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 Malkin  Manager  |
As I understood it, the Gizmo genome enabled their sense of direction at birth, because suddenly changing the way the world feels isn't very friendly. Would it be possible to test that with the CFF? My TCR Norns |
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 Yme |
Put as mutch gizmo stuff in them as you want, and give them the same lifespan as the C2 and C1 Norns. I'm pretty sure that would make CFF the best genome to date  |
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 Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Malkin: I think it just enabled their ability to get the directional drives and their smell ability at birth, but not the actual instincts that let them know how to navigate up lifts and out doors, etc. to deal with those drives (they could possibly learn that these things help with navigational drives though if they tried them, unlike other babies) I'll look closer though... IQ tests show CFF born in the lab tend to pretty much make a beeline for the food in the meso as soon as they hit childhood (~9 minutes for chichis), so a baby that can smell and knows how navigate would pretty much be totally safe I think, it should find food as soon as it gets hungry enough. If these were smell-enabled at birth, AND knew everything about how to navigate at birth, they should be really quick at finding food, but it would be a bit unrealistic... (then again, so is living until late adolescence without having a single meal) Without navigation instincts, a sense of smell is good enough to find any food that is on their level but out of sight, which might work... They will also get appropriate navigational drives when they reach a smell link like a door or elevator, but they will not have much meaning to them without the instincts... Still, if they happen to do the right thing, they will find it rewarding and learn that is the way to deal with that drive (though they will be less likely to do this when they really have a reason to want to go somewhere, because they will be more fixated on whatever they really want, and not want to mess with random things so much)... This is a lot more realistic... I still don't think they'd do great in the standard IQ tests that way, and it might even give babies a tendency to EES because they could get obsessed with the smell but only able to navigate as far as the door or lift, though it bears testing. "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 |
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 Sanely Insane RisenAngel Manager |
Random question: I was looking over the CFF lactate cycle today, and I noticed that chem 37 has a half life of 0 (instantly decaying). Clearly the system's working despite this, but I couldn't help but think that was a little odd. Was it intentional, or just an oversight? Risen Angel's Creatures Blog |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Intentional. LDH's decay rate of 0 is actually not QUITE instant in C3, just a very short half-life... Which is what lets it work with emitters and receptors that have a sample rate of 1 tick and maintain and raise its levels in the body with other reactions when its needed... I know it helped me get the reaction working well with some fast sample rate emitters and receptors involved, which made the related chemical level curves a little smoother and easier for me to tune, and made sure it would go away as soon as it isn't needed. The reaction that makes it is also quite fast, as is the one that breaks down lactate, but I'm not EXACTLY sure why I did all of it that way now, it's well over a year later... I do remember having a nightmare trying to tune that whole cycle properly, trying all kinds of values in all these genes and decay rates to make lactate properly leave their system and turn back to pyruvate when their oxygen went back up, and to figure out the right oxygen level to make LDH come into their system to trigger lactate creation, and for the speed of the reactions and receptors, etc... Pretty sure in the case of LDH, part of the reason was to make sure the lactate cycle went back to its normal state and stopped making lactate right away when their oxygen levels got high enough. "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 |
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 Wingheart |
Evol, do you know what makes norns make anabolic steroid? |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
No, it doesn't seem they do actually. that could be broken... Either that or they intended you to have to inject them with steroids to allow them to build up muscle tissue from protein naturally, which I kind of doubt... Really, if that is broken, since it normally allows extra protein to be metabolized into new muscle tissue, it could be responsible for their adipose getting maxed out so easily... Without being able to turn into muscle tissue, the excess protein would instead all get broken down to pyruvate and then turned into glucose and fatty acids then into adipose for storage. "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 |
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Yme |
So C3 Norns are'nt (how's that spelled?) able to build muscle at all? Are they born with a fixed amount of it, then? If they can't build muscle, what exactly does muscle tissue do in a C3 Norn? Is this something that's worth fixing? |
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 Wrong Banshee Dragoler |
