Creatures 2 to Docking Station

The Granary

2011-05-15T15:04:00.001-04:00

As mentioned on the C2toDS Facebook Fanpage, the Granary is a large silo capable of being filled with tasty foods, fruits and seeds.

Even after I fine-tune the C2toDS ecosystem, Albian winters are still long and harsh, and many species of plants won’t be able to tolerate the cold for such a long time. Automated replenishment will be an option, but for those of you who enjoy taking an active part in a realistic world, the granary will help you fend off the starvation of your beloved pets. Collect and harvest any food, fruit, or seed and keep it for those long, cold winter months.

A sufficiently stocked granary will give you plenty of time to wait for the warmth of spring, after the final frosts, to reseed the world with the various seed dispensers in Albia.

How it works:

You can manually drop any food, fruit, or seed into the granary, but for easy collection, you will also be able to shift-click to harvest everything laying on the ground nearby. Once it’s in the granary, there is no easy way to retrieve it without vending everything in the silo, so be sure you want to store it before putting it in!

Nothing in the granary ever spoils, and it is also labeled as a dispenser, so Creatures should learn to use it themselves just as they would any other vendor—just be sure they don’t wipe out your supplies the first day and leave it to rot on the open ground!

Beneath the Canopy, and Other Old Stuff.

2011-04-09T18:49:00.001-04:00

Check out the post at the Dev blog about the making of the Canopy, and keep your eyes peeled for more to come as I dig through my archives! Click the link to go!

Ssshhh! We’re sleeping!

2011-04-07T22:58:00.001-04:00

Just updating the blog to let everyone know that C2toDS is not dead, just dormant while I and Liam focus on school and work.

Also, a bit disappointed by the lack of involvement in the Developer’s Challenge I posted a while back. I suppose 10 cobs/agents was a lofty goal, considering I’ve gotten none! So I’d like to ask, what is the greatest obstacle to you developing? What would help remove that obstacle? Do you struggle with graphics, coding? Post it in the comments!

C2toDS With C1toDS

2011-02-26T21:46:00.001-05:00

Since I’m getting tired of hearing about it…

C2toDS DOES NOT WORK WITH C1toDS.

THERE IS NOT, AND WILL NOT BE, A FIX FOR THIS ISSUE, AS THERE IS NO IDENTIFIABLE REASON FOR THEIR INCOMPATABILITY OTHER THAN ENGINE LIMITS. IT IS NOT AN ERROR WITH C2TODS.

You MAY get lucky if you install C1toDS AFTER C2toDS, but even that doesn’t work all the time.

Developer’s Challenge! #1

2011-02-12T02:49:00.001-05:00

Spending hours upon hours developing C2toDS, I rarely get to actually go back and play Creatures 2, but I can think of many awesome cobs I loved to play with, and many things I wanted to add to C2 (Which become inspiration for things I’m doing in C2toDS!).

So I got to thinking, why not put out a challenge of sorts? C2 was a great, if neglected, game. There was so much that could have been done, but never was. I want to see more for C2. Things to inspire me, things to make me want to play it!

In short, I want to see 10 new cobs for Creatures 2.

But that’s not all! I also want to see things from Creatures 2 brought to DS/C3.

I want 10 new agents either based on something in C2, cobs from C2 converted (with permission from their respective owners) to DS/C3, cobs originally for C2 remade and re-imagined for DS, or cobs made specifically for C2toDS.

And finally, there might be something in it for those who make cobs! Maybe I’ll port your cobs to C2toDS, maybe you’ll get to beta-test the next release, or maybe you’ll get a sneak peak at something I’m doing on the side! ;)

Either way you’ll be rewarded by enriching the community with your contributions and helping to inspire Liam and I to develop!

There’s no deadline for this challenge, or limit to the number of contributions, so start developing!

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Not an agent engineer or a cobbler and feeling left out? Don’t! More opportunities in various categories will be given, so that everyone can do their part! :)

Release 2.1

2011-02-11T00:00:00.002-05:00

Get Release 2.1 here!

