Out with the old

After much thought, I made a decision. All eggs would be stashed in my inventory, and once the existing population died out, I'd hatch the eggs and put them up for download on the blog. The world itself would be the same, but I'd be starting from scratch with the creatures.

Fig, Acacia, Spruce, and Sequoia were hanging out in the Woodland, in a very loud feedback loop of opinions about each other. Maple and Sycamore had extracted themselves from the noise and gone to the Jungle for a respite. Daisy had similarly moved to escape the noisy boys and was chilling on the bramboo terrace. Amaranth, Carnation, and Tulip were in the Meso with Dogwood the Grendel, while his brother Coconut was off doing his own thing somewhere.

Alas, my comments about the Grendels behaving surprisingly well were apparently tempting fate, because I was a split second too slow to intervene when Dogwood unexpectedly turned on poor Amaranth and killed her. At least he had the decency to look like he felt guilty about it, something he didn't bother to replicate when he killed Tulip. Carnation, however, with her Hardman blood, could hold her own and gave him what-for when he picked a fight with her. In the moments after that, I got another death notification for Fig, though I'm not sure of the cause in that case.

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.

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!

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.

Everything went better than expected

 [Originally written October 3 2020]

The Meso is a very comfortable area, so creatures seem to not really want to leave it. I expect this is exacerbated by the fact that the only ways out are via portals and the door to the hub; the hub doesn’t have much interesting-smelling in it to draw them through the door, and I don’t believe portals carry smells at all so the only reason Norns push them is boredom or crowdedness. As such, most everybody except Ash, Lilac, and the Grendels were in the Meso (the rest were in the Woodland). Birch at least decided to be adventurous and wander into the Hub, but not for long – he just entertained himself going back and forth through the door.

With everything calm and a large number of young male Norns, I decided it was the ideal time to bring in a new breed, and hatched Daisy, a Fallow Norn. She got on quite nicely with Spruce, and the two were pretty well inseperable.

Rose has seemed pretty content to remain on the top level of the Meso by herself. She sometimes sits by the warp portal but doesn’t go through, although sometimes she gets visitors through it.

Acacia outgrew his younger playmates and became a bit aloof, while still sticking around the area. Perhaps he wants to be seen as the cool older kid? Pine certainly seems to be in awe – either that or he’d just been smacked around a bit by Birch! I noticed he often had a frightened look about him and I wasn’t sure whether it was caused by other Norns treating him as a punching bag or something else, so I gave him a new Cuddly Tree to play with.

Meanwhile, in the Woodland, the stress of dealing with Ash’s incessant attempts to play catch with him turned old Willow gray! Oak was perfectly well adjusted, if obsessed with his gadgets, but I occasionally had to encourage Willow to take his anger out on the objects left laying about for this express purpose. Still, the fact that Oak at least turned out well tells me I did something right with that one. I’m getting my Grendel-taming mojo back!

Lilac wasn’t content to stick around in one place – leave it to the Chichi to teleport all over the place! She decided a trip to the Desert was in order, where she attempted to play with the rocks – classified as toys, yet not something creatures can play with. I can understand why object categories behave so inconsistently in Creatures 1 and even 2 to an extent, but you’d think by Creatures 3 they would have figured it out… Thankfully I found a fix for this on the internet so I’ll inject that for the next session.

Spruce took after his mother, braving the trip through the warp portal to the Woodland. Evidently the climate wasn’t to his liking, or maybe he just liked the feeling of teleportation, since he just went back and forth for a while. 

Meanwhile, Lilac continued her adventure by teleporting to the Workshop, but from there she decided to walk to the Hub and eventually join the gaggle of Norns already in the Meso. This left Ash and the Grendels as the only inhabitants of the Woodland. 

To even things out a little bit, I grabbed a few creatures and moved them to the Woodland. Acacia looked like he wasn’t having any of it, since he immediately headed back for the warp portal, but changed his mind on the top level.

Spruce headed for the drumset, while Daisy went straight down the elevator and in the opposite direction. Just a tip, Spruce: if you’re going to try to serenade a female, drums are not the most romantic instrument to use. 

