Creatures 2 Albia is a large and intricate world full of caverns, passages, and impassible terrain. Trying to circumnavigate it is a very difficult task for the average pedestrian, and the Shee and their Ettin engineers have devised means to explicate otherwise arduous journeys.
Of course C2toDS includes the basic boats and dingy of C2, but here is a look at some of the more interesting ones.
Beam Me Up Bibble!
Like Creatures 1 Albia--and all of the Creatures series--Creatures 2 includes a teleportation system: a complex network of interlinked transporter devices that can ferry Creatures from one place to another.
Personally, I never used any of them, and don’t know anyone else who did, but since I’ve recently implemented them myself and improved upon their functionality, let me take a moment to explain the teleportation system and my improvements.
The teleporters of Creatures 2, and consequently C2toDS, have general operating procedures of randomly selecting another transporter pad in the network on activation, however, there is a dedicated line on each pad to the incubator room. It’s very handy for quickly transporting toys, seeds, food, gadgets, or lost Norns back to the burrow.
Which brings me to a new feature! Unlike Creatures 2, Creatures 2 to Docking Station’s teleporters have been upgraded to include not only inorganic matter in their pattern buffers, but simpler biological life forms as well. Everything from caterpillars, to seed launchers, to Norns and machinery, can be whisked away in a flash!
Lift! I Need Lift!
You already know C2toDS comes with the same lifts as Creatures 2, but what you may not know is how versatile and intelligent the lifts actually are.
C2toDS’s lifts are versatile from a developer’s standpoint because they can be easily implemented and function almost anywhere. Adding another lift to C2toDS, with any number of stops, would take mere minutes, and each stop can be fine tuned.
Players should note that C2toDS’s lifts have a prioritized memory, and if a creature or the Hand has pushed another call button in the system, it will proceed to that stop after it has finished it’s current round. Any number of buttons can be pushed in any order, and the lift will navigate them in time, and appropriate priority order.
Retro-Travel, All Aboard the Cable Car!
Loyal readers are rewarded with secrets, surprises, and fun facts, and this is one such time!
Buried in soil of the once beloved Albian garden--now turned gaping chasm--and unearthed by the running waters, the cable car of Creatures 1 has been lifted up back into the treetops to serve loyal passengers once again!
It does it’s duty by ferrying creatures across the mighty gap, giving travelers another, very scenic, means to cross the waterfall canyon.
Ride on quaint traveler! Ride on!
Love the cable car. A cool idea, add some flowers to the bush it passes so norns in it can pick them to eat. And hummingbirds to polinate the flowers.
ReplyDeleteThe flowers are there, but not pickable. see the yellow ones? They came from Life Kit 2. :) And hummingbirds just weren't injected at the time. ;)
ReplyDeleteI certainly wasn't expecting the cable car to show up, but it did and it was wicked. \o/
ReplyDeleteI'm not certain if I read it right, but if I did it's news to me that the teleporters in the original C2 can teleport stuff that isn't creatures.
No no, that's a new feature. My C2toDS teleporters can handle other objects. :)
ReplyDeleteCable car! Yes!
ReplyDeleteC2 could definitely use more efficient transportation. I've always had the problem of my norns... well, not going anywhere. They'd stick around the incubator for the duration of their sad, sheltered little lives. :(
Man, all of these great updates. I'm getting ridiculously excited over here.
You should be!
ReplyDeleteI'm getting ridiculously excited, and I'm the one coding the jellyfish swimming around the oceans!
Awesome :D Sounds like I'll be able to use the lifts to rock a norn to sleep, like I did in C1 :D
ReplyDeleteYou guys are so goddamn awesome...
ReplyDeleteLove this. More useful teleporters = <3 And love the added cable car!
ReplyDeleteQuestion: Will it be possible to toggle the teleporters' features on/off? Meaning, setting an individual teleporter so it either only goes to another teleporter, only goes "home" to the incubator, or both?
The C2 teleporters have 2 buttons. One for going to the incubator, one for going someplace else.
ReplyDeleteOnly the hand can activate the "go home only" button. When creatures press it, they'll be ferried to a random teleporter in the network.
Perfect. :D I never liked the 50/50 chance of a rare travelling C2 norn ending up back by the incubator. D:
ReplyDeleteFantastic work on the teleporting system, and is a great idea to introduce cable car, more ways for the norns to go where they wants. And made the jellyfishs swimming around the oceans, give to it (finally) more logical moves :) And do you make more than one jellyfish?
ReplyDeleteThey have had significant changes, and now follow the lifecycle of a jellyfish much more realistically. And yes, they do move more realistically, as well. :)
ReplyDeleteHave you added cataloge files yet?
ReplyDeleteSlowly but surely :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for have respond to my question (about the jellyfishs), but i have a another question. Which cobs have you decided to recreate for this great project? Some people have suggered great things in the previews posts :). And i have a idea (and is only a idea), in C2 when you select the «health care injector» you can inject cod oil... but i never view this fish in the original game (is only a idea and you are not obliged to make it, if you don't want), after you are the masters of this project
ReplyDeletePS: Great work on the rainbows :)
I guess you'll just have to wait and see ;) We're not giving up all our secrets at once!
ReplyDelete