So, after realizing with TheDrunkenNorn that the Ferals reproduce surprisingly slowly I decided to re-check what could be the cause of it. Since I basically 1:1 copied the anti-inbreeding solutions that Kannova Venterra, Bonewall Grendels and Iscah Ettins were using successfully up until this point (with one mistake along the way, though), I didn't think it could go so badly this time, but it did.
Basically :
- Either the fact they were produced by a virgin birth
or, more likely
- The Feral2 brain structure.
Messes up the brain-based parent and child recognition (in all the breeds up until that point, only sibling recognition was messed up).
This leads to the norns being able to assume that :
- They're their own child (and since Ferals perceive themselves a fair bit longer than most other breeds do, that's a problem)
- Norns that share their genetic makeup, or Norns in general, are their own child (and that's a problem, since TheDrunkenNorn has both clones and female/male counterparts)
- Norns that pet them enough are their parents.
Basically the instinct and stimuli of the Norns tell them the Norn they interact with can simultaneously be their child and parent, while when they perceive themselves they can mistakenly assume they're their own child.
As you can probably tell by now :
- This has NEVER come up before in my breeds.
- This completely murders their sex drive.
This is fixable without completely removing the anti-inbreeding mechanism (the emitters for child and parent pheromone still work; it's the instincts and stimuli that so far added the extra anti-inbreeding boost correctly that end up being messed up) but frankly I just don't have the strength to fix it now. I'll do it before/during the weekend and update them as an egg pack / send renovated versions to Creatures Repository.
I'm starting the run over, this time around with regular Feral2's. We'll see these Norns as the original author intended.
More than half of them use Creatures 1 body parts, so we'll be seeing a lot of retro Norns. Hopefully, the Creatures 2 variants out-breed the Creatures 1 variants.
The regular Feral2s are CRAZY about taking care of needs. They sleep, eat, and play with toys far more than they even need to. They're very unique.
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>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Theme Song of the Run <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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The theme song of the run this time around is... a Creatures song? Yeeeah, this one is from the Playstation port. I'm unsure if this music made it into the PC release for Creatures 1, but what I do know is that it's freakin' amazing. Most of the Playstation Creatures music is great. It's a shame that they use the same OST for both Playstation Creatures games, meaning if you get sick of a song, you're sick of the music on two different games.
Well, I'm glad that my Wolfling Run world isn't broken. They're starting to get pregnant really early in the run this time around. Their hilariously over-social nature means this makes a lot of sense. They hardly spend any time apart from one another, messing with some toy or "pet Norn" for 10 years.
Edit: No such luck on the Creatures 2 body parts taking the lead. We have a purebred Creatures 1/Creatures 2 Pixie Norn on our hands here.
Thanks Brynn. For someone whose entire job is to observe what is going on, I have the observational skills of a blind moth priest from TES IV: Oblivion. Maybe I should take up knitting instead.
These Creatures love toys more than life. This went from funny quirk to glaring flaw. They do nothing BUT stare at toys 90% of the time. Something about toys interests this breed in particular far more than any other I've seen.
It's a miracle! A summer Christmas miracle! We have ourselves a Creatures 2 baby!
It's hard to get a picture of the Feral2 Norns without them being grouped up into an incomprehensible pile, but I think I did it here.
I have to admit, I really like the C2 head with C1 body parts. The C1 Norns have... hardier-looking bodies.
Don't get me wrong, the Creatures 1 Norns ARE cute. It's just that they look anorexic compared to C2 Norns, who look like they are much better fed.
I do enjoy the backwards-compatibility with Norns in Creatures 2, with the Creatures 1 sprites hidden in the files. This makes me really happy. It means that Creatures 1 Norns that you love can be ported over to Creatures 2 without much of a fuss!
Do we need to call an exorcist?
The Norns are doing that twisty owl neck thing again... I wonder if this is an animation bug or an intended feature?
While on the topic of questions to the community, I wonder if you can straight port a Creatures 1 Norn to Creatures 2, and how would they handle the new Creatures 2 functions?
There is a C1 to C2 creature converter, but frankly it doesn't work too well. Most of the unique quirks of the creatures are broken away and it basically just makes a C2 creature with C1 sprites and the age the creature had in C1, but with little 'extra'. This is why there was no converter included for C2 norns being converted into C3/DS, despite there being some people who converted the models.
So, they basically get lobotomized upon transfer, eh? That's a shame. I thought it would be cool to bring C1 Norns into C2 with the same personality traits and whatnot.
I figured that with less things, the new Nerinath world would make C2 crash less.
BOY WAS I WRONG!
It has crashed three times today!
(Though on that note, I've recently been using the Wolf Control application again. This thing and crashes seem to go hand in hand, so I'll turn it off for awhile. Worst comes to worst, Nerinath crashes more than the base game, even though it has 1% of the content. Huh.)
If there ever was a Norn breed that just sits on the couch all day playing video games, this was it. I've never seen a more disinterested and lazy bunch of Norns. They just sit around a toy staring at it for hours (Dismiss the commentary on how much of a waste of time video games are). At least I can relate to these Norns I guess, but I can't help feeling that I should replace the snowglobes with Nintendo Entertainment Systems because of how enamored they are with them. What animal spends 70% of their life staring at a toy? A Feral2 Norn, that's who.
I redact my previous statement about the Ferals being good at taking care of needs. They're good at interacting with the closest possible object, whatever that may be.
Case in point: this.
This is the remaining population: four Norns. The rest died of starvation because they were too stupid to stop playing with toys. They get stuck in loops, where they do something their entire lives.
Well, the Feral2 breed was a wash. This is the last one. He's only a generation 3! That's 256-genome bad! (The 256 genome is the original Creatures breed). I'm dumbfounded; these guys started out really well! They had some weird habits, sure, but as they produced offspring, these habits became their daily routine. They died because they were too STUPID to get up from sleeping/playing with toys to eat!
Well, that's that. A weird, disappointing but very interesting race. Feral2 really showed promise. If you want a unique C2 breed, this is it. They will need a LOT of care and love, however. Nova Subterra did way better than these guys.
Well now, here's something new: I'm rehashing an old Wolfling Run! (I suppose I've done Akamai Cannies to death, but this is different). Remember the Valentine Norn run? The guys who just wouldn't die out despite the inferior genes? Well, I'm bringing them back!
The Valentine Norns were some of my favorites, so I'm going to be doing them again. But... not exactly. This is more of hitting the "load" function on my previous one; I released 8 Generation Z Valentine Norns a while ago from the run, and I'm going to put that very same population into this new world.
Speaking of which, Nerinath'll be their new romping ground too! At least I'm rehashing stuff I've already done before in an interesting way. Rehashing aside, I've wanted to bring these guys back for awhile now. We'll see how they do.
I'm curious to know whether the temperature is still stable. Could you monitor hotness/coldness in one of your norns and see what they're like now that the world has been populated for a while?
Sike! Thanks to GimmeCat, I was able to dig a backup out of the game's files.
To do this, go to My Documents > Creatures > Creatures 2 > Backup > World Name > World Name.sfc and copy the World Name.sfc file into your Creatures 2 documents folder.
creatures caves is your #1 resource for the creatures artificial life game series: creatures, creatures 2, creatures 3, docking station, and the upcoming creatures family.