In the Meso, excessively tall bramboo was getting to be a problem, and somehow they’d started sprouting in the middle level, so I stripped the tallest stalks bare and used the berries to make cookies, which I scattered around at random.

Oak, ever the well-behaved Grendel, made friends with Acacia and enjoyed playing with the rocket toy with him. Now if I can just get all future Grendels to be like this one! Ash, meanwhile, enjoyed the cool breeze from the weather generator.

Spruce had figured out that the drums weren’t doing the trick and went to be a little more direct with Daisy. This time she returned the interest, and soon there was an egg on the way!

Almost simultaneously with little Foxglove’s birth I got a death notification, which momentarily scared the bajeezus out of me, but it was just an Ettin. The little Norn was quite healthy! She has three minor pigment bleed mutations and one change to a receptor. I don’t believe it’ll have any significant effect, but she’ll need slightly more prostaglandin than usual to heal her immune system.

There was a period of not much interesting going on. Spruce, Ash, and Acacia harrassed the Grendels while they tried to sleep. Lilac wandered through the warp portal to the Terrarium. 

As Daisy recovered from her first pregnancy, she gained an entourage of hopeful male Norns, and it didn’t take long for one to catch a lucky break and father her second – this time, it was Acacia, though Spruce was eager to take credit! 

I don’t have the heart to break it to him, but thankfully Norns aren’t smart enough to put together Amaranth’s parentage from her appearance. She has three mutations – two to chemical reactions and one to a pigment bleed. Incidentally she gets two autocorrections when I open her genome. The pigment bleed just has a life stage change, and one of the reactions has a mutability degree change. The third flagged gene has no changes so it must be one of the automatic corrections.

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!

Good night, sweet prince

 [Originally written September 18 2020]

It seems Creatures 3 is insistent on being a dumpster fire for me. First, Willow came down with something, which I dealt with quickly. Continuing my rounds, I checked in on Aspen in the Jungle – he, too, was sick, so I brought out the pink fog, but in an eerie repeat of Tamora’s death, he collapsed almost instantly. Just as with Tamora, his Injury level was maxed out and I’d failed to notice.  Cursing myself and the antigens alike, I pulled out the Grendel egg I’d stashed away at the start of the world, the second one produced by the egg layer in the Jungle. 

What came out of that shell gave me quite a surprise – this was no Jungle Grendel! When I was updating the genomes I placed the new ones in all the genetics folders to be sure they’d be used. I know the standard Grendel genome usually resides in the Creatures 3 folder while the Banshee Grendel genome is kept in the Docking Station folder, so I figure the egg layer must just pick a random Grendel genome from the Creatures 3 folder. I’ve deleted the Banshee genome from there, so it’s only in the Docking Station folder. Hopefully that will prevent this mixup from happening again. 

The random element might be nice in some cases but I’d like to have one of each breed, and randomness gets in the way of that. Anyway, Banshee or not, Oak is welcome in my world. While I was training him with the dummy, Lilac even came to pay him a visit! Here’s to hoping it was a good first impression. Evidently a field trip for the scaly little student was in order, because they teleported out to the desert, where Lilac instructed him in the ancient martial art of Hit Gadget.

Yew was taking good care of himself on the bramboo terrace, and all seemed well… little did I know there was trouble brewing just off-screen! If only I’d just scrolled over a bit, I might have been able to intervene and prevent a tragedy, but it was something I could not have seen coming.

The death notification came as a nasty shock, and I found poor Daffodil with all the signs of a violent death. The only creatures in the immediate vicinity were Ash and Caliban. I suspected, sadly, that the latter was responsible. I know it’s a rather unfair assumption, given that I can prove nothing and his genetic engineering should reduce his violent tendencies. In my defense, it’s not entirely because he’s a Grendel that I suspect him – he was also physically closer to the scene of the crime.

Still, I couldn’t stay mad at the old boy so close to the end of his own life. I brought him to the Workshop for a quick training session, where he was joined by Ash via teleporter, then sent him home to continue my rounds. Ash decided to head to the Desert, where Yew was also enjoying himself in the cavern next to the pond. Right up until he got into a fight with Oak. 