Just fixed a couple small bugs, and tried to make it Mac compatible by attempting to remove the rainbow spew. Unfortunately I have no Mac testers at this time, so I don’t know if I succeeded. I also fixed a small map bug that prevented tall creatures from traveling into the Greenhouses.

Remember that you MUST, MUST, MUST, MUST delete all sprite files in your Images directory beggining with the prefix, “moe_C2toDS_” and inject C2toDS into a NEW WORLD, IF you’re upgrading from the FIRST release. If you don’t, things will mess up! The cheese machine and lifts in particular.

Download Mirror 1

C2toDS Release 2!

2011-02-02T23:27:00.001-05:00

The highly anticipated C2toDS Release 2 has arrived and it’s jam-packed with all kinds of goodies!

Such additions include:

Full transportation system, including to and from Albia and the Capillata
A wide variety of Albian plants and wildlife
New additions to C2 such as the Air Trolley (among other exciting additions)
New vendors
Toys!
...and a few secrets to discover! ;)

Get it here!

And don’t forget to get the music here!

The first release had dependency bugs and would not inject. If you were unable to install the first release, you can re-download the whole thing above, or download this somewhat smaller patch. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This release is far from finished. Send bug reports to:

C2toDS (-at-) Gmail.com (CAOS errors only, please)

And as always, we love your feedback! Leave your comments below or on our Facebook page. :)

Credits and Shout Outs!

I forgot to put this in the credits, but I really should give a big shout out Elastic Muffin for giving us a sub-domain and bandwidth to host C2toDS so we don’t have to deal with those nasty file-share sites! Thanks EM!

Also, thanks to Aquashee, for assisting me with some post-release beta testing, and for ideas and suggestions. :)

And of course, Liam, my partner in crime, for coding things, and a whole boatload of other Liamnessness…plus for poking and prodding me into make a new release. ;)

And last but not least, the community, for not dying on me! Stay strong! Stay supportive! Keep developing, commenting, drawing, writing, or whatever it is you do to contribute to the Creatures Community. Thanks!

GOG Sales!

2010-12-29T11:49:00.001-05:00

The sale has ended. Hope you were able to get the games while they were cheap! You can get them now for $9.99—still a great price. :)

Good Old Games.com is having a spectacular sale! You can get The Albian Years, Exodus, and Creatures Village for 4.99 each!

If you’ve never played any of these titles, I highly recommend making a purchase--particularly if you’ve never played the original Creatures 2.

While C2toDS will be accurate, expansive, and more advanced than Creatures 2, it can never replace the quaint atmosphere and quirks of the original; not to mention it contains the Emerald, Hebe, Golden Desert, Frog and Pixie Norn breeds—arguably the most adorable of all the series!

So while you wait for C2toDS, there’s never been a better time to go snatch up The Albian Years and play the original. Not to mention, the original game is the best sneak peak of what is to come you can find!

Thanks to Jessica from Discover Albia for bringing it to my attention through her thoughtful Facebook and Twitter updates!

To my knowledge, all of these games work on Vista and Windows 7. However, I am not the manufacturer or a sales rep. Please don’t ask questions in my comments section about compatibility, pricing, marketing, or anything equally unrelated to C2toDS and Creatures. Thanks. :)

Socialize’d

2010-12-28T11:40:00.001-05:00

Check us out on Facebook and Twitter! See the links and live feed in the side! -->

Like or Follow for an inside look at developing…or more likely…the profane jibberish of a developer’s frustration! Either way, check it out. :)

C2toDS Preview Agent from the CCSF 2010!

2010-12-21T19:27:00.000-05:00

This is a C2toDS sneak peak agent from Moe!

It adds relocatable butterflies and pear plants to the Capillata, giving it a whole lot more life.

