Glub glub

 I'm starting to see why Jessica separates generations, as it's becoming increasingly clear to me that I'll never get all the breeds in play that I want if I have continuous breeding. While I initially stashed eggs today because I was streaming (though, sadly, to no audience), I'm considering starting from scratch yet again. The Eden world itself is fine, of course, but I have a constant stream of Norns with only five breeds represented, and Magma Norns died out entirely before I could introduce a sixth. I'll be caught forever in a loop of restoring lost breeds instead of adding new ones. So perhaps I should let the remaining population die out and start a new population, with all desired breeds represented. But that's something to deal with later.

After distributing my new honey pot agent around the ship, I checked in on the creatures. Most of them were hanging around in the Woodland or the Meso. I lost a few Grendels in this session; they've taken well to using potions to regulate their anger, but the Hardman Norns have had a little more trouble adapting. I still refuse to give up on keeping them together, though! I have been making steady progress, after all.

As I made my rounds, I kept hearing the low-glycogen music in the Woodland. Sequoia, for whatever reason, holed up in the treehouse and kept running dangerously low on starch. I blame the fact that the pumperspikel seeds don't land on that level. Then again, he should know enough to take an elevator up or down to get starch when he's starving.

Bees, Beelacanths, and Flies, Oh My!

Having finished my improved version of the bees and hives update, as well as my improved beelacanth, I'd like to go into detail about the changes I've made to the code, which means lots of rainbow-highlighted CAOS scripts. If anybody reading this post happens to be colorblind, I apologize in advance. To the anonymous commenter who wanted more CAOS code: you're welcome.

Creatures 2 is broken but I love it anyway

It's always fun when the first thing that happens is the game crashing. It was a sign of things to come, as the whole session was an exercise in C2's jankiness, but boy I can tell my mental state has improved because it's not bothering me so much anymore! So I've got that goin' for me at least.

I loaded back into the world with the babies still exported, and decided to keep it that way. I think for Creatures 2 I'm going to separate the generations; things are chaotic enough as it is.

Once I got back into the game and got my bearings, I saw Magni taking another swim. I sure am glad for the pufferfish! Meanwhile, Gunhild was stuck in the boat, which is quickly rising to the top of my COBbling hit list. I could sink a lot of effort into making it not be terrible, but really, what's the point? Not only do creatures constantly get stuck in it, not only are the controls located where you can't click on them when the boat is occupied, but the boat itself is completely pointless because it leads to a small, dead end patch of island with no food on it. I will likely just remove the boat from my world. Anyway, I eventually managed to get it to cooperate and drop Gunhild off, and began leading her across the desert.

Sharing the love

Well folks, we're officially caught up on the backlogged journal entries! Norns of the Round Table is now live. To celebrate, I streamed today's session in Discord for a group of friends, who had never heard of Creatures before, with a cheatsheet I'd put together to help them identify my Norns in the corner. To my immense surprise, I actually had a small audience! Unfortunately, the first hour of the show wasn't the most interesting, as it consisted almost entirely of trying to convince Tiberius to eat. It was pretty hilarious, though; everyone was cracking jokes about him being on hunger strike, and there was a small commotion in the call every time he picked up a carrot (and inevitably dropped it moments later).

Julia's life force also slowly waned over the course of the session, so when Tiberius decided to take a nap, I took the opportunity to isolate Julia and convince her to eat some honey. Unlike Tiberius, she only took a little bit of coaxing, and was soon happily munching away. After some time I noticed that Tiberius was still asleep, and his sleepiness drive was still high. I gave him multiple doses of Wake-up Pill to no avail, and sensing a bug, decided to quit and relaunch the game. Unfortunately, at this point, "unsticking" Tiberius led to his immediate death.

At this point, I excitedly dove into genetic analysis of a replacement, only to realize just how much baseline knowledge and understanding of Norn biology I had really built up as I floundered to figure out where to even begin explaining to the folks on Discord what we were looking at.

Bee nightmare script, annotated

 [Originally written July 12 2021]

I started by examining the official beehive upgrade script. It includes scripts for both bees and hive. I started first with the hive, and found that most of the scripts are fairly simple. The push script looks complex and frightening at first, but on closer inspection they’ve just crammed multiple statements into the same line. Split up for readability and annotated, the script is long but not so frightening.

The biggest problem here is that this is the push script, which should feed the creatures in accordance with similar vendors, but instead it dispenses bees. I suspect this is so that you get bees upon clicking the hive, so when I swap the scripts, I’ll either have to disable that feature or find a way to conditionally react differently to the hand.

Then I moved on to the bees themselves. Whoever wrote this monstrosity should be keelhauled. 

Thanks, I hate it! I went through and added linebreaks and indentation for readability, then annotated the whole thing. You're welcome.

scrp 2 10 3 7 loop  anim [01R]  rndv var0 0 1  doif var0 eq 0   doif obv0 le 0    gsub hunt   endi   doif obv0 ge 2    wait 10    gsub hive   endi   rndv var0 -1 1   addv obv0 var0  else   rndv var3 10 20   reps var3    rndv var0 -10 10    rndv var1 -1 -5    mvby var0 var1    rndv var4 1 4    wait var4   repe  endi ever subr hunt anim [01R] setv var0 posl setv var3 post rtar 2 4 14 doif targ ne 0  setv var1 posl  setv var4 post  setv objp targ  targ ownr  setv var6 var1  setv var7 var4  subv var1 var0  subv var4 var3  setv var5 var1  doif var5 lt 0   negv var5  endi  doif var5 lt 2100   divv var1 200   divv var4 50   reps 50    reps 4      rndv var2 -5 5     mvby var1 var2    repe    rndv var2 -2 2    mvby var2 var4   repe  else   divv var1 600   divv var4 60   reps 60    reps 10     rndv var2 -5 5     mvby var1 var2    repe    rndv var2 -5 5    mvby var2 var4   repe  endi  setv var0 posl  setv var3 post  subv var6 var0  subv var7 var3  divv var6 30  divv var7 30  reps 30   mvby var6 var7  repe  targ objp  doif touc targ ownr gt 0   rndv var9 0 5   doif var9 eq 0    mesg writ targ 1   endi   targ ownr   addv obv0 1  endi endi targ ownr reps 20  rndv var0 -5 5  rndv var1 -5 5  mvby var0 var1 repe retn subr hive anim [01R] setv var0 posl setv var3 post rtar 2 8 1 setv var1 posl setv var4 post setv objp targ targ ownr subv var1 var0 subv var4 var3 setv var5 var1 doif var5 lt 0  negv var5 endi doif var5 lt 2100  divv var1 200  divv var4 50  reps 50   reps 4    rndv var2 -5 5    mvby var1 var2   repe   rndv var2 -5 5   mvby var2 var4  repe else  divv var1 600  divv var4 30  reps 30   reps 20    rndv var2 -5 5    mvby var1 var2   repe   rndv var2 -5 5   mvby var2 var4  repe endi setv var0 posl setv var3 post targ objp setv var1 posl setv var4 post targ ownr subv var1 var0 subv var4 var3 divv var1 10 divv var4 5 reps 5  reps 2   mvby var1 0  repe  mvby 0 var4 repe setv obv0 0 retn endm

