CCSF Blog Carnival 7: Community

I just realized that this is my 50th blog post! It doesn't change today's post any, it's just a neat milestone. Today's prompt was basically why do like the Creatures series and why do you keep coming back. It was also the hardest prompt to answer. My poor notepad file has three mostly complete drafts, and yet I'm writing a another one. I tried talking about how I'm still in the community because it's to creative and welcoming for me to want to leave forever, but then I remember that I have wanted to leave before. I tried talking about how I'm still playing mostly out of habit, and, while that's partly true, it isn't the whole reason I continue to play the games. To actually answer the prompt, I still play because because there isn't another game like this and the community is amazingly creative.

Creatures is a unique series and fills a niche in the virtual pet genre I didn't even know I wanted until I discovered the series. Despite it's age, it's still fun and surprisingly educational. It's taught me the basics of programing, how to organize projects and fight off procrastination, and it's helped keep my writing skills sharp. Add a wonderful community to that, with creativity only bound by time and motivation, and you get people like me hooked on a 20 year old series. It's the community that has brought out the potential in most of the games through addons and inspired people to take a second look at their norns through fan fiction and art. I can't help but keep coming back, I might miss something amazing if I don't!

It also doesn't hurt that I haven't had to change computers in almost four years. My machine is still running Windows 7 and still runs all of the games nicely. So technical problems aren't really a factor for me right now. That's going to change eventually, especially considering my hard drive is old and heavily used. I'll also eventually upgrade to Windows 10, even though I still hate it. And I can't say I'll be all that motivated to play the games if it means dealing with frequent technical issues or whatever it throws at me. Then again, old habits are hard to break, and playing Creatures off and on has been a habit for years now.

These guys are from CCSF 2012.

And I couldn't leave this post without salvaging one thing from my old drafts: my history with the CCSF. I honestly can't separate my personal history with the Creatures series from my experiences with the CCSF, both the older ones and the ones from the past few years. A part of the reason I'm still here, and even in the community at all, is because of the CCSF. One of the first Creatures websites I found was the old CCSF 2008 site, and I found the idea of a festival for an ancient game to be absurd and amusing. I thought it would be the last year,  but they kept happening. So I kept coming back. It was like a beacon from the community to the rest of the world saying that there was still some life left and new things being made.

By 2012, I wanted to be a part of it and so I submitted some creatures. I did the same for 2013 and almost did the same for 2014. That year, though, it looked like it wasn't going to happen. So I stepped in and coordinated it. It was stressful and Creatures Caves died right in the middle of it, but I'm glad I coordinated it. Hosting it helped me realize what an amazing community I had stumbled into. It's not perfect, we don't always get along and it's not the thriving community is used to be, but there's something just something about the combination of weird niche game and tiny, creative community that keeps me coming back.

CCSF Blog Carnival 6: Mythology

Today's prompt is about the mythology and backstory of Creatures. I'm the worst person to ask this since I haven't really thought about the backstory in any real detail. It's been over a year since I've read the backstory for C1/C2 and even longer for C3/DS. I remember liking both of them, I just don't remember that much of it. The two bits of lore that have stuck with me over the years are: the Shee left Albia/C1 with only 6 eggs to continue the species and the Shee were master space ship builders and were prone to abandoning spaceships. These two bits of (possibly incorrect) lore have informed my own version of the creatures universe, and the few bits of fan fiction I've written for the Creatures games.

Like many players, I used to occasionally write down what happened in world as a story. Over time this evolved into a fan version of what a Shee society would be like. In my fannon, the Shee had found their fabled 3D world, and were so unimpressed about it that most Shee left for other planets. So there were quite a few Shee, but most were scattered around the galaxy. The Lone Shee's warp was still a thing, but most of the ships weren't compatible with it yet. Communication between them was possible within a certain distance, but they could go quite a few years without bumping into another of their species. Even still written letters and packages of strange new tea were a favorite thing for Shee to send to each other. Who delivered the mail though? It was often a species of immortal norn and, rarely, a grendel. These mailnorns and mailgrendels were smart enough to pilot simple mail ships, and deliver mail.

This has nothing to do with the actual post.

Ships filled with genetic experiments and frozen specimens were common and abandoned ones were also somewhat common. (This was partly inspired by the Seru agent.) So it was fairly common to see a few Shee and their assistants exploring old, abandoned ships to salvage something from them. One of these explorers is Balmora and she was an assistant to a Shee version of myself. From what I remember, my Shee was the owner of the Mobula Ray, and Balmora was her assistant. She could pilot the ship without the Shee and knew quite a bit about ship engineering and maintenance. She was also prone to forgetting things and ruining experiments, so the Shee eventually fired her.

Balmora became a freelance assistant while the Shee went on to do other things. I didn't do much with the Shee character, but Balmora's whole freelance assistant thing has stuck around. I've even thought of starting a more story-based world again, though that idea is quickly killed. I have enough projects on my list of Creatures list already.

A side effect of the many, many abandoned ships is that the Grendels of Minimordor, or GoMs, were able to breed and take over small sections of the galaxy. The GoM queens were smart enough to be able to direct their hoards of males to salvage parts and repair broken down ships. They could also pilot ships, and raid Shee ships for norns to eat and eggs to enslave. They tried to leave the Shee ships intact and didn't hurt the Shee if they didn't fight back. After all, they were dependant on the Shee for food.

Inspired by my own Cattle norns I also eventually added Shee that tried to appease the smarter GoM queens with immortal norns for slaves and fast breeding norns for food. This worked out well for the GoMs, they got a stable supply of food and cheap labor, while the Shee were left alone. Until those smart GoM queens had female children and the GoMs took over more sectors of space. The GoMs weren't invincible though, space could still kill them and most of the queens weren't immortal. So they couldn't take over the galaxy, just make it a miserable place for some Shee.