Think of muscle tissue like a store. You got starch, protein and fat which are your raw chemicals, then they are processed into glucose, amino acid and fatty acid which are the useful chemicals that are used in metabolism, and then those are stored as glycogen, muscle tissue and adipose tissue. Having said that, each can be converted into other forms and much of the starch and protein a creature eats ends up getting turned into adipose tissue anyway. I did some experimenting with the steroid emitter, and I am pretty sure that it not working properly is a good reason why creatures build adipose tissue so quickly. Creator of the TWB/TCB genome base.  |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Yeah they are born with a fixed amount of muscle tissue, it gets used up when they are low on amino acids, the same way adipose gets used up when they are low on fatty acids, or glycogen gets used up when they are low on glucose... but unlike those, it appears they can't build it back up at all without actually being injected with steroids and then eating protein. Fixing it would stop them from building up so much adipose, and make their nutrition storage more balanced (including giving them more protein storage, so ones that eat well can last a little longer without food) See, the other long-term nutrition storage chemicals are converted back and forth into their short-term forms by reactions. Many of these reactions use other chemicals like triglyceride, protease, etc. to fuel the conversion. These chemicals are emitted when they have too much or too little of some kind of nutrition chemical, triggering a conversion to or from long-term storage to fix the problem. Anabolic steroid performs this function for fueling the reaction that stores protein into muscle. They already have a reaction in the standard genomes that lets them build muscle tissue back up, but it relies on this anabolic steroid, which is never made in their bodies for some reason. Because of this, excess protein that seems like it should be getting turned into muscle tissue is all just getting metabolized into adipose tissue instead. It looks this can be fixed by just adding one gene... A steroid emitter that starts working when they have plenty of amino acids in their bodies. I think the C2 genome is a good place to start looking for an emitter like this... If the gene is really missing from C3 just because it's another one of these half-finished reactions they overlooked and left broken like the lactate cycle, it should be there in C2. If a gene to make steroids IS in C2, it should at least give me some idea what it should look like and where it belongs, but the settings on the gene are another story. The genes in C3 for converting muscle tissue back to amino acids when they are low should give me a pretty good idea of what the ideal level of amino acids should be in a C3 creature. Then I will know the threshold to set on the new emitter gene so it knows when to start making steroids. The C3 emitters for the chemicals that fuel the other short-term to long-term nutrition conversions should give me a decent idea of what the other settings on this steroid emitter gene should be. It will still probably take some tweaking and testing to get all the settings on the emitter right, but it should work. "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 |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Looks like in C2 there is not an exact analogue to steroid, however, the genes DO show that in C1 AND C2 any extra amino acid did turn to muscle tissue properly, and it was always working. So it is definitely SUPPOSED to happen, they are supposed to be able to build up muscles on their own if they get enough protein. The balance of their long term and short term nutrition stores were helped along by other reactions and a lot more different metabolic chemicals though... The C2 genome actually gets quite a bit deeper into real digestive metabolism, with a lot more of the real intermediate chemicals and regulating chemicals for most things. I can still at least use the genetics in C3 to give me some clues as to how to make a good working steroid emitter gene and set the sliders properly. Then it can work pretty much exactly like the other kinds of nutrition storage they have now, and from looking at the reaction gene they already have that is fueled by steroids, it seems that's how it was intended to work... "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 |
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Wingheart |
...there's SO MANY mistakes in the C3 genome. So. Many. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Yep, but really this one is really barely noticeable and won't affect play too much. The only real effect is they are worse at storing protein than if the gene were working properly... Still, their body makes up for it by putting the nutrition from the stuff they eat into other stores, at least until they fill up with fat, then they can't hold any more... If muscle tissue were working properly, they would be able to build up even more long-term nutrition storage, and it might even build up evenly enough to stop them from getting super fat, unless they really eat a ton. If I also do something like link their hunger to their actual nutrition levels like in the earlier games, that will involve enough changes in enough places in the genome that I might even be able to leave the heart disease gene in and get it working right without any really bad risk of genetic effects... So, it's a bit nitpicky really, like several of the other little fixes I've made in CFF like some of the ones with the stress emitters that were messed up... The best biochemical fix like that in CFF is fixing the lactate cycle problem that used to kill their muscle organ so much, but they really don't need that organ to live perfectly normally anyway... I think the only difference is they don't dance or change gait for moods if that is dead. But still, now that broken muscle tissue thing will bug me if I leave it broken, so I have to fix it... and even better if it lets me make their hunger and heart even more realistic and more like the better biochemistry in the C2 genomes (C2 creatures were so sophisticated they could actually get diabetic health effects leading to heart disease from a damaged ability to make insulin... C3 genomes don't even have insulin... they just have a glycogen limiter gene, and if this gene fails, all it does is let them store more glycogen with no ill effects...) It's also kind of silly that their hunger in C3 really has nothing to do with how actually starved they are and can easily get out of sync with it... Real animals (and c2 creatures) get extra cravings for nutritive elements their bodies are missing (too bad they were so dumb anyway, lol... the brains in c2 weren't anywhere near as good as the c3 ones) "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 |