ENTER SCOPE SCRIPT Endless loop {Flap wings animation  Pick random choice of 0 or 1  If choice is 0  {if obv0 is 0 or less (obv0 = fullness)   {run the hunt subroutine   }   if obv0 is 2 or more   {wait for 10    run the hive subroutine   }   Pick random value   adjust obv0 accordingly  }else (if choice is 1)  {pick random number of repetitions   For that many times...   {pick random vertical value    pick random horizontal value    move by that amount    pick random amount of time    wait that amount.   }  } } HUNTING SUBROUTINE (when bee is hungry) flap wings animation record x position record y position target random beelacanth if target exists {record x position of plant  record y position of plant  set object pointer to point to this plant  target bee again  save plant x position  save plant y position  find x distance to plant  find y distance to plant  record soon-to-be-absolute x dist to plant  if it's less than 0  {negate it to make it positive  }  If absolute distance is less than 2100  {divide x distance by 200   divide y distance by 50   for 50 repetitions   {for 4 repetitions    {pick random value between -5 and 5     move toward plant in x, random y    }    pick random value between -2 and 2    move toward plant in y, random x   }  }else (absolute distance is more than 2100)  {divide x distance by 600   divide y distance by 60   for 60 repetitions   {for 10 repetitions    {pick random value between -5 and 5     move toward plant in x, random y    }    pick random value between -5 and 5    move toward plant in y, random x   }  }  record new x position  record new y position  find new x distance to plant  find new y distance to plant  divide x distance by 30  divide y distance by 30  for 30 repetitions  {move toward plant  }  Target beelacanth  If the beelacanth touches the bee  {pick random value between 0 and 5   if that value is 0   {beelacanth pull script   }   target bee again   add 1 to obv0  } } target bee for 20 repetitions {pick random value  pick random value  move by random values } end subroutine HIVE SUBROUTINE (when bee is full) flap wings animation record x position record y position pick random beehive record beehive x position record beehive y position set pointer to beehive target bee again find x distance to beehive find y distance to beehive save soon-to-be-absolute x distance if it's negative {negate it to make it positive } if absolute x distance is less than 2100 {divide x distance by 200  divide y distance by 50  for 50 repetitions  {for 4 repetitions   {pick random value    move toward beehive in x, random y   }   pick random value   move toward beehive in y, random x  } }else (distance is more than 2100) {divide x distance by 600  divide y distance by 30  for 30 repetitions  {for 20 repetitions   {random value    move toward hive in x, random y   }   random value   move toward hive in y, random x  } } find new x position find new y position target hive get hive x position get hive y position target bee again find new x distance find new y distance divide x distance by 10 divide y distance by 5 for 5 repetitions {for 2 repetitions  {move toward hive in x, no y change  }  move toward hive in y, no x change } set obv0 to 0, bee is no longer full end subroutine end script

Next I looked at the push script for the bee, which brought me to a conundrum. Creatures 1 makes no distinction between good critters and bad, and the majority of critters are neutral or good. Therefore, the bees are the oddballs that break behavioral expectations. You can’t expect a Norn to understand that carrot beetles are okay to play with but bees are not. So my options are to either make bees invisible to creatures, or try to make an entirely new object category. I wasn’t sure if that was even possible, so I threw together a test COB (using the unused microscope sprite). Sure enough, Betty the Beta Tester was able to process this as a new item type!

Not long after I had a new version of the bee and hive upgrade: one where the bees are a new type of object, and where the hive behaves similarly to other vendors (getting the hand to get different results than creatures was just a matter of a simple doif from eq pntr statement in the push script, where I triggered the pull script instead). Also, I made two versions; normally the bees at the hive have eyes but the ones that roam do not, and I made a version where they all have eyes.

Of course, the updated hive and beelacanth go hand in hand, so next on my to-do list is updating the unruly beelacanth, and I won't be releasing the beehive update until that's done!

Peaceful times in Albia

 [Originally written July 10 2021]

Albia has given me a break from the chaos, instead allowing me to peacefully make my rounds and convince whoever had the lowest life force to eat.

That started with Julia hovering at 30%, and I couldn’t get her undivided attention with other creatures around, so I pulled her up a lift into the treehouse where I argued with her for a while. Once she got the point, though, she readily ate several pieces of food, and I released her back into the world. Next up was Tiberius, who was… much more difficult. Frustrated with his refusal to eat food, I tried getting him to push the vendor, to no avail.

My attention was drawn away from him by Eudocia, who was pregnant, and her life force was dropping quickly. She was hanging out on the island with Marcellus, Verania, and Secundus. Once again, I couldn’t get her to cooperate with others around, so I lured her onto the boat and over to the jungle, where I was able to get some food into her.

After this, I started eyeing the beehives. I have been meaning to make a better version of the “upgraded” beehives, after all. But I’ll split that out into a separate post!

An influx of Norns

 [Originally written July 8 2021]

Albia was a freakin’ circus today. I started off with most of the Norns sleepy and collapsing into a snoring pile together; Sigurd and Gunhild got into a slap fight behind the water pump where I couldn’t discipline them, but seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Then things got weird, fast. For some reason, the pufferfish decided to eject Olaf, and only Olaf, from the ocean. I have no idea why. Then, once he was on land, I tried to get him back in the water where he belongs, only to have him completely freeze on me. I tried fiddling around with the springy toy (again, it’s a godsend for moving stuck Norns) but to no avail. Olaf actually aged up on land, so it’s a very good thing that he’s an Atlantic Mernorn and not a standard variety, or he would have suffocated. When injections failed to un-stick him, I exported and reimported him, which did the trick, but then I had to juggle him with all the other Norns and try to get him and only him into the ocean, which was an ordeal. It also involved Magni helpfully trying to demonstrate swimming, so that was fun. Then Sven went and collapsed, presumably due to not eating, so I had to get him back on his feet with an injection, but he seemed to stabilize after that.