You can download the C2toDS preview agent over at the CCSF 2010 website!

xx Liam and Moe

HEY YA'LL

2010-11-17T01:36:00.001-05:00

Just an update to assure you that despite popular belief, we are not dead. Resting for a while, perhaps, but not dead. :)

Have a complementary screenshot in the meantime!

Boo! D:

2010-10-04T12:44:00.001-04:00

Sometime around 1998 Creature Labs released a Halloween object pack. As that season approaches, and Albia has graced our screens once more, it was only fitting to reproduce the Halloween pack.

There are two agents in the package. One for C2toDS, to decorate your world just as it was in C2, and one for Docking Station to liven up your Meso.

All the objects of the pack have been remade and altered, with a few additions, namely the pots and wind-up-bat toy you see above.

Some of the objects can be quite frightening, so expect to see a lot of scared creatures if you install these cobs! :)

Download- Happy Halloween! -Download

Traveling Albia

2010-09-17T12:27:00.001-04:00

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!

C2toDS! And Then Some…!

2010-09-15T01:07:00.001-04:00

I started playing Creatures with Creatures 2, and I remember all the cobs I used to play with, all the cobs I wish people would make, and all the cobs I wanted to make.

Many of them are lost, sadly, including many of my favorites. But no matter what game you play, most of us have downloaded cobs we feel really should have been standard in the game, or seen things that should be fixed or expanded in any of the series.

Possessing both the authority and ability to shape C2toDS to my liking, I’m taking the creative liberty to expand and add the game, in both small and large ways.

Several previous posts examined various ways I’ve added small features, bee boxes and honey jars, mushrooms, and connectable gadgets, but I’d like to spend a brief moment on some new additions. :)

First up are the mushrooms you see above. You probably saw them before, tucked into a screenshot, but I never mentioned them directly. The concept was actually taken from the background of the world itself, and brought to life. There are several things in the world that I have done this with.

Second in our lineup for this post are a handful of new gadgets for your enjoyment. They fill various gaps in the world, from vending seeds and fruits, to critters. Some of them are obvious as to their function, but what do the others do and how do they operate? Well you’ll have to find out. :)

Our final sneak peek for this post are a lost cob I remade. As I remember, it was one of the most well done plants for C2. Sadly I can no longer find the original cob and don’t recall the author, but these pepper plants pay homage to a great plant from my memory and ~~a cob lost to time~~. Extremely healthy, with various properties depending on the color/ripeness when eaten, they fight disease while filling tummies! Though slightly hot with a little kick, they are one of the healthiest fruits in the game.

These are just a few of the additions I’ve made to C2toDS. Now I want to know what your favorite C2 Cob is! If you’ve never played C2, what about C1? And finally, if you’ve never played either of those, what is your favorite C3/DS agent? And why, of course!

Personally I don’t have a favorite. I loved a lot of cobs, mostly animals, plants, and cool gadgets, especially those which allowed you to grow more things.

EDIT: I FOUND THE PEPPER COB! on one of my favorite sites, The Creatures of Avalon. :D It was a cob made by none of other than Spirit. :)

I’ve Got You Trapped Now! >:D

2010-09-03T20:08:00.001-04:00

One of the most frustrating things about my early days of C2, and even C3/DS, were the difficulties of keeping Norns contained to certain areas.

While people have invented various agents, from force fields, to gadgets and door locks, and even “stopper” agents to deal with the Norn instinct to travel, I felt it would be a good idea to incorporate features directly into C2toDS wherever needed, to aid in wrangling and entrapping creatures.

One of the most important places such features are needed of course, are on the call buttons. Not only do Norns, by their very nature, become obsessed with lift call buttons, they also use them frequently to run amuck in a world.

Not anymore! The two main lift call buttons in Albia have been programmed with locking mechanisms that make them invisible and inoperable to Creatures!

And you can also see that they both have input and output ports for programming automated actions related to lifts. Trigger the cheese machine to vend as soon as a Norn comes down, perhaps? The limit is your creativity.