This is long enough and I don't have many questions about the mythology or backstory. So I'll talk about my favorite bit of C1 lore instead. I've always been facinated with the idea of a limited population, like the Shee only leaving 6 eggs behind. In C1, it made you extremely careful with those precious few eggs... until you realized how to get more anyway. I've tried doing a similar thing in C3/DS where I limited myself to 6-10 SERU eggs. The run ended horribly when all but two females died and I had to import a few gen 1 males. I've considered trying it again or trying it in a different game, but, like the story-based worlds, the idea is killed before it goes to far... Anyway, I'm really curious to read the other post's for todays prompt. This isn't a subject I've thought about in any real detail for years now, and I'm interested in others weird versions of how the Creatures universe could work.

CCSF Blog Carnival 5: Modding talk

Today's prompt is to talk about what sort of things you make for Creatures, how do you make those things, what you want to make in the future, and, if you don't make things, what would you like to make. I do create content, and I usually create things I'd like to see. If they turn out well, and aren't horribly buggy, I eventually release them. I've only been developing for a year, so I pretty much create whatever I can code and find sprites for. So far the things I create are either solely for the hand, or objects creatures and the hand can interact with. Objects that creatures can interact with but the hand can't are a minor pet peeve of mine, so I try and avoid that when I can. On a random tangent, the flowers and grass you've seen in some of the screenshots are a good example of a buggy things I don't feel are worthy of release yet. They work, there's just a problem I haven't bothered to fix yet.

Some agents end up going nowhere for months.

I'm going to read "what do you use to make things" as "how do you make things." Otherwise my answer is short and pretty boring. I use gimp to tweak existing sprites, the caos tool for the coding, and Jagent for everything else. Anyway, how I make things isn't very revolutionary. I start off with a problem I want to fix or an idea for an agent and figure out what I need to do to make it. If I know I can make the sprites myself or have someone making them for me, I then start planning out the code for the agent. I usually start with a description of what it does down to as much detail as I can manage. If there are any parts I know will be tricky, I even write out some pseudocode like "If creature has a Bengal face, target it and make it dance. Else do nothing."

I also prefer breaking the agent into chunks that can be worked on and tested individually, if I can. I've found that quiets the inner procrastinator a bit. Otherwise I tend to get interested in Facebook or literally anything else. From there I work on it, often testing as I go. These tests usually involve me creating buttons to test caos commands I've never used or specific chunks of code. (And, honestly, I've created more buttons then I have actual agents.) After it's done, I usually sit on the agents for months and release them when something like the CCSF or a holiday comes along. So most of my agents sit around as loose .cos and image files until the last minute. Also I use Caos2Pray to make the agent files because writing pray files is the worst.

As for future projects, the biggest one is to finish the Stinger Norns. I've been working on them, on and off (mostly off) for a good year and a half. I finally have a stable base genome for them and it's just a matter of working on the different variations of them. I also have two ideas for genomes after the Stingers are done, a swimming ettin breed and something I've been calling Interactive Norns. The Ettins are the farthest along, and I even started working on a genome for them a few months ago. The Interactive Norns, meanwhile, are still being planned out and I'll probably make a thread about them on one of the forums when I'm ready to start on them. They're meant to be a genome geared towards nurturing players and, if these past days of blog posts have taught me anything, I'm definitely not the most nurturing. So other's input on that is going to be more valuable then my own.

As for agents, I've hit another lull in ideas. The ones I have are either nearly complete, or . One thing I have been working on is a simpler version of the Hoverdoc, and it'll probably be release next year. It's simply a little circle that floats near a norn and tells you it's highest drive and whither or not it's currently sick. I've been documenting how I created it and what sort of problems I've run into. I'd like to turn that into a blog post or two eventually. I'm always interesting in how things were made, and hopefully others are as well. I also have an idea for a potted plant, but I'd like to finish the simpler Hoverdoc and a few other things before starting it. Plus I still need to find suitable sprites for it.

CCSF Blog Carnival 4: Mostly mods

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.

CCSF Blog Carnival 3: Old play style

Today's prompt is about how your play style has changed since you first started playing. I still play the game I started with, still mostly run wolfling runs, and still mostly play with norns. So the way I play hasn't changed much, but the species I raise and type of worlds I build has changed a little. I used to only raise norns because, like most players, I had a bad introduction to grendels and ettins. The default grendels and ettins in C3 either killed my norns or messed up my gadget arrangements. I even had a few serial killer ettins who killed norns because they were over crowded and fearful. I have gotten over that though, mostly because I either kill the egg layers or keep the species separate. Plus I've found smarter and much happier grendel/ettin genomes to play with. Grendel Man's genomes helped me realize that happy grendels are absolutely adorable, and they've become my second favorite species. The Chameleon Ettins made me realize that the regular ettins were the worst species because of their genome, and not just because they're ettins. Seriously though, I'm terrible at reading the Desert Ettin's moods, their expressions all look the same to me. Even third party breeds can't save that species for me.

In fact, it was this world that lagged the GB a lot.

I build different worlds then I used to. When I first started, I was limited by what metarooms were around and what they came with. As a result, I tended to use metarooms that connected to the main ship. The Norngarden 1 and the Terra rooms were my favorite, especially the former. I was also fond of using TwilightCat and Trollop/Bugs agents. The ones that came in seed packets spread nicely, and the tea time potted plants produced enough food for a small colony of creatures. I also didn't decorate my worlds that much. Then Magic Words: Room Edits and the Garden Box came out and my worlds were never the same again. I realized seasonal wolfling runs were possible, so I started making a lot of them. Overly decorated worlds were now possible, so I started making them as well. The only way my play style has changed since those came out is that I don't add quite as many GB decorations everywhere. Turns out you can make the Garden Box if you add to many decorations.

One minor change in how I make worlds is that I don't make so many of them anymore. I used to limit myself to six Docking Station worlds at anytime, and deleted one when I wanted to make a new one. As a result, I made a lot of worlds and usually made worlds for a specific population. The Mobula Ray and Remora Ray were the only worlds that weren't made that way. As you might imagine, this got really old after a while. So I stopped making so many worlds and stopped deleting them. In case anyone is curious, I currently have 13 worlds, two of which have names like "!" and "!!." What great names for testing worlds!

Maybe a C2 "vacation" will change things up.