During all this chaos, the land-dwellers had produced three eggs, and soon a fourth was on the way. With the Mernorn situation under control, I tried desperately to catch up on land by hatching the eggs. I adored Grelod the moment I laid eyes on her; my orange-tipped female Frog Norn sprites go so well with the Golden Desert Norn sprites! But my second thought was the realization that I would not be able to handle four hatchlings with all the adults still in the room. So I exported Grelod and decided it was time to eject the other Norns from the safety of the cave.

This meant pulling them up the lift and tossing them through the random teleporter. This worked out better for some than for others. Sigurd ended up just jumping off the platform, and the poor amphibian was very confused by his arid surroundings.

Freyja ended up in the splicing room, which is not a good long-term location for a Norn, so I guided her out into the treehouses. Eventually I got everybody into at least decent positions, except Magni, who continually re-activated the teleporter to go back to the incubator! He really didn’t want to leave! Eventually I got the cheeky little fellow out, and then it was time to set about hatching the remaining eggs. 

And that, of course, means it’s time for genetic analysis! We’ll start with Grelod. She has a lobe mutation that is thankfully just a random value in a state rule, sandwiched safely among a bunch of <END> flags. The receptor that makes Norns walk differently when sleepy kicks in early for her – normally, being a walk animation, it doesn’t kick in until childhood, as babies are supposed to still be crawling, regardless of mood. Her third mutation is unfortunate but not crippling.

Reaction

Gene 115: drive 4 reducer

3 Coldness Decrease + 3 Coldness = 1 Reward.
Rate: 8 (max to 0 in about 0.4 secs)

3 Coldness Decrease + 3 Coldness = 1 Punishment.
Rate: 8 (max to 0 in about 0.4 secs)

Normally this reaction encourages Norns to do things that warm them up when cold, but in Grelod it will discourage this behavior.

The next egg was the only one not laid by Freyja, but it’s worth noting I didn’t know whose eggs these were, just that I had a pile of them! Each one was a surprise. Thordis is an odd combination of sprites but I think she’s strangely charming with her purple and green coloration. I am pleased to see that, at least so far, my Lop Norn sprites seem to hybridize just fine with other breeds!

Her first mutation is the receptor that ties the sleepiness chemical to the sleepiness drive; normally it’s active from birth, but it doesn’t kick in for Thordis until childhood. Her second mutation is in the emitter for sibling pheromones; the threshhold has changed by 1, which I expect will have no effect. The third mutation changed a 1 to a 0 in the inputs of a reaction; a 0 isn’t a valid value so it gets autocorrected by the kit, and the chemical being counted was <NONE> so this wouldn’t do anything anyway.

The next egg held Grelod’s sister, Halla. They look very much alike, although Halla doesn’t have matching arms and legs like Grelod does. 

What she does have is far more interesting mutations, aside from her two lobe mutations, which are just random values among the <END> values in state rules, as per usual.

Receptor

Gene 624: Oestral cycle (F)

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Reproductive”, Locus: “Become fertile if high”. Chemical: “Oestrogen”.
Analogue: Output = 0 + ((Signal - 73) * 255).

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Reproductive”, Locus: “Become fertile if high”. Chemical: “Oestrogen”.
Analogue: Output = 0 - ((Signal - 73) * 255).

At first, I was a bit excited about this one. I figured since the signal was inverted, the output would always be 0, and thus essentially she would never be fertile, and therefore never produce arousal potential (and in turn, no sex drive). As an asexual person myself, it would have been cool to find essentially an asexual Norn. However, if the math is not clamped until the end, then a signal of less than 73 would result in subtracting a negative number; essentially Halla would become fertile only when she had low oestrogen. We’ll find out as she grows up!

Her next mutation is one I can’t even make sense of, and I suppose must be an error. The gene actually looks the same in the genetics kit, but the D-DNA analyzer flagged it as a mutation, and when compared to a standard Norn, there’s a chunk of the line missing.

Receptor

Gene 465: 122 Antigen 2

465 Different in File 1 122   0 Emb   B MutDupCut   128  Organ#=6 chem=Antigen2, thresh=16, nom=0, gain=50, features=Digital

465 Different in File 2 122   0 Emb   B MutDupCut   128  Organ#=6 Organ, Injury chem=Antigen2, thresh=16, nom=0, gain=50, features=Digital

My best guess is that the entire Receptor Attachment section just got omitted. No idea if an invalid change like that would actually do anything in-game, or what it would do if it did.

Emitter

Gene 050: Get claustrophobic

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Sensorimotor”, Locus: “Crowdedness”. Chemical: “Crowded”. Sample every 40 ticks.
Analogue: Output = (Signal - 2) * 8. 

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Sensorimotor”, Locus: “Light Level”. Chemical: “Crowded”. Sample every 40 ticks.
Analogue: Output = (Signal - 2) * 8. 

This is certainly a strange mutation! Halla will prefer dark places, feeling crowded in bright light. That said, this probably also means that how crowded she feels will be unconnected to the number of Norns around her.

Reaction

Gene 139: Fight to Flight when retreating

1 Collapsase + 1 Anger = 1 Fear.
Rate: 32 (Max to 0 in about 5 secs)

1 Upatrophin + 1 Anger = 1 Fear.
Rate: 32 (Max to 0 in about 5 secs)

Now this one’s interesting! Collapsase is a chemical that is produced when a creature is retreating from a potential threat, and its presence spurs the fight-or-flight response toward flight by converting anger into fear. In other words, if a creature starts running, its anger turns to fear and it will probably continue running. The equivalent in the other direction is turnase, produced when a potential threat approaches, which converts fear to anger – a Norn standing its ground will probably continue doing so.

