creatures caves welcome, guest
downloads   gallery   dev   community   creatchi   forum   mycaves
bookmarks | search | post new topic
General Forum
old
Correspondence with Spil Games   1 | 2 | 3 | 4
FaerieHawk

FaerieHawk



  9/1/2017  3

All the norns I saw were soooo creepy!

Also if you wanna wait for those points to pile back up so you can keep making elements and stuff? You better keep that tab open and keep that tab the active tab because apparently if you don't the point timer won't work once it drops to 0. It'll just wait for you to open the tab back up.

How crappy is that.

Edit: Well booted it up to play again after I woke up today. Got almost to the end of the second part and the buttons glitched and stopped working. So I refreshed to see if that fixed it.

We'll never know if that fixed it because at that point the site started throwing up a "lol u usin adblocker? unblock us or this is the only screen you gonna see" crap thing.

Yeah I'm not unblocking ads on a lil internet games website. I like my PC not riddled with viruses from crappy ads, thanks.


Between my love of cookies, tea, and the observation of genetics in nature I'm practically a Shee.[ngrin]
 
Uzag

Uzag


 visit Uzag's website: DeviantArt
  9/1/2017

Mmm, it seems like we all run into that one bug. In chapter 2, after you've done the quest to create the fallow norn, you won't get any more quests. If you click "quests" at that point, your menus will freeze until you reload the game. We've yet to find the final norn in chapter 2 but it's possible that chapter 3 won't unlock due to the quest issue.

(Not sure if I'd want to bother sending a notice to the developer about this bug though, I'm too lazy... ^^;; )

 
FaerieHawk

FaerieHawk



  9/1/2017  1

oh well I'll just never get to see it anyway because "OMG ADBLOCK NOOE".

I know I won't bother sending a note about the bug.

I just don't understand how I was able to access the game twice before that screen started popping in. I wouldn't have been surprised to find out the bug was in there on purpose to catch people using adblock.


Between my love of cookies, tea, and the observation of genetics in nature I'm practically a Shee.[ngrin]
 
Doringo
Lodestar

Doringo


 visit Doringo's website: Abacus & Ettinus
  9/2/2017

I played it once and aside from softlocking due to button suddenly going missing (and not being able to leave and re-enter the mixer screen because tutorial locked!) there was a part where I had to make a norn for a task, but I ran out of life. Except the timer for the life regen simply said NaN, and would never regenerate. It's so barely playable it's like they hardly tested it for bugs, which makes me not very hopeful for what kind of mess Family is going to be.
 
Papriko
Peppery One

Papriko



  9/2/2017  2

You know... A lot of people (admittedly myself included) have been rather harsh so far. I kinda hope we don't discourage the devs over at Spil too much with this.

Lets play plants! Photosynthesis... Photosynthesis... Photosynthesis...
 
Laura
Tea Queen

Laura

Administrator


 visit Laura's website: CC Chat
  9/2/2017  4

I've just posted my thoughts via a bibble, but as an addendum: The way I see it, Spil Games don't owe us anything. I'm not sure when the community (generally speaking; I'm not referring to any individuals by saying this) began thinking they were entitled... These are free-to-play games. Play 'em, don't play 'em, like 'em, don't like 'em... They'll still help bring new people into the community and more interest to the series, and that's always good! :)
 
Arnout

Arnout



  9/2/2017  1

I think it's quite courageous of Spil Games to pick up this complex series and turn it into something new. :)
 
Mandymom

Mandymom



  9/2/2017

Well, the concept of the new minigame they released sounds interesting, it's one of those combine the elements type of thing, but you create norns by combining the elements of them together.

Grendels aren't so bad, but I love Ettins! They're adorable! The complexity of creatures is quite amazing.
 
Jacob

Jacob



  9/2/2017  3

Bluntly, anyone who did expect a Cyberlife/Creatures labs level experience are pretty delusional. Most companies would deffo not be willing to fork out the massive amounts of money it would take to make a CORE creatures game just because of how devalued the brand is now. We've not had any real core games since C3 (DS should be considered an free expansion to C3) and A-life is just a genre that has been left behind in the dirt over the years.

It's a sad state, but given the number of companies that did mostly nothing with the licence (here's to you, Gameware!) for many many years, it should be hardly surprising that this would be what the franchise has to show in a new game. The best hope that could be had is that this mini-game will spark some life into the community and hopefully act as a gateway for new people to discover the franchise and the strong community it has to offer, maybe then things will really kick off.

