malymin | Entries tagged with gaming: creatures

Current C3DS save is named "Cat's Cradle." I started with six norn eggs: siamese norns, bengal norns, and the tawny, maned hardmans. Two of each species, one of each sex.

So far, the Hardman Norns have killed seven grendels.

Prior to writing this, one norn has died: Sassy, the female siamese norn. She was an adolescent, and 28 minutes old. She was killed by a grendel in the Jungle Terrarium.

Bengal and siamese norns are both pretty "normal" norns. Bengals belong to the base genome type that shipped with the game. Siamese norns use the same genome that chichi norms use - a little more resilient to disease/poison/injury than the non-dlc norns, and an innate desire to use warp portals (the online feature that no longer functions, lol).

Hardmans are tougher still than chichi reskins, and are assholes. I kind of love them for it, though? It's charming when a virtual pet is an asshole. Part of the appeal of some of my favorite Catz breeds. Although Hardmans being assholes often has more...lethal consequences.

The underlying mechanic, as I understand, is that they get scared (including of things that don't scare other norns), instantly metabolize their fear into anger, and then want to hit other creatures (mainly grendel, but also other norns) in order to release that pent-up rage. Deep down, their anger management issues stem from them being scaredy-cats!

The first norn to get pregnant and lay an egg has been Tigress, the female bengal, after mating with Sophistico the male siamese, and she laid her egg in the treehouse of the Norn Terrarium. I've named the daughter Tabby. The second norn to get pregnant has been Lioness, the female hardman, after mating with Tyger the male bengal, and she laid her egg near the door to the Jungle Terrarium. I've named the daugher Tigone.

Lionel, the male hardman, is the first norn I've successfully taught Handish this run. For whatever reason, he'd decided to wander into the Norn Meso, guarding the entrance from any grendels who might come nearby (even though the door is locked for grendels...). After some time of Lionel being alone, Tyger joined him.

Tigone has been taught words. This will make it easier for her to communicate her needs with me. And she's killed her first grendel. She's also learning that hitting the mecha-grendel helps alieviate her boiling, hereditary rage. She got some toxins in her, and I fed her a potion to help her recover from them. When that wasn't enough, I took her back to the jungle to eat some peppers to boost her immune system.

Lioness is pregnant again. I think it's with Tyger again. A second liger (this one male) has been born, named... Liger.

Tigone has grown old enough to have sex, and did so with... her father... it's fine, Norns are like that. o_o; She laid her egg in the jungle. Lioness is also having a second child. Tigone has had a second pregnancy with Sophistico.

The plants provided with the Hardman Norn Pack, which grow natively in the terrarium once injected, make the Jungle an interesting place to raise norns. It's not as kind a place as the Norn Meso or Norn Terrarium - it's still full of diseases and the haunt of grendels. But with the Awkwood vines, food is even easier to find than in the terrarium for a starving norn - the pellets it leave behinds seem to never decay the way most edibles do. And the peppers provide more vitamin C than other fruits, which helps norns recover from injuries they get from being slapped by grendels. (Or each other...) I feel like "high risk, high nutrients" is a realistic trade-off for living in the rainforest compared to the typical norn regions.

Lioness is hungry, but seems to have forgotten how to eat. Her attention is focused on the food in front of her, she just can't... pick it up? I think she may die soon. Ok, nevermind, she remembered how.

I terraformed the Desert, aka the Ettin Home, some, by planting tubas ("food" plant) and bramboo ("fruit") in the soil. I hope this is at least part of the reason my ettins are still alive after... two hours. I think they're the first ettins the game spawned. I always feel bad for the ettins dying, I wanted them to live a little more comfortably.

The tigers have had an egg together, laid in the Norn Terrarium.

Omnikitty (the siamese/hardman/bengal) died in the desert. She was a child, and 18 minutes old. Most likely, she died to the grendel that was also in the desert.

EDIT: An ettin has died. Most likely, it was to disease and toxins from a grendel, considering the hover-doc autopsy. She was two hours and sixteen minutes old.

EDIT: An second ettin has died. Most likely, it was to violence from a grendel, considering the hover-doc autopsy. She was seven minutes old, and an adolescent.

Drop some balloon bugs from the Desert Terrarium into the Norn Terrarium.

The balloon bug seems to take great joy in floating around in the hot air currents created by the volcano. It also has the unique property of being an excellent food for the stickletrout in the Norn Terrarium, which otherwise die out by predation from the kingfisher. The stickletrout seem incapable of eating the balloon bug, but gain nourishment from it all the same.

Go to Comms Room and inject Awkwood Creeper (C3 version). This places the plant in both the Norn Mesa and Jungle. It is stated to be a source for "a good range of nutrients."

Go to Comms Room and inject Chili Pepper Pot (C3 version). This creates a potted plant, but also places a stationary copy of the plant in the Jungle, providing a source of protein and Vitamin C.

Gather Bramboo Berries from the Norn Mesa and plant them the desert, as a source of protein.

...I think bamboo went extinct in the Norn Meso this run.

EDIT: Thank god, they start growing back on the background layer if they've been depleted for too long.

EDIT: Saving this link.

Well... I caved and got the full Docking Station + Creatures 3 combo. Hey, six dollars USD is a good price, especially for a game that was not that cheap when it actually came out.

I'm learning the game the roguelike way - that is, through repeated failure, as I did in Caves of Qud, and learning from that failure.

