The most boring colortrue creature ever

It's kind of nice knowing that the Toxic Norns are safe wherever they go. There's plenty of food even in the halls, disease is not an issue, and there are no Grendels to worry about. Of course, that doesn't mean that nobody's going to slap the Norns. Gaius continued harassing poor Foulvenom, despite my efforts to teach him not to. Even after I hauled him off to the training dummy, he would hit it, I'd slap him several times, and he'd just look at me and hit the dummy again.

Turned out, Gaius responds well to reward from the hand but not to punishment. That green spike is when I tickled him for behaving peacefully, and those small red bumps after were me slapping him multiple times for hitting the Norn. And I don't mean each little bump is a slap, I mean each little bump was three or four slaps, and he still barely felt it! No wonder he wasn't learning! Thankfully, the Biochemistry Kit has an Injection tool, so when he hit the Norn dummy again, I just gave Gaius a full dose of punishment! That seemed to do the trick!

With the unruly Geat under control, I turned my attention back to the Toxic Norns. The females gathered in the lower section of the Woodland, while the males wandered off. I eventually found them camped outside the locked Meso door. I'd declared the Meso off-limits because most of the food contains cures that can be dangerous for Toxic Norns, but it occurred to me that there was no reason I couldn't just kill hots the vendors and fill the area with toxic food, so I did that. Even so, I brought the males back to the Woodland, because you're not going to get any breeding if the sexes segregate themselves!

All around Albia

After double checking that I'd already taught Aurelia all her vocabulary, I injected my better bees and beelacanth updates into the world, and set about planting the flowers in the jungle and near the lighthouse. Then, as usual, I looked over the Observation Kit and went to tend to whoever had the lowest life force - in this case, Julia, at 30%. She was in a small cluster of Norns on the island, so I broke the group up and shuttled them over to the mainland, but scattering Norns is easier said than done. Making matters worse, at around 20% life force, she got pregnant! Thankfully, I was finally able to get her to eat something, and once she started, she scarfed down several more pieces of cheese.

Meanwhile, Verania was also pregnant and hovering at low life force, but there was nothing I could do about that, so I instead turned my attention to Eudocia, the one Norn still on the island, whose life force was now the lowest on my list. She, thankfully, didn't put up much resistance when I asked her to eat. It's amazing how some creatures are so difficult and others so easy to work with. After that, I made my rounds. Verania laid her egg in the treehouse, then took the cable car over to the windmill. Julia laid her egg in the temple at almost the same time, while Augustus looked on. Cassius played in the garden, and Secundus rode the raft back and forth underneath.

The Last Children

In my last post I mentioned that the C2 Norns produced seven new hatchlings, so I'd split the genetic analysis off to a separate post. And here it is!

The first two hatchlings were from the Mernorns. This makes four, and all of them are male, so for the next generation, I'll have to introduce a new female. First up was Vragi! He has seven pigment mutations and one pigment bleed mutation but all are invisible.

He has a minor brain lobe mutation that I expect won't affect him at all; his decision lobe rest state is 81 instead of 80. He also has a stimulus mutation that makes falling through the air a little scarier for him, but given that he'll live underwater, that shouldn't be a problem!

His brother, Halfdan, may look similar right now, but I expect that to change! He inherited the male pigment bleed gene on both slots, although one has mutated to kick in at childhood instead of birth. He also has several pigment mutations, of which four actually changed pigment values, albeit only from 128 to 129. This may explain why he looks ever so slightly different from Vragi already. Aside from these, he has only one mutation, changing an output value in a stimulus from 0 to 1 - but that slot has <NONE> for the chemical, so it doesn't matter.

Continuing the green parade, Baldur is the spitting image of his mother, Gunhild! He inherited none of Bjorn's looks. He has eight mutations. One of them is a half-life mutation for an unused chemical, and one is an instinct mutation that changes the cell number for one of the unused lobes, so no big deal. There's also a small change in the gain value for the crowdedness receptor, which shouldn't have much effect in practice. And he has a small lobe mutation: a relax susceptibility value changed from 0 to 1, which I'm not even sure has a measurable effect given that the slider in the genetics kit will only jump to multiples of 8. At any rate, the associated susceptibility rule is undefined so it probably wouldn't do anything anyway.

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.

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.

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.