---

I’ve also fixed another extremely irritating, saddening, and common problem from Creatures 2. In fact, my first Norn, a green Emerald named “Matt” died from drowning…I cried…so Norn safety is important to me.

With newly installed dock moors with safety rope, creatures will never run off the edge again!

And finally, to surely halt all ye meandering nomads and to protect the wayward wanderer, I have recreated the electric gate from the Creatures 2 Object Pack #1. As an added bonus and improvement upon the original, it has one output port, reflects agents as well as creatures, and the sound of the field can be disabled on each unit. :) Observe the field here, reflecting (and also activating) a tomato launcher. :)

I Really Feel We Have a Connection…

2010-09-03T00:07:00.001-04:00

One of the things most lacking in Creatures Docking Station were connectable agents, and to this day, few agents incorporate this fun and interesting feature of the C3/DS engine. It really gave users a hobby of sorts--to create useful and fun complex gadgets.

I recently discovered my love of connectable agents, have began to incorporate them into C2toDS.

This was of course a controversial decision, because it requires editing sprites to incorporate ports, and breaking some of the immersion one might have between C2 and C2toDS. However, after carefully weighing the decision, and by that I mean I thought it was cool so I kept going, I’ve been incorporating connectability into many of C2toDS’s agents.

From call buttons, to the cheese machine, to teleporters, to tomato launchers, all kinds of gadgets are hooking up!

Hate it or Love it, let me know. :)

We're not dead! We're still alive!

2010-08-18T02:58:00.002-04:00

Just a quick post to assure everyone that we haven't died in mysterious accidents, we've both just been a little busy and haven't had time to update the blog. Expect an update in the next week, when they resume properly!

In the meantime: if we were to release a preview agent, what would you want it to be?

And now for an instrumental...

2010-07-19T05:26:00.000-04:00

Just a quick update to show that we're still alive and working--I'm on holiday in Sweden right now, and I'll soon be on holiday in Victoria, AUS (skiing), but rest assured I'll be back in full gear in August!

In the meantime, I'm interested in seeing how many people read this blog. Post your support below, and why you think C2toDS is awesome!

Some day I'll fly away...

2010-07-09T04:08:00.000-04:00

The rumoured appearance of bees on Albia has been confirmed! The bees are possibly some of the more complex agents in C2toDS, and can travel vast distances to collect pollen. They also come with a few surprises, so it's well worth following them if they seem to be heading in a particular direction...

Why do I develop?

2010-07-07T00:47:00.002-04:00

I was reading Amaikokonut’s blog earlier today, and came across an interesting post entitled Why Develop?

I’ve been considering the question of ‘why do I develop’ for so long now I’m no longer entirely sure I know what the question means!

First off, why Creatures, and not some other game? Why not a newer game that combines writing and nice code/art? The answer to this question is pretty simple for me. One, I know these games well. I’ve been playing Creatures for almost 10 years, and I’ve been playing BGII for 7. The next reason is that I know how to develop for these games, and I don’t need to learn a whole new way of thinking. It’s relatively simple for me to pick up the CAOS tool and tap out a functioning agent. But beyond those things, there is something that keeps me coming back.

When I think about it, the pessimist in me says, “What’s the point? The community’s surely no more than thirty people scattered over various sites, and out of that thirty few are actually going to try whatever you make. The community is small, none of the games are officially supported and—let’s face it—the series is thoroughly outdated. Why bother?”

I know several other people who regularly ask themselves this. I’m not the only one. There are so many reasons not to develop for Creatures, so many reasons to pick up the Dragon Age toolset and make a brand-spanking new companion called Jamir who has a penchant for heels and rouge-- or, uh, possibly not--but you get my drift. There are far more recent games, with much larger audiences to play any mods I release.

Despite this, I keep coming back for more. There is something about this game, this series, this concept that just hooks me in. And if I’m honest with myself, it ain’t the norns.

