A thread for talking about the Creatures game series. I just found out that there's an online genetics kit for Creatures 3 and Creatures Docking Station! This is a very good thing because the official kit is about 15 years old and does nothing but crash on my computer, and the unofficial one is very confusing for me. http://danielmewes.dnsalias.net/~livegms/ Here's a link to the community site, with all its many, many mods: http://creaturescaves.com/index.php I'll probably post a tutorial on getting the games to work properly with newer computers tomorrow, it's almost midnight here right now.
Tutorial! This is needed because the newest Creatures game is 17 years old, and so they all have compatibility issues. All of them need the Creatures Remastered patch except maybe Creatures Village. http://www.webpetz.com/creatures/remasters.php If you're thinking of getting creatures 1, get it from GoodOldGames in a bundle with C2. Install it to My Documents and install the Creatures Remastered patch: http://www.webpetz.com/creatures/remasters.php You might need to run it in compatibility mode with reduced colour options-C1 has an 8-bit palette. This link has a download to a modded world with some fixes: http://discoveralbia.com/2016/11/download-a-custom-c1-world-file.html There's also this link with a bunch of optional upgrades-they predate the carrot fixes, though. http://norntropolis.albia2000.com/upgrade.html There's also a sprite fix for baby male norns: http://discoveralbia.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Updated-C1-Baby-Male-Norns.zip And some better body data for grendels: http://discoveralbia.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Complete-Updated-C1-Grendel.zip Of course, if you intend to play with Grendels, you'll need a better Grendel genome-the default one's designed for a lone Grendel that will never get the chance to breed, so they're infertile. Other grendel genomes have fertile grendels. There's quite a few possibilies-here's a link to a list of C1 breeds: http://creaturescaves.com/downloads...t=&sortBy=ID&searchFor=grendel§ion=Breeds I think that's everything for C1. I don't play C1. Bonus mod for winged norns that don't overwrite the default sprites: http://www.creatures.org.uk/ccsf/ccsf2016/releases/C1/C1 Wingies.zip If you want Creatures 2, you'll need to get it from GoodOldGames in a bundle with C1. Creatures 2 is less stable than Creatures 1 and honestly you'll need an emulator and a copy of Windows XP (or earlier) or else you'll get lag and no in-game pointer. Install it to the My Documents of your virtual XP machine. In Compatibility Mode (if needed-may do this by default) tell it to use only 16-bit colour. You'll have to get Creatures Remastered patch. You'll probably want some mods to cover the seas, because norns are not good at avoiding cliffs: http://creaturescaves.com/downloads/cobs/236.zip You also probably want something from here: http://www.webpetz.com/creatures/toysc2.php There's several tabs of useful mods and patches. And here is an updated world file, with instructions: http://creaturescaves.com/downloads.php?section=Metarooms&view=140 You'll also want a patched breed. The ones in this link can breed with most other patched breeds safely, but you can go looking for others (Kannovas, Cannies, and Nova Subterras) if you want. http://www.creatures.org.uk/ccsf/ccsf2016/releases/C2/Kannova Venterra.zip I know nothing about Creatures Village but that doesn't seem to need anything special apart from probably reduced colour mode. Creatures 3 and Creatures Docking Station is what I use! Docking Station can be gotten standalone for free (do not open it with installblast, and if you do, decline the updates), and can be installed anywhere if you do that. http://www.webpetz.com/creatures/dockingstation.php You cannot register a DS identity though. The servers are down, so you must use a login disabler. This also disables the Warp and messaging. Those are DS's only online features! There's two login disablers. However one is on a forum that is currently down for maintenance so I will have to add it later. That leaves the one included in C12DS. One of not very many game mods that had official help, in this case, being sent every file they could legally use. Which was enough for a full port of the game! http://creaturescaves.com/downloads.php?section=Metarooms&view=32 If you get the Creatures Exodus pack from GoG, you will have to install it into My Documents, and you will need the Remastered patch. You will still need the login disabler for