kyevan
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Creatures is an artificial life game. It's kinda like a virtual pet game (in fact, you can play it that way!) but the little creatures are actually arguably alive and thinking, rather than just runing simple alogorithms to decide what to do. It might be easier just to play it... but thankfully, there is a full entry in the series, Creatures Docking Station, available for free at http://www.gamewaredevelopment.co.uk/ds/ds_index.php ! (Some of the other entries, C1 and C2 especially, are a little better in many ways. DS has the Warp for tradeing creatures online easily, though, so that's nice. And it's free!)

Anyway, those who know what it is, (already, or now ) might be interested in my tribble norn genetic breed for DS. No egg file, yet, and in many ways, they're really just Chichis (the default DS breed), but... there are special features. You may want to try them in a secondary world, by the way. You can download a pair from The Creatures Repository, http://tcr.diagonalfish.net/view.php?id=955 and http://tcr.diagonalfish.net/view.php?id=954

So, what do y'all think of the game, and my little experiment?

Syntax
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kyevan wrote:
Creatures is an artificial life game. It's kinda like a virtual pet game (in fact, you can play it that way!) but the little creatures are actually arguably alive and thinking, rather than just runing simple alogorithms to decide what to do. It might be easier just to play it... but thankfully, there is a full entry in the series, Creatures Docking Station, available for free at http://www.gamewaredevelopment.co.uk/ds/ds_index.php ! (Some of the other entries, C1 and C2 especially, are a little better in many ways. DS has the Warp for tradeing creatures online easily, though, so that's nice. And it's free!)

Checking it out... You'll need IE to register though.

kyevan
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Really? That's rather surprising, seing as... there are linux and mac versions. (The mac version isn't freely downloadable, sadly.)

BeefontheBone
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Ah, memories of teaching my sister's Norns to swear. Bliss

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Syntax
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kyevan wrote:
Really? That's rather surprising, seing as... there are linux and mac versions. (The mac version isn't freely downloadable, sadly.)

Yeah, the signup page didn't fit in FF.
Also, I couldn't get the game running (XP) as it wanted me to run it in 16-bit colour, so I deleted it for now.

Alneyan
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I've registered using Konqueror (Safari is a relative), so it can definitely work on browsers other than IE.

I loved Creatures 1, but I sorta lost interest when Creatures 2 went out... I've only found out about Creatures 3 a few months ago, and it hasn't really caught on with me yet (except dumping a Grendel on my unsuspecting sister... hey, it's evolution at work!).

kyevan
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Yes, the directx engine does demand 16 bit color. Rather annoying, but easy enough to switch. There's also an alternate engine built on top of SDL instead, somewhere... I forget where, though. I'll look.

Edit: Or you could run it in full screen. Change the FullScreen entry in user.cfg (in the Docking Station directory) from 0 to 1. It should launch, then.

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[Last edited by kyevan at 01-24-2008 11:20 PM]

kyevan
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Ahah, found it!

http://ccdevnet.org/~fuzzie/dsbuild189_win32_sdl.tar

Extract the bz2 files from the tar archive, extract the files from those into the DS directory, overwrite. If you want to back up first, back up all the .exe, .dll, and .map files, then do that.

The SDL version can run in 32bpp color, but it has worse sound. MUCH worse.

Pick whichever one will drive you less crazy.

Anson
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I remember this game! I downloaded alot of custom creatures, but as soon i saw DROD i quit it.
Anyway... I didnt like it becuase the Norms didnt listen to be, but i got used to it.

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Malorie
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I wasnt much of a fan of it, cause you couldn't (seem to) pick up norns or tell them where to go...

So the stupid things just kept walking backwards and forwards in the middle of the map it seemed... and as soon as they started to actually explore in a direction, they'd just turn around and walk back to the middle again. Plus, you couldn't scroll the 'world' that much past where your norn was, so... it was very dull!

It was annoying to have a whole world thing that they could explore, but they never ever did!

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Alneyan
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Erh, Docking Station runs just fine here (Debian Linux), even though I'm running in 24-bit color, and my driver cannot do 16-bit in the first place. I seem to recall the same goes for my sister's Windows XP computer, but I can't check from half the world away.

You can forcefully move the creatures around in Creatures 3. In the earlier games, you had to lure them somewhere indeed... I didn't have that much trouble back then, and my problem was more like 'how to keep them in the same area, and not frolicking around'.

The 'no scrolling' thing is a feature, and only in Creatures 2, I think; it's enabled once a Norn picks up a particular power-up on the map. Of course, said power-up is located a bit far away, so you need to learn how to make your Norns explore the world before you get it.

kyevan
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Alneyan: The 16 bit color requirement is only when running windowed using the DirectX version of the engine. There was an SDL-based release for Windows, and obviously it's the only release on Linux and OS X systems!

Malorie: You can pick them up in DS, and in C3 after activating a power up. In those games, you can also hold their hand and lead them places.

You can pick them up in C2, too, by activating a cheat through a registry hack, but it's a little buggy

Alneyan
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kyevan wrote:
Alneyan: The 16 bit color requirement is only when running windowed using the DirectX version of the engine. There was an SDL-based release for Windows, and obviously it's the only release on Linux and OS X systems!

Ssh. Look at that butterfly over there. Pretty, eh? (My excuse is, I just didn't realize how dumb my remark was at the time. Ssh. So, what about Georgia?)

kyevan
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Georgia? Your sister?

You can run full screen and you don't have to switch modes, and there's an SDL-based build for windows.

Or maybe she was running in 16 bit color anyway.