Upatrophin and downatrophin are simply chemicals emitted in response to the steepness of the terrain, usually used to trigger receptors that cause the gaits for walking up and down hills. In Halla’s case, she essentially doesn’t have a normal flight response, as collapsase won’t trigger her anger to convert into fear (which would encourage more running, producing more collapsase). However, she is unwilling to fight an uphill battle, literally! If her opponent has the high ground, she’ll become afraid; note that this is a reaction converting anger into fear, so if she’s not angry to begin with, upatrophin won’t make her afraid.

Finally, there’s Svala. She has only two mutations. One is a slight change to an initial concentration of a normal chemical, and one is a change to a receptor. 

That said, looking at the normal behavior of the receptor made me question my understanding of receptors as a whole, including going back and re-evaluating Halla’s fertility mutation.

Receptor

Gene 605: Stress reduces healing

Organ: “Current Organ ^(Gonad)”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Repair Rate”. Chemical: “Stress”.
Analogue: Output = 0 - ((Signal - 0) * 12).

Organ: “Current Organ ^(Gonad)”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Repair Rate”. Chemical: “Stress”.
Analogue: Output = 0 - ((Signal - 1) * 12).

The mutation itself seems inconsequential; if you’ve got more than 0 stress, you probably have more than 1 stress. But shouldn’t the normal behavior of this gene always produce an output of 0? No matter what the signal is, it’s always positive and therefore, when subtracted from 0, should always be clamped to 0. 

This leads me to two possibilities: first is that the repair rate accepts negative values and therefore doesn’t clamp. The other is that my formula for receptors with the “output REDUCES with increased stimulation” flag is wrong. I have been operating on the assumption that the formulas here are the correct ones. But for emitters, the genetics kit lists inversion as meaning that the signal is treated as (255 – signal), so it’s entirely possible that’s the case for receptors as well.

I tried engineering a test Norn with receptors and emitters tied to arnica (since I could dose the Norn with that at will via arnica berries) and to unused chemicals (that would otherwise not show up but could be graphed) so I could watch the interaction, but to no avail. I have no answers at this point in time.

Paradigm Shift

 [Originally written July 5 2021]

Yesterday I spent the day cobbling together my first C3 agent, and I’m quite proud of it! This smart vendor can only vend so many calm balm potions in a given amount of time, represented by an energy meter, and won’t vend if too many are already nearby. If the conditions are right for vending, though, it vends on push from creature or hand, or if a creature complains of anger (using code very similar to the empathic vendor). Gone are the days of hitting gadgets and toys to deal with anger; now these potion makers are distributed around the ship!

Download the Calm Balm Vendor

And not a moment too soon. As I placed the new vendors, there was a flurry of noise and activity among the creatures. I hatched a replacement Hawthorn (wasn’t gonna waste a perfectly good name) I injected with the genetics kit, as my egg layer seems to still be spitting out both kinds of Grendel. Oh well.

In the chaos, sadly, several Norns were lost. Ash and Lilac succumbed to old age, while Birch, Peony, and Sunflower were killed in the midst of attempting to transition into a potion-based anger management model. 

Then, as suddenly as the chaos had started, it calmed down. Norns wandered about the ship, Hawthorn and Sycamore learned to turn to potions instead of violence, and, after a few eggs went into my inventory, I was given a blissful respite from the constant influx of new creatures. At this point I turned down my creature cap to 20 (18 breeding cap) because this is about all I can handle.

Finally, I was able to actually make my rounds and check on everyone. They were scattered about in the Jungle, Desert, Woodland, and Meso, and I got the occasional scare from death notifications from Ettins wandering into ponds and drowning. Sadly, one was not a false alarm; Fig, of all creatures, killed Hawthorn just as he was settling in. The new Grendel is a Banshee called Dogwood, and he seems to be taking well to the potions. Amaranth and Daisy had to be scooped out of their vacation in the Jungle for quarantine as they picked up some sickness, but thankfully the lull in activity gave me a chance to actually deal with the situation. A few minutes later, Pine had to get a similar treatment, but all three got a clean bill of health and released not long after.

After that, I sat around in the Meso, keeping an eye on Dogwood and Sycamore. It was too… well, it’s never quiet with Norns around, but it was too calm. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. A flurry of eggs, outbursts of violence, a sickness… but nothing happened.

Having lost two of the three recent hatches and with three more eggs in my inventory, I decided it was time for another round of hatches. The first one was Tulip, daughter of Rose and Sequoia. She has an ominous looking mutation that changed her initial concentration of air into chemical 28, but she was the first to hatch and didn’t immediately collapse, so I guess it’s not as problematic as it looks. She also has three invisible pigment bleed mutations.

Next was Hazel, Sycamore’s first child by Foxglove. He also caused the weird glitch in the mutation finder where it would spit out vast walls of text due to the actual gendiff.exe failing, so I edited my script again to make the “cannot identify line format” error terminate the script; I am no longer seeing weirdly formatted lines anyway, so I only see that error when gendiff breaks. 

Having corrected the script and Hazel’s genome, I took another look. He has a couple invisible pigment bleed changes, and a minor inconsequential change in his half-lives (a 255 changed to 254), which I didn’t even bother to figure out what chemical it was. Slightly more notable is this change to a receptor.

Receptor

Gene 0006: Drive 7

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Drive levels”, Locus: “TIREDNESS”. Chemical: “Tiredness”.
Analogue: Output = 0 + ((Signal - 0) * 0.851).

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Drive levels”, Locus: “TIREDNESS”. Chemical: “Tiredness”.
Analogue: Output = 0 - ((Signal - 0) * 0.851).

Normally, as the tiredness chemical value goes up, the creature’s tiredness drive in the brain will go up accordingly. In Hazel this has mutated to be inverted, so the drive goes down as the chemical goes up. However, since the nominal value here is already 0, and the value can’t be negative, this effectively means his tiredness drive will always be 0, no matter how much tiredness chemical he has in his system. Thankfully, his sleepiness drive is fine, so he’ll rest because of that (hopefully).

Last, we have Sycamore’s second child, Carnation, daughter of Amaranth. The mutation finder detected 4 mutations in her, and opening her file produced a note saying that 3 genetic errors were corrected, and one of the genes the mutation finder indicated had no visible change in the genetics kit, so that must have been one of them. Another mutation was an invisible pigment bleed change.

This left two instinct mutations, but I couldn’t write them off as being the remaining autocorrected errors; Amaranth’s file had 2 autocorrected errors too. Indeed, both of the indicated instincts were mutated, which means that Amaranth’s error mutations have passed to Carnation. I’m still not sure if they actually affect anything though. Anyway, the instinct to eat fatty foods when hungry for fat mutated to be variant 1. Carnation is variant 5, so this instinct is dormant in her. The other mutation was an exercise in irony.