Another change is that I play the game less then I used to. If I were keeping track of my play time, I wouldn't consider background wolfling runs and testing things to be actually playing the game. So the amount of time I'm playing the game has gone down drastically over the years. This has had an interesting effect on the way I play the game, creature watching has become interesting again. With the right music (and my web browser closed) watching creatures has become a nice way to relax. So, on second thought, I suppose my play style is in the middle of changing as DS slowly grows boring and tinkering with genetics/caos takes over my older play style.

CCSF Blog Carnival 2: Play styles

Even the aquatic worlds are decorated.

Today's prompt is about playing styles and habits/quirks. My play style has been shaped by my first real creatures game, Docking Station. So I usually play hands-off, full of wolfling runs, full of decorated worlds, and full of genetic and caos projects. I have a lot of worlds, and most of them are for testing things or wolfling runs. Coming up with ideas for wolfling runs and setting up the worlds is about as active as I get with most creatures. I love playing like that, and seeing if the populations can survive, thrive, and mutate is fascinating to me. Also Decorating worlds is sometimes a pleasant way to burn an hour or two. The focus on wolfling runs means I'm free to tinker with caos or genetics without worrying about my creatures.

Most of my play time this year has been spent messing with caos and developing a few agents I've always wanted or whatever random idea pops into my head. Caos, to me, has become the ultimate jigsaw puzzle. Like any good jigsaw puzzle, I have a picture on the box, a bunch of pieces, and it's up to me to figure it all out. And, unlike a real puzzle, it's almost impossible to loose these pieces. I also mess around with genetics, though I haven't done that as much this year. There's only so much I can take of the genetics kit before I get bored.

When I get tired of testing things, I start a nurture world. I have the occasional DS nurture world, and my C1 and C2 games are dominated by nurture worlds. I gave up on wolfling runs in C1/C2 after I always ended up wiggling food in my favorite norn's face to try and get it to eat. Even though I enjoy most of my time with C1 and C2, I don't play them that often. The norns in C1 are equally as frustrating as they are lovable, so it often gathers dust for months between play sessions. I used to play C2 more, but my game somehow corrupted itself early this year. I lost all of my worlds and any creatures I didn't export. I haven't really touched it since then (though I have been slowly reinstalling it.) So most of my recent nurture worlds have been in DS, which hasn't gone well. As much as I love the game, the norns in it aren't as charming or lovable as the older ones.

Stingers in a Stinger Norn world, how original.

As for habits or weird quirks, I have a few of them. I have a few names I use when I can't think of a good name for a world. Mobula Ray is the name I've been using the longest, so much so that I named my blog after it! I've probably used it for dozens of worlds now. I also use the Remora Ray for a filler name. Mobula and manta rays often have remoras attached to them, and the original Remora Ray was meant as an extension to the Mobula Ray world at the time. So it was named the Remora Ray. And my oldest habit is adding stingers, bugs, and critters to every world. The habit started forming back from the many, many tests I did when making the original Stinger norns. For whatever reason, I just haven't stopped adding stingers and bugs to my other worlds. To be fair, the stingers act as a hazard to regular creatures, and the bugs I usually use act as play things to my CFF creatures. So perhaps it was a good habit to get into.

My most recent habit formed from me trying to figure out caos. I got in the habit of creating buttons that run chunks of caos code. Most of them only get used once or were one off tests. A few of them have become permanent parts of my game though. The one I use the most is a button that checks creatures hunger levels every few minutes and exports them if they are extremely hungry and not a baby. (An earlier version killed them and targeted babies... that run didn't end well.) I use it in my wolfling runs to help weed out creatures who won't feed themselves. I can't say if it's made much of a difference to my gene pool, but it does help the generations go by a bit quicker. It was originally inspired by the wolfling monitor. I wanted a simpler version, so I made it. And that's pretty much been my play style this year, full of caos, genetics, wolfling runs, and the occasional nurture world.

CCSF Blog Carnival 1: In the beginning

Today is the first day of the CCSF! I've already sent in my two things, and might be sending in another thing or two. I also signed up for the blog carnival event, and have been mostly unsuccessful in keeping things short. So hopefully you enjoy my ramblings though, I know I enjoyed writing them. Anyway, today's prompt was basically how did you get started with Creatures and are there any fond memories.

I got into Creatures through the PS1 games years ago, though Creatures DS was the first one I played in the main seris. If I remember correctly, my mom brought home the original ps1 game at some point and I tried playing it. I thought it sucked so I shoved it in a case with some other games. Fast forward a number of years to 2008ish and I tried playing the game again. This time I gave it a fair shot and thought that it had potential, even if it was a bad game.

Creatures Caves looked a little different in 2013.

I thought that a sequel might have improved on a few things. So I Googled it and found Creatures DS. I also found the CCSF website and found that there was still an active community. I vaguely remember thinking that the community was going to die at the time, so I didn't really join the community. I then played that game on and off before joining the community in 2012 or 2013.

What first intrigued me about the games was the creatures themselves. I've always played games like Monster Rancher and the Petz series, so cute norns were a natural next step. The promise of an evolving population was to interesting to resist, even if that evolution usually turns out to be fertile creatures with useless mutations. The mountain of mods didn't hurt either and the only other modding community with that level of creativity I'd seen at the time was for Elder Scrolls series. For as small as this community is, it has an impressive amount of creative people doing things with the game! There's still amazing things like the Garden Box and CFF/TWB creatures coming out every few years. The Garden Box alone reshaped how I played Docking Station, and the CFF norns helped get me back into genetics after a lull.

Most of my creaturey memories are from DS. I still remember back when I knew even less about genetics then I do now. My first attempt at the Stinger Norns failed horribly. I couldn't figure out why my Stingers were dying. They were getting the necessary nutrients, but they were still hungry. I think I got angry and gave up before I figured out how the hunger for whatever chemicals and stimulus genes worked. I also remember that they were red, angry Hardman Norns with grendel tails, the most original genetic breed ever.

All but one of them are from 2010.