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 Dark |
Would it be possible to transfer the C2 biochemistry over to the C3 norns entirely or would that be entirely too much work/impossible? Edit: I took a break from Creatures again and when I came back decided to ditch my breeding project because I was trying to breed the CFFs in and breed OUT the genetic defects I'd accidentally allowed to breed in via unchecked wolfling runs. I started a loose run with some of your CFFs the other day and I've already got norns doing exactly what I was breeding for in my project... kicking the crud out of grendels without sustained anger levels. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Hmm, I think a little beyond my scope anyway... my head was starting to hurt looking at them, not only are many chemicals different (and more plentiful), there are a lot of things that just work totally differently because of the engine, even half-lives and reaction rates work totally differently in C3... Also, getting multiple levels of metabolic reactions working together and tuned right is a nightmare... I've already pretty much managed to grab everything cool or useful I saw that wasn't too hard or disruptive to implement already in CFF... I had a hard enough time just getting lactate, pyruvate, and oxygen to work together properly to fix their drowning response and lactate cycle... The brains, brain chemistry, learning, dreaming, and pheromones and stuff are all different in the C3 engine too... C3 creatures have more sophisticated brains and several new brain lobes and other new things in the engine that fulfill many of the functions that had to be done in C2 purely with biochemistry. Plus it would definitely once and for all make that breed entirely incompatible with any other C3 breeds. So far, I've been trying with the CFF changes to make sure that genetic problems are kept to a minimum, and that crosses who inherit only some of their genes should be very unlikely to be worse off than a creature without those genes, and a lot more likely to be better off in some way. If I get ambitious and have a lot of time, I might try and make a special kind of breed that mimics the workings of all the C2 genes, though that would be really time consuming, considering that their genomes are bigger than the c3 ones (and again, certain things in c3 make many of those genes and chemicals no longer needed... ) Still, if I can at least get this heart disease gene working properly in CFF, it's entirely possible they could get the same kind of diabetic consequences if their glycogen limiter or the organ it is in failed. It could very well be easier for them to gain weight and get heart disease without that limiter working, though it's a little hard to say, because what builds up is based on a lot of other interlocked genes and reactions that can go either way, so the final results are not very easy to predict. "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 |
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Dark |
That does make sense. Well, at any rate, I'm hanging around here again and would be happy to test out any new pairs you put out. I've caught up on what all's going on with them. I think I didn't catch the near death music because I tend to turn the music off. |
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Wingheart |
I keep music off too, which may have kept me from noticing when I tested. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Yeah, it doesn't seem to really affect them all THAT badly to have slow liver function... Besides, you can just get them drunk a lot and they should be perfectly fine... It should even let them build nutrition back up because it speeds up their liver (not quite to normal speed, but it should be enough to let them gain some nutrition back with a good diet...) That's pretty funny, Norns whose livers don't really work right unless they are plastered, lol... "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 |
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Yme |
Haha! I had no idea the C2 Norns were that detailed :O They even get cravings for things they lack? Too bad the foods in that game don't have any rules as to what they contain. The Norns don't even have a brain that will let them controll what they look at. They just automatically look at what is most simulating, and the most stimulating thing is usuallly "nature", it seems  Too bad... They should have had brains that were capable enough to make use of their fantastic biology, and the game should have had rules about what different food groups contain, like in C3.At least that's what the stock Norns are like. I think this was fixed in the cannie Norns, but I like using the stock Norns. They are easyer to get to sleep, and therefore don't get as confused about how to survive, later in life. It seems to me that one of the problems with getting Norns to sleep in C2, and maybe even C1, is that they don't really understand words like "push, eat, rest" etc when it isn't included in a complete sentence. So they will understand "Bob eat fruit" but they wont understand "Bob rest"... The latter doesnt seem to trigger anything in their brain, when spoken, for some reason. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
