So Where Are the CREATURES?

It's been forever since I posted about my Creatures 3/Docking Station worlds, so thought I'd do an update on those little morons.
Why do I say morons? Because they've become stupid from overbreeding... but they breed like CRAZY.
They're also lots of pretty colors!

But anyway. I have been conducting a Feral Run for a while now, after many failed runs.
They're on generation 315 as of today, have an incredible lifespan of 24+ hours, and come in every color of the rainbow.
Here are some screenshots to show you their color development!

A full color spectrum of Norns!

A few hours after the picture above was put together, these two new colors appeared in the population!

They tend to crowd together and keep breeding repeatedly.

The crowd at a different time.

Until next time!

Life Musings (+ some grendels)

So.
I forgot to post these pictures of colorful grendels.
SO HERE THEY ARE.

Yes, they are pretty colors.

Anyway.

I've recently been thinking about how much my life has changed in the past few years... in fact, in the past month.

I remember being in high school, struggling with my schoolwork and fighting off the worst depression could throw at me... especially that feeling that I'd never amount to anything. It was a helplessness that I thought I was doomed to feel for the rest of my life.

Really, I now think that the reason why I felt so trapped and hopeless was because I was working at everybody else's pace, and not my own.

College proved that to me. I really couldn't handle college full-time. I found it impossible to balance spending time with my boyfriend, classwork, being social, and my free-time activities. Either I wasn't spending enough time together with Jon, I was neglecting my friends and roommates, I couldn't do anything enjoyable like gaming or listening to music, or I was skipping homework.

In other words, I was miserable, constantly letting someone or myself down.

Now that I'm moving through life at my own pace, I realized that I am capable of doing things... not the way people want them to be, not the way most people go through life, but I'm doing it nonetheless.

I have a job now!

Not a high-paying or well respected job, but it's a JOB.

I'm getting up in the morning, getting ready and arriving on time, and being functional again. It feels so good to know I'm capable of that, especially after all of the times I believed I could never do anything with my life at all.

I also have a fun and creative hobby of crafting, and the possibilities of what I can do are endless.

Maybe some day it could potentially become profitable, but right now I'm just happy with creating things.

I'm especially excited this weekend because I just received my needle-felting needles today, and my wool roving will most likely come in the mail on Monday.

I absolutely can't WAIT to start my hand at 3D needle-felting!

Best of all, I feel like I've attained somewhat of a balance to my life.

I have a job, which schedules out my week and gives me a source of income and accomplishment.

I have an incredible boyfriend, who gives me the continued support and confidence I need when I begin to doubt myself, or am hesitant to go forward.

I have a very supportive family, who is proud of me for the first time in a while.

And, of course, I have my creativity, which I had lost for a while and had feared was gone forever.

And when I compare that to my quality of life years ago...

...Change is good.

The Funny and the Scaly

Got some screencaps today, Productivity Week Day 5 entry tomorrow... (or today because it's past midnight here.)

Oh, Swagbucks... :P Got this as my captcha when searching about the "Toasty!" guy from Mortal Kombat. Jon has been playing it on the flatscreen in our basement, and once in a while this guy pops out of the corner saying "TOASTYYY!" in a womanly voice. 

See what I mean? (Warning, there is a spray of blood. But seriously, it's a GAME.)

Happy colorful grendels! I started a new feral run after my norn run reached Generation 140.

Wow, that's a lot of color variation! Unfortunately my purple ones died, and still no sign of a blue one... but hey, almost have a full rainbow.

Happy Easter!

Quickly visiting Blogger to wish everyone a Happy Easter!
I'm not religious at all, but I still celebrate the typical Christian holidays... not for their religious significance of course, but just for fun. It's a habit, I guess.
This morning we opened some adorable little bunny boxes that Jon's mom had made completely from scratch, ate some candy, and generally were in good spirits. My father was wearing a sea-green polo in the pastel-color Easter spirit, and joked that he was being an egg. Unfortunately he can flex his gut enough to look like an egg, which was a little disturbing yet funny at the same time.
He needs to lose 15 lbs... shh, don't tell him I said that. :P

Not much else to say, but I'll leave you with some more screenshots of my Creatures world.

Look at those happy little guys... okay, so maybe they were all complaining of protein hunger at the time, but whatever. I have taken away all continuous sources of protein and turned off the automatic vendor, so now they will have to actually learn to push the dispensers themselves to get their precious protein-filled fruit. That wooden box is filled with nutritious eatin's of all types, for instance. The Magma head and Bruin body have showed up again, and both types of pigment swaps continue to appear in the male population. The females continue to have a slight pigment swap and various color tints. Purple seems to still be the most common tint of males, though even females are appearing with purple tints now!

Here's a small treat for players of Creatures!

Wulfrin is up for adoption at Creatures Caves! :]

He's a generation 102 norn from my feral run, and is 2hours and 20 minutes old. He's in perfect health aside from a lingering protein hunger, and he rarely feels crowded.

You can download him HERE!

(You may have to scroll a bit to find him as time passes from the original posting of this entry...)

That's all for now!