DS. Docking Station has the gimmick where it can use all of C3 as an expansion pack-you can use all the C3 content without ever opening the C3 game! As usual, there are fixes. Genetics fixes first! http://wayback.archive.org/web/2016...res.virtualheaven.nl/agents/cfe/download.html Those are the CFEs. If you want the sprites and default genetics of the norns that do not come with either game, I will happily email them to you! Many of them are unavailable otherwise anyway-the official site hosting them went down. There's an updated breeding script, to fix a problem that was masked by the vanilla genetics forgetting everything every time they go to sleep: http://wayback.archive.org/web/2016...ures.virtualheaven.nl/agents/cfe/updbreed.zip There's also everything here: http://wayback.archive.org/web/20160304210530/http://creatures.virtualheaven.nl/
Title change due to discovering that Steve Grand (the guy responsible for the major draws of the series) disowned the more recent ones and has started making a spiritual sequel called Grandroids, the community has gotten quite far in making a spiritual sequel with the working title Kreatures and current final name ideas bouncing between Laife and Regenesis, and Spil Games may or may not be working on a terrible mobile-game so-called-'sequel' which is official but likely won't be a Creatures game in anything but name. ETA: You could make an argument that any of those are the actual sequel. Grandroids is made by the previous lead dev, Kreatures was aided by Grand and has a story that's the description of both the world and the Creatures Community, and Creatures 4 by Spil Games has the official copyright status.
I need to get my games running again. I think it's about time to crack out on Creatures again. I'm a huge mod fiend and my favorite playthroughs are careful breeding plans between very different breeds and wolf runs. How's the progress on Grandroids? I last looked at it like 4 years ago, maybe longer. It was all proof of concept stuff.
Quoth the development log: "This is so complex and massively parallel that I’ve had to write a simulation of my simulator." He's got a creature walking around, somewhat, but they keep falling over. He's also redesigning the brain to be more efficient, learn better, and so on-I think he's testing high-level navigation now? I didn't donate to the Kickstarter so I don't know all the details. Anyway, on the topic of mods-there's now a Faster Agent Injector, some new C3 patches, coconots for the Aquatic metaroom, a new mod-added Ark thing (only one metaroom, but it's big and there's like 6 different biomes in there, plus you can partition it with the invisible-to-creatures doors) and some really good conversions of the official breeds to a new genome, the 2017 Genome. ETA: Kreatures is also going good-the base engine is very nearly done, the dev's just making fluid physics. Currently they're testing with Albian Regenesis, which still isn't a C3/DS metaroom but was able to become a Kreatures world in about a day because the dev designed it to be even easier to mod. There's also more CAs.
I haven't poked at Creatures in at least a year. Don't want to fight with it over Win10. Are those mods all on CC?
Yup! I play Creatures on Win10, it works pretty well. Only C1, C3 and DS though-and I don't play C1 very often. I have a massive Agents folder and can give you pretty much anything not on CC, and if I don't have it BlockLockCity probably does. ETA: Am currently trying a relaxed feral run thing with the 2017 Bengals and Siamese.
Jungle grendels come with C3. Banshee grendels are the mall breed, which I have, as well as Norngarden 2 and Candyfruit. Private sharing only, of course. You fine with PMs?
That's fine! I figured out my problem wasn't Win10 it was the hard drive upgrade. I moved over the stuff from my Games folder but I delayed on moving the My Documents stuff because ExDys.
It'd probably be best if you put everything into My Documents, else you get the My Documents bug and have to double up on everything.
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee creatures archivist Cari found some old (first-release?) engine maps for DS so now we have access to...a lot of info. like, there is what looks like an entire function map in one of these files and it's not even the entire file. there is a file that's engine-netbabel.map which looks like a full function map of the netbabel module. this is, like, the stuff dedicated teams spend actual weeks hacking out. and the devs just...bundled it in the release version.