I also remember the first time I used the genetics kit to make something. I was breeding Vampyre grendels and bred an adorable blue grendel with draconian arms name Ayuka. For whatever reason, I loved this little grendel, and watched over her carefully. Unfortunately, her genome was a mess and she ended up dying being adulthood. So I wrote down her moniker, downloaded the genetics kit, and figured out where the lifespan and death receptors were. A few tweaks later, and I had an adorable grendel who couldn't die named Balmora. I used the inseminator on her a few times and she had a few babies. Sadly, the world most of those babies were in corrupted and I was unable to save them. Their mother survived though, and she's still around even five years later. She's as close as a virtual thing has come to a pet as anything. The only ones that come close are Petz I've had for almost as many years.

And I'm going to be cheesy and say that my last fond memory is the community itself. This community is one of the best things that ever happened to me. Since 2013 quite a few close family member have either died or nearly died, and that's on top of my own failures at various things. The Creatures community wasn't the only thing keeping me going during all of that, but it certainly gave me something positive to look forward to. Things have gotten better since then, and the games and community have continues to be a (mostly) positive thing in my life. So thank you Creatures community and thank you to the two coordinators for this year's CCSF! If the interesting Blog Carnival is anything to go by, we are in for a fun CCSF this year.

Grendels: The End

This was written after the months long gap in posts. Even after that gap in blog posts, I was surprised by how well I remembered certain individuals. Puddle was the darling little baby who found the forbidden fruit first and Arroyo was one of the grendels who laughed in the face of physics. The grendels didn't notice the time gap, and didn't seem to care that their world was in the wrong season. To them it was an eternal pool party, from sun up to sun down.

The Aquanornia group was spread out on two levels, with Lagoon joining Gulf as soon as I opened the world. Spring, Arroyo, and Firth were fond of kisspopping while Lagoon and Gulf preferred to give each other some space most of the time. Meanwhile the Oasis group was still in two separate groups. Even after an hour, Fjord was still with his parents, Creek and Loch. Meanwhile, Ocean was still with her parents, Bay and Puddle. Cove was there as well, enjoying the sun and butterflies fluttering about. Even old immortal Balmora was as happy as an eternally bored grendel could be.

Everyone was entering the the ancient stage, so I decided to up the population limit a bit. Almost immediately, Ocean was expecting an egg from her father. A few minutes later, Creek and Fjord were expecting, as well as Puddle and Bay. Unfortunately for the Aquanornia group, I hadn't increase the limit that much. So they didn't have any extra children. They had spread back out anyway, apparently driven into the depths by Balmora's constant vibraphone playing.

All was quiet though, so I decided to record a few minutes of each group. I realized around three minutes in that Fjord had decided to visit the Aquanornia group. Gulf also died during the video. She didn't die of old age. I don't think she was eating that well and starved. How did the rest of the group do in the face of death? Spring didn't wait around for it. In the last minute of her life, she visited to the Oasis. Puddle and Bay, meanwhile, did wait for death and died within a few second of each other. The rest also didn't move much, and enjoyed the company of their friends. In the end, I was left with five grendels of various ages and 20ish eggs to hatch.

 

The remaining grendels, Fjord, Lagoon, Loch, and Ocean, as well as half of the eggs will be moved to a different world at some point and the other babies will probably be uploaded. Balmora, meanwhile, rushed into the warp room with her vibraphone babbling about some concert in an old castle. So maybe we'll see what she is up to later. All in all, I really enjoyed watching this generation and I'll eventually get around to writing about the next one as well. Next week is the CCSF, and I joined the blog carnival. So expect a lot of rambling from me!

Grendels: Getting Old

These lavender grendels didn't always die from eldritch entrancement, sometimes they just didn't like eating. Delta died of starvation, and I wasn't surprised. He and Bay had a mutation that made eating seeds useless for them and both of them had problems remembering to eat in the past. I would have been worried for Bay, but he had a happy smile on his face and plenty of food near him. So the only way he would starve would be to ignore all of the food around him. With Delta's death, Fjord was born. He quickly dove into the group of adults and it took a few seconds before he came out for this screenshot. He was Creek and Loch's baby, so I moved him over to his parents group. They immediately welcomed him with hugs and kisspops.

Meanwhile in Aquanornia, everything was fine. Firth and Spring were still on the top level, Arryoyo and Lagoon were checking out Mere's old area, and Gulf was off on her own still. Balmora had finally decided that pushing unpushable plants was a waste of time and instead filled the air with her wonderful vibraphone songs again. Almost as soon as she did, Lagoon took the elevator up to the top level and started pushing Balmora. Pretty soon a little fan club had formed around her, though Lagoon made it very obvious that she was Balmora's biggest fan.

Besides a newly formed fan club, the world was other wise very quiet for a while. Eventually the main population started entering the old stage and even Fjord was growing up. I decided to celebrate this by burying everyone in ice cream and quirky cookies. They weren't very impressed at first, but some of them eventually gave into temptation and ate some.

Grendels: Eldritch Enchantments

Last time at the Lavender Grendel's pool party, I was flooded with eggs and the group was doing well. This time I started up the world and was surprised to see Balmora away from her vibraphone. Apparently four was a crowd and she had moved on to pushing plants. Also the grendels on the top of Aquanoria occasionally broke the laws of physics and teleported to the picnic table. They were either very interested in the teapot in the background, or they were a bit to big for the area. Either way, Balmora's wonderful vibraphone concerts had given way to plushie squeaks and kisspopping parties. Or maybe they were driven to madness by Mere constantly squeaking her star-spawn plushie. Despite slowly going mad, everyone was healthy.

Even the Oasis group was doing well. They weren't breaking any laws of physics, and the rain wasn't dampening their spirits any. With the new fruit sources, they didn't have to move around as much. So they were content to stay in their separate groups. Then suddenly Mere died. She had apparently been so entranced by the eldritch plushie that she forgot to eat. She didn't have any hunger on the hoverdoc, but the Lavender Grendels had some Gizmo genes in them. Even 10 minutes without food was potentially deadly for them. I gave her a parting tickle before turned my attention to the new baby.

Because Mere died, one of Puddle and Bay's babies hatched. Little Ocean immediately went down a level and turned on the sprinkler. She didn't know what to think of the water droplets and watched them for a while before heading to the forbidden fruit puddle. She took a bite of it and said that she was happy. Fortunately for her, this forbidden fruit just taught her vocabulary. Ocean eventually settled down for a nap and I hid the apple again. After her nap, she set off to look for her treasure. She took a wrong turn though and ended up with her parents. I made sure she had her air bubbles before going back to the Aquanornia group.

