Zombie Creatures – Byotobyo

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Really quick, here’s a quick follow up to Bihia. She loves pushing dispensers.

Byotobyo

1byotobyoByotobyo isn’t much of a zombie. She lies still but is still very much alive, she can even die when left alone too long! She’s more like a coma patient and it seems she can die when her organs fail or of starvation.

First things first, Byotobyo, unexpectedly, had a lot of her genes intact. Compared with Bihia’s meager 526 genes, Byotobyo has 804, only 22 fewer than the CFE ChiChi genome we’re comparing to. After considering the genes that she’s missing, she appears to be a normal grendel. Except that she doesn’t move. Or talk.

I did notice something very, very strange in the Poses section of the Gene Compare, though. As it turns out, 40 of her pose genes are dormant! Many of them apply to approaching, walking up and downhill, and even shivering, picking things up and wandering are dormant genes! Normally, changes to Poses and gaits can cripple a creature but here, it seems to have frozen her altogether!

As for not speaking when spoken to… I’m not sure how that worked out. I checked her stimuli and there were no changes to the hearing/speaking genes, unless there was a change in a part of her brain that I didn’t know about.

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Zombie Creatures – Bihia

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Super spooooOOOOOOoooooky!

And I’m about a week late on this whole Halloween thing. HAH! Oh well. I promised mea of Caos of the Creatures Realm that I’d take a look at her zombie creatures. In case you haven’t guessed by now, you should know that I LOVE checking out weird genetics. Let’s get started, and we’ll take it from the top. As in, Alphabetically.

Bihia

1bihia

Generation 2 Female Norn

The 4 and a half hour old baby. Besides her strange age, an unusual gait and the fact that she’s eternally sleepy, she looks pretty normal at first glance. A closer look, using Xray shows that she’s eternally sleepy but her tiredness does decrease with rest. She is never hungry but will occasionally eat the Stingers in the Meso. Besides the gait, she might even be a good pet, except that she’s basically incomplete.

Let’s start with the obvious bit, that I showed in the picture above.

File 1 – CFE ChiChi Norn
File 2 – Bihia

ORGANS

These are all genes that are present in the CFE ChiChi but absent in Bihia. All this means, literally, is that she doesn’t have them and because many genes are tied to these organs, she probably lacks those as well or the genes simply aren’t ‘active’. In fact, a closer look at her shows that this is exactly the case.

Spoiler Inside SelectShow

 

Receptors, Emitters, Reactions, Initial Concentrations

Rather than show you all of the missing genes, I’m just going to say that most of them are missing. Compared to the CFE ChiChi’s 826 genes, Bihia only has 526. The genes that were left in tact weren’t spectacularly different from the CFE ChiChi’s and weren’t of any consequence.

That said, the Receptors, Emitters, Reactions, Initial Concentrations were the sections that had the biggest chunks missing. Heck, in her appearances, she lacks Body, Arm and Leg genes!

Shockingly, the Instincts, Stimuli and Pose sections are all relatively in-tact.

I apologize about her analysis being relatively short but I honestly wasn’t expecting the source of her zombie-dom to be so… simple. She’s a zombie with dead organs because of her incomplete genome! Why isn’t she dead? Well, I have no idea, but I have other zombies to investigate and I might learn more on the way.

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Jane and William’s Genetic Analysis

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As most nurture-style worlds tend to be with me, this one hit quite a lull. There were a few points where I had to intervene and offer toys and various foods to norns but, otherwise, everyone was getting bigger without incident.

I did have to keep a very close eye on Percy, though. He seemed to have a harder time learning how to help himself.

At 20 minutes old, as of posting this, Susan is the youngest and still a child. As for the others, they were all Adolescents and would soon start breeding. It got me thinking about their genetics and I just couldn’t resist taking a peek anymore. I paused the game and set to work.

Jane

1jane

I skipped our little Generation 1 girl because her genome is no different from a CFE Chichi norn’s. Just a few exceptions were that her digestive needs and aging genes all had mutation turned off. 🙂

William

2william

Next, I moved on to William. Seeing as this group is a few generations along, I sat down and read through each of the differences from the CFE Chichi genome. I’ll spare you the part about their brains and the minor changes, but I’ll definitely share the changes that I find interesting.

