Creatures 1: This carrot has too much glucose

Most of us know about the OHSS (One hour stupidity syndrome) that affected Norns in Creatures 2. Basically it was an inbalance in the Norns brains that made it so they were rewarded for doing pretty much anything. This obviously affected learning and made it so the Norns would go stupid after a while.

I've been wondering if something similar is up with my Creatures 1 Norns, as the older they get, the dumber they seem to get. They very rarely feed themselves, and the more difficult ones won't even eat when asked. They just stand there, staring at the carrot looking terribly upset. The only way to get them to eat is to give them a slap or two, which seems to get them going again. But only until the next time they need food, when we play the game all over again.

Needless to say, this is very frustrating, because I don't know if it's genetic, a fault in the game's chemistry system, or if some of them are just plain dumb.

I've been watching the science kit, and I'm starting to wonder if it's not a small fault in the chemistry of my Norns. But first, a little science!

A Norns digestive system, although basic compared to ours, is terribly complicated. They can take in different energies and store them as muscle tissue and fat. This gets pretty complex in C2 and C3, but I think it a little more basic in C1.

As I understand it, in C1 Norns eat food, which gives them a dose of starch. This then turns into glucose, which is essentially their energy. With a lot of glucose in their system it can then turn into glycogen, which is stored energy (the C1 equivalent of muscle tissue or fat). When a Norn's glucose (energy) levels drop, they dip into the glycogen (stored energy) reserve for a little extra kick. Glycogen is essentially what gives you a Norns life force. A good glycogen level will usually result in a life force of around 77%.

Now here's the kicker. You would assume that a Norn with low levels of glycogen would need more glucose, which in turn means they need more starch. They get starch from eating foods. So a hungry Norn has low levels of glycogen, yes? Well, apparently not.

I've been watching my Norns hunger levels in contrast to their starch, glucose and glycogen levels. They all seem to have high levels of both glucose and glycogen. They only get small kicks of starch right after they've eaten, which then returns to zero while boosting their glucose. But they're always darn hungry!

Why is it a Norn who has plenty of energy, and plenty of stored energy, is so hungry? I think my Norns are fat. I think they've got to the stage where they're used to eating on a regular basis, but they're so fat they don't actually need the food. Which might explain why they're resistant to my pleas for them to eat. Perhaps they have bad body image.

So this is my project for the immediate future. Try and figure out whether my Norns are overeating, and whether or not this effects their desire to eat, even when hungry. And then I guess try and find a way to fix it, if it is indeed a problem.

There's a couple of interesting documents on the Cyberlife website, mostly written by Liz Morris. I'll throw a link up here at some stage, but I should really get back to work right now.

If anyone knows whether my ramblings are true or not, or knows any interesting links that would be worth a read, leave us a comment.

Creatures 1: Raising Norns

I received an interesting comment on my last post with quite a few interesting questions about Norn raising. I started writing a reply, then realised how big it was going to be and thought it might be worth dedicating an entire post to the topic. So here goes:


I'm curious - do you have a strict methodology you use when hatching, training and investigating each individual Norn?

Even after playing for 10 years or so there's still so much I don't know. I've no idea if there is a 'best way' of hatching and raising a Norn. Do you give them one tickle or many when they behave nicely? How many smacks is too many?

So no, no strict methodology. Although I do hatch, feed, then try and get them to the learning computer ASAP. I try and keep them around the garden as babies (not always effective). If possible I like to take them around the world once to teach them, then let them go off on their own, although as the worlds population increases this becomes harder.

I use the observation kit to keep tabs on them, and if their health drops below 65% I usually need to encourage them to feed. At least for the moment I'm trying to keep the Norns alive more as pets and learn about their biology and genetics at the same time. Once I have a solid number of Norns and a better understanding of their innards I'll start looking into some more experiments.

What do the other [Norns] get up to in the meantime?

Mostly? Breeding. With a population of about 13 Norns I've found I've usually got at least one Norn pregnant. I remember the C1 Norns not breeding nearly as much as C3 Norns and although that's true, it's not as wide a margin as I remember :S

And do you have any kind of endgame or direction in mind as you investigate their genetics or are you just wanting to see what happens as they breed and let the chips fall where they may?

I would like to have an endgame idea. At the moment what I'm really doing is looking for one. I think what I'd really like to do is have a collection of Norns, then do some selective breed to achieve...something. I'm not sure what that something is yet.

Perhaps I'll learn enough to craft my own breed from scratch. Perhaps I'll just seletively breed a new breed into existance. Or perhaps Grandroids will be released before I get around to it and I'll get massively distracted :P I don't know.

If anyone has ideas of what would be fun to aim for, or knows of some other interesting breeding experiments that have been done, or even has a method of hatching and raising baby Norns, I'd love to hear about it.