It was quieter there... almost. Firth and Spring were fond of kisspoping until they fell asleep. The world was at the egg limit though, so no new eggs would be laid until someone else died. I was hoping that would be far off into the future though. I was fond of this group of grendels, even if some did worship eldritch plushies until they starved to death.

Whoops

I'd like to blame the Starbound 1.0 update and Skyrim for the gap in posting. I've been playing Creatures a bit, if tinkering with caos and splicing norns counts as playing. I just haven't been in the mood to document anything. I did leave a certain grendel world in the middle of a generation though, and those posts will be going up every Wednesday until I run out of them. There aren't that many left, which brings me to my next point...

This blog is probably going to be random for a while. I have one thing I'd like to write about, but it still needs a lot of work. So I'm just going to write about what ever random thing I'm doing in the games at the time or some weird things I've done in the past few months. I'll save all of that for the actual posts though. For now I'll just leave a screenshot from my Skyrim game bugging out. I didn't install a texture pack properly and got this lovely image:

Everything was missing a texture!

Grendels: Flooded with babies

(I've somehow lost my screenshots for this post, so please enjoy some unused ones from the last post instead.) Last time, the grendels in Aquanornia had two children and I decided to look at some of their genomes. Fortunately for them, there weren't that many notable mutations. Unfortunately, two of the mutations they did have were major. Three of the gen 6 grendels, Bay, Cove, and Delta, had this mutation: (top file is the default Lavender Grendel genome and bottom is the mutated version)

554 Different in file 1  36   0 Emb B MutDupCut        128   0 Eaten plant (77) causes sig=0 GS neu=0 int=0, ,,,192 => -31*Hunger for carbohydrate + -37*Hunger for fat + 13*Starch + 13*Fat
554 Different in file 2  36   0 Emb B MutDupCut        128   0 Discomfort (76) causes sig=0 GS neu=0 int=0, ,,,192 => -31*Hunger for carbohydrate + -37*Hunger for fat + 13*Starch + 13*Fat

Instead of getting starch and fat from eating seeds, they got starch and fat when they felt discomfort. I'm not sure what triggers this stim, but I do know that these unlucky grendels no longer got anything from eating seeds. They do have other instincts that tell them to eat something else for starch or fat, but it's a terrible mutation to have in the gene pool. So I went into their genomes and changed the gene back to the proper stim. I don't think this will help them that much, but hopefully this will make sure the mutation doesn't pass on. Luckily, Loch and Lagoons parents were free from this mutation. Arroyo, their father, did have one interesting mutation though:

443 Different in file 1   9   0 Emb B MutDupCut        128   0 I am sleeping (periodic) (22) causes sig=75 GS neu=0 int=0, ,Sensed even when asleep,,224 => -5*Sleepiness + -2*Crowded + -5*Tiredness + 2*Boredom
443 Different in file 2   9   0 Emb B MutDupCut        128   0 I am sleeping (periodic) (22) causes sig=75 GS neu=0 int=0, ,Sensed even when asleep,,224 => -5*Sleepiness + -2*Crowded + -5*Sleepiness + 2*Boredom

Instead of this stimulus reducing tiredness, it reduces sleepiness instead. This likely made sleeping less effective for him, and have even made him more tired then the other grendels. I made a mental note to watch his tiredness closer from now on before unpausing the world.

! spotted the green apple and moved it back to it's hiding spot. No like/love loops for them if I could help it. Immediately after, Spring and Firth had their first child. Loch had apparently had enough of Balmora's terrible vibraphone playing and moved into the Oasis. While watching him there, I noticed Delta and Bay were quite hungry. I found Delta near the temple looking miserable and Bay desperately trying to eat the green apple to satisfy his hunger. So I took them to a separate room and taught them that food is good. Delta got it immediately, but Bay took a good minute of "eat food" before he actually ate food. Both looked much happier after they were done with their little lesson though.

Meanwhile the Aquanornia group had two more babies. The first one belonged to Arroyo and Gulf, and the second one belonged to Mere and Firth. Arroyo stayed put while Firth and Mere had enough of the other grendels pushy lifestyle. Mere moved up a level to take a nap while Firth explored the rest of Aquanornia. He even met Lagoon and Balmora on the top level. Lagoon had been trying to make friends with Balmora this whole time, and she actually succeeded! She and Balmora had probably bonded over their common interest in pushing things. Speaking of pushing, Mere, Spring, and Gulf all got pregnant around the same time. The Oasis group also had it's first pregnancy! Cove and Bay were the proud parents. A few seconds later and Puddle and Bay were expecting twins.

After a few minutes, Mere was pregnant yet again. Arroyo, Gulf, and Spring had also joined Mere in the middle of Aquanornia. Before I could watch them any further, Creek and Delta were expecting their first baby. Lagoon was also pregnant, with Firth being the father. Then Spring got pregnant. I was flooded with eggs at this point and was quite glad I had the population limit set to 13. If the 12 of them were this prolific, I really didn't need their children adding the chaos. At this point everyone, besides the two babies and Balmora, was around an hour and half old, and had an untold number of eggs. I was quite happy with how they were doing, but I knew was going to stop reporting every baby after this post. So many babies.

Grendels: Smooth Sailing

Between the calming waves in Oasis, and jazz music I had in the background, I nearly missed Puddle living up to her name. She was investigating the only puddle in the world. Entranced by the strange green apple, she stared at it for a few seconds before eating it. Amazed that the fruit didn't disappear when she at it, she stared at the camera and said "Puddle happy!" I didn't teach the grendels their vocabulary. This strange fruit had the horrible effect of teaching her Handish. She was quite happy about this, but I was slightly dreading the "love/hate" loops if some of the other grendels found the apple. Puddle was determined to keep her new treasure though, and tried to hide behind a flower. I let her keep it and checked on the other group.