I promptly dragged the Grendel off to the Workshop, but Lilac had other ideas, and staged a little rescue mission! She teleported in from who-knows-where, and in the blink of an eye had stolen him away to the Terrarium.

Since the other Grendel, Willow, seemed perfectly content to stay in the Desert, Yew had decided to vacate the premises and visit the Jungle instead. I caught an Ettin coughing on him, and promptly doused the area in pink fog, but thankfully he hadn’t picked anything up. 

I left him to enjoy the chili peppers and checked in on Ash, who had also decided the Desert was not for him, and teleported into the Meso. Meanwhile, apparently satisfied that they’d lost me, Lilac and Oak returned to the Workshop, where Oak took charge and led his Norn friend out into the hallway… and straight into the Meso. Hello, again!

All this movement through the world meant old Caliban had the Terrarium to himself, which seemed to suit him just fine. I kept glancing at his vitals graph, as his Life slowly drained away. As if seeking to cheer me up, the reunited adult Norns produced a new egg, which went straight into my inventory to wait until after Caliban’s passing.

I did not, however, neglect the rest of the creatures, and kept making my rounds. A good thing I did, too, because I was just in time to break up a fight. 

Don’t let the picture fool you; Yew was no innocent victim! The little Magma Norn is the one who started it, then ran off crying when he got his rear rightly whooped. Still, I intervened to pull Willow off of him, as justified or not, the Grendel could easily kill him.

This makes me wonder how many of the unseen fights that claimed lives were started by the Norns – I’ve witnessed them throw the first punch on multiple occasions. While they lack the sense to not bully things that can eat them for breakfast, part of the problem is that their size makes them difficult to properly discipline – when a Norn hits a Grendel, the Grendel’s larger body makes it hard for me to get in there to administer a smack to the offender without accidentally striking the victim. 

At any rate, both of the involved parties were dragged off to the Workshop. Yew needed to be taught not to pick fights, and though Willow hadn’t started the fight, I had to remind him that striking Norns was not acceptable. I brought them both with me to the Woodland so I could keep an eye on them while I cared for Caliban, and they seemed to settle down a bit. I chose to use a picture of Yew curled up with the old Grendel for a nap, as it’s a better memorial for him, but Yew and Willow were also by his side when he passed away.

But I don’t intend to end this entry on such a sad note; Caliban’s death was followed shortly by the birth of Rose, the Norn whose egg I’d stashed earlier. She has no notable mutations as far as I can tell – she had one genetic error corrected automatically when I opened her genome in the Genetics Kit, and one of the genes flagged by my script as a mutation didn’t appear to be different than the CFE Chichi genome, so it’s possible that she has an unknown mutation. Regardless, here’s to hoping she fares better than her unfortunate sister!

A broken genome

 [Originally written September 14 2020]

I briefly hopped into C3/DS to hatch the egg from last time and do a genetic analysis. Out came little Daffodil, who takes after her father, except for the tail. To add more diversity to the gene pool, I also hatched her a partner, Yew the Magma Norn. After teaching them language and dropping them off in the Woodland, it was time for genetic analysis!

Or so I thought. I encountered this rather bizarre behavior when I tried to run my mutation finder script. Figuring it was a problem with my python code, I kicked myself for not properly error checking the file reads. Only adding such code didn’t actually help, and my script certainly wasn’t the source of the “bugger” lines! That was coming from the official gendiff.exe, which was encountering some kind of problem when it got to pigment bleed comparisons. 

Opening the genome directly in the genetics kit resulted in it informing me that it corrected 2 genetic errors automatically.

Indeed, these must have been what caused the problem with gendiff, because I saved the autocorrected genome and tried plugging that in instead, and lo and behold, the errors were gone. Why the problem with gendiff.exe caused my python program to read infinite blank lines is a mystery I don’t care to solve.

