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evolnemesis
Code Monkey

evolnemesis



  4/6/2016

Well, from what I've seen, as far as complexity and intelligence, Grandroids look like they will be to Norns about like we are to paramecium.

"For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love."
"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan

 
C-Rex
Lollipop Lord

C-Rex


 visit C-Rex's website: The Norn Nebula
  4/6/2016

I probably didn't word it right in my previous post - what I meant to get across was that most people expect a virtual pet to get involved more with the player, like for example, let the player brush them, bathe them or dress them, whereas creatures is more like a window into an alien world.
 
SpaceShipRat

SpaceShipRat



  4/7/2016

Ultimately, Creatures did REALLY well.

The only reason it died out was that C2 and C3 didn't really improve creatures' intelligence much. (besides the fact that the original C2 norns were "broken", and that C3 was hard to figure out, with all the technology and machines).

So long as the graphics are "ok" and the creatures do cute and interesting things, it would appeal to what is now a HUGE number of casual gamers.

Really, norns were fluffy and went "coo", and they still had depth :P

 
evolnemesis
Code Monkey

evolnemesis



  4/7/2016  1

C3 actually could have significantly and noticeably increased their intelligence if it hadn't been so incomplete. Really if it even had the stuff they were obviously working on but never implemented, like creatures being able to react to sound, light, and heat CAs, audible events, and some of the situation/detail neurons and loci they never did anything with and the engine doesn't even touch, a few other little things, it would have already been a lot more. Much of the biochemistry around hunger, working friend/foe lobes and proper ability to learn, and a lot of stuff that WAS working in previous games, was all half-done, missing, or broken, making them much dumber than they could have been (the base non-cfe/cff genomes all even forget EVERYTHING they have experienced every time they go to sleep...)

The C3 brains really are a LOT more complex and have a lot more potential than in either of the earlier games, they can interact more with their biochemistry as part of their function, they can remember specific creatures (though this ability was barely working until CFE), and even the biochemistry and instinct systems had several improvements that allow them to understand what's going on with their own drives much better, and to make bodily reaction systems able to be more realistic (true half-lives in genes, instead of decay time from full to 0, things like that). It's possible that with all the extra complexity they bit off a little more than they could chew.

Still, for all the work that was put into CFE, CFF, and TWB, to fix as much of this as possible, and I think these are noticeably smarter and better at both learning and taking care of themselves than ones from previous games... I think they are still not even to the point where their genomes would have been if C3 had been properly finished... These genomes really just fix things that were already half-done, that they obviously intended to implement but never quite got to... and they still can't fix the things that were never finished in the game engine, like some of the CAs and neuron functions.


"For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love."
"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan

 
Lurhstaap

Lurhstaap


 visit Lurhstaap's website: Addicted To CAOS
  4/7/2016

Yeah, I agree with Evo. Creatures' major problem is the same reason we haven't gotten any more games like it - that level of complexity requires an amount of time and money that most companies just aren't willing to invest. Too risky, too scary. TBH I feel like we're lucky that we got as much as we did, and that Steve Grand is such a dedicated, self-motivated man.

Conclude with killer catchphrase.
(Lurhstaap)
"This is not knowledge -
this is information!"
New Model Army, "Courage"

 
Moe

Moe


 visit Moe's website: Creatures 2 to Docking Station
  4/8/2016  2

One of the big problems with fully utilizing the C3/DS engine is that we're still stuck with the C3/DS content. I believe the creatures can be improved significantly, but as long as we're trying to make them backwards compatible with the shortcomings of C3/DS, we won't be able to proceed.

Sound is a great example. There's almost no agents that use it, so even if you did change the creatures to perceive it, there would be no point. They would become confused or crippled in existing metarooms.

What we really need is a new world, with new content. Creatures 4 if you will, but we have to be willing to let go. Leave the old stuff behind or port it over with new features. But again, this all depends on what's an engine limitation vs what's a genetic limitation. I'm not qualified to answer that part.

 
evolnemesis
Code Monkey

evolnemesis



  4/8/2016  1

Well, sound as far as I can tell is never produced or utilized by the engine at all... much like wind in C1... there were loci for it, but it was non-functional in the engine. Never produced or detected. If you put a CA detector, you will never notice anything making the CA, and even if you put an agent to emit the CA, as far as I can tell, all the links and loci regarding sound are never touched by the engine, and it can't be used to navigate, so it could never really be noticed ('audible event', 'it is making that much noise' neurons and loci involving sound all never flicker no matter how much of the CA is made, how much talking is done, or what agents are activated near a creature, etc...)

But you do have a point... Even without properly working sound, there is a lot more that I think could have been addressed, if there wasn't the concern with genetic compatibility and being able to work with the old genomes and limitations of the standard C3/DS .cos files, bootstrap files, brain structures, and catalogue files... If someone were to REALLY tear apart all that stuff and mod the game from the ground up with a new genome and updated cos files and catalogues, it would probably make a pretty big difference... Still, they do definitely have limits, 2 dimensional neural nets can only do so much, there are limits on how complex an SV rule can be, and there is a maximum number of total neurons in the brain too (creatures use well under half their potential brain space right now)


"For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love."
"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan

 
Moe

Moe


 visit Moe's website: Creatures 2 to Docking Station
  4/8/2016

That's a shame about sound...but I think you got my meaning perfectly. Especially with trying to be backwards compatible with genetics...that's a huge issue I've noticed.

The engine is so versatile and mod-friendly. It's just a matter of knuckling down and using it to its full potential. Sadly I don't think we've got enough development muscle in the community to make it happen.

 
Lurhstaap

Lurhstaap


 visit Lurhstaap's website: Addicted To CAOS
  4/8/2016

TBH yeah I think we need to free ourselves from feeling a need to make our genomes and such backwards compatible. We have the talent and motivation in the community to do at least some of this work, I think.

Conclude with killer catchphrase.
(Lurhstaap)
"This is not knowledge -
this is information!"
New Model Army, "Courage"

 
KC11

KC11


 visit KC11's website: DragonClawWritings (Tumblr)
  4/9/2016

evolnemesis wrote:
(creatures use well under half their potential brain space right now)



So would you say they only use...10% of their brains? ;)

In all seriousness, I would love it if the game were redesigned this way. I know that for another game I love, Skyrim, there was something like this. There's this part in the game where you chose which side of a war you want to be on, and then you fight for that side. In the base game, these quests were a bit lackluster - you ran with people into a town or keep, killed some people, and got the keep. You could never actually fail these quests or die at all.

Someone went into the game files and discovered that there was actually an entire complex event planned with the war. It was actually an interesting and strategic quest that involved a lot of planning, I can't remember all that was in there but it was indepth. Unfortunately Bestheda got pressed for time and decided to scrap it, but they left the code in. So some intrepid person went in and not only restored the original war quest, but added in a lot of other great things to actually make playing that questline interesting (and also to fill in some seams of missing code/animation).

I think that, if someone could do that with Skyrim, a far more recent game that's arguably a bit harder to break into than Creatures, it's very possible with Creatures. But either way it's hard to know what to do or how to achieve it. Grandroids would probably be done by the time we made headway. :P

Edit: Here's the mod I was talking about.


Do not upset the ugly worm, lest it be a dragon in disguise. (>oo)>

 

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