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.