I remember when I was first introduced to Creatures. I was 11 or 12, and Dad bought it from a computing store, thinking that I might enjoy it. I can remember first visiting the CL website and downloading the Purple Mountain Norns, and being so excited at the prospect of playing with new objects and imported norns. (As I recall that was also my first foray into the internet, as well, and we all know how that ended up: I’m virtually attached to a screen at all times.) I would come home from school, boot up Creatures, and play until I was booted off by well-meaning parents worried about the effects of too much time in front of a computer. (They’ve given up now that I’m no longer living at home, thankfully. That would just be awkward.)

I played Creatures 1 because I loved raising norns. I was so attached to them that often remember there being a few tears when they died. It was my great love of norns that drove me to download my first few third-party objects—sadly I don’t remember what they were—but I do remember that they were to help me care for my intrepid creatures. But though my intentions were noble and norn-serving, with those ventures into the world of 3rd party objects, I was forever changed... though I didn’t know it yet.
It didn’t take me long to decide to make my own cobs, though initially I didn’t get far. I think I followed a tutorial on making some cheese, at which point Creatures 2 was bought for me and that was far more interesting. Frustratingly I didn’t find Creatures 2 as engaging as Creatures, but I faithfully played it until I got Docking Station.

Docking Station was something of a turning point in my Creatures-playing-career, as it signified the point where I stopped playing for the creatures themselves. Of course, earlier on I was playing for the new addons, to try out new breeds and cobs, but I was still mainly in it for the norns, ettins and grendels... but with the release of Docking Station, I found I couldn’t engage with my furry liyylr subjects. Still, I loved the look of the game, the new interface, and the plethora of objects that soon became available... as well as the lively atmosphere on Albia2000 and the GE Forums, where I spent much of my online life. The norns didn’t interest me, but the community and the addons did, and I soon decided to help out with several projects.

Within less than a week I was hooked. And then a couple of us developers got to talking, and BLG showed up and posted some amazing artwork on the GE forums, and most of you probably know the story from there.

I’m still not sure what’s so alluring about development itself. I think it’s the strange feeling of joy when you get something ingame that you worked hard to create. It’s hard to describe until you’ve experienced it yourself. It’s very satisfying, and I suspect more than somewhat addictive. Using Docking Station, it’s relatively easy for me to create something and get it ingame due to my previous experience... so it makes sense that I would keep coming back, in that way.

With all this blathering, however, I still haven’t answered the question of why I develop despite the community being small and my paranoia that few people ever actually install and play my modifications. There is just something about the community and the game that keeps me coming back. One theory is that it’s my history, the countless hours I’ve spent participating in the community, the fond memories of development teams and forum roleplay, of hours spent perfecting models in 3D Studio Max and yet more hours spent inputting code to the CAOS tool to make my models come to life.

Or maybe it’s just that Creatures is bloody awesome, and I’m going to keep caring about it and making addons for it until I finally get a job in the game development industry, and maybe beyond.

If I had to choose, I think I like reason #2.

Crossposted from the Creatures Development Blog.

The Lost Cave Released!

2010-06-28T04:09:00.003-04:00

The Lost Cave Story
The Albian Temple has always been a mystical place, somehow special beyond others, especially to Norns and Ettins. Perhaps it is no wonder that in the eruption following the Lone Shee's departure from Albia, the Temple was saved. Encased in molten lava, the Temple and its surrounds remained untouched as it was flung into space in the explosion. The lava quickly quickly cooled, forming a protective bubble around the Temple. As the Temple travelled through space, the inhabitants began to evolve, forming entirely new species, distinct from those of Albia. Evidence that some other strange race visited the Temple exist in the form of the symbiotic Caveweed and Cavefish, which are totally unlike anything from Albia. Currently, the Lost Cave (as it has come to be called), is in orbit around a sun in some distant part of the universe.

On one of his regular excursions through the Warp, the Lone Shee came across the Lost Cave... and marvelled at the ability of life to exist in almost any circumstance.