Generation 85+

My feral run has reached Generation 94 as of now, and no signs of idiocy yet.
They seem to like resting often, and have a penchant for eating large amounts of fruit. Their bodies seem to always require large amounts of protein, and I've seen a few die from protein starvation. I think the next step of improving their gene pool is taking away major sources of protein from their environment. Hopefully natural selection will take care of this little problem.
The excessive resting really hasn't become a problem yet. They will get up when they actually need something, they just prefer to rest when they're content.

Anyway, here's some screenshots of some more color mutations and stuff like that.

A new color mutation that has emerged... A lack of green pigment, and increase in red and blue, which results in a purple tint. (The pigment system is RGB based.) This mutation is present in three norns at the moment... Without the pigment tints, the norn on the left would look just like the one to the right. (They both have a pigment swap of 72 to begin with.)

For a little while, the Magma norn head and Bruin norn body made a reappearance. It was pretty random because the population had been homogenized for at least 30 generations. Strange how things work that way, but I guess some sort of recessive gene made its way through or something. The Magma and Bruin parts have since disappeared from the population, but they were pretty while they lasted. These are two males with a pigment swap of 44 and 72, respectively.

The game developers must have had a secret love of Pokemon... The autonamer apparently named on of my male norns "Pikachu." 

Well, at least he wasn't named "Derape." I've seen a norn autonamed that before... I can just imagine a male norn being all sketchy and being like "Heeeeyh babeh, I'm DERAPE!" and forcefully kiss-popping. Yeah. Bad autonamer, baaaad.

That's it for now...

More Color Mutations

Been being my lazy self.
So here's some more screenshots of colorful Creatures that have been born in my feral run.

HAHAHA his ridiculous mutated legs.

The common mutation has been the purple and green, which is a mild pigment swap. The turquoise and purple mutation is a more intense pigment swap, and showed up just recently in the population.

The one on the left has a pigment swap. The one on the right has the same pigment swap, but also has a pigment rotation, making the parts that would normally be greenish a dull grayish purple.

Feral Run - Day 6

It's Day 6 of my Feral Run!
My population has started to homogenize in the sense that they nearly all have the same body parts.

Body Makeup (estimated):
Head: Chi Chi 95%, Porcelain 5%
Arms: Bruin 60%, Emerald 30%, Plant 10%
Body: Magma 80%, Dodgy 20%
Legs: Civet 85%, Dodgy 15%
Tail: None 55%, Butterfly 45%

Here are the two new video logs from today showing the run's current progress:

Was interrupted by a birthday phone call... yes, I'm 21 today! :P

Part 2!

I also took a few screengrabs of some color mutations.

Also, just as a note, this blogs is NOT becoming a Creatures-only blog. I'm just excruciatingly lazy and haven't posted about anything else lately. I will try to get back to the swing of posting non-Creatures things later this week.

Quick Creatures Update

A quick update on what's going on with my current little project!

My world is on generation 35 now I believe, and going strong.
Since implementing an IQ test for all new hatchlings to go through, I've noticed a drastic difference in behavior.
Unlike with my failed Fallow Norn project, the norns that make it to the Norn Meso are lively, curious, interactive, and mobile.
They have lost most of their motivation to listen to my commands as they get older, but they aren't nearly as idiotic as the fallow norns were.
In other words, they aren't mindless breeding machines. They'll get up and walk around, look for food, approach each other, give each other suggestions and occasionally act upon them, and generally act like first generation norns.

I haven't seen too many interesting color mutations aside from the occasional pigment tint, but I did catch a glimpse of these guys.

Pigment swap in a baby norn... The guy on the left has norn pigmentation, while the one on the right is visibly different.

This guy was named Gerald, and he was quite pretty! He had a pigment rotation I believe? Either way, he was almost completely monochromatic, save for an amazing sea green coloration. I sure hope he had a few kids...

In other news, today my family and Jon celebrated my birthday!
I got some incredible gifts and had a great weekend overall. :]
More on that another time!

This is my bored face

I had a weird sleep last night, fell asleep at 7:30ish and woke up after midnight.
In other words, I'm EXHAUSTED right now.
Going to go back to sleep for a couple hours and then officially start my morning...
Before I do that, however, leaving you all this little screenie.

Oh... I should have guessed. I mean, clearly your face just screams "bored."

(Sister on the right was bored too when I asked, just couldn't get them to say it at the same time. :P)

Fallow Norn Project - FAILURE

Well, the Fallow Norn Project has officially FAILED.
Yep, they are ALL DEAD.

Why?
Because I tried to put them all through an IQ test overnight, which really only involved opening two doors.
I had hoped that the smartest ones would make it to the food-filled paradise on the other side, and breed smart little babies.
Turned out that most were too stupid to even do that, because I woke up to having them all gone.

Watch the video log for more info...

And wow, do I sound like a dork in this video.
Time to go sulk.

Nah, just kidding, no sulking. :P
But new project?
YESSSS.

Fallow Norn Project - Day 5

Here's the latest video log from my Fallow Norn Project!

In other news, I made another pair of earrings yesterday!
I'll be working on more clay pieces this week, and will hopefully bake and glaze them this coming weekend.