I'll be honest, having looked into the company and their "style", i'm not optimistic, but I'd love to be wrong, and i think anyone who's giving the company verbal hell over this have a severe lack of understanding as to the nature of trying to revive what is frankly a dead series. Given the hand that they've been dealt, they've done the right thing if they were to even stand a chance of reviving the series.


Not really active around these parts anymore.
 
GimmeCat

GimmeCat



  9/2/2017  2

Jacob wrote:
Bluntly, anyone who did expect a Cyberlife/Creatures labs level experience are pretty delusional.



I don't think anyone was expecting that. In fact, I'm pretty sure the majority reaction as soon as the IP was acquired by a mobile games developer was a collective groan, because we all suspected it would end up like this and were unhappily proven correct (I'm thinking about Creatures Online here as well).

Jacob wrote:
I'll be honest, having looked into the company and their "style", i'm not optimistic, but I'd love to be wrong, and i think anyone who's giving the company verbal hell over this have a severe lack of understanding as to the nature of trying to revive what is frankly a dead series. Given the hand that they've been dealt, they've done the right thing if they were to even stand a chance of reviving the series.



"The hand they've been dealt." I'm not sure I understand this. To my knowledge, they weren't simply saddled with the IP through circumstance. They chose to buy the property, so any difficulties in reviving a dead franchise was part of their purchasing decision.

Since a company like this is mainly concerned with easy profits, I imagine they saw a cheap IP that was once semi-popular and would still have enough brand loyalty from fans to justify a quick knock-off. Throw together a basic by-the-numbers app, re-use as many assets as possible to keep the costs down, add micro-transaction bait mechanics like 'energy' and then just shovel it out the door for a quick buck. It's an extremely common practice in the mobile games market and is essentially how leech developers like this continue to exist.

Personally, I find it nothing but damaging to the franchise for it to be associated with some of today's most scummiest business practices and the shameless companies who profit from them. Low-effort 'freemium' game development that targets children is a concept I refuse to support-- monetarily, verbally, or otherwise. Posts like this won't discourage them because they don't care what we think. But if it did, I'd be glad for it.

 
Jacob

Jacob



  9/2/2017

^^

How can you damage a dead series? Lmao. In todays market, if a full fledged creatures game were released with the brand being what it is right now, guess what? It'd crash and burn, and whatever poor sod decided to publish it will feel the burn big time. The only way creatures is gonna get to be even a fraction of what it was is if more people hear about the series and actively get involved, take it from someone who works in the gaming industry and manages multiple large communities of gamers.

I see a lot of people here being all "but MOBILE GAMES ARE DUMB and i HATE them they're killing creatures" and I just can't help but think "okay, but what are any of you doing about it?" You all want to revive the series and bring back community? Then get on notepad or photoshop or whatever and make some content, make some mods that'll make people want to actually load up their worlds, hell a few of you can collab and make something big for the community.

It's utterly frustrating to see this attitude, when gameware took over and did utterly nothing with the series, the old guard kept it alive by making new content for the games that kept people wanting to play it, and believe me it was a LOT harder then with the dev tools being sold as opposed to freely shared online. When DS servers first died people LEAPED to find work arounds, and as I recall in one case, made their own server. That passion doesn't exist anymore because people don't want to put in the effort to keep things going outside of a select few communities managers and the very limited number of active modders right now.

Be thankful theres ANY signs of life from the series cause right now, I'm not seeing a lot of it from the people who want to revive it.


Not really active around these parts anymore.
 
GimmeCat

GimmeCat



  9/2/2017  5

Well, speaking for myself, you can find my COBs here, if you're interested, plus I have an active CAOS troubleshooting topic with the aim to help new COBbers learn. Perhaps my biggest contribution to date is the ReSlot utility, filling a niché that I think has been vacant since Creatures existed.

You might also be interested in Geat_Masta's Kreatures project, which is essentially C4 built on an entirely new, custom engine. Geat has even talked with Steve Grand himself and gotten advice from him on technical matters.

I understand that someone out of the loop might presume nobody is doing anything. A more frequent visitor might notice the various projects going on, such as TheDrunkenNorn's new world from a little while ago (not to mention his long-running wolfing run series). For how small the community currently is, I'd say we're doing a pretty good job at staying active.

(Edit: There is also Doringo's Youtube series, of course! Can't forget that.:))

 
Doringo
Lodestar

Doringo


 visit Doringo's website: Abacus & Ettinus
  9/3/2017  1

Jacob wrote:
Bluntly, anyone who did expect a Cyberlife/Creatures labs level experience are pretty delusional.


