Glitch Norns

I figure it's probably about time to introduce you to another one of my experiments gone haywire: the Glitch Norns. The idea I had in mind when I made these was to create Norns with funny poses that would move strangely but could still do stuff fairly normally. I gave them the name 'Glitch Norns' because the end goal was essentially to make them look like they were all weird and glitchy. I made two versions of the Glitch Norns, the second one 'improved' from the first (it wasn't really: predictably I screwed it up). There are only two Glitch Norns: Pythagoras, the first one, and Tessa, the second.

Essentially, the method I used to make these Norns was quite simple: enter the genetics kit, change up pose strings and hey presto, you're done. Very scientific.

CCSF 2015

OK, I'm late to the party. Even so, I'm actually really excited by this year's CCSF, and I have been following along this whole time; I was just too lazy to post anything until now. There's been a lot of really good stuff so far and I can't wait to see what comes over the next couple of days.

The link to the CCSF is here, in case you missed it.

I think the thing which really makes the CCSF (you probably know already, but just in case you don't, CCSF stands for Creatures Community Spirit Festival) special is that it shows that, even though the series is like a decade old, we're still here, and we have it in us to pull off something like the CCSF every year. And more than that, I think it shows just how much we all love the series.

I could say something eloquent about community spirit and endurance and what have you, but, essentially, that's what it boils down to: we all love the series.

'Nuff said.

Operation Save Unova

It's been awhile since I visited my Norns that aren't genetically modified, so when I sat down to play creatures today I thought I might boot up their world. Honestly though, I think I forgot how hard it is to look after ancient (and I'm talking 30+ hours old) Norns. They just don't eat like they used to!

...especially when they're hanging out and refuse to be separated from each other. As you can see from this picture, Coco, Finch and Dubby have decided to party on the raft, which doesn't make it easy to feed them.

As it turned out, though, these three Norns weren't really going to cause me too much trouble in the end—they all had an OK life force, so it wasn't like they were going to drop dead if they didn't eat within the next ten minutes.

But Unova—oh, Unova. She was the one I needed to be concerned about. She simply didn't eat. Her life force had dropped to around 35% and she still wouldn't eat. And of course, she was only going to find a way to make matters even worse. While I took a short break to admire Aladdin as he played some music for me on the drums and harp, Cosmos found Unova and made her bloody pregnant.

I didn't fancy her chances at this point. Especially seeing as I would have to find a way to get Cosmos away from her for there even to be chance that she might eat something.

Carrot Love

At first, this might seem like Monty is just feeling a tad peckish. Don't be fooled. I'll admit that he was hungry at the time, but he wasn't actually eating this parsnip. Just staring at it lovingly...

Alas, it was not to be. He gave into the hunger pangs. Well, it was fun while it lasted, I guess, and it seems to have sparked a craze with all things carrot-like in Albia. Not only did Monty find a cave carrot to obsess over afterwards, he even went so far as to share his newfound love of carrots with Quella, who was happy to join in with him.

And Monty and Quella weren't the only ones to get caught up in this new trend. Over at the island, Erin couldn't keep her eyes off a parsnip. And the lift. And the parsnip. And the lift. She couldn't decide which was worth focusing on so she spent a good minute or two just swapping between them. I suppose it simply fascinated her.

Lonely Norns—Update

Just checking in real quick to let y'all know that the Lonely Norns are available for download now, and a full list of their genetic modifications is up on their pages too. You can get them from here.

Have fun with them :)

Lonely Norns

Dr. Shoy is back! Sorry for the absence.

The idea behind the lonely Norns was to create a breed of Norns that would avoid each other's company, but would still have a trigger that would fill them with sex drive so that they would still want to breed. Guess how that turned out???????

Yep. So, Monty, Erin, Quella, and Cornelius are all Lonely Norns. There's quite a few changes in their genome so I'll merely summarise the changes rather than listing every edited gene compared with the original version. Keep in mind while you read this that the changes probably don't have all that much logic to them as I knew very little of genetics when I made these.

A main feature of the Lonely Norns was my attempt to make them change from hating each other to horny in an instant - which was going to be done by slapping and patting them. Patting was supposed to make the Norns sex drive go down and slapping was supposed to bring it up. That at least did work, but at the time I didn't realise that saying 'yes' and 'no' have the same affect as physically patting/slapping the Norns, so I didn't realise that this would leave me with no way to punish and reward them without putting other chemicals in that might affect their learning.

The other main aspect was controlling three chemicals: loneliness, sex drive, and crowdedness. Of course, being the inexperienced little mad scientist that I was back then, I'm not sure I fully understood what I was doing. It seems I was operating under the assumption that these three drives, upon being changed, would automatically convince the Norns to act in different ways, when that's not the case; the drives affect the neurons in the drive lobe (which can be used to form concepts) and punishment/reward is used to reinforce the concepts.