Creatures Caves

From the work I'm doing on the Dragons, the answer is no for the CFFs. I was going to add a tract to ForF covering Push, but it's already there. I only needed to add Pull.

I've already posted about some of what's going on in my blog if anyone's curious. You wouldn't BELIEVE the Norn soap operas you guys. The kind of stuff that used to crop up mostly by coincidence and sort of resemble a soap opera is happening ALL THE TIME and it looks way way less coincidental and way more purposeful. TBH it's almost unsettling. At the very least, their social processing is significantly more -complicated- and from their perspective the results are a lot better. They seem to truly recognize other individual Norns now. Maybe not to the same degree that you and I as humans recognize individuals, but to a far greater degree than they were capable of before. Serial monogamy is now the MOST COMMON reproductive tactic among my testers, for example, and not because pairs isolate themselves away from other options.

Whether it's -improved- in a subjective gameplay-enjoyment sense... that I'm still working on. XD Because of the aforementioned hit-happiness, they're still pretty destructive creatures. Also - this may or may not be entirely due to that - murders are happening... not A LOT, but more than did in the earlier edits or standard CFFs. They aren't as able to express their like/love as they are dislike/hate, at least not directly. Not yet. If I achieve what I'm trying to, though, their social abilities will be enormously improved. (On the upside, an adult Dragon can kill a C1toDS Grendel in literally one second, two hits, if angry enough and Critical Hits is installed. I actually felt bad for the grendels. They were -wiped out- in this one run by a weirdo Dragon.)

The current step in the project is to give them more positive associations in their ForF lobe. Even the CFF genome seems to only handle Push, Retreat and Hit - the one that did 'slap' in the base genome has apparently, in the CFF, been redone to do 'push', as when I went to add a 'push' tract I found that one of the existing three already handles push, and its SVRules are set to 'inhibit if disliked/hated, don't inhibit if liked/loved'. Now, that's PART of what I wanted to do. But it's not all of it. I'm still trying to figure out how to reverse that SVRule so it says 'if liked/loved, encourage/promote this action. if disliked/hated, don't.' Once I do, though, I'll make some new tracts which do that. The result will be that if they like/love another creature, they will be more likely to push or pull (kiss or tickle), as well as merely less likely to slap or hit.

Last night, I also hooked the Boredom drive to ForF, in the hopes that this will allow them to interpret some individuals as "fun" ( "boredom goes down when I'm around X Norn" ) and "boring" ( "boredom goes up when I'm around Y Norn" ), just the same as how it works for Anger, Fear, Pain, and Sex Drive. Since happiness for Norns is defined as the absence of any high drive, that was the closest I could come up with for now to giving them an actual -positive- possible association with other creatures.

Otherwise, their positive relationships have been entirely either family-based (parents and offspring, siblings) or mating-based, because their only direct positive connection they could make was through Sex Drive ("mating with X Norn reduced Sex Drive and thus made me feel good - I like X Norn"

. Their ability to detect familial relationships through the Detail lobe also apparently gave them an indirect ability to develop some sort of connection to their family members, if for no other reason than the non-brain genes that incline them to hang around family members when young, then scatter from them when old enough to breed. In short, they are always aware of who their relatives are, and even though this awareness has no direct connection to ForF the way it's currently set up (that I know of), the fact that that Comb can make connections with itself in our edit seems to allow them to make connections between concepts, allowing them to connect ideas in a way that wasn't previously possible for them. Thus, in turn, allowing them to recognize their family members socially in some small way.

If I'm correct and I did the edit right, this should now allow them to form what we humans would think of as real friendships. Playing with a toy together should create the association of "push toy + Norn X was present + boredom went down", encouraging the Norn to repeat that combined experience. In human terms, that translates to "I played with a toy, and Norn X was there, and it was fun." Especially if Norn X also plays with a toy at the same time and thus has the same experience, the two should increasingly want to be near each other when pushing toy. In short, they should increasingly want to play together. This is what I'd call a real friendship - it isn't based on merely not being annoying (Anger) or not causing you harm (Pain/Fear) or being a good mating partner (Sex Drive). It's valuing someone's company because they were around when you had a pleasant experience, and so you came to associate the two. This is a component of how human friendships work (think about it - it's true!)

The other component will come into place when I get that SVRule figured out. As Geat_Masta described, right now, when a Norn that is disliked or hated is present, the tendency to hit -everything- is increased, not just the rival. IMO this is realistic. Think about it - angry people don't just hit the person making them angry. They often hit whatever objects are around to be hit, and the angrier/more out of control the person is, the more likely they are to vent their wrath on random available objects (and people) as well as the actual person who got them angry to begin with. So IMO this is so by design and is not, per se, inaccurate.

In the brainedits, especially, it also seems (I may be wrong about this) that the presence of disliked Norns causes them to experience everything a bit less pleasantly than they normally would. Things that make them angry make them a bit angrier than usual, things that they enjoy seem to give them less enjoyment than usual. If this is accurate, that's also realistic IMO. I know when people I don't like are around, I'm more irritable, more inclined to be cynical, and less able to enjoy things that I like. XD

Once I get the SVRules figured out, the opposite will become the case as well. That is, when a liked/loved Creature is present, the individual will be more inclined to push/pull everybody and everything, not just the liked/loved creature. In short, they'll be more inclined to be nice to others and to play with toys and other parts of their environment. This, too, strikes me as realistic and appropriate.

Mind you, I'm not disconnecting the older circuits. I just want to add these positive circuits to finish the set. Once all of them are in place, individuals will have a much fuller range of options for social and personal development.