All aboard the mutation express

 [Originally written November 21 2020]

It’s been a while! I’m glad I keep this record now, so I can remind myself of what was going on. When we left off, the Ettin was stuck in the ground, so I exported and reimported him. Boy, the game is fast at detecting a missing Ettin, because it immediately produced another in the time it took me to reimport Smeagol, who happily settled into his new home in the incubator room and began quenching his thirst from the fountain. So now we have two Ettins. Hopefully Gollum won’t fall into the floor!

We also left off with Edmund hanging out by the seaside, occasionally going for a dive. This was something he was eager to do upon my return, so I grabbed him and carried him over to the Calendar Tree. He was not happy about this positioning and immediately called an elevator. He liked the little cave with the red berries much better, though.

I made my rounds in the typical fashion. The Mernorns and Erika needed some coaxing to eat, but at least they were happy. It’s hard to tell with Banana Norns, but I think Erika still doesn’t have her old age sprites; it seems that all Creatures 1 imports get a full shot of Life rather than scaling to their age. 

As such, old Beth is still going just as strong. She also seems to do a better job of caring for herself, as her hunger bar was just fine when I checked in on her. Like all Norns, she’s reluctant to sleep, but she did eventually get some rest.

Tom seems to have settled into place behind the purple berry bush. It’s a comfortable place with a ready supply of food that doesn’t require him to move, and he can hide from me and grin cheekily through the leaves at me. Despite having said food supply, he wasn’t eating, and I think he was disappointed to find I could see him through the bush and engage him in a rousing round of “eat fruit.” 

Meanwhile, in the ocean, Arwen finally grew her tail and gained her rich adult pigmentation. She also seemed to develop a gait problem, which worried me considerably. Instead of moving about normally, she’d get stuck in a sort of bouncing animation. I was concerned that this might be a problem with the Atlantic Mernorns and how their swimming worked, but after I removed and re-injected the swimming COB, Arwen was happily and gracefully moving about, and was soon joined by Boromir! 

Look how magnificent they are with their gorgeous coloration! Not long after, they produced a second egg, which I hatched along with the other one. First of all, I want to talk about coloration. I examined the pigment genes in both Arwen and Boromir; they both have neutral pigments and only two pigment bleed genes. All pigment-related genes are switched on at birth, so the color changes seen over the course of their lives are inherent in the mernorn sprites. Interestingly, their bleed genes differ from each other, so their children may not have the same coloration. Arwen’s first gene is female-linked with rotation 255 and swap 128, and the second is male-linked with rotation 85 and swap 200. Boromir’s first gene is male-linked with rotation 0 and swap 128, and the second is female-linked with both rotation and swap at 128.

The two boys rolled out of the seashell incubator happened to inherit the female-linked genes on both slots, so they have neutral coloration. That didn’t stop the first child, Pippin, from having a unique look, as he sported unusual arms, a mutation type I was not expecting to see so early! The second, Gandalf, looked normal, but quickly turned out to have a more sinister mutation, as he collapsed with stars around his head. I quickly gave him a metabolism transplant and defibrillant, which got him up and moving again, only for him to collapse a second time. I repeated the injection, and quit the game to dive into the genomes.

Pippin’s mutation report came back with 11 mutated genes. One of these, obviously, is his Grendel arms! I welcome this bit of variety to the otherwise very uniform Mernorn genepool. Another listed gene didn’t have any differences I could find either in the D-DNA Analyzer report or the Genetics Kit. Seven more were changes to pigment and bleed genes that didn’t actually have visual effects (life stage changes, mutability value changes, and in one amusing case the color itself mutated from Blue to 3, which the Genetics Kit autocorrected to Red, not that it matters because the value is still neutral). The remaining two mutations are as follows:

Receptor

Gene 006: 065 Prostaglandin

Organ: “Current Organ^{(001 CNS: DRIVE LOBE SUPPORT)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Repair Rate”. Chemical: “Prostaglandin”.
Analogue: Output = 2 - ((Signal - 0) * 255). 

Organ: “Current Organ^{(001 CNS: DRIVE LOBE SUPPORT)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Repair Rate”. Chemical: “EDTA”.
Analogue: Output = 2 - ((Signal - 0) * 255). 

