Problem solving

[Originally written September 2 2020]

So I’ve been thinking about my C1 and C3 worlds. Both of them have problems.

When I started my Creatures 1 world, I didn’t have the foresight to realize that using the default genomes that lack the death by old age fix would become an issue. I have a whole bunch of eggs lined up, and I didn’t want to just abandon this world and start over, so my plan is to hatch each egg, export it, and then use the Genetics Kit to add the fix to the genome and inject it back into the world. This way all the creatures except the Grendel would be transitioned over (and since I don’t breed Grendels in Creatures 1, I don’t mind this at all – in fact I quite like having him around as an ageless immortal being). But what to do with the existing Norns? I don’t want to simply export them and have that be that, but I also can’t exactly wait for them to live out their lives. 

But then it occurred to me – importing C1 Norns into C2 converts them to the C2 genome, which in theory should allow them to die of old age. And I haven’t really gotten the ball rolling on my C2 world yet. I could just temporarily export my little Frog and let the oldschool Norns have the run of the world for a while. Meanwhile, I could fix up my Creatures 1 world a bit – I’ve downloaded Jessica’s improved carrots from Discover Albia, but I’m not a fan of her improved lemons – she’s done an excellent job, but I don’t want all the extra goodies she added. I just want them to not confuse the creatures. And I’d also like to figure out what’s up with the coconuts, as creatures don’t seem to ever want to eat them, even if I do the work of breaking the shell. So I suppose that means CAOS and cobbling are my next project – shouldn’t be too hard, considering that I already have some experience with mucking about in CAOS from the C3 console prompt. This would also give me time to figure out what to do about the inevitable overproduction of eggs.

Which leads me into the problem with my Creatures 3/Docking Station world: they breed too much! The obvious solution is to airlock some of the eggs, but which ones? Do I just space ‘em all from certain parents after a while? Perform genetic analysis on each and every one and select the best? While I pondered this, my eyes happened to rest upon my D&D dice bag – and there was my answer. I’d roll one die of a side count determined by how many offspring the egg’s parents already had, and if it rolled a 1, I’d keep the egg.

If...	Roll n-sided die
Both parents have less than 2 kept offspring	4
One parent has less than 2 kept offspring	8
Both parents have 2 or more kept offspring	12
It's twins	20

I think I have a plan for both problems.