The Aquanornia group were a close group of grendels, literally. They weren't as spread out at the Oasis group and were fond of pushing each other. Perhaps they had formed a Coralroot Club and were all gathering to celebrate the over abundance of them? Or maybe they were just fascinated by them because their instincts told them plants were entertaining. Either way, they all figured out that pushing each other was very entertaining. Soon Gulf and Arroyo were proud parents of the first egg! Followed by Mere and Arroyo. Arroyo was one of the gen 6 grendels, and I was curious if he had a mutation that made him more fertile. I wanted to check on the other group first.

Back with the Oasis group, things were going slightly terrible. I had forgotten to add a source of fruit for them, and two of them were very hungry. So I lured everyone into the pool with some fruit and added a few more fruit sources to their hut area. I also noticed that Cove was now an adult. Everyone was around the same age, so this meant that everyone would be an adult soon. This was a perfect time to hatch some babies and soon Loch and Lagoon were hatched. After double checking that they had air bubbles, I looked up a bunch of monikers and got to comparing.

Grendel-infested Waters

(Ignore the slight gap in the posts, my crop of cacti were infested by bugs and it always takes more time to squish them then you think it does.) First, here's an update on the Lavender Grendels from the Mobula Ray world. All but one of them died out and the one that survived, Etienne, survived because he was exported. So I hatched a bunch of first gens for him and watched over them carefully. I even rigged up some antibacterial spray to spray every so often. The grendels turned these into toys, but they still did wonderfully. By the time Etienne's generation died, they had 20 children! Etienne had 11 children while another male had 9. Why have I mentioned the grendels here? Because one of the Creatures Challenge over at the Discover Albia forum caught my eye around the time I was deciding what to do with all of these babies. I decided to create a summer-themed world just for them.

Summer to me means water, heat, and way too many insects everywhere. So I created an aquatic world... for terrestrial grendels. Normally this would end up with a load of dead grendels, but through the magic of magic words I could give these lucky grendels air bubbles so they didn't end up drowning. The rest of the world was setup like most of my pet worlds end up, overly decorated and easy to live in. Sadly, the world didn't have space for all 20 of the babies, so I chose 10 random grendels. I also went with the somewhat fitting theme of "random bodies of water" which meant names that went from Arroyo to Puddle.

I ended up with four males and 6 females, all of which seemed to get along with each other. Firth, Arroyo, Gulf, Spring, and Mere were in Aquanornia, while Puddle, Creek, Cove, Delta, and Bay were in the Oasis. Balmora was also taking a vacation there, but she was more interested in the Vibraphone them meeting her new neighbors. How well did the grendels settle in? Find out next time! For now, here's a list of most of the agents used in the world:

Metarooms:
Oasis - Created by Liam and Moe. It needs a lot of work to get it habitable, but it's very pretty.
Aquanornia Revamped - Originally created by Jennie updated by Grendel Man. It's empty but it's very easy to turn into a livable space. I usually use it with Past Seas.

Agents:
Aqua Toys - Created by Laura and TrellyDawn
Beach Ball - Created by Creatures Labs
C2 crabs - Created by AquaShee
Comfort Candles - Created by Jesseth and Kezune
Feuerling - Created by MK Grendel
Garden flower - Creatred by Mea and Grendel Man
GB: Butterfly - Created by Amaikokonut
MW: Air bubbles - Created by Amaikokonut
Muffin basket - Created by Ghosthande
Norndoll Bondi - Created by Ghosthande
Other butterflies - Created byTwilightCat
Oasis Shrimpton - Created by Moe, Ghosthande, and Grendel Man
Sea Garden pack - Created by Mean and Grendel Man
Star-spawn pushies - Created by Ghosthande
Sunflower - Created by Ghosthande
Survivor Radio - Created by Ghosthande
Sprinkler - Created by Geek2Nurse
Tea Time plants - Created by TwilightCat and Bug
Weather generator - Created by AquaShee
Vibraphone - Created by Apollo

What's old is new again

My oldest feral run is coming to an end and I just feel like rambling about it for a bit. I've been running if off and on since 2014ish under different names. They used to be called Wuta Norns, then they went nameless for a few hundred generations, and now I've started calling the Akorith Norns. The main reason for the various names (besides realizing Wuta is a terrible name) is that the current norns don't have a lot in common with the old ones besides generation count. The Wutas were CFE while the Akoriths are CFF. To be fair, they were converted during their nameless phase in 2015, not recently. Getting them from CFE to CFF was a pain, to put it mildly.

The current norns, the Akoriths, have their own base genome I've slowly tinkered with while the run was going on. They're a nice purple, carnivorous norn that's somehow gained some Stinger Norn traits. I can't remember why I added those, but those genes are firmly established in the run now. Some of the later genes I added didn't get passed on though. Combine that with a lot of mutations, and they aren't very similar to their base genome anymore. They breed very well and seem like quite competent little norns. They can even navigate at birth instead of childhood!

The world they're in is a seasonal wolfling run set in the Desert Ruins and C3toDS Ettin Terrarium. Unlike some of my worlds, it isn't amazingly decorated and the few decorations it does have are just there to put patch plants on. Both of them have had their agents stripped out so the norns migrate properly. Speaking of which, the migration path they go on works amazingly well. The top of Desert Ruins is their home in spring and fall and the bottom of it is their home in the winter. The Ettin Terrarium is their home in the fall. As for the eggs, they are transported into the Workshop by an egg finder. From there the babies only have to get to the Meso to be teleported to the spring/fall area. So the babies have a good chance of being teleported into an area with food.

To wrap up this meandering post, my oldest feral run is slowly coming to and end. It's had many names, but its final name is likely going to be Akorith Norns. Their base genome is a weird mix of last minute additions and most of the norns aren't even similar to the latest version of it. Plus the world they're in works well. All in all, I'm happy to see the run end at generation 1,000.

22k Problems but a Norn isn't one

Like I said in the last post, I was trying to create a new seasonal migration world for my wolfling run. It has a desert theme, and the only additional metarooms were the Desert Ruins and Ettin Terrarium. I also added in a few other agents and seasonal garden box patches. I thought it looked nice, but wanted to make sure it was actually habitable. So I hatched a few random Norns and turned on fast ticks. When I came back, the world was super slow. I freaked out a bit before I remembered the magic profiler and frame rater.I opened the frame rater up first and learned that I had over 22,000 agents in the world! I then let the profiler run in hopes of learning why my world was being over run with agents..