Creatures produce prostaglandin when injured, which induces healing via receptor on a per-organ basis. In Pippin, this doesn’t work in the Drive Lobe Support organ, as the receptor is switched to use EDTA instead. The good news is that the medicinal Gelsemium herb that can be given to help speed healing with a boost of extra prostaglandin also contains EDTA, so will still have the same effect on Pippin. I just need to remember that he needs a booster when injured.

Receptor

Gene 145: 109 Antigen 3

Organ: “Current Organ^{(017 CNS: CONCEPT LOBE SUPPORT)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Injury”. Chemical: “Antigen 3”.
Digital: Output = 0 + 50 if Signal > 16.

Organ: “Current Organ^{(017 CNS: CONCEPT LOBE SUPPORT)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Injury”. Chemical: “Antigen 3”.
Analogue: Output = 0 - ((Signal - 16) * 50). 

So this one’s a double mutation – it switched from digital to analogue and also became inverted. If I understand correctly, this gene is responsible for causing Antigen 3 to damage the Concept Lobe Support organ. I’m not sure exactly how the magnitude of the output translates to the change of life force in the organ, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s just say it “deals X damage to the Concept Lobe.” 

In a normal Norn, it does 0 damage until the level of Antigen 3 rises above 16, at which point it regularly deals 50 damage. I’m actually quite glad that it inverted when it switched to analogue here. If it had not, then it would still deal no damage when Antigen 3 is less than 16, and would still deal 50 damage when Antigen 3 reached 17, but it would scale up the damage with the level of Antigen 3 in the system, quickly reaching the maximum output of 255 when Antigen 3 reached a mere 22. However, because it’s inverted, and the game clamps these values between 0 and 255, the output will always be 0, rendering Pippin immune to the Concept Lobe damaging effect of Antigen 3!

Gandalf’s report came back with 12 mutations. Four of these were inconsequential pigment gene changes. Two of them were lobe mutations, which always look intimidating, but both turned out to simply be 0s inserted after a string of <END>s in a state variable rule. He has a stimulus mutation that swaps tiredness for sleepiness, to more or less the same effect. A receptor that caused water to speed up the skin organ’s clock rate switched from being on at birth to kicking in during childhood, but that shouldn’t be too bad. But from here on out, things just got worse.

Receptor

Gene 146: 142 Prostaglandin

Organ: “Current Organ^{(017 CNS: CONCEPT LOBE SUPPORT)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Repair Rate”. Chemical: “Prostaglandin”.
Analogue: Output = 2 + ((Signal - 2) * 255).

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Perceptible i/ps”, Locus: “Leakage”. Chemical: “Prostaglandin”.
Analogue: Output = 2 + ((Signal - 2) * 255).

Uhhhhh… I don’t know what this means but I don’t think it’s anything good. First off, this means the prostaglandin healing effect for the Concept Lobe is just straight-up gone. Secondly, it seems to be having some kind of effect on the perception lobe’s “leakage,” though I haven’t a clue what this actually means in practice.

Emitter

Gene 220: 028 Hunger Lobe 9 Cell 2

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Lobe 9^(regulator)”, Locus: “Cell(2) Output”. Chemical: “Hunger”. Sample every 20 ticks.
Digital: Output = 2 if (255-Signal) > 127.

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Lobe 9^(regulator)”, Locus: “Cell(2) Output”. Chemical: “Need for Pleasure”. Sample every 20 ticks.
Digital: Output = 2 if (255-Signal) > 127.

The nasty mutations continue. Lobe 9 is the not exactly part of the normal brain lobe system; it’s a regulator that contains the receptor emitter pairs that control the hunger mechanism, much like the Life Kit Norns from Creatures 1. This mutation means that the mechanism that is supposed to raise Hunger instead raises Need for Pleasure.

Emitter

Gene 217: 029 Thirst Lobe 9 Cell 1

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Lobe 9^(regulator)”, Locus: “Cell(1) Output”. Chemical: “Thirst”. Sample every 8 ticks.
Digital: Output = 25 if (255-Signal) > 127.

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Lobe 8^(concept)”, Locus: “Cell(1) Output”. Chemical: “Thirst”. Sample every 8 ticks.
Digital: Output = 25 if (255-Signal) > 127.

