Creatures Community Chat

Friday, December 23, 2011

Grandroids Update: Merry Christmas

It's Christmas eve here (and I still haven't done my shopping) so I thought I'd try and do a Christmas present post for you all. I've been planning on doing a Grandroids update post for a while now and this seems like a lovely present to give to those that didn't get a subscription to the forums.

Naturally I've been ethically sworn to secrecy on the forums stuff, so I need to keep things as vague as possible, but hopefully I can give some cool information while sticking to happy moral grounds at the same time.

So where to start? I guess we'll start at the beginning.

Most of the world and the creatures still exist in code, and that which has been made in 3D is still placeholder stuff, not what will likely appear in the final game. With that in mind I think it's okay for me to show a picture of Gollum, the poor little critter who Steve's been doing all his testing through. The talk Steve has been doing suggests the final creatures are likely to be ape-like; able to walk on two legs to use their hands for manipulating tools, but will likely move about on all fours.
Naturally though this is still the testing phase, and quite likely to change. As well as that there's been talk of several species, but we haven't even seen Gollum in action properly yet, so that's still a pipe dream.

You may not know this, but the Norns movement was all genetics based. The sprites themselves were hard coded, but how those sprites were displayed was all dynamically coded, allowing creatures to develop limps and other interesting characteristics.
Grandroids will work similarly, but vastly more complex. Instead of being simple sprites the creatures will have bone and muscle structures that will be dynamically driven by code, allowing for a lot of diversity in movements. As well as this, the bone system is linked into a physics engine, so objects, including the creatures should obey laws like gravity.

The biology is largely completed. That's the stuff in the science kit, where all the chemicals interact. This is something I need to be pretty vague on, but let me say there's some amazing stuff going on in here and people will not be disappointed. The system is vastly more realistic than our Norns are, and I'm pretty sure Steve is building things to be energy conservative, meaning free energy will be hard if not impossible to come by. What does this mean for players? No more immortal creatures. Or at least none that evolve naturally.
The other thing I just have to mention about the chemicals is that they'll actually act like chemicals. No more 'Random Chemical X' that increases and decreases. These chemicals will actually interact, break apart and reform to make other chemicals. I can't go into this any more, partially because there's some trade secrets stuff, but mostly because it goes above my head!

The genetics are just about all completed. At the last update Steve said there was still the reproductive organs to code, but aside from those it's just about in order.

The last few posts have mostly been about the brain, and that is still largely under development. What's really cool is that Gollum is now starting to move about, although at the moment it's pretty random. Apparently there's been a recent update that's made things a little more natural, but we haven't seen anything yet. With the brain still only partially completed this is hardly surprising.

I guess it's been something like 8 months since the Kickstarter project finished and Steve started working, but from my perspective this is all coming together amazingly fast. I don't imagine it will be early next year, but some time in 2012 I'd expect Grandroids to be released. Of course I won't be holding my breath; Steve has the extra cash and I want to see this game polished, so I also hope he spends the extra time on things.

Regardless of when, I hope these forums get opened up to the public so everyday people can have a read. Although a lot of it goes over my head it's fascinating to watch and it's driving me to want to learn more about biology, chemistry and evolution. If nothing else I'm sure Steve will write another book. For those that haven't read it, I highly recommend 'Creation: Life and how to make it', his earlier book about how he brought the Norns to life. An amazing read which changed the way I consider life.

I think this quote from one of Steve's older posts really sums up what he's trying to achieve with Grandroids:
"Creatures only had a twenty year shelf-life - this time I want to make it last"

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Creature 1: Gen2

I'm getting close to having all the Gen2 Norns raised into adulthood. Only three more to go and they shouldn't take too long at all. So I figured at some point I should actually tell who's made it into the breeding pool for this generation and who will become available for download to anyone interested.

First up, the females, as there is less of them and it's a little more obvious who's made it in. In no particular order, the female contenders are:

Mayflur: Although having a very small chronic sleep disorder, Mayflur also has a mutation that reduces the speed at which her Antibody3 dissipates from her body. Her physical appearance also made her a hot contender.

Stephanie: Other than having some PMN genes Stephanie is a perfectly normal, healthy Norn.

Enza: With her mutation that reduces fear rather than loneliness when being patted by the Hand, I'm really hoping Enza will pass on her mutation to a group of Norns.

Causty: Although she has a mutation that may make it impossible for her to recover from Antigen3 Causty has been a great Norn to raise and has just squeezed into the next generation.

Beatrice: A very ordinary Norn. No mutations and incredibly cute.



The males were a lot more difficult to choose from. Not only were there a lot of them but there were a lot of reasons to pick or not pick a Norn. Public opinion also played a strong part.

Trillo: Although I'm not a huge fan of the male Forest Norn heads, Trillo has some strong genes and was voted for by viewers.

Totem: One of my favourite of this generation, Totem does very well at taking care of himself, rarely gets hungry and is also incredibly cute. I've also noticed recently he can walk incredibly fast, outpacing most of the other Norns. I've no idea what causes this, but it's cool to watch.

Techie: Techie is a pretty ordinary Norn genetically speaking, although he does have a lot of the good Forest Norn genes. He takes good care of himself and rarely gets hungry.

Bonza: I never intended to add Bonza to the breeding pool, as his mutations are clearly detrimental to him. Although not as severe as I initially thought, his mutation should reduce his sexDrive and increase his anger. I think I may have over-sold his musical talents, making him a very popular Norn to my readers :P
Needless to say Bonza may need a little more attention than the other Norns, but he's also very interesting. Hopefully his children will either miss this mutation or they'll learn to cope with it in interesting ways as Bonza has.


Naturally as we have winners we must have losers. The following Norns won't make it into the breeding pool for generation 2, however I'll be adding a new page in the next few days where people can download them, along with a text document with a breakdown of their genetics. Here's to hoping they find some happy homes.


Tracey
Maramel
Maelstrom
Javas
Lentil
Myles
Jupitor

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Creatures 1: Gen2 Update

Feels like forever since I last had a chance to play Creatures. It's even longer since I did an update.
I have been playing a little over the last month or so, but that time has been dedicated to raising up the last few Norns to adulthood and preparing them to enter to world together.

This is just a very brief update to say things are still trundling along, and to inform you of a (very small) setback I had.

Upon importing Totem to raise him to adulthood the poor Norn suffered an import death. I doubt there is any reason for this; probably a small bug in the game that crops up now and again.
What was interesting was that after importing and having Totem die on me, there was another 'Totem.exp' file sitting in my import folder. I'm sure this is related to the bug I discovered in one of my previous posts where some of the Norns weren't showing up in the Windows directory but would still show up in-game. I'm guessing the game is automatically and unintentionally making backups of the Norns when you import them, presumably due to some sort of administration protection whereby Windows duplicates the file on import, rather than removing it.
An interesting backup scenario, but not one I'd rely on. The following picture explains why.

I was quick enough that after dying, I was able to instantly import the duplicated file of Totem and strangely have the second Totem meet his deceased self. What's interesting is that it's not quite the same Totem. The second file is a younger version, whereas deceased Totem is an adult. Not to worry though, the Albian Space/Time continuum doesn't seem to have been affected.