What came back surprised me: there were 22,683 grazer wastes in my world. I quickly removed them all with some Caos magic and the world sped up. I don't know what caused it, but I'm happy to say the world has been fine ever since.

Desert-themed Agents

 

I've decided to take a slight detour for a week or two and post a few things I never got around to posting earlier this year. I created a list of desert-themed agents list for a wolfling run months ago, and figured others might be interested. So here's a list for anyone one wanting to create a desert-themed world. Admittedly, some of them barely fit the theme.

Desert-themed metarooms:
C3toDS Ettin Desert by Emmental
Desert Ruins by Allekha and Mea
Freedom Room by Ghosthande
Lost Caves by Bifrost, Moe, and Liam 
Monturrarium (CA emitters patch) by Chaos Development

Desert/Brown Breeds
Dustdevil Grendels by Ghosthande
Fire Norns by Tafgana
Bruin Norns by Creatures Labs
Fallow Norns by Creatures Labs
Magma Norns by Creatures Labs
Wood Norns by Creatures Labs

Desert-themed critters/plants:
GB Playful Gnarlers by Amai
Dustdevil object pack by ghosthade
Balloon Bugs by Creatures Labs
Uglees by Creatures Labs

Vaguely Desertish things
C1 and C2 Arches for Garden Box by C1anddsaddict
C1 Roofs for Garden Box by C1anddsaddict
C1 Ettin Temple for Garden Box by C1anddsaddict
Feuerling by Marcus K.
Garden Box Fences by C1anddsaddict and Mea
Genie Lamp by Ghosthande 
Sacred Dragon Skull by chocosaurus and ylukyun
Sunny by angelneko
Sprinkler by Geek2Nurse
Stone Lamp by Marcus K.
Steam Rock by Bug and TwilightCat
Terraka Weed by Sent and Liam

Mobula Ray: The End

I was unfortunately correct last week, the Lavender Grendels were doomed. Two of the gen 2 females died soon after died. With their deaths, that meant there were five grendels, two ettins (both of which were female and amazingly still alive), and 25 Norns with most of those being Stingers. The move to the Meso had proven to be mixed. The Norns were even more slap happy, but that didn't seem to stop them from producing two more eggs. Speaking of Ettins, Uda, was still in the desert and was nearly five hours and 30 minutes old. The other Ettin, Pinquana was in the Norn Terrarium and doing fairly well. And not a minute later, another gen 2 Grendel named Pen died.

Pretty soon Uda and Pinquana both died of old age.After they did, the whole world started dying. First it was the last gen 2 Grendel died, a male named Lutwin. After his death, the Norn Garden gang started dying off one after another. Then a gen 2 female named Ezura who died of starvation. Ditte and Christian were next and died of old age at 5 hours and 39 minutes. While there were a couple of first gens left, I decided that to stop there.

This turned into one of my favorite worlds in a while, and it all started with one Grendel named Isolda who wanted to see what was in the desert. Besides posting posting what happened to her descendants, this is probably it for this world. It's a lovely world, but there's a few other things I'm working on at the moment. (Plus the Stinger Norns have taken over and I'm out of things to write about them.)

Mobula Ray: Grendel Trouble

After attempting to cure a plague of histamine and giving up, I regretted making the Jungle such a hot spot. If old age didn't kill these creatures, the bacteria in the Jungle would. Old age claimed a life first, though. Antonio, the first gen male Grendel, was the first to die around 4 hours and 38 minutes. Since my world was at the population limit, a little gen 5 male grendel hatched. Not a second later, an old gen 1 male Stinger Norn died of starvation. This left the Norn Terrarium group without a male, though there were two or three in the Jungle. Even the stinger baby who hatched was female.

Amusingly, my norn home smell emitter was still active and confusing Norns. A female Stinger named Kanako decided to lay her egg in the Ark's hallway. She really didn't know what to do with herself. She picked up her egg, tried to hit it, but ended up dancing around with a teacup. The newest Grendel joined her for a while before traveling to the Desert. He was the latest member of the Grendel group to make that journey, with Isolda being the first.

While watching the Grendel, one of the gen 1 Stingers, Miai, died. She died of starvation in the Jungle, which had more then enough food. A little stinger male hatched, and I moved him into the Norn Terrarium. And then Tsiyi died of apparently nothing. He wasn't old, diseased, or starving. Living in the Jungle might have gotten to him though. He was one of the sicker ones when the histamine plague hit. I then noticed that there weren't any Grendel eggs.

Slightly worried for my favorite group of creatures in this world, I decided to export the latest baby, just in case the whole population died out. All of the Grendels were older then an hour, and a decent amount of the were in the old stage or higher. There were two or three Grendels still below old age though. I also moved the Jungle Stingers to the Meso, since the Grendels and Norns were getting into little slap-fights here and there. To both breeds credit, neither side had killed one another yet, they just didn't like each other very much.

Mobula Ray: Genetic weirdness

I'll admit, my interest in this world died a little bit when Isolda died. Because of this I decided to stop blogging the world when most or all of the first generation died off. Considering these first gen Stingers were close to the three hour mark, that wasn't far off. Anai Stinger usually live 10ish hours, but I had forgotten to length this version's lifespan. So they had the regular lifespan of about five and a half hours. The Ettins were over three hours old at this point, and the rest of the first gens weren't to far behind. The only surviving gen 1 Grendel, a male named Antonio, was over 3 hours old and already in the old stage.

It wasn't any of the first gens who died first though. Instead it was a second gen Grendel who died of starvation. I was quite disappointed to see that, since the room was filled with food, and I was fond of dumping food near them. There really wasn't a good excuse for him starving. Still, his death meant that there were only three males left, and one of those was the first gen. In another part of the world, Christian, the ex-loner Stinger male, finally had a child named Fidelio. Sadly, that child ended up being a fastager and died quickly.