Similarly to hunger, Lobe 9 regulates thirst. This, too, is screwed up in poor Gandalf. Once again, this mutation breaks the emitter-receptor mechanism for thirst, instead basing thirst on a cell in his concept lobe.

Emitter

Gene 244: 70 PGK lobe 9 cell 13

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Lobe 9^(regulator)”, Locus: “Cell(13) Output”. Chemical: “Glycolase”. Sample every 2 ticks.
Analogue: Output = (Signal - 0) * 232. 

I think we’ve just found the biggest problem. This gene is responsible for producing glycolase; in Gandalf it doesn’t kick in until childhood. Glycolase is part of the process of converting glucose to ATP, which is effectively the vital life essence of a creature. Let me lay out the relevant reactions to illustrate why an inability to produce glycolase is a death sentence. Italicized inputs come from other reactions that I left out of the table. I also omitted the reaction where cyanide consumes energy, because that’s not part of the “normal” chemical cycle.

Gene	Input	Output
308	1 Hexokinase + 1 ATP	1 ADP + 1 Activase
321	1 Energy + 6 ADP	6 ATP + 1 Hotness
322	1 Glucose + 1 Glycolase	2 Pyruvic Acid + 2 Energy
323	1 Pyruvic Acid	1 Lactic Acid
324	1 Pyruvic Acid + 3 Oxygen	2 Energy + 3 Dissolved CO2
378	1 Oxygen + 1 Lactic Acid	1 Pyruvic Acid + 1 Oxygen

To produce energy, you need either oxygen and pyruvic acid, or glucose and glycolase. To get pyruvic acid, you need glucose and glycolase (the lactic acid loop effectively doesn’t produce pyruvic acid, it just changes its form back and forth). No glycolase means no pyruvic acid and no energy. No energy means no ATP. No ATP means death. Technically, I could keep this Norn on life support by injecting him with ATP until the emitter finally turns on in childhood, but given all his terrible mutations, it seems both wiser and more merciful to let him pass on – and not pass on his genes.

Lop Ear Norns

[Originally written September 19 2020]

I found a thread on Reddit that gave me an idea. Or rather, it showed me an idea that Wafuru of Mernorn and Kai Norn fame came up with and never actually made into a breed.

A bit of photoshopping later and I had some concept art. I’ve done COBbling, I’ve done genetic engineering, and I’ve done sprite overhauls… I think it’s about time I make my own breed from scratch. As much as I’d like to work in Creatures 3, the one glaring omission in my otherwise quite broad artistic skills is 3D modeling, so until I jump into Blender, new breeds with fancy sprites are a no-go there. Creatures 1 and 2 on the other hand, have more “painterly” art styles, which I can work with. 

I made sure not to just copy Wafuru's art directly, but rather just use it as inspiration. No plagiarism intended, only standing on the shoulders of a Creatures 2 giant! For one thing, my Lop Ear Norns have wildly different tails and no spots. The color schemes are also a bit different, though similar, and the hairstyles are different (though the presence of hair at all is definitely inspired by the original artwork). Also, the males have horns. I feel they’re different enough to not qualify as stealing Wafuru’s work, though if I ever complete them and actually consider putting them up for other people to enjoy I’ll attempt to make contact just to be sure.

Of course, this may end up being far too ambitious a project for me – I remember how much work just revamping the Frog Norns was, and this will involve a lot more hand-drawing and intensive editing.

---

[Originally written November 21 2020]

I have finally finished making my first from-scratch breed, and have received permission from Wafuru to distribute the Lop Ear Norns! They are both a visual and genetic breed, having some edits to their genome as well as fancy new sprites. I’ve set all of their Pigment and Pigment Bleed genes to neutral values, so the colors you see in this image are the colors you get. Additionally, they have the following changes to their genome, which in theory should make them a touch less aggressive and a bit more skittish than the average Norn.

Receptor

Gene 331: 041 sleep when v. sleepy

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Sensorimotor”, Locus: “Involuntary Action 5^{(pass out)}”. Chemical: “Sleepiness”.
Digital: Output = 0 + 255 if Signal > 230.

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Sensorimotor”, Locus: “Involuntary Action 5^{(pass out)}”. Chemical: “Sleepiness”.
Digital: Output = 0 + 255 if Signal > 200.

Lops are slightly quicker to pass out from exhaustion.