They had hunger that was based on their actual nutrition levels, it would go up when they were lacking nutrition, rather than just being emitted constantly like in C3... They also had thirst and suffocation, as well as NFP. But that makes me think of an interesting point... it's actually possible to 'repurpose' the drives... C2 norns only had one type of hunger, so if someone really wanted to reproduce them, they could make the other 2 hunger drives that are in c3 instead represent thirst and suffocation, and attach instincts and stimuli to them accordingly, then it wouldn't even require rewiring their brains... It's not like it's really all THAT necessary for creatures to get a balanced diet, their body can still compensate decently for one type of nutrition being low... Since homesickness also didn't exist in that game, one could even reproduce the Need for Pleasure drive too. You could even change the drive names and words with a slight catalog change. I think in C1/C2 one of the biggest problems with getting them to do anything was that they couldn't REALLY tell what drive anything fulfills... They could have instincts about what to do in certain situations with their drives, but ultimately all the instincts could tell them is that something was rewarding, and reward was all they really cared about, and they got reward in one form or another for most things... so really whatever they do the most tends to win out, and they tend to pay attention to the most stimulating things, so that can kind of take over their desire to do much else. Their brains were still pretty cool, but they were more like just pure neural networks that worked on greatest expected reward (except one of the lobes... the sarahbellum, which was pretty much just a bunch of extra nodes for chemical receptors and emitters to attach to... basically it was a big multi-purpose regulatory gland)... As for them not being able to rest, I think that was something else where they had a hard time ever thinking of looking at themselves... The only time Creatures can sleep or rest is if they are focused on 'self' (there's an instinct in C3 to strongly suggest they look at themselves when tired... adding a similar instinct to any genome in C2 that doesn't already have such an instinct should help them as well... Creatures are unlikely to ever think that looking at themselves is productive without an instinct like this; and unless they are looking at themselves, the 'rest' action is meaningless to them... If they hear 'rest', they'll just think 'rest <whatever they are looking at>' and that won't actually do anything, so they ignore it... in C3 they were better about this, since they could link concepts with nouns, verbs, and specific drives besides just NFP... so if one were a little tired and they heard 'rest', they would link that word with the concept 'rest self' if they had ever found doing that useful to reduce tiredness, and then they would think of trying that. In C1/C2, they would still get an impulse in their verb lobe for hearing just a verb, but they would only think in terms of overall reward, and the concept they link it to only being using that verb with whatever they are looking at. They would hear 'rest', think 'rest <whatever they are looking at>' and have no experience or idea of any reward attached to that, so they would just ignore it... Likewise, if you just told a norn 'eat', it would think 'eat <whatever I happen to be looking at>', which often is not the most generally rewarding action they can think of, so it can easily get ignored even if they are hungry... "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 |
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Dark |
I'm several generations in playing with the CFFs and I've noticed that they seem to make dying noises much faster when drives get even a little bit high. Possibly even the boredom drive... I need to recheck that though. Definitely the hunger drives. They don't seem to actually die in any hurry, but if say their hunger for starch, protein, and fat are all at about halfway or one of them is almost all the way, they start making the dying noises. |
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Wrong Banshee Dragoler |
Don't they do that when glycogen stores get low, same as how the near death music is triggered? I had a test creature nearly deplete glycogen and she started grumbling... that's also how I found out that their receptor for muscle tissue that is suppose to make them produce hunger for protein was broken (I copied it to fix their hunger drives)... Creator of the TWB/TCB genome base. |
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Dark |
That would make sense. I only read that the near death music was playing not that they also made the dying noises, but it would certainly make sense. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Yeah, the low glycogen levels also makes them make the near death moaning sound, as well as the music... Feed them well and get them really drunk... Leave lots of booze around, they should start to like it... with enough alcohol and food together they should be able to build up glycogen. I'll have last fixed version packs out soon, though, so this problem should go away... Just gotta test and tweak this latest change with muscle tissue... I want to make sure the genome is all good this time, lol... "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 |
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Dark |
Fingers crossed that everything will be in perfect working order on this last batch! |
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 Lodestar Doringo |
evolnemesis wrote: Now that reminds me of the perfect agents for that. Food and booze. My norns have a tendancy to drink the booze on sight, it's classified as manky. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Dark: should be, that was the only gene in CFF that really could affect their regular biochemistry in any major way. Though now this muscle tissue thing from the base genomes looks like a place for a new fix, so I have to mess with this stuff more (did I mention how much I hate trying to tweak and balance metabolic reactions? I dunno, maybe I'm just biased because the last time I had to do this kind of thing it also involved suffocating norns to make sure they responded correctly to low oxygen levels, and every try that I didn't get right during my testing made me feel horrible...) I want to make sure this fix doesn't cause new problems right after I just figured out this last one (I can't think of any really bad ill effects from just adding a steroid emitter though... it should just make it take longer for them to starve because they would be able to store protein now... it's not attached to any organ clock rates or anything like that). Dragoler: I'll check out the hunger for protein based on muscle tissue emitter too, but I seem to remember checking it out before and I think it was working but one of the things attached to that receptor emitter was mislabeled, or something like that. Then again that hunger emitter is kind of pointless if they also can't actually build muscle back up from eating protein anyway... Once that's fixed I can see better if it's really having an effect. Doringo: Yeah! A good party can make anyone feel better! "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 |