The Fallow Norn Project - Day 2

So, I just figured out how to download videos off of Livestream and put them on Youtube today!
Livestream has a really good recording program that comes with it, but playing back video can be a pain in the butt with those irritating ads.
Plus, I can't do something like this!

That was my first little daily video about my population's progress in my Fallow Norn Project.

Today's video log is here for your viewing pleasure... or boredom. :P

I actually managed to make my voice record a bit louder with this stupid built-in mic... You'd think Alienware would provide a good mic for the crazy price I paid for this laptop. Needless to say, I'm not buying from Alienware or Dell ever again.

Leaving with a random screenshot I took earlier... One of my norns was autonamed Hamlet last night.

IN CREATURES 3, HAMLET LIKES YOU!!!

Norns Norns Norns! About Creatures

I just recently got back into a game I used to play back around the very early 2000's called Creatures 3/Docking Station. I used to have quite a bit of fun with it, but I could never really understand some of its features since I was too young at the time...

Let's just start by saying that this game isn't really a game at all. It's an artificial life simulator, evolution simulator, god game, whatever you prefer to call it... and it's far from being simple.
It's extremely complex for being such an old game.

In the game, you hatch creatures called Norns. These little guys grow from being babies to children, to adolescents, youths, adults, and finally they are classified as being just plain old. (If they live long enough they end up being classified as ancient)
Their appearance changes as they grow up, from size to defining features on a breed basis.
Once they get old enough they will begin to "kisspop" (their form of mating) and create eggs that eventually hatch into more norns.

Oh, those little buggers...

Now this is where it gets complicated.
Norns aren't just little characters that walk around, eat, breed, and die based on a simple script. They have "brains," so to speak.
Creatures isn't just your run-of-the-mill commercialized game. The development team actually consisted of many scientists in addition to game developers and artists. They managed to create an extremely advanced form of behavior for these creatures by designing "DNA" and a "brain" based on levels of "chemicals," "drives," and outside "stimuli" of other objects in the game.
As an example, if you hit a norn, it will get visibly upset. It isn't just getting upset however. The hit registered as pain, which triggers adrenaline levels. It may stand with its head in its hands unable to decide what to do, or may start fleeing from your hand. Hitting also adds to the norn's injury level, which might lead to death if repeated. It adds to their stress levels and fear levels.
To make a long story short, many different things are going on regarding the norn's overall health. They'll most likely remember the treatment you gave them as well, and might even become conditioned based on when it was hit. (Imagine hitting a hungry norn when it's on its way to get some food.)

And it gets more complicated.
As generations go on, their genome can mutate.
For example, their colors might change or they can gain a color tint. (Not the same thing)
Their reactions and urges may change. For instance, a more aggressive norn could be bred, or norns that can survive longer without food. You might breed a norn that loves being alone, or one that calms its fears by eating uncontrollably. Some norns might end up having a longer lifespan, or have an addiction to pressing buttons.
Of course, these mutations are all random, and can be influenced by natural selection based on their environment.

So, you can see why this game would become a lot more interesting as you get older and have quite a few years of high school science behind you.
It's like having your own little laboratory on your computer for you to experiment with to your heart's content!

I've been leaving my computer on overnight for about a month now to see how my population progresses, and have started up many different projects or "worlds" to fool around with.
My most recent project is leaving a bunch of Fallow Norns in one locked room full of food, and seeing how the population progresses.

They're kind of deer-like... and apparently they love to breed, because there's dozens of eggs scatted about.

I only started this morning, so nearly all of them are second or third generation. I have an automatic exporter set up to move any norns older than 2.5 hours out of my world to keep the generations moving along. (Most norns reach the "old" stage at 3 hours, and die at about 5 hours. In between this time they breed a lot less often, and take up space since I have a population limit set up to prevent my CPU from lagging.)

I'll add some updates as my little experiment moves along.

In conclusion, here are some links!

Docking Station is a Creatures game that can be played for free, and can be combined with Creatures 3 for a larger world to roam. It can be downloaded HERE. The system requirements are extremely low and I know some Windows 7 users have problems running it. (I'm using Vista, and I have no problem)

If you want to watch some Norns go about their everyday business, Live Nornish Action is a live video feed of Norns that have been sent in from the community.

Lastly you can see my dabbling in video recording on Livestream. I have a video or two about my Creatures experiments.

Until next time!

I SHOULD HAVE NEVER TRUSTED YOU RED 40!

Well well well.
Apparently one of the top news stories is the supposed link between Artificial Dyes and ADHD.
That's just lovely.
I stuff my face with artificial colors every day, and I scored nearly 4x the minimum requirement to be diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive type, not the jumping-up-the-walls type) 5 years ago.
HOORAY FOR CHEMICALS.

Annoying concentration issues aside, I just filmed two little segments on Creatures 3 on Livestream.
Click here to watch it.

In other news I just started playing Borderlands the other day, beat Mass Effect 2 on Sunday, and I have 4 clay pieces made and ready to bake.
Look out for more additions to the shop this April!