A nostalgic vacation

 [Originally written September 26 2020]

I actually began this session nearly a week ago, but didn’t stick with it long enough to make an entry of it. I was feeling kind of down, so having a death be the very first event of note did not help me want to stick with the game. Willow had apparently decided to get even with Yew, who’d picked a few fights with him in the past, and tried to hide behind the hill when I came to investigate. He could not evade me, though, and was summarily carted off to the Workshop for another round of “Hit Norn no, hit gadget yes.”

After that, I hatched a new Magma Norn, Birch, to replace the loss from the gene pool. At this point most everybody except Willow had either passed away or migrated to the Meso, so I hung around in there. Although I’d started this run with the intention of not spending the majority of my time on the Capillata, it was a nice little return to my roots; standalone Docking Station was my first Creatures game on the PC (my introduction to the series actually having been through the mediocre Playstation game, of all things). I’m not sure how it ever held my attention with just Chichis, but perhaps that’s why I was quick to buy the addon breeds (or rather, given the timeframe, beg my parents to buy them).

Oak seems to be shaping up as a shining success in my efforts at Grendel-taming, as he’s been exceptionally good about venting his anger by hitting gadgets and usually has a near-zero anger level because of it. The Norns are more likely to smack each other than he is, and I’ve become used to the constant thudding noises and almost don’t hear them anymore. Willow, on the other hand, occasionally pushes gadgets, but rarely hits them unless instructed, so it’s probably for the best that he ended up isolating himself in the Woodland.

Lilac and Ash decided the time was right to give Rose a sibling, so I soon welcomed Acacia to the world. The mutation finder reported a single mutation in the gene that controls Antibody 4 production, but opening his genome in the Genetics Kit results in a message about one error being automatically corrected and the gene in question looks normal, so I don’t know what the mutation actually was – and I’m still unclear on whether invalid mutations actually have an effect in-game.

While everyone seemed quite happy in the Meso, and I did enjoy it, I would actually like my creatures to not live in one small metaroom their whole lives, so I decided vacation time was over and brought everyone back to the Woodland. Apparently, the younger creatures were unhappy with this choice and decided to return to the Capillata via teleporter.

I left them to it, as I had a rather dangerous situation to keep an eye on. Ash had planted himself behind the two Grendels. While I wasn’t at all concerned about Oak, I worried that Ash’s tendency to harass and hit the Grendels could ignite the powderkeg that is Willow. And hit, he did! I wasn’t able to get past the Grendels to discipline him either. How frustrating!

Meanwhile, in the Workshop, some of the Norns made their home inside the containment chamber, which had been left standing open. I put an end to this lollygagging by moving them out and closing the door. Birch made his way to the Meso, while Acacia and Rose continued loitering in the Workshop. The former also made his way out in time, and when next I checked on Rose, she was stuck with a case of Eat Elevator Syndrome, so I moved her to the Meso to get some food in her, just in time for her entrance to adulthood.

Birch was quite happy to see her, and the reunion resulted in an egg. Meanwhile, in the Terrarium, Lilac and Ash decided to fill their empty nest with another egg of their own. I may start employing the dice on these two if they continue reproducing at this rate, but it is still better than the genome that shipped with the game, at least! Related names seemed appropriate for two Norns born so close together, so they were dubbed Pine and Spruce.

Pine is a very handsome mix, although the purple arms do look a bit out of place! He has several mutations, most of them very minor. His hunger drive overwhelmsion organ turns on at childhood instead of as an embryo. There was an unknown change to the fight or flight receptor for the smell of Norns, probably the one error that was autocorrected. He has a slight increase in nominal value in the ammonia poisoning receptor. A few variant and mutability changes. He has one notable mutation though.

Reaction

Gene 0262: Boredom maintenance

1 Boredom backup = 1 Boredom.
Rate: 58 (Half-life: 15.5 seconds)

1 Boredom backup = 1 Fear.
Rate: 58 (Half-life: 15.5 seconds)

If one drive overwhelms the others (for instance, he’s very hungry), the other drives switch to backups, so the Norn can’t detect them anymore. Once the crisis is averted, they return to their typical drive chemicals – in theory. If Pine was bored at the time, when the crisis is over, he’ll instead become afraid!

Spruce is technically Pine’s uncle, but was born a few seconds later. He only has a handful of mutations, and all but one were minor. 

The last one pushes the bounds of my understanding, but it seemed like it could potentially be serious, so it merited a little bit of research.

Emitter

Gene 0167: (Loc2) Protease

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Circulatory”, Locus: “Floating recep-emit 2”. Chemical: “Protease”. Sample every 9 ticks.
Digital: Output = 0.008 if 1-Signal > 0.502.

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Circulatory”, Locus: “Floating recep-emit 2”. Chemical: “120”. Sample every 9 ticks.
Digital: Output = 0.008 if 1-Signal > 0.502.

Protease is apparently involved in converting muscle tissue to amino acid, while chemical 120 is unused. The loss of a protease emitter therefore seems like it could be quite bad, but I’d need to understand the context. So, what exactly is the locus here? Apparently creatures have several so-called floating recep-emits, which are places a receptor can store some value in, that an emitter can then use. Essentially this bypasses the brain and ties receptors and emitters directly together. I’ve made reference to Life Kit Norns in Creatures 1 having receptor/emitter pairs that regulate their hunger; a mechanism like this is how that works. 

To fully understand this gene, I needed to find what receptor (or receptors) were tied to this same FRE. Thankfully the descriptions include a label so it was just a matter of seeking out a Loc2 tag.

Receptor

Gene 0153: Amino acid (Loc2)

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Circulatory”, Locus: “Floating recep-emit 2”. Chemical: “Amino Acid”.
Digital: Output = 0 + 1 if Signal > 0.063.

So, if the amount of amino acid in Spruce’s system goes above 0.063 (on a scale where the maximum is 1), the receptor puts out a signal of 1 to the locus, and otherwise a signal of 0. If the inverted signal is greater than 0.502, it triggers the emitter; since the only options are 1 and 0 given the nature of the receptor setting the signal, and the emitter inverts the signal, that means the emitter triggers when the locus is set to 0 (which happens when the amino acid level is low).

In a normal Norn, this means that low levels of amino acid result in the production of protease, which converts muscle tissue into amino acid to bring the level up. In Spruce, though, it just produces the useless chemical 120. So the question is – does Spruce have any other way to get protease? I found another emitter that also produces it, attached to FRE 0, itself tied to a receptor for adipose tissue.

Receptor

Gene 0155: Adipose tissue (loc0)

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Circulatory”, Locus: “Floating recep-emit 0”. Chemical: “Adipose tissue”.
Digital: Output = 1 - 1 if Signal > 0.031.

Emitter

Gene 0169: (Loc0) Protease

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Circulatory”, Locus: “Floating recep-emit 0”. Chemical: “Protease”. Sample every 5 ticks.
Digital: Output = 0.031 if Signal > 0.502.

If the locus is greater than 0.502 (in other words, if it’s 1, which happens when adipose tissue falls below 0.031), the emitter produces 0.031 protease. This is actually considerably greater than the amount that would be produced in Spruce’s mutated gene. And of course, after going through all this research, I went to look in the chemical reactions and found that while there is a reaction where muscle tissue and protease react to produce amino acid… there’s also a slightly slower reaction where muscle tissue becomes amino acid without the aid of protease. So Spruce will be fine!