Instinct

Gene 0467: Approach if lonely

When… “Tissue 2: noun” “IT is <ID 36>^(Norn)” …and you “Approach it”: -1 LONELINESS.

When… “Tissue 2: noun” “IT is <ID 36>^(Norn)” …and you “Approach it”: -1 CROWDEDNESS.

Essentially, Carnation won’t instinctually want to go to other Norns when she’s lonely, but she will instinctively flock to them when she’s crowded. She’s a masochistic introvert who stays by herself even when she wants company, and is perpetually uncomfortable in crowds but can’t bring herself to leave. I can relate!

Creatures at warp speed

 [Originally written July 3 2021]

Holy smokes, I’d forgotten how chaotic Creatures 3 is. I spent less than half an hour playing and a lot happened in that time.

I’ve been batting around the idea of making a Calm Balm vendor to help out with angry creatures, but once I downloaded the tools for C3 agent making and started ripping apart the scripts for the medicine dispenser and mini empathic vendor, I realized I might be in just a bit over my head. That’s not going to stop me of course, as I’m going to dive into a way-too-complex project in true Shee fashion, just as I did with genetics. But I did decide maybe I’ll do it another day. 

Instead, I returned to the Shee Ark and tried to recall what was going on, besides a lot of noise. Most of the Norns were either in the Woodland or the Meso. I had an egg in my inventory, and Daisy laid another moments after I logged in. Acacia was in the Jungle, sneezing, so I quarantined him, gave him a lemon, and spritzed him with pink fog, but as far as I could tell he didn’t have anything wrong with him, so I moved him to the Meso.

Willow, the grumpy Grendel, passed away, and soon a new Jungle Grendel hatched, who I named Hawthorn. I taught him the basics of appropriately venting his anger, introduced him to Sycamore, and saw that they seemed to be getting along well enough, so I left them to it and went to hatch the two eggs in my inventory. No sooner had I hatched them, though, than I was drawn away by a death notification. Sycamore had turned on his new Grendel friend and beaten him to death, so I swooped in to re-educate him with the training dummy. During this time, Amaranth got pregnant and laid her egg on the heat pad in the Meso, where it hatched.

I told you a lot happened in a short span of time. With three new hatchlings with genomes to analyze, I decided that was quite enough and closed the game.

First up is Peony, the daughter of Foxglove and Pine. All of her mutations were minor. One mutation was a variant change in a receptor gene that isn’t expressed anyway. One gives her slightly better boredom reduction from playing with toys. The gene that causes adolescent Norns to feel crowded by their parents (and thus want to move away from them) kicks in at the youth stage instead. She has two invisible alterations to pigment bleed genes. And her constitutive drive maintenance organ is slightly more vulnerable to damage.

Next is Maple, the son of Daisy and Spruce. He has two minor mutations and two noteworthy mutations. One of them is that the Stress emitter on floating recip-emit 15 has become tied to variant 1. If I’ve read the genomes right, that FRE has a receptor for the “hunger for protein” variant of the stress chemical. So what that means is, when hungry enough for protein, FRE 15’s stored value increases, and should cause the emitter to produce the generic stress chemical. In Maple, the stored value updates correctly, but the emitter only works for variant 1 creatures. Maple is variant 3. 

The other noteworthy mutation is a changed instinct, but Maple inherited his father’s “do not express” flag on this gene, so it won’t affect him.

Instinct

Gene 0854: Push portal when hurt

When… “Tissue 2: noun” “It is <ID 34>^(portal)” …and you “Activate 1 it^(push)”: -0.306 Pain.

When… “Tissue 1: verb” “verb: Default (quiescent)” …and you “Activate 1 it^(push)”: -0.306 Pain.

This, of course, is utter nonsense. The verb lobe handles creatures hearing verbs being spoken, and I don’t think the default/quiescent verb can ever actually do anything in this lobe. If, somehow, a Norn with this mutation dreams that someone tells him to do the default verb, and he pushes something, his dream tells him this will reduce pain. I don’t expect that bizarre nonsense instinct will have any real effect, so this is more noteworthy as the lack of the “go through a portal when hurt” instinct. But even that means nothing for Maple, since he and his father both have this gene flagged as “do not express” anyway.

Finally, there’s Sunflower, the daughter of Amaranth and Sequoia. She is very slightly more susceptible to muscle toxin, and has three invisible changes to pigment bleeds. Otherwise she has no noteworthy mutations, but she sure is cute!

Cataclysm

 [Originally written July 2 2021]

I’ve been putting off going back to Creatures 2 for multiple reasons. First, there was the fact that poor Gandalf’s deadly mutation was waiting for me. Second, I had moved furniture and the KVM/NUC setup dedicated to running Creatures 2 needed to be reconnected. And third, it turns out I was suffering from depression.

But I'm on sabbatical and getting treatment, and doing much better now, so I was ready to expend energy on things like re-wiring the computer system. I even figured out how to get the monitor to scale appropriately; I have a 1080p monitor but of course Creatures 2 doesn’t like to work well above about 720p, and I had previously set it up to stretch the 720p desktop to fit the monitor, resulting in odd sizing and blurriness. Now, after some tweaks in the Intel Graphics Control Panel, it just renders at real size with letterboxing, making it much easier for me to gauge the size of Norns and making everything much crisper. 

I braced myself for the inevitable and loaded into the game. And it sure was a good thing the antidepressants were working because I got to witness poor Gandalf collapsing, and Pippin becoming increasingly confused why his brother wasn’t responding as he tickled, spoke to, and even slapped him in his attempt to wake him. Then, he vanished. There was no death notification, but the graveyard noted Gandalf as recently deceased. I registered the death, then shook myself out of my daze and set about teaching Pippin.

Once I was satisfied, I moved on to checking on the land-bound Norns, and found that they’d gotten into quite a bit of trouble while I was distracted. Edmund had fallen down a well, so I had to extract him with the spring toy and lead him up to the nearby red berry bush, where he settled in. Then I checked in on Tom, who was in the desert… with an unexpected friend. Beth had escaped from the Incubator room, so I immediately set about wrangling her. No sooner had I gotten her back in than Erika made a break for it and took off across the desert, requiring me to herd her back into the incubator room as well! The two of them are tag-team trouble! 

