Today's prompt is about the agents/metarooms you use and what you'd like to see more of. I'm mostly going to talk about C3/DS, since I play it the most. Advanced Muco is in every world, and I don't know how I played the game without it. The Garden Box is in most of my worlds as well, since it makes my seasonal wolfling runs possible. The inseminator, eggornator, and super splicer are permanent agents in my splicing world. I also use the splicer control panel from the DS splicer to import creatures and make them sleep. If a world doesn't have the garden box, it probably has the potted norngarden plants and some of TwilightCat/Bugs agents. For sprite breeds I use as many as I can,
often referencing a breed slot list. And for genetic breeds, I use any CFF or CFE genomes.
For metarooms, I end up using Primordia and Veridia the most. They're around the same size and mesh well together. Veridia is empty, easily customizable, and perfect for most of my worlds. Primordia can also easily be emptied out of agents, so it's almost as customizable as Veridia. Ainadia and Chione are my go to rooms for larger worlds, though I use Ainadia the most out of the two. Anadia is a gorgeous room, and it even has an aquatic area. So I can have aquatic and terrestrial creatures in the same world. Chione, meanwhile, is my favorite room for Christmas or cold-themed worlds. It's big, customizable, and has one of the best system of doors and elevators of and metaroom. I also use the Norngarden rooms, even the second one. I can't say it's worth how much it costs, but it is a very gorgeous room.
The only other Creatures game I mod a lot is C2, so I might as well list a few from there. I don't use as many cobs for it as I do DS. I often use the desert and volcano garden mods though, to give my creatures more spaces to live it. I also use the golden tomatoes and rainbow peppers to give my norns more to eat. For breeds, I love using the Albian Greys, Gargoyle Norns, Draco Norns, Kimahri norns, and Cat Norns. I don't use the genomes that come with those breeds though. I just change the breed slots in a default Akamai Canny norn and call it good. I never learned which breed had which genome, and don't really care enough to compare genomes and find out.
As for pet peeves, I have one major one. Most of the existing portable door agents are terrible, but I'm forced to use them in some of my larger wolfling runs. With most of them, creatures end up bouncing between the doors. They eventually get to where they want to be, but only after playing door roulette. It's frustrating when you want to string metarooms together and the poor creatures bounce between the rooms until they get exhausted and sleep. It doesn't ruin wolfling runs, but it's seriously annoying. Even the door agent I made a few months ago doesn't always work
properly, and I can't figure out why. So whenever I get enough time, and
more importantly motivation, I'm going to create a portable door that just... works.
Lastly, I'd love to see more decorative agents that do something. It's probably because I've spent so much time decorating my worlds with the Garden Box, but I'm tired of my worlds looking pretty but not doing much. I'd also love to see more terrestrial critters and bugs. I love the ones we have now but my carnivorous creatures could use some variety. If fact, if someone would make the sprites I'd be happy to try and code them. I've never coded a critter before, but I'd love to figure it out. And Grendels and Ettins could also use a few more sprite breeds.
What I'd really love to see are more tutorials though. I forget who said it but developers are the lifeblood of the community. Maybe if we had some tutorials or coding tear downs
like on the Creatures Wiki, it wouldn't be so intermediating for newbies. A part of the reason it took me so long to really dive into caos was that I didn't know where to go after basic toys and vendor tutorials. I know I'm going to start commenting on why and how I made my agents the way I did, if I can get everything in order. That way there are a few more examples floating around for people to learn from. And, who knows, maybe some of my useless buttons can inspire someone to tweak my code a bit and dive into caos.
Do you have anything in mind for decorative items that do something? I really like to decorate too (though that's probably obvious, considering all the Garden Box decorations I've made). Animated decorations, toys, dispensers? I don't think I could do the coding (not good enough at it yet, and Jagent doesn't want to work on this computer), but maybe I could do some sprites.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any ideas at the moment, but I'll let you know when I do! I'd be happy to do the coding if you do the sprites.
DeleteTBH, you're looking in the wrong place. That issue with the doors is genetic rather than a problem with the agent. It has to do with what stims they get. This is one of the many, many issues I'm trying to iron out in my dragons. Essentially, I've noticed that dragons use offline portals sensibly, but not doors, and after looking into it, I'm about 90% sure it's because portals 100% WIPE all drives they affect. I think it's Pain, Boredom, and maybe Anger? I know the first two. Whereas doors only wipe the enter/exit stuff, and give merely a small reduction to Boredom. So what this ends up doing is motivating the Norn to go through the door a bunch of times until its Boredom has been reduced enough that it's no longer 'uncomfortable'.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure it's a problem with genetics and not the agents? Most breeds don't go through doors because they're bored, so of course the door stim doesn't wipe boredom. The only times I've had breeds use doors out of boredom were when they were babies or modified breeds.
DeleteTo be fair, I don't know why door roulette happens. The DS doors don't do the door roulette thing for most breeds. It might have something to do with the distance between the doors or even if they're connecting two different metarooms together or parts of the same metaroom. One may use a different stim then the other and getting the wrong one might confuse norns? Anyway, thanks for the reminder about this post. I'd forgotten about me looking in to door roulette.