History
The room originally began as a project by artist Bifrost, back in 2004. I (Liam) volunteered to code it, as Bifrost was struggling, and coded several objects before Bifrost and I moved onto other things in our lives and in the community. Several attempts were made to restart the project, but it wasn't until I started working on Creatures 2 to Docking Station with Moe that I began to seriously think about finishing it.

With Moe's help, I pulled together what was existing and between us we added several new things to give the room a little more life, and am now proud to present The Lost Cave to the community.

Credits
The Lost Cave and several of the objects were created by Bifrost. Moe worked to create new images for the remaining objects needed, and shared the code-load. Moe made the fantastic c1-style music and added further sound effects and enhancements. A big thank you to our testers pirate-rob and TreeSprite for ensuring everything worked OK, and for pointing out remaining bugs.

Concept and background: Bifrost
Object graphics: Bifrost & Moe
Coding: Liam & Moe
Descriptions: Moe & Liam
Packaging: Liam

Download the Lost Cave here!

Crossposted from the Creatures Development Blog.

Crazy Carrot

2010-06-21T20:04:00.002-04:00

Work is preceding apace! Keep your eyes on the blog, we're gonna be making weekly or biweekly posts until release. :)

Creatures 2 to Docking Station was running in the background the other day while I was doing some work on the Biodome, and by chance I scrolled by the Treehouse section… to find this. Oh, dear. Obviously Moe’s population control monitor wasn’t working quite right.

Crazy carrots indeed.

[For the record, I was aware of this problem before Liam injected them. :O I’m a good coder I tell you! A good coder! – Moe]

What preview would you like to see next?

2010-06-14T23:14:00.001-04:00

C'mon guys and girls, what sort of preview would you like to see next from the infamous Moe and Liam?

Apple Norns Released

2010-06-13T23:03:00.003-04:00

Hi all!

I've got an exciting announcement to make... after many years languishing on Moe's harddrive, we dusted off a norn breed hitherto unreleased to the CC! With help from Grendel Man, geneticist extraordinaire, we have a fantastic new breed for you to play with.

Pulled from Moe's archives, these Apple Norns, originally meant to be released with the Canopy, are finally seeing the light of day. You can trace the Apple Norns' ancestry back to the Treehugger norns, though these Norns are very social and love to eat fruit. Their fur is waxy and smooth, making them prefer moist environments. They are at one with nature, and will chase clouds or any kind of weather when homesick. They have a strong immune system; boasting a resistance to ATP Decoupler and Cyanide, which is found in trace amounts inside of apple seeds. They tend to be great navigators and bear eggs with considerable ease.

They occupy Norn Slot Y.

Credits:
Liam - Forced takeover of the project!!!
Moe - Images
Edash - Concept
GrendelMan - Genetics
Vampess - CFE Genome

You can download the Apple Norns by clicking on the banner above, or clicking here!

And by popular request, some pictures of the Apple Norns ingame:

Crossposted from the Creatures Development Blog.

Terra Reborn

2010-06-02T10:56:00.001-04:00

Terra Reborn is a beautiful, well crafted room, and it was one of the first to bring that touch of the former worlds back to Docking Station.

I often inject other people’s metarooms and play a bit to glean some inspiration from the room and the series. As I played Terra Reborn I remembered it’s primary complaint at release: it overlapped with the Creatures 3 Norn Terrarium, making it impossible to use in a docked DS world.

It struck me that now that the Map has been expanded, there’s no need to worry about room placement, and Terra Reborn wouldn’t be that hard to move.

I set about an hour aside yesterday and moved it, so it is now injectable in a Docking Station world docked with the C3 Ark.

With Liger’s permission, I am releasing it. Those of you who visit the NEW Creatures IRC Chatroom, got a chance to use it early yesterday. :)

Enjoy this touch of Albia while you wait for C2’s next release. :)

Notes: It is not compatible with C3 Standalone, and does not have it’s own Room Icon (It actually used the C3 Norn Terrarium’s.)