I went to find where Tom had gone since I last saw him, and he was now inside the volcano, so I fished him out and guided him away. Thankfully his limping gait works just fine for going up a hill like the one in the volcano’s cone. As soon as Tom laid eyes on the raft, he became obsessed with it, and I didn’t want him riding it back and forth all day, so I got him to the other side and then sent the raft back before he could get back on. 

The Mernorns produced another son, but I’m not bothering to analyze the genetics, because of what was soon to come. Borland’s sudden appearance turned out to be a bad omen, because not long after, the game crashed. I tried to relaunch, and got an error. I rebooted, tried to relaunch, and got an error. I opened a test world, no error. Tried to open the main world, error. The world file was corrupted. I had no choice but to start over.

I built up a new world, Midgard, and made a backup copy. Hopefully if the world becomes corrupted, I can drop the backup file in and the inhabitants will be fine. Speaking of inhabitants, I needed some, now that the old guard were lost to the void. I started with two Mernorns, Olaf and Inga. I did not train them as thoroughly as I had with previous Mernorns, as I started them off in the water from day one. Olaf turned out to be a bit of a bully, but they eventually learned to get along.

Then, at long last, it was time to introduce true Creatures 2 Norns to the land. I hatched five of them, which may seem like a bit much, but I wanted these breeds represented in the population. Magni, the Lop Ear Norn, would be the first of his breed to see actual, normal gameplay! Freyja and Bjorn brought Golden Desert and Hebe genes to the table, while Gunhild the Emerald and Sigurd the Frog Norn brought vibrant greens to the world.

I thought it would be efficient to teach the entire gaggle of young Norns all at once. This is fine for verbs, but doesn’t work so well for nouns, which I found out the hard way. I ended up having to export them and import each one to be retrained, one at a time. Sigurd somehow associated “root” with something else entirely and no matter how I tried I couldn’t find out what he thought “root” referred to, so I couldn’t clear the word up to be reassigned to the correct category. As such, he now calls carrots “rut” which I figured was close enough. Hopefully the doozer and other creatures will sort him out.

I then brought the creatures down to the adjective computer in pairs; wrangling all five was just too much trouble. Eventually, I had them all trained, and they happily lazed about in the incubator room until growing into childhood. I have put the elevator on their level so they can leave when they like, as I don’t intend to keep them cooped up. The land is theirs to explore, now. Meanwhile, the Mernorns set about claiming the sea, bringing the first second-generation child into this new world.

Sven has several mutations of note. He’s got two brain mutations to start with, both displaying the same change. I’ll show the one in 555; the other is in 570, the Regulator Lobe.

Lobe

Gene 555: Attention Lobe

D1 Growth

Source Lobe: Noun i/ps. Min: 1, Max: 1. Spread: flat. Migrate: never.
Initial config: Fanout: 0, LTW between 255 and 255, Strength between 255 and 255.

Source Lobe: Noun i/ps. Min: 1, Max: 1. Spread: normal. Migrate: never.
Initial config: Fanout: 0, LTW between 255 and 255, Strength between 255 and 255.

I don’t expect them to have any effect; since the min and max dendrites are 1 for this gene and 0 for the other, so in both cases the spread shouldn’t actually matter.

Receptor

Gene 163: Punishment reinforct

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Decision o/ps”, Locus: “Chemical 1”. Chemical: “Punishment”.
Analogue: Output = 0 + ((Signal - 0) * 255). 

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Decision o/ps”, Locus: “Chemical 1”. Chemical: “Punishment”.
Analogue: Output = 1 + ((Signal - 0) * 255).

This one may or may not be a problem. Basically, Sven always has a very small punishment signal in his brain, which could cause trouble with learning. On the other hand, because it’s such a small signal, it may not have a noticeable effect.

Receptor

Gene 163: Ageing Death

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Somatic”, Locus: “die of old age”. Chemical: “Life”.
Digital: Output = 117 - 255 if Signal > 5.

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Somatic”, Locus: “die of old age”. Chemical: “Life”.
Digital: Output = 117 - 255 if Signal > 4.

This equation produces 0 if the creature has more than 5 units of Life. Presumably, a non-zero value triggers death. The Life chemical decays over time, which triggers aging and eventually death. Barring catastrophe, Sven will live a bit longer than a normal Mernorn because his Life needs to decay more to trigger death.

Reaction

Gene 126: drive 11 reducer

1 Boredom Decrease + 1 Boredom = 1 Reward + 1 <nothing>.
Rate: 8 (Max to 0 in about 0.4 secs)

1 Boredom Decrease + 1 Boredom = 1 Reward + 1 Pain.
Rate: 8 (Max to 0 in about 0.4 secs)

Sadly, it seems reducing boredom will cause Sven a small amount of pain. Hopefully, this trace amount will have no effect on his quality of life, and thankfully it creates Pain directly rather than Pain Increase, which would involve punishment.

Reaction

Gene 382: Glycogen to Glucose by Adrenaline

1 Glycogen + 1 Adrenaline = 3 Glucose + 1 Adrenaline.
Rate: 32 (Max to 0 in about 5 secs)

1 Glycogen + 1 Adrenaline = 3 Glucose + 0 Adrenaline.
Rate: 32 (Max to 0 in about 5 secs)

Not sure what to make of this one. In theory, this would mean that adrenaline-fueled conversion of glycogen to glucose would also consume the adrenaline, making the reaction much shorter. However, it is the type of mutation that gets automatically corrected in the genetics kit, so I’m not sure it actually affects him.

Sven also has a mutation in the half-life of chemical 168, which shouldn’t affect anything. He has a few minor pigment and pigment bleed changes that shouldn’t be visible. The most notable of these changes is that one of his red values is at 137 instead of 128, but even this hasn’t produced a noticeable change. As for the mix-and-match color genes of the Mernorns, he has inherited both of his father’s pigment bleeds, so he’ll be the spitting image of his dad.

The king is dead. Long live the king!

 [Originally written June 19 2021]

So it’s been about half a year since I last did anything with Creatures, as I’ve been occupied with the entire Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, as well as a nasty bout of depression. The antidepressants finally seem to be kicking in, though, and I finally had the mental energy to deal with the chaos of Albia. Initially I just made my rounds through the world, getting my bearings and figuring out just what was going on when I left off six months ago. I noticed I still hadn’t re-injected the underground mushrooms, so I did that, then checked in on each creature.