It turns out Daffodil has only three mutations (anything that was obliterated by the autocorrect notwithstanding). One makes her libido lowerer emitter kick in earlier (but without the rest of her reproductive system adjusting to match, it shouldn’t have any effect). The other two are pigment bleeds. One of those is that one of the female adolescent pigment bleed genes now kicks in as an embryo, but since none of the coloration values have changed, it has no effect. If they had changed, I’m not sure if they’d mix with, overwrite, or be overwritten by the existing bleed genes. More research is needed. The final mutation changed one of the male adolescent pigment bleed genes to have a mutability of 73 – quite a massive change from the standard 255! Now why couldn’t that big change have happened to the actual pigment values and not the mutability?

Third time's the charm, right?

 [Originally written September 13 2020]

I had to briefly go install Creatures Exodus on my testing VM in order to recover the unfixed man-o-war file as I had apparently lost the original, but after that and a great amount of world setup (and discovering that you can in fact airlock the noisy C3 floating cameras without crashing the game), I was ready for a fresh start with the CFF 2017 genomes.

I started by ushering two baby Grendels into the world – watched over by none other than Caliban, fresh off the import boat. You didn’t think I would leave him behind, did you? He may not be CFF, but as I won’t be breeding the Grendels, his different genome is a non-issue. Willow and Aspen greeted me and each other with a hail of punches – ah, the sounds of Grendels! Such magnificent creatures.

I taught them with the dummy as well as I could but I think the true key to keeping them around Norns is to introduce them early and keep a close eye on them. 

So I welcomed the first two Norns into the world: Ash the Bengal and Lilac the Chichi. So far these Norns seem to be doing a better job of taking care of themselves, although it took a little while for them to get the hang of eating.

This world, however, doesn’t seem to be so great for the Ettins. Caliban wandered into the Jungle and killed one (as I only dampened his genes that cause aggression against Norns) and another collapsed shortly after due to a very nasty disease (which I promptly coated in pink fog; I don’t want that concoction of glycotoxin, sleep toxin, fever toxin, and multiple antigens spreading!)

I’m beginning to wonder if stalking is a Banshee Grendel thing. Cleo used to creep on the Norns: not touching them, just following them and staring at them, and I caught Willow doing the same a couple times. 

Aspen, on the other hand, took straight to attacking them, which is precisely why I watch him near-constantly, ready to intervene with a well-aimed smack and pull the Norns to safety if needed. 

It’s made him a rather unpopular fellow, but I’m determined to keep these creatures together. I have kept Norns and Grendels together in harmony before, and I will do it again. The dislike is apparently mutual, although some members of the population seem willing to forgive and forget, and embraced my attempts to welcome the Grendels into the community. Others aren't shy about their opinions.

I caught Caliban wandering around on top the piranha trapdoor and eying the button ominously, so I deemed it wise to pick him up and take him back to the Woodland. 

He soon reached old age; he had, of course, lived a good deal of his life in my first world, so it was actually surprising he had taken this long. I will be sad to see him pass on, but I’ve been strongly considering immortalizing him as a mascot of sorts if I ever do get around to turning this journal into a blog.

Note: That's him up on the banner! Though he might be cut off if you're on mobile.

I remembered to turn on some of the Creatures 3 teleporters this time around – they so often sink into the background and I forget they’re there. Willow took advantage of this to get away from the bothersome Norns and found himself a nice spot in the Desert.

Meanwhile, in the Woodland, I was caught off-guard by a special proclamation! I have never actually seen creatures use the word “love” (or “hate” for that matter), only “like” and “dislike.” And certainly I’ve never seen a reference to any feelings one way or the other about me! It’s almost enough to make me consider teaching them to call me by name… but I feel like that would trip me up more than them!

And Lilac certainly seemed to be full of love in general, as she soon welcomed the first egg to the world – Ash apparently wanted nothing to do with the responsibility, as he took off running from her soon after! 

I am not rolling dice for the time being – I’ve decided I’ll start rolling a four-sided die if certain Norns get out of hand, but for now I want to see what the reproduction rate on this new genome is like. As for the egg itself, I stashed it in my inventory for hatching and genetic analysis next time! This genome supposedly prevents some of the nastier mutations I’ve encountered such as immortality and pose gene changes, so hopefully we won’t see so many crippling mutations from here on out.