Stimulus

Gene 531: 005 Creature slaps me

Stimulus: “Creature slaps me”, Signficance: “128”. Reaction: “I’ve been slapped”, Intensity: “255”. Detected while asleep.
+64 Pain, +32 Fear, +16 Anger.

Stimulus: “Creature slaps me”, Signficance: “128”. Reaction: “I’ve been slapped”, Intensity: “255”. Detected while asleep.
+64 Pain, +45 Fear, +0 <nothing>.

Stimulus

Gene 580: 029 I've been hit

Stimulus: “I’ve been hit”, Signficance: “127”. Reaction: “IT has hit me”, Intensity: “255”. Detected while asleep.
+80 Pain, +48 Fear, +16 Anger.

Stimulus: “I’ve been hit”, Signficance: “127”. Reaction: “IT has hit me”, Intensity: “255”. Detected while asleep.
+80 Pain, +60 Fear, +0 <nothing>.

Lops don’t get mad when hit, they just become frightened.

Stimulus

Gene 576: The Hand SHOVED me (Emb)

Stimulus: “I’ve been pushed”, Signficance: “127”. Reaction: “IT has pushed me”, Intensity: “255”. Detected while asleep.
+32 Pain Increase, +32 Fear Increase, +47 Need for Pleasure Increase, +0 Anger Increase.

Stimulus: “I’ve been pushed”, Signficance: “127”. Reaction: “IT has pushed me”, Intensity: “255”. Detected while asleep.
+25 Pain Increase, +35 Fear Increase, +47 Need for Pleasure Increase, +0 <nothing>.

TYPE

Gene XYZ: The Hand SHOVED me (Ado)

Stimulus: “I’ve been pushed”, Signficance: “127”. Reaction: “IT has pushed me”, Intensity: “255”. Detected while asleep.
+16 Pain Increase, +16 Fear Increase, +64 Need for Pleasure Increase, +64 Anger Increase.

Stimulus: “I’ve been pushed”, Signficance: “127”. Reaction: “IT has pushed me”, Intensity: “255”. Detected while asleep.
+10 Pain Increase, +20 Fear Increase, +64 Need for Pleasure Increase, +20 Anger Increase.

TYPE

Gene XYZ: The Hand SHOVED me (Adu)

Stimulus: “I’ve been pushed”, Signficance: “127”. Reaction: “IT has pushed me”, Intensity: “255”. Detected while asleep.
+0 Pain Increase, +0 Fear Increase, +48 Need for Pleasure Increase, +32 Anger Increase.

Stimulus: “I’ve been pushed”, Signficance: “127”. Reaction: “IT has pushed me”, Intensity: “255”. Detected while asleep.
+0 <nothing>, +0 <nothing>, +48 Need for Pleasure Increase, +10 Anger Increase.

First of all, those gene names sound so indignant, I love them. You SHOVE Miette? You push her body like the shopping cart? Oh! Jail for Hand for one thousand years! In all seriousness, I felt bad when I discovered this gene, as I’d never realized that trying to scootch my creatures hurt them (or simply upset them in adulthood). Lops are more willing to go with the Hand’s guidance, resulting in less pain, and their timid nature makes them less angry, but also makes them slightly more afraid until they get used to it in adulthood.

Instinct

Gene 388: 030 Flee approaching when Frightened

When… “Drive i/ps” “FEAR” and “General Sensory i/ps” “IT is approaching” …and you “Retreat frm it”: +127 Reward.

When… “Drive i/ps” “FEAR” and “General Sensory i/ps” “IT is approaching” …and you “Retreat frm it”: +155 Reward.

Instinct

Gene 390: 036 hit approaching when angry

When… “Drive i/ps” “ANGER” and “General Sensory i/ps” “IT is approaching” …and you “Hit it”: +127 Reward.

When… “Drive i/ps” “ANGER” and “General Sensory i/ps” “IT is approaching” …and you “Hit it”: +70 Reward.

Lops are more likely to flee than fight back.

Instinct

Gene 787: 045 avoid detritus

When… “Stim source i/ps” “<ID 11>^(detritus)” …and you “Eat it”: +66 Punishment.

This one is just a general life improvement; I noticed Norns had an instinct to not eat weeds, but couldn’t find one for detritus, so I made a version to avoid detritus.

Download the Lop Ear Norns