Now in my opinion, isn't it a tad bit ill-mannered and disrespectful to return to the community to call people delusional? [nwink]

Jacob wrote:
The best hope that could be had is that this mini-game will spark some life into the community and hopefully act as a gateway for new people to discover the franchise and the strong community it has to offer, maybe then things will really kick off.


Well I'm not too sure about that exactly if the gateway for people to discover the franchise is a Youtube video titled "Terrible and cringe-worthy flash games", kinda feels like it portrays the series in a bad light and starts people off on the wrong foot, know what I mean?

Jacob wrote:
I'll be honest, having looked into the company and their "style", i'm not optimistic, but I'd love to be wrong, and i think anyone who's giving the company verbal hell over this have a severe lack of understanding as to the nature of trying to revive what is frankly a dead series. Given the hand that they've been dealt, they've done the right thing if they were to even stand a chance of reviving the series.


Judging from their portfolio, I really don't think they're up for reviving the series, never has it probably ever crossed their minds, unlike what Fishing Cactus was trying to do. It's very likely that they'll just rush it for a quick buck than actually put the sufficient amount of care and effort to revive it, as GimmeCat said.

Jacob wrote:
How can you damage a dead series? Lmao.


Now it's probably just me this time, but that feels rude. [nblank]

Jacob wrote:
I see a lot of people here being all "but MOBILE GAMES ARE DUMB and i HATE them they're killing creatures"


First off, that's a Straw-man argument you're opening up with. Most of us aren't going "mobile games dumb, it's killing creatures" but rather we're more worried about the quality of said games, having to constantly stop for microtransactions or incredible wait times detracts from the experience. Not to mention the rushed nature that it's probably going to have, among other things, such as how the company will treat the franchise.

Jacob wrote:
and I just can't help but think "okay, but what are any of you doing about it?" You all want to revive the series and bring back community? Then get on notepad or photoshop or whatever and make some content, make some mods that'll make people want to actually load up their worlds, hell a few of you can collab and make something big for the community.


Gimmecat already gave a great response to this but I'd also like to add on to it that I am actually in the process of making a full metaroom and I have been archiving promos for multiple years, Arnout has been regularly making cos edits and C3 agents. Not long ago he even released another version of the 2017 norns!

Jacob wrote:
Be thankful theres ANY signs of life from the series cause right now, I'm not seeing a lot of it from the people who want to revive it.


I'm just going to let these links speak for themselves: [nwink]
Kreatures
Albian Warp (blog)
Albian Warp (thread)
Batch sprite rescaler
Brain explained
Creatures 3 Genome project

 
GimmeCat

GimmeCat



  9/3/2017  3

Indeed, I'm actually a huge fan of a few really great mobile games because the companies that made them clearly care very much about delivering a quality experience. I loved Pakka Pets as a spiritual successor to the Tamagochi games of old, and currently I'm playing a multiplayer survival game called Durango whose quality absolutely blows me away, and would do so even if it was a PC game-- it's that good.

Mobile games can be worthwhile. Even 'freemium' ones. Just look at the games KairoSoft produces. Now there's a company that understands how to make good games AND profit from them! The problem is that the current market does not discourage lazily thrown-together apps, so there's really no reason for developers to put more than a token effort in. But clearly, it's not too much to ask. And if they don't want to bother? Fine, I guess, but I'll still call it out for what it is.

Let us not forget that the market exists to supply the demand, not the other way around. Demand better.

 
xan

xan



  9/6/2017  5

that anyone here is seriously trying to argue in favor of a company trashing a uniquely educational and experimental IP to reuse as clickbait, or framing them as a 'brave indie taking risks' for opportunistically buying the license to do so, is a sobering sign of the times. (I am aware this is appeal to ridicule; I don't care. it's ridiculous.)

a parallel topic, and something that could bear interesting statistics (not anecdotal evidence), is how many people encountered the Ubisoft-era Petz games and subsequently sought out or made the connection to the more innovative '90s ones. What is happening here is anything but a blessing in disguise; maybe that could be argued if Spil was promoting the older games, but they aren't, to my knowledge.

mourning what could have been is worlds away from entitlement.

 
Puddini

Puddini



  9/7/2017  1

its sad to see that such an unique series has been reduced to... this
 
Freylaverse
toxic biohazard

Freylaverse

Moderator



  9/8/2017  1

Here's an idea. Is there any way to remove the metarooms that come with the DS base game? I know we have a lot of really talented developers here. I think that if we pooled together all our skills, we could make an agent that removes the base metarooms and installs new ones in their place - A whole new community-created world, within the Docking Station engine. That could easily be our Creatures 4, and no one would have to buy the rights to anything!

