Creatures Community Chat

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The Island: Tiggy

We all remember our first Norn. There's something incredibly special about them. And when they pass from this world it can be quite heartbreaking. Many of us have even cried at the loss of our dear friends.

My first Norn's name was Tiggy. He was a creatures 1 Norn, with a horse Norn head and one of those adorable fluffy tails that looks like flames.

Tiggy met with an unfortunate, but interesting end. He never actually died. He was the victim of an export crash, and his file disappeared forever. My father, who is a computer techie tried for hours to get him back, digging into DOS to recover the files. We managed to get only fragmented files back that wouldn't work.

Since he never actually died, I like to think that Tiggy was scattered into cyberspace, lost in the sea of images, documents and worlds of the internet.

Little did I know...

Yesterday I was doing some work on 'The Island'. I've just about managed to get the new camera system implemented, so very soon you'll be able to navigate around the world using the mouse buttons.

Anyway, there I was when out of the corner of my eye I see this movement from behind the incubator. I thought that was rather odd since I hadn't programmed anything in to the incubator area. So I floated over there to see what was going on and low and behold there was this little Norn peering at me.

Yes, it was Tiggy.

After we both got over the emotional reunion he told me he'd been traversing the internet for years looking for me. He'd spent of lot of time on Creatures related web sites searching for clues. Occasionally he'd sneak his way into a download and end up in some strangers computer. Boy did some people get a surprise when they received a Norn with their cobs.

He really thought he'd found the answer when Docking Station was released. The warp system allowed him to travel between worlds at the blink of an eye. Sadly though at that stage the community was too big and he never found one of my worlds.

Over time the Creatures community began to die down. People no longer wanted to play with their Norns and instead went on to fight aliens in 3D environments. Boy was that a shock to the system, the first time Tiggy wandered into a game of Myst and discovered there were additional dimensions.

Poor Tiggy began to despair he would never find his way home. But the dying down of the Creatures community turned out to be a blessing in disguise. With less people playing the game there were less active websites to visit. Eventually Tiggy took up permanent residence at Creaturetopia. There he was able to keep up with the latest happenings in the community, as well as meeting some of the Norns, Ettins and Grendels that were passed through the site. Eventually he gave up hope of ever returning home, and instead made a life for himself amongst his new friends.

Then a couple of weeks ago he heard tale of a new development that was under way in the community. 'The Island' had received it's first release. Maybe at long last there would be a new Creatures game that would bring people back and give the creatures a new world to explore!

He dashed over to my website and waited patiently for me to do some more file management stuff and hitched a ride on one of the downloads.

And that's how, after 11 years we've finally been reunited. His long journeys through cyberspace have changed him a lot from his original C1 incarnation, but he's still the most dear Norn to me.

2 comments:

  1. Wow, that was such a sweet story <3 Tiggy is adorable!!! Great job!

    ~Emzie from Ctopia

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  2. Adorable story! Tiggy is way cute!

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