Eudocia laid an egg up in the computer room near Verania. Julia was pregnant and hanging around on the island with Quintus, Augustus, and Gaius. Tiberius was in the kitchen, and Greg was in the garden playing with Marcellus. I spent some time trying to coax a few creatures with low life forces to eat, and various Norns moved around. Julia laid her egg. At one point I noticed a small group of Norns riding the lift down to the deathcap, so I intervened, pulling the lift back up and leading the herd back to the safety of the garden.

It was then that Julia was marked sick in the observation kit. I immediately jumped over to the island to see what was up. She had come down with a case of Antigen 7, Histamine B, and Unknown Toxin 3. And she was standing right next to Augustus and Marcellus. “Ah boy, here we go,” I said to myself. I didn’t even try to lead her away from them; it would have been an exercise in futility trying to split this little flock, and besides, she was already smearing her germs all over them. Indeed, within moments, they also became sick. I designated the entire island as a quarantine zone and brought over some cheese, and set about trying to ensure their life forces stayed high. This mostly meant focusing on Julia, who was at 55%, because the other two were hale and hearty with their life forces in the 90s.

It only took about 3 minutes to fight off the infection, so it was a fairly minor incident. However, Julia’s life force was still low, and she was proving to be difficult to feed when her friends were around, so I put her on the boat and lured her through the jungle, where she encountered the Grendel. Nothing seemed odd until he spoke: his words were garbled. My first thought was that somebody’s speech had managed to confuse Greg and he would need to be reminded of the correct words. I selected the Grendel.

It wasn’t Greg.

My heart sank. Some time in the half hour following my last sighting of Greg, he had passed away offscreen, unnoticed. Losing him, especially without even noticing, hurt possibly more than losing one of the Norns; after all, Greg had been around since the very start of my Creatures 1 playthrough, through many generations of Norns and several world transfers.

Still, I had no choice but to accept it and move on, without so much as a graveyard entry for him. During all this, Verania laid an egg, which hatched around the same time I noticed the new Grendel. I quickly named and exported the hatchling, and then went to deal with the unexpected newcomer. I named him Secundus, and used the ball to lure him to the computers so I could teach him his words. Secundus proved to be just as quick a learner as his predecessor, and just as obedient.

I brought him down to the kitchen to meet the Norns, a couple of whom had grown into old age, just in time to Julia to lay another egg (right next to Verania for safekeeping). Welcome to the family, Secundus. It never gets any less chaotic.

A very delicate situation

 [Originally written November 24 2020]

If there’s one thing I can say the Creatures 3 crowd are, it’s loud. Even with the new genome that discourages excessive expression, these creatures like to chatter. After taking that break and then going to the relatively quiet worlds of C2 and C1 first, it was actually kind of overwhelming!

The two Grendels, Daisy, Ash, Spruce, and Acacia were clustered in the Woodland, yelling at the top of their lungs, so after checking in on them, I fled to the relative tranquility of the Meso, where the creatures were a bit more spread out. Rose continued to chill up by the lemon pod. That seems to be her home, and I don’t expect her to move any time soon. Both of the youngest Norns seem to have found adult mentors, as Foxglove stuck close to Birch on the lowest level, and Amaranth played with Pine on the middle level.

On returning to the Woodland I decided to redistribute the creatures a bit within the metaroom to end the cacophony without significant disruption to their lives. Once my brain had recovered from the auditory overload, I made my rounds and found everyone in good health. Lilac and Ash’s entry into old age was heralded by one last(?) egg. Sequoia has five mutations, two of which are irrelevant pigment bleed changes.

Receptor

Gene 0095: 139 Antigen 5

Organ: “Current Organ^{(043 MITOCHONDRIAL FUNCTION)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Injury”. Chemical: “Antigen 5”.
Analogue: Output = 0 + ((Signal - 0) * 0.255). 

Organ: “Current Organ^{(043 MITOCHONDRIAL FUNCTION)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Reaction Rate”. Chemical: “Antigen 5”.
Analogue: Output = 0 + ((Signal - 0) * 0.255).

Normally, Antigen 5 causes injury to this organ, but for Sequoia it’ll instead alter his reaction rate in some way. The fact that this receptor outputs 0 when there’s no Antigen 5 in his system doesn’t seem to be having any harmful effect – if it caused the reaction rate to come to a stop, I’d expect him to be dead, as this organ hosts the reactions involving the production of ATP.

Reaction

Gene 0364: 091 Ag to Ab 6

1 Antigen 6 + 3 Glucose = 3 Antibody 6 + 1 Hotness.
Rate: 48 (Half-life: 5.8 seconds)

1 Antigen 6 + 3 Glucose = 3 Antibody 7 + 1 Hotness.
Rate: 48 (Half-life: 5.8 seconds)

Sequoia produces the wrong antibody in response to antigen 6. This doesn’t worry me too much based on my previous research, which seems to indicate that the antibodies don’t actually do anything chemically in Creatures 3. If they do anything at all, it’s fighting the bacteria itself rather than the disease, and frankly that’s not a problem when my response to any and all bacteria is the pink fog.

Stimulus

Gene 0535: 058 I have teleported

Stimulus: “<spare action>”, Signficance: “0”. Reaction: “Default (quiescent)”, Intensity: “0”.
-1 Pain, -1 Boredom, -1 Crowded.

Stimulus: “<spare action>”, Signficance: “0”. Reaction: “Default (quiescent)”, Intensity: “0”.
-0.992 Pain, -1 Boredom, -1 Crowded.

The Genetics Kit lists this stimulus only as “spare action” but based on the title of the gene it’s the stimulus of passing through a teleporter or warp portal (I’m not sure whether they have the same stimulus or not). Sequoia gets slightly less pain reduction from teleporting… though I’m not sure why teleporting relieves pain at all.

Edit: I later figured out that this is to encourage creatures to flee through portals when they're being attacked.

Meanwhile, I decided to introduce new blood to the population. I’ve been hesitant to bring in the Hardman breed despite them being tied with Bengals as my favorite, because I’ve already had such trouble with keeping Norns and Grendels together. But I figured that with Oak being as tame as he is, now’s the best time to try it. If any Grendel could get along with a Hardman, it’s him. So I welcomed little Sycamore to the world and immediately introduced him to Oak. This was a very delicate operation so I had to watch them very closely and train them very carefully. As such I spent most of the session with them.