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; We should not distort it.
 
Doringo
Lodestar

Doringo


 visit Doringo's website: Abacus & Ettinus
  9/8/2017  1

Layla wrote:
Here's an idea. Is there any way to remove the metarooms that come with the DS base game? I know we have a lot of really talented developers here. I think that if we pooled together all our skills, we could make an agent that removes the base metarooms and installs new ones in their place - A whole new community-created world, within the Docking Station engine. That could easily be our Creatures 4, and no one would have to buy the rights to anything!



Edynn tried something similar. Also since the DS base metarooms and stuff are installed via the bootstrap, you could potentially just strip the bootstrap for that, but you might want to make some drastic alterations to the world switcher too.

 
Freylaverse
toxic biohazard

Freylaverse

Moderator



  9/8/2017  2

Doringo wrote:

Edynn tried something similar. Also since the DS base metarooms and stuff are installed via the bootstrap, you could potentially just strip the bootstrap for that, but you might want to make some drastic alterations to the world switcher too.



Yes!!! That's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. We could take entries like with the CCSF, but instead of making them all addons to the base game, everyone can send in stuff that gets coded into a new game. A bit like that Community Scribble project we did a while back?


Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; We should not distort it.
 
Doringo
Lodestar

Doringo


 visit Doringo's website: Abacus & Ettinus
  9/8/2017  1

Layla wrote:

Yes!!! That's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. We could take entries like with the CCSF, but instead of making them all addons to the base game, everyone can send in stuff that gets coded into a new game. A bit like that Community Scribble project we did a while back?



I'm sure some cluster of homebrew Creatures games could be brought together if enough life, talent and cohesion is present in the community as a whole. I would probably call it something like "Creatures homebrew cook-off" or "Creatures Gamejam (though i'm sure there might be some licensing issues on that one)".

 
KittyTikara

KittyTikara


 visit KittyTikara's website: The Mobula Ray
  9/9/2017  2

It's the Creatures community, there's enough talent here to pull off something like that. Finding enough people with the time to dedicate to it would be the hard part. That said, if C1toDS can edit the world switcher and make it work, then so could we. I would put the agent injector in the same spot as the old one. That way some DS agents would be able to be injected in the new DS. I'd also put the egg layer and incubator there, but that's because I'm lazy and want all of my tools in one spot. I'd be willing to help out with some of the coding, though editing the world switcher and agent injector are both beyond me atm.

The Mobula Ray - My Creatures blog
 
Freylaverse
toxic biohazard

Freylaverse

Moderator



  9/9/2017

I'm afraid my CAOS ability isn't what it once was, but I've greatly improved artistically! I really like where this is going - Perhaps someone should make a new topic?

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; We should not distort it.
 
SpaceShipRat

SpaceShipRat



  9/14/2017  4

Expecting the Creatures Community to be thankful for this game is kinda like expecting a beggar to be thankful for throwing a moldy ham sandwitch in his face.

No, wait, forgot the microtransactions. Throwing a bite of ham sandwitch, ten telling him to wait 10 minutes for the next bite, or pay up.

Also, the sandwitch is only half ham, the rest is spiders.


All that aside, I think this community would do a much better job of creating spin-off games if just we could bring ourselves to leave off the actual "creating artificial life" part of it, which is... hard! But the Creatures Series has so much interesting little-explored lore. (How is C2 Albia restored after the volcano? What does the Lone Shee find on Sphericus? how did the Banshee split from the Shee- or was it the other way round? Why is Albia tiny and flat, is it artificially created, by whom?) and it would be so cool to explore that in a game where norns are merely written as intelligent.

The last time I proposed it I was angrily shot down, but I think if we've reached the point where a spider sandwich almost tastes good, perhaps there's a place for a community- built Creatures spin off. Just to show Spil Games how to do it properly, if nothing else.

 
GimmeCat

GimmeCat



  9/14/2017  1

I wouldn't oppose it, but that's not really why I play Creatures, nor what attracted me to the series. It was definitely the AI aspect.

I think that's a large part of the reason why I vehemently oppose these mobile efforts, in fact. They're trying to create casual games that focus more on cutesy graphics and addictive gameplay systems than AI, and I don't think that's where the series strengths lie.