Receptors

202 file 1  68   0 You F MutDupCut        128   0 Organ# = 11, Creature, Sensorimotor, Involuntary action 1, chem=Progesterone, thresh=223, nom=0, gain=255, features=Digital  (0)
202 file 2  68   0 You F MutDupCut        128   0 Organ# = 11, Creature, Sensorimotor, Involuntary action 1, chem=Progesterone, thresh=245, nom=0, gain=255, features=Digital  (0)

This is part of a ‘family’ of genes that I like to consider the ‘egg laying’ group. These control whether a female can get pregnant, when she can get pregnant, how much progesterone she produces and how much is required to lay an egg. The change here means that a female creature would have to produce more progesterone before she can go into labor and lay her eggs. As William is a male, this won’t affect him directly, but any girls he has might carry this gene and will have longer pregnancies as a result, assuming they can produce enough progesterone. However, if they can’t, they’ll have stuck pregnancies.

—

236  file 2 131   0 Emb B MutDupCutDor     128   0 Organ# = 13, Current Reaction, No Tissue, Reaction Rate, chem=CA smell 12 (Norn), thresh=214, nom=209, gain=56, features=Analogue  (0)

This (and other genes related to smells, stress, and some of the hunger receptors) are all dormant, so he cannot experience stress from sleepiness, hunger from protein or hunger from carbs.

Emitters

203 file 1  13   0 You F MutDupCut        128   0 Organ# = 11, Creature, Reproductive, I am pregnant, chem=Progesterone, thresh=128, samp=1, gain=3, features=Digital  (0)
203 file 2  13   0 You F MutDupCut        128   0 Organ# = 11, Creature, Reproductive, I am pregnant, chem=Progesterone, thresh=128, samp=3, gain=4, features=Digital  (0)

This belongs to that family of egg laying genes I was talking about. Here, the changes make it so that a female creature would produce 1 unit more progesterone than normal, but at a much slower rate. I’m not 100% on the math involved, but I’m pessimistic that a female with this and the described gene above would be able to lay an egg if she were to become pregnant.

Neuro Emitters

536 Different in file 2   1   0 Emb B MutDupCutDor     128   0 [03: stim] [Cell 37 (Grendel)] + [Brain Lobe 255] [Cell 0] + [Brain Lobe 255] [Cell 0] => 8*Adrenalin + 13*Fear + 6*Crowded + 0*<NONE>; Rate = 4.

The Fear produced is normally 5, so this guy gets much more scared when he senses a Grendel. Poor guy.

Reactions

262 Different in file 1  20   0 Emb B MutDupCut        128   0 Organ# = 15, 1*Hunger for protein + 1*<NONE> => 1*Hunger for protein backup + 1*<NONE>; half-life = 18
262 Different in file 2  20   0 Emb B MutDupCut        128   0 Organ# = 15, 1*Pain + 1*<NONE> => 1*Hunger for protein backup + 1*<NONE>; half-life = 18

This gene is called the “Painly hunger for protein overwhelmsion” gene. That means that when he experiences too much pain, his genes should convert Hunger for Protein into Hunger for Protein Backup. That’s not the case, however, and instead, Pain gets converted to H4P backup. This could mean that when he experiences too much pain, his pain could be converted more quickly but into a state that you wouldn’t expect, and he’d come out of his frightful event hungrier for fruit than he was before he got scared.

Half Lives

Progesterone
CFE ChiChi – 50
William – 57

This is good news for any daughters he might have. Despite the changes above, a slower decay for Progesterone means that the girls have a good chance to lay their eggs.

—

Life
CFE ChiChi – 99
William – 101

More good news! This means that he should have a slightly longer life-span.

—

Up, Down, Exit, Enter, Wait
CFE ChiChi – 38 (all)
William – 0 (all)

I don’t know a lot about the navigation chemicals, but in William, they vanish from his system instantly.

Stimuli

389 file 1   2   0 Emb B MutDupCut        128   0 Creature slaps me (4) causes sig=116 GS neu=0 int=0, ,,,240 => 2*Anger + 6*Fear + 3*Pain + 3*90
389 file 2   2   0 Emb B MutDupCut        128   0 Creature slaps me (4) causes sig=116 GS neu=0 int=0, ,,,240 => 10*Crowded + 8*Fear + 7*Pain + 4*90

Good news about his temper, William doesn’t get angry when he’s slapped by other creatures. However, he does get very crowded, experiences slightly more fear and gets more pain and woundedness from getting slapped. Similarly, in the next stimuli gene, he gets more fear and woundedness from the hand slapping him as well.

—

396 file 1  10   0 Emb B MutDupCut        128   0 I have rested (21) causes sig=116 GS neu=9 int=78, ,,,112 => 1*Boredom + 1*Hunger for carbohydrate + 3*Sleepiness + -6*Tiredness
396 file 2  10   0 Emb B MutDupCut        128   0 I have rested (21) causes sig=116 GS neu=9 int=78, ,,,112 => 5*Coldness + 1*Hunger for carbohydrate + 3*Sleepiness + -6*Tiredness

Rather than get a little bored from resting, he actually gets very cold! Poor thing. It does help to explain why he always complains of feeling cold.