[Room Plan Notes:]

X: 10032 Y: 0 Width: 2688 Height: 1111

A little local flora

2010-05-28T00:54:00.005-04:00

Just thought I'd quickly pop by with some new images for everyone to admire! I've been volunteering a little of my time to help out with some of the less interesting parts of the conversion. You'll be seeing some of my work in the not too distant future, no doubt.

Moe has been hard at work on Albian flora, so here we have a number of plants and fungi, some new, some old!

And because I can, here's the norn burrow and incubator, with an adult Civet lurking in the tomatoes!

Moe's really got some exciting things in the game, so keep checking back for regular updates!

And lastly, a question: what was your favourite part of C2, apart from the norns, and why?

Motivational Speech

2010-05-20T22:58:00.001-04:00

Someone mentioned my motivation- what drives me to work on C2toDS. I want to address that briefly.

I want this community to grow, prosper, and last. What inspires me the most is seeing other people working on projects. Watching them learn and apply their skills- be it fiddling with code, painting a new breed, or boxing out a model in 3D software- all the while making others and themselves happy in the process…that really gets me moving.

I want to see the community bustling with excitement and development! I have not seen this in a long time…

My biggest fear is that I’ll end up developing something for a community that isn’t there. Although I enjoy working on it, the project isn’t made for me- it’s made for you, players, fellow developers, and the community as a whole. Creatures cannot last without you. All my work, all my effort, it’s all in vain if you’re not there.

You want to see this project move like none before it? Go pick up Blender and make something, anything. A toy wheel, a beach ball, a block of cheese or a blueberry muffin, anything! Or grab your digital camera, snap some shots of the fruits on your kitchen table, put ‘em in Gimp, make some sprites, and code an agent of them! Can’t code? Learn, or find someone who can! If Genetics is your thing, go make a new genome, a smarter Norn, more vicious Grendel, or a more kleptomatic Ettin. The more active the community, the happier, and more productive I become.

Gameware has all but abandoned the Creatures series. You are its only Public Relations agents, it’s only form of Marketing, its only members, and its only developers. You, we, are its only chance for survival.

Thank you.

Moe

“Base” Release

2010-05-20T01:06:00.001-04:00

Taking a new approach to development, such as I already have by making this development blog, I’ve decided to release C2toDS in parts! If only to give you all something to do other than wait on me to update the blog! XD

Click to Download

INSTALLATION

1. Unzip the files.

2. Put the agent file in your My Agents folder.

3. Put the c2tods.mng in your Sounds folder.

4. The Agent will be called "C2toDS Base" in the injector window.

Inject it like you would any other agent, but be aware that C2toDS is LARGE. It could very well freeze the game for several minutes or more just by clicking on it! There is no conventional door at the moment. You'll have to ferry Norns to the world yourself, but there is a Favorite Place icon. :)

DESCRIPTION

The first release! This is everything you need to get C2toDS in your world for the first time. It puts the world in and sets all the basics up. Emitters, sounds, overlays, weather, lifts, and of course, cheese, are all implemented...and you'll find a little surprise when the hand moves into C2 Albia! There is one small bug with the sub bay door, as long as you close it first and open it back up, you should be fine. :)

Since emitters are in place (though it may take a few minutes for everything to propagate correctly), you're perfectly able to begin habitation procedures. I recommend grabbing some agents like JayD's Superfood vendor over at Creatures Caves, and/or the plants from Terra and Terra Reborn, both of which contain C2 converted flora and fauna. Edash also coded in many of the Creatures 2 critters and those can be found at Edash's old Creatures webspace. The soils of Albia are quite fertile, so you shouldn't have a problem seeding the land with all kinds of 3rd part plants. (Tubas in particular grow well and can get around. C2toDS was the reason I invented the Tuba Collector/Mover/Killer. XD)

Also, the clouds will seem to mob across the skies for the first ten minutes or so due to the way and timing at which they are created, and how they behave in high pressure areas, but after that they should start scattering nicely across the skies. :) It might also snow a bit more than you'd expect at first for a couple reasons:

1, I haven't fine tuned the temperatures yet. 2, the heat emitters will take a few minutes to propagate the rooms, and 3, it's a spring morning when you get to Albia, a little snow is to be expected! Seasons are fully implemented, but the classic GUI is not, check the calendar on the world tree to see what season you're in.