But as a community game? Sure, why not? That's probably the best place for lore expansion. Fanfics and fanart have been the popular arena for non-canon lore expansion for decades.

 
Freylaverse
toxic biohazard

Freylaverse

Moderator



  9/14/2017

I'd love some lore expansion, yeah! The AI aspect is what attracted me to Creatures, but the lore is a huge part of why I stayed. I got into the series sometime before first grade, so I needed that fantastical element to hold my interest while I was struggling to grasp the more advanced components. A spin-off game that's plot-based would be a lot of fun!

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; We should not distort it.
 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  1/2/2018  3

Creatures Alchemist has now been broken in a brand-new way... The button to go to the element mixing screen has been removed. :(

My TCR Norns
 
Wingheart

Wingheart



  1/2/2018

how the hell did they manage THAT
 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  2/6/2018

Huh, I didn't even know the game was already finished.

Does anyone else know something about that idea to buy the creatures IP? Have any figures been passed around? And could we get the source code to the games this way?

 
RisenAngel
Sanely Insane

RisenAngel

Manager


 visit RisenAngel's website: The Realm
  2/6/2018  1

At last report, Spil's not budging on parting with the IP. The only attempt I know of was by someone spamming them to buy it for $4 dollars, which I don't think is going to succeed (and given who that someone is, I hope it doesn't). No word on figures or anything like that.

I personally have had the thought of using crowdfunding in an attempt to buy the IP. I don't know exactly how much Spil paid to get the IP from Gameware, but I figure if we offer them enough money we might be able to get them to change their minds.


~ The Realm ~
Risen Angel's Creatures Blog


 
C-Rex
Lollipop Lord

C-Rex


 visit C-Rex's website: The Norn Nebula
  2/6/2018

It's a shame really how Spil are literally sitting on the franchise and haven't given us any updates since around mid 2017. I think the main issue with the Creatures series is marketing - it was a pretty obscure series even back in the 90s/early 2000s, and is quite niche, meaning that it might be difficult for a company to market the game towards a specific audience, which probably explains the simplicity of Creatures Online and the fact it was a free-to-play game.

And yeah, I wouldn't like to see the IP in that particular someone's hands, either. I'm surprised Steve Grand hasn't stepped forward and tried to acquire it, but seeing as he had very little involvement in the games following Creatures 1, I doubt he would see any point, after seemingly being booted from his own project, from what I've seen.

 
Laura
Tea Queen

Laura

Administrator


 visit Laura's website: CC Chat
  2/6/2018  1

I'm surprised Steve Grand hasn't stepped forward and tried to acquire it


He's probably more invested in/bogged down with Grandroids, atm. :)

 
C-Rex
Lollipop Lord

C-Rex


 visit C-Rex's website: The Norn Nebula
  2/6/2018

That would make sense. I'm actually a backer for Grandroids but I've not checked on the development blog in ages. Maybe I should do it sometime soon? :P
 
Uzag

Uzag


 visit Uzag's website: DeviantArt
  2/6/2018

(Who is that particular "someone" you're speaking of? Voldemort??)

EDIT: Now I know, please don't reply to this~

 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  2/7/2018

Grendel_Man wrote:
At last report, Spil's not budging on parting with the IP. The only attempt I know of was by someone spamming them to buy it for $4 dollars, which I don't think is going to succeed (and given who that someone is, I hope it doesn't). No word on figures or anything like that.

I personally have had the thought of using crowdfunding in an attempt to buy the IP. I don't know exactly how much Spil paid to get the IP from Gameware, but I figure if we offer them enough money we might be able to get them to change their minds.



I just hope it was a substantial amount. It would suck to have lost such a chance for only a small amount.

But did Gameware SELL the IP or is it just a license?

I was also thinking of some kind of crowdfunding, but we'd need to know a target figure first :) And if maybe we could also get the source code?

 
saintrowfan2

saintrowfan2



  2/7/2018

Creatures Alchemist?
 
 
  replies cannot be added because this thread has been locked.

prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | next

downloads
cobs
adoptions
creaturelink
metarooms
breeds
 
gallery
art
wallpaper
screenshots
graphics
promos
sprites
dev
hack shack
script reservations
dev resources
active projects
dev forum
 
community
links
advice
chat
polls
resources
creatchi
 
forum
bookmarks
general
news
help
development
strangeo
survivor
mycaves
log in
register
lost pw
2 online
Nerds
OddFerret
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.

contact    help    privacy policy    terms & conditions    rules    donate    wiki