At first I kept them in the Learning Room, with a cookie machine to provide a gadget to smack around and not a lot else, so that we could focus on learning how to handle anger. Once I was satisfied with their behavior I moved both of them to the Meso and kept a very close eye on them, though I did occasionally check in on the others; Spruce and Ash were telling Willow about how much they loved Daisy, while Willow politely disagreed, and Daisy herself was hiding behind the framework by the door to the Jungle, presumably trying to get away from her obsessive fanclub. Pine was hanging out by himself, and Acacia had gone off on an adventure to the Jungle. After a while, I moved Sycamore and Oak to the Terrarium, as Foxglove had just laid an egg and I already had Daisy’s in my inventory, so I figured I could proceed with normal creature management. 

I stashed the new egg and hatched the existing one, welcoming Fig into the world. My world’s naming scheme so far has been to use fruits for the Ettins and trees for male Norns and Grendels, but of course most fruit-bearing trees are named the same as their fruit, which takes out a good number of tree names, so I’m dropping that distinction. All three of Fig’s mutations are inconsequential – two minor nudges to pigment bleeds, and one slight increase in the intensity of the “quiescent” response to the stimulus of playing with a bug.

A brief look into variants

 [Originally written November 23 2020]

I had previously been dismissing any mutation that just changed a variant number, on the assumption that the variant system wasn’t actually implemented fully in C3/DS, and that the value was completely meaningless. But it started gnawing at me, so I decided to test it by engineering a genome where colors are linked to variants, then hatching several eggs of that genome. The result was a rainbow of Norns, proving that while the default genome doesn’t use variants, the script is still in the game. Further, it turns out that the CFF genome does use variants (to determine whether a creature is an angry drunk, a happy drunk, etc). 

Well, I haven’t been paying attention to my creature’s variant changes, so I decided to go through and check each genome, but it turned out that all of my creatures have only had variant changes in their pigment bleed genes, so there’s nothing to be concerned about. This does make me think, however – I’ve seen a few notable color rotation/swap mutations crop up over the years but almost always had trouble getting offspring to inherit them. If variant mutations are this common in the pigment bleed genes, it may be that the mutations I’d seen were variant-linked, and therefore appeared not to pass on because the children weren’t the right variant.

Albia grants mercy, but not too much

 [Originally written November 22 2020]

The session started off slow. I loaded in with Greg selected and not much memory of what I’d been doing when I left off, so I bonded a bit with the Grendel, got him to eat some carrots, and assessed the state of the world. Verania was hanging out in the computer room with a life force of 50%, but there’s not much I can do about that since I can’t instruct her to eat. The other creatures were split into their typical social groups: Julia, Tiberius, Lucius, and Augustus were in the kitchen, while Eudocia, Gaius, and Quintus soaked up some rays on the island. Greg decided to join the kitchen gang, and seemed to be having a good time, so I headed off to the island.

Eudocia’s life force was lowest at the time (not counting Verania), at 51%, and she was too busy playing with the other Norns (and eventually Greg, who rode the submarine over) to eat the coconut pieces, so I wrangled her down into the bubble, where I finally convinced her to eat some honey and coconuts. 

With her life force on the rise, I checked in on the next two lowest values on my list, Lucius at 61% and Julia at 63%.

As always, Lucius and Tiberius were inseparable, and much more interested in each other (and Lucius’s odd obsession with going left) than in food, so I decided my time would be better spent coaxing Julia to eat.

I had my work cut out for me. I alternated between trying to get her to eat food directly, which she’d happily pick up and carry but refuse to put in her mouth, and from the cheese plate vendor, which she was inexplicably terrified of. She would repeatedly walk over to it, look at it, and then run away with a sad expression. Eventually I got her to eat some cheese, though she never overcame her vendorphobia. I decided that was a battle for another day, and checked my observation kit to see where I was headed next.

Eudocia had just laid an egg, and the pregnancy took its toll on her, bringing her down to 50%. Her life force continued to dip as I struggled to convince her to eat, and eventually I got her away from the island boys by bringing her down to the submarine bay, where Augustus arrived with her underwater uber. Once I had them over in the jungle, they were more cooperative, though there wasn’t much food around, so I had to bring some over from the garden. That was when I noticed Lucius was flagged as being sick.

My heart sank when I found him still hanging out with Julia (who was pregnant) and Tiberius, and more so when the whole flock migrated out to meet Eudocia in the garden. But I didn’t hear any coughing or sneezing, so I opened up the science kit for a diagnosis. Albia granted me one small favor – there were, indeed, no histamines present. The disease, consisting of Antigen 1, an unknown toxin, and sleep toxin, was not contagious. That didn’t mean I didn’t have to isolate Lucius, of course, since he wasn’t likely to listen with anybody around, so I led him to the treehouse.

I did everything I could. Lucius fell into fits of sleep brought on by the toxin, and eventually started whimpering, but simply refused to eat anything. I watched the antibody graph slowly climb even as his life force drained, but he still hadn’t fought the disease off when his life hit the single digits, and I knew he was a goner. I kept pleading with him, but it came as no surprise when the sickness claimed his life. Such must have been the price for the mercy of noncommunicability. There was nothing left to do but move on, so I checked the observation kit for the status of the world, and spent a little time getting Julia’s life force up to reasonable levels.

But where one life ends, another begins, so it was time to bring another hatchling into the world. Next on my list was Marcellus, son of Julia and Gaius. He has only one mutation of his own, which was autocorrected back to its natural value on opening the Genetics Kit. His mother, Julia, of course, has no mutations, but Gaius passed on both of the mutations he’d inherited: one that links female fertility to anger, and one that adds need for pleasure as an input in the glycogen-to-glucose conversion reaction. I also updated Marcellus’s genome with the life kit changes.

Verania was still hanging out in the computer room, but Marcellus didn’t seem to mind that his classmate was much older than him. He learned what he needed quite quickly before Eudocia arrived via teleporter to escort him to the next stage of his education, where Greg joined to helped teach him his adjectives, as per tradition. After that, I introduced him to the typical array of important nouns, and taught him how to eat food, use the vendor, and follow the hand. He seems a quick study so far, so it’ll be interesting to see how he grows up.