already made copies of these two and I’m going to make them available for download whenever I get an internet connection and the time to do it.

Merry belated Christmas?

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Unpause! Also, my bad.

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It’s finally after Christmas and we’re back! Packing to move has been keeping me very busy, but I’m doing my best to squeeze in time for Creatures whenever I can. Also, it turns out that I didn’t have to worry about my grendels aging immediately after conceiving. (my bad for not knowing) The CFEm Banshees don’t have that aging gene and, apparently, neither do the Boney Grendels. Boneys don’t seem to have sprites for the different life stages anyway, so I don’t think I’d have noticed til it was too late anyway.

Anyway!

I finally had an adult Norn in Loving Wren so it was nearly time for me to prepare for baby norns. I had some youths in my norn group as well but I limited breeding to Adults only. Still, it meant eggs in my near future.

Before I had time to sit down and plan what to do with my grendel eggs, though, I got a medical alert and found that Obese Bomb was harrassing the stingers in the jungle.

Afterwards, things got very quiet. Some creatures got bored and others advised them to push buttons and machinery. The grendels hadn’t hit each other in a long time and I actually caught a few of them taking naps.

I figured it was a good time to start hatching some grendel eggs.

I’d forgotten how I divided the eggs, so I just took one from one of the two sets and hatched it.

What a strange (and very cool) looking grendel. Apparently, this boy was from Obese’s eggs and his father was Macabre Desire! Congrats! He’s got banshee grendel head and tail sprites, and the rest of him is boney grendel.

Next was an egg from Des’ eggs. She’s very strange and her movements make her head duck behind her body. She has banshee arms and a banshee body, no tail, and her head and legs are boney. Very strange indeed!

This little girl’s father is Earthly Giants! Congrats!

There are still 6 more eggs to go through and I still need to get to know these two, but they know their words now.

Next time!

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