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Wrong Banshee Dragoler |
The muscle tissue receptor wasn't working, not the emitter. As it was, it would never send a signal (nominal to 0 and output reduces ticked). I added the fix for it to the genome I sent. Creator of the TWB/TCB genome base. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Hmm, interesting... That makes me think they knew that the muscle tissue protein storage thing was broken and they left it that way on purpose... I wonder what I'm getting into. I was looking at the mechanisms they used in earlier games to tie their nutrition use to activity also... and it seems they did have a set of reactions that used up glucose when they moved... They converted glucose to hexokinase then activase (the chemical in c1/c2 that they used to walk forward)... C3 doesn't need anything like activase to make them move... but they do have stimulus that can tell when they are moving, which can be linked to some reaction using up glucose to get the same effect. I'll also try and figure out how it took nutrition from pregnant creatures. I think the main reason a lot of this stuff was left undone, half-done, or just broken in C3 was that a lot of basic stuff in the game engine had changed so drastically from both earlier games that much of the biochemistry required a complete overhaul and rebalancing/tweaking completely from scratch... A painful prospect, and it almost definitely increased the amount of time they had to spend on even the parts they got working right. I also have a feeling C3 suffered from bumping up against some budget/time constraint, which couldn't have helped matters and probably forced them to simplify a lot of the stuff. It seems like they had a lot more they wanted to do... there are some CAs and neurons that were named and put there with an apparent purpose, but then left unused by the game, and some other little clues to this. "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 |
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Wrong Banshee Dragoler |
Yes, I assumed the receptor was left broken because the steroid emitter was non functional... which might also explain why the muscle tissue/hunger for protein receptor/emitter combo is the only one in the genome (I mean for hunger). They intended to implement a dynamic hunger system with muscle tissue build up based upon activity but they scrapped it half way through... Creator of the TWB/TCB genome base. |
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Yme |
evolnemesis wrote: This is a really awesome idea! The whole "hungry for xxx" is a bit odd anyway. Hunger is hunger, and as in C2, it's not that hard to give your Norns a ballanced diet, even if they don't tell you exactly what they are hungry for. Wish I knew anything about coding, and about the genetics in this game. Sounds like there are possiblilites to make som really awesome stuff here! You have some really cool ideas  evolnemesis wrote: So when they got reward for eating, all they knew was that eating lowered a drive they didnt know what was, and that it was rewarding? So basicly "This action did something, and I liked it, but I have no idea what actually happend"? Would it be possible to fix that, so they understood what was actually going on, or was it a limitation of the game engine? The way I understood what you wrote, it sounds like they really arent able learn how to do anything, really. evolnemesis wrote: Yeah, the problem was that they didnt look at themselves when they needed to rest. I found a nice workaround for that though... If you get the Norn to look at the hand, the pick up and object, they had turns invisible to them, and forces them to look at themselves. This usually sends them to sleep if they are both sleepy and tired, and it makes them easyer to care for, as they work better when they only have 1 or 2 needs upp at a time. Is that something that is possible to fix? evolnemesis wrote: Wonder why they didn't have this in C1 and C2 evolnemesis wrote: If you were to tell them "rest" while they were looking at themselves, would that help anything at all, you think? Or would they still be as confused about everything, because they don't really understand what actions lower what drives? |
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Yme |
Dragoler wrote: I wonder how the Norns would have turned out if they got to make them exactly how they wanted. Seems they would have bin a lot more complex. Are there other things in their DNA that hint at some cool stuff? I remember when the game was newly released. The Norns were even worse off, as they didnt even use their facial expressions. |
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Wrong Banshee Dragoler |
Well, there are options for receptors that detect light, air temperature, time of day and season but non of them work... which is a real shame because there are so many fun possibilities those could have brought! Creator of the TWB/TCB genome base. |
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Dark |
Playing with the CFFs and I've noticed that they seem to be getting into loops of 'approach x home'. Most of it happens on the incubator pad where they will pace back and forth. When I ask them what they're doing, they say 'approach norn home'. I don't remember this happening with the originals but I haven't tested them out for it yet. Just throwing this out there. Anyone else notice this? |
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Wrong Banshee Dragoler |
They should do that when pregnant. They have a "comfort drive" which isn't shown by the hoverdock, and their instincts tell them to "go home" when in need of comfort (which is emitted in pregnant creatures). The incubator emits Norn Home scent. Creator of the TWB/TCB genome base. |
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