First of all - there's two environments that are considered "Norm Home" - relatively safe environments that pregnant norns will migrate towards to lay their eggs. In the standalone Creatures 3, this was the Norn Terrarium - a wide open extremely British-pastoral biome full of european birds and insects and hedgehogs and alien pig things - and no predators or disease that can hurt a norn. (Although there is a small pond norns can drown in if they're really desperate to die.) In the standalone Docking Station, this is the Norn Meso - a smaller and more overtly artificial area with a tiny bamboo jungle as its most natural subregion, though rich in both food-dispensing vending machines and foragable foods, and equipped with a machine that helps instantly teach creatures the user's human language for easier communication. (There's also no pond for them to drown in.)

In a combined game, norns prioritize the Norn Meso over the Norn Terrarium as "home." This is fine, actually, because Grendels - goblin-like creatures that are covered in disease and love slapping Norns to death - can get into the Norn terrarium, but are locked out of the Norn Meso by default (you can change this if you want) at the start of a new game. This makes the Norm Meso a much safer "nursery" for norns than the Norn Terrarium.

Nonetheless, I've discovered that a lot of norns born in the Docking Station love to teleport into the big Creatures 3 area, and then they encounter grendels and get beat to death. I can take deaths (I am expecting deaths), but I want some of them them to at least reproduce before dying. The door out of the Meso is unlocked by default; I'm locking it until my norns reproduce and start building up a population, at which point I'll unleash them on the rest of the ship.

The exception is the Hardman Norns I hatched; after watching one beat a grendel to death with its bare hands, I decided they could wander the Creatures 3 region of the fused game to their hearts content. First-gens are already calibrated to be more survivable against poison and disease than the average norn, and they're also the only Norn breed whose homing instincts tell them to lay eggs in the Jungle Terrarium (which is the Grendel Home, and full of diseases and toxins) instead of in the standard "norn home" areas.

The house-arrest population consists of two adult Chichis and two young Bondis. The Chichi breed are relatively "generic" norns, and the original default breed in Docking Station; when you tell the game you want to start with pre-trained adults, you are always given Chichi Norns.

The Bondis... I thought it would be interesting to mix some genes for longevity into the population. The two breeds that already start with longevity genes are Bondis and Treehuggers. Both have longer lifespans, and lack a homing instinct and will lay their eggs anywhere they feel like. They sort of remind me of animals that evolved on islands, as they're both from alternate universes where Albia (the native planet of Norns) has no native norn predators.

It's the areas where Bondis and Treehuggers differ where I thought Bondis would be better addition to the breeding stock. Treehuggers are more susceptible to injury, disease, and poison than the average norn; they also, from what I understand, just don't understand doors and elevators as well as other norms, making it harder for them to navigate the spaceship-ark the player will be raising them on. Bondis, meanwhile, have some potentially useful traits in their gene pool. For one thing, they're omnivores, able to derive nourishment from small fauna (such as crabs and fish) as well as edible plants and manufactured food. They also stay satiated after eating food longer, and thus need to seek food less frequently. And, though not exactly aquatic, they take longer to drown than other breeds. Overall, the Bondi seems to have more useful qualities to mix into a Norn gene pool than the treehuggers.

Henceforth, I will continue to inject new breeding stock of non-Hardmans via the incubator in the Meso (where the norns are under house arrest until I let them out), and inject new breeding stock of Hardmans via the incubator in the Norn Terrarium... where they can freely migrate to the Jungle Terrarium if they please.

It's absolutely a shame that "Creatures" is the absolute least SEO-friendly name for a game series ever, because Creatures (90's pc game series) is a really interesting animal... and one I know very little about, compared to Petz.

There's so many fascinating quirks to the official breeds! Like C2's Frog Norns:

The Frog Norns came as part of Life Kit 2 for Creatures 2, and were the second official norn breed released for the game (the Golden Desert Norns were the first). They only come with adult sprites, and unlike most breeds, which are hatched from eggs in the hatchery, they are injected into the world as frogs that live in the underground lake by the Dark Ocean. On being kissed by a Norn, however, the frog is transformed into a frog norn of the opposite sex. Frog norns are amphibious, but they cannot stray too far from their pool or they will revert to frogs and die. Any child of two Frog Norns (a second generation Frog Norn) can move anywhere in Albia, without restriction, and will never revert to frog form.

But Creatures 3 sounds like it has a lot of... idiosyncratic breeds. Some of them were given specific "care guide" manuals on the official website, to take into account the way that they different from typical norns.

Hardman Norns: resilient, aggressive Norns that can fend off attacks from Grendels on their own. They consider the predator-laden and toxic Jungle Terrarium, not the peaceful Norn Terrarium, the best place to lay eggs and raise their young.
Treehugger Norns: about as opposite to Hardman Norns as possible, they're physically frailer and more prone to getting sick, as they came from an Eden-like environment without predators or other hazards. They also need to supplement their diet with raw plant material in order to put on body fat, as they can't absorb fat from ordinary Norn foods.
Bondi Norns: laid-back Norns from a coastal environment, that age slower and live longer than other Norn breeds. Can survive in water without drowning for a bit longer (though they aren't amphibious), are omnivores that can eat live prey, and are happy to lay eggs in any enviroment available.
Toxic Norns: The real fucking weirdos. Need to be awash in detritus, toxins and diseases to stay healthy, and get sick if you feed them antibiotics. Potentially dangerous to hybridize with other Norn breeds, as the result is likely to have an immune system at constant war with itself.

Other Creatures 3 breeds that are less radically different in biology from the norm include:

... and the Magma Norn apparently has temperature-related preferences, but there's no official care guide for it.