—

409 New in file 1  23   0 You F MutDupCut        128   0 Involuntary 1 (29) causes sig=0 GS neu=9 int=34, ,,,240 => 9*Pain + 23*Sleepiness + -13*Progesterone + -124*Comfort

This gene is absent in William. This gene makes it so that pregnant females experience pain and sleepiness once they’ve laid an egg. His daughters might lack this gene which would make for comfortable, painless birth, but they wouldn’t get the same reduction in home sickness.

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Walkthrough Tutorial – How I Make Custom Creatures

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This isn’t necessarily “the way to do it” but this is how I do it. This isn’t exactly a planned tutorial and it might not get much support once it’s published but if you were curious, here you go. 🙂

Step 1 – What do they want?

I’ll be using CeruleanSilver’s request as an example.

Creature’s Name: Aster
Creature’s Gender: Female
Head: Siamese Norn
Body: Fallow Norn
Arms: Siamese Norn
Legs: Magma Norn
Tail: Treehugger Norn
Color: Pale blue

We can use this information to determine what slots the different parts use.

Fallow – Norn K
Magma – Norn E
Siamese Norn – Norn L
Treehugger – Norn H

Step 2 – Get a basic sprite.

Now I can open up the Genetics Kit and start working. I assign the different parts the appropriate sprite and import an egg of the appropriate gender into the game. I do this in a world that has Norn Poser and Green Screen installed.

Once I get the creature into pose, I set it in front of the Green Screen and instantly age it to adult by entering “targ norn ages 4” into the console.

I then take a picture that I move into MS paint and I change the backdrop from whatever the green screen’s color was to black, as shown here. You can still see the green through her hair and other parts of her sprite.

solazyUsually, I name this file “solazy-0”. Heh. While in paint, I go ahead and save this file as a .bmp to prepare it for Sprite Builder. Once I open it in Spritebuilder, I simply name it “z” and move the new z.c16 into my Docking Station/Images folder. I overwrite the old file.

Step 3 – Using the sprite to get a desired color.

Once z.c16 is in place, I enter this script into the console in the game to inject the image into the game as a movable agent.

new: simp 1 1 12345 “z” 0 0 500 attr 3 mvto mopx mopy

bandicam 2014-10-19 16-44-44-691

Seeing double? Not quite. The one on the right is just a sprite and I can freely change its color now. Once I release her, the Creature on the left is free to move around and I can work with the sprite.

With the hand pointing at the sprite, I can play around with TINT, which is the command that I use to test out different color values to try to get a desired effect.

targ hots tint x x x y y

The first three xs are the Red, Green and Blue values, respectively. The two ys are the Rotation and Swap, respectively. The way I like to ‘tamper’ with these values is to start from the default, middle value (128) and change the different values to numbers between 1 and 255. I never go below 1 because it throws blank graphics and I don’t go above 255 because that can’t be replicated in the Genetics Kit.

CeruleanSilver wants Pale Blue. Let’s try some commands now.

closeTint 128 128 128 128 10

I played with a few options before arriving at my first blue. This is already a pleasant shade but I wanted to see if I could get something a little more pale.

closeTint 150 150 150 128 10

That’s a little better!

Step 4 – Making the creature match the sprite.

Now that I have the values I need, I open the Genetics Kit again and sort the genes by description.

genesTo save time, I added genes that were missing for different ages and renamed them according to color. To make them all appear on the bottom, I added ZZZ to the beginning of each of the pigment gene names. If I hadn’t added the new genes, colors wouldn’t have transitioned well from age to age. Anyway, Now I need to edit these in the following way. All of the Pigment genes shown above would need to be set to 150 on the slider. Lucky me that the genes all share the same value.

As for the Pigment Bleed Genes, I only need to reduce the Swap slider down to 10. Those are easy to find, too. I simply sort by type again and look for the Pigment Bleeds. Let’s see what these edits produce. If I’m lucky, the baby that hatches will match the picture.

genesShe’s certainly very close! Once I’m happy, I name the creature and assign it a tag. I take one last picture of the creature in pose and then I take it to photoshop to give it a clean outline and transparency.

AsterAt this point, I save the .gen file as norn.WhateverTheCreature’sNameIs and then update the first post of the Wolfling Run thread. The two creatures used to make this .gen file are removed and to remove the remaining sprites, I use this script.

enum 1 1 12345 kill targ next

Running this makes is to that I can overwrite z.c16 when I get to work on the next creature.

I hope you found this interesting!

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