Also, it's very cold at night in Albia! (Another reason it might snow a lot.) Get your Norns into the burrow or near a fire if they can't stand the cold. Currently, without the UI, you can't really tell it's night, but you'll know when Norns start shivering, and the clouds start falling.

The volcano is not currently dangerous with radioactivity. You're free to place your creatures in it, but conditions are not favorable for growing things, so place vendors in there. Oh, but it is quite hot... Magmas will love it!

Macintosh computers have a problem with the world wrapping skipping a bit, and this is beyond my control, but it's nothing serious. Comments and bug reporting are highly encouraged!!!

DISCLAIMER:
THIS ADDON IS GIVEN "AS IS". IT HAS NOT BEEN BETA TESTED THOROUGHLY BY ANY MEANS. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. I DO NOT ADVISE USING IT IN A WORLD WITH CREATURES YOU ARE FOND OF.

I say that because I have too. However, It should be pretty safe. There's nothing in this release too intense that it could cause problems, but be on your guard. WATCH YOUR CREATURES. The map is large, and has not been thoroughly walked yet. A Norn could get stuck someplace it shouldn't be and die! Just saying…

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The Latest Upload SHOULD have made the following unimportant, but in the event the agent returns an error about not being able to find a room at such and such location, follow these steps and try again:

PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOUR MAP HAS BEEN EXPANDED PRIOR TO INSTALLING THE AGENT. TO DO THIS, PRESS CTRL + SHIFT + C TO OPEN THE COMMAND WINDOW AND TYPE "MAPD 50000 50000" AND PRESS ENTER. THE AGENT WILL RETURN AN ERROR IF YOU DO NOT DO THIS CORRECTLY!!!

The Day of the Triffids!

2010-05-11T15:42:00.001-04:00

Here’s just a snapshot of one of the crazy things that can happen when developing! The maker of C2toDS brings you…

Fun Fact: The Triffid plant in Creatures 2 is believed to have gotten it's name from the novel "The Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham.

Lack of Updates!

2010-05-11T14:13:00.001-04:00

Sorry for the lack of updates. It’s a major pain to be running Creatures 2 on a virtual machine, so that slows down development a lot! If anyone wants to buy me the GoG version of The Albian Years, you go right ahead! lol

That minor obstacle aside, I have been working diligently on a couple of things, namely the plants of Albia. Did you know the Spinnomosa Aridus cactus only blooms at night, and doesn’t grow during winter?

Morever, did you know many of the flora and fauna from Creatures 2 got their “latin” names from Creatures players?

For example, the glow worm is Ali, from Albia2000: “Solarvermes alimaggsii”

Helen, from Helen’s Bibble Directory, got the snail: “Cepaea helenii “

But here is something particularly interesting!

The Capillata (the ship on which Docking Station takes place), got it’s name from “Cyanea capillata”, a jellyfish in Creatures 2, and a real jellyfish species.

Want to know more about the ecology of Albia? Check out the Creatures 2 species list!

The Windy City.

2010-05-08T16:29:00.001-04:00

C2toDS reintroduces wind into the C3/DS game. Using CA 19 as a diffusion system for pressure, “wind” is created. Clouds move in the opposite direction of high pressure areas, as do any other objects from C2 that responded to wind, such as the Spinnomosa cactus seeds, and wind sock.

While we’re on the topic of wind, here’s a special feature on one form of weather unique to C2toDS:

Water, Water, Everywhere

2010-05-08T12:24:00.001-04:00

And Norn’s don’t drink a drop…