Slightly weirded out by the Stinger dying, I copied down the fastagers moniker and compared it's genome to the base genome. Before I got very far in it though, I noticed that the Jungle Terrarium couple, Ezura and Sassacus, had a baby. As if that wasn't enough, the newest Stinger baby quickly suffocated to death... on land. So I added her moniker to the list to compare. I also noticed the first gen Grendel had histamine, so I moved him to the medbay to cure him. While doing so, I found Christian trying to eat an elevator. So I moved the both of them to the Jungle and paused the game. I was tired of the interruptions and was dying to know what happened to the babies.

Finding out what happened to the fastager was easy. The initial concentration of life was set to variant 1, which meant that this Stinger was dead when it was born. I debated if I should to fix this in the base genomes or not, and went with yes. This sort of mutation is unrealistic and mildly disturbing. While the first baby was easy to figure out, the second one was much harder to pin down. It didn't have any obvious mutations like the last one. I did eventually find out what happened, and it's even more interesting. File 1 is the baby who died, and file two is the original genome:

 150 Different in file 1 176   0 Emb B MutDupCut        128   0 Organ# = 6, Current Reaction, No Tissue, Unknown Locus: 2, chem=Antigen 5, thresh=0, nom=0, gain=68, features=Analogue  (0)
 150 Different in file 2 176   0 Emb B MutDupCut        128   0 Organ# = 6, Organ, Organ, Injury, chem=Antigen 5, thresh=0, nom=0, gain=68, features=Analogue  (0)

This mutation, if it was connected to a less vital reaction, wouldn't be fatal. It's supposed to injure an organ when the Norn is infected with Antigen 5, but it's mutated to shut off the reaction entirely. If I remember correctly, this sort of receptor setup speeds up or slows down a reaction, depending on how much of that chemical is in the Norn's body or if the chemical passes a threshold. It's been a while since I've messed with receptor genes, so correct me if I'm wrong in the comments. The only thing I know for sure is that the baby dies even with antigen 5 in its system. The only way I got the poor thing to live was by silencing the mutated receptor. Once I did that, her clone was fine.

When I unpaused the world, Ezura and Sassacus had another baby, a healthy female this time. After checking on the rest of the world, I noticed some of the second gen Grendels were getting old. Also that the Jungle was getting quite crowded, with 9 Grendels and 4 Norns. The Norn Terrarium was also a bit full. So I lowered the population limit from 40 to a more manageable 32. Seeing as the world already had 32 creatures in it, any new eggs wouldn't hatch.

And then, like Creatures worlds usually do after such an eventful time, they go silent. Eventually, I got bored and used the airlock glitch on a scent emitter. I think it confused a norn, because Ditte left the Terrarium to come check it out. It shocked her so much, she went grey! Or at least that's what I like to think. Really it was just her unusually short lifespan kicking in.

Mobula Ray: Distractions and Death

Last time, everything was going pretty well. So well in fact, that I felt confidant I could leave the game running while I took care of something else. When I came back Sayo, one of the gen 1 Grendels, and one of the gen 2 stinger males were dead. Isolda had apparently had enough of the heat and Ettins and moved back to the Jungle. Some Stinger had tagged along with her, and now the Jungle had both Norns and Grendels in it. Also Miai and Isolda had their first babies. Miai's baby turned out to be female while Isolda had twins, one male and one female.

Christian had moved down to be with the rest of the Stingers, and Ditte had another female child. It didn't take long for one of the Stinger males, Sassacus and Isolda's male baby, Tsiyi, to move to the Desert terrarium. One of the Ettins, Uda, was still in there. So perhaps the Grendel wanted to keep him mother's childhood friend company. One of the Norn garden gang has also decided to move to the Meso, a mountain Norn named Xerxes.

After a while, Tsiyi moved back to the Grendel Jungle, probably to pass on a message from the Ettin to his mother. The Norn garden gang had another baby, which I moved into the Norn Meso to give Xerxes some company. I was regretting my choice of marks for the grendels at this point. All of the swords tended to merge when they were all together. Also regrettable that I forgot to pause the game when the phone rang and I was distracted for a while.

When I got back, Isolda was dead. She was fine when I last saw her, but a full dose of Antigen 6 was to much for her. Even sadder was the fact that she was pregnant when she died. There was still hope for them though, her daughter had laid an egg and I was also able to use the eggernator to get Isolda's last egg. Isolda's egg hatched into a male named Guregori. He was immediately swarmed by flies. So I moved him to safety and notice that Sassacus had moved into the Jungle as well. And one of the Stinger had twins! Despite the deaths, the Stingers were up to 12 members, the Grendels still had 10 members, and the Norngarden Gang were up to 8 members.

Mobula Ray: Cacti and Ice Cream

 

I loaded up the world again and decided to add come cactus toys I created for a different world. While I was adding some cactus toys I've been messing around with to the Ettin Desert, a Stinger had another male baby. And then one female got pregnant again. I realized that I hadn't added the longer pregnancy to this Stinger genome and wrote down a reminder to fix that. Then I went back to adding cacti.

After I finished adding cacti, nothing really happened for a while. I was getting really bored of watching them until I remembered the ice cream machine and decided to make ice cream for everyone. It works like the quirky cookie maker, and it's always fun to see what mixes together. The main gaggle of Stingers weren't impressed by my creations, and ignored them. Another Stinger had joined Christian at the crypt, and he even grabbed the ice cream. I think the color confused him though, because he just danced around with it before taking a nap. The Norngarden gang were happier to see them and one female immediately took a bite. Isolda was also happy to see them and ate one before I could take a screenshot. The Grendels in the Jungle weren't interested either and were more interested in practicing their crowded dance.

When I went back to check on my Stingers, I found Christian with a different Stinger, Miai, and they had apparently fallen in love. And two more babies had been born, two females. Both of them were from Ditte, who was a baby making machine. She alone had possibly secured the next generation for the Stingers, barring any plagues. Considering I was curing any sick Norns, plagues weren't very likely. The Norngarden gang had only had a grand total of one baby, and weren't looking so good. The Grendels were doing slightly better, with quite a few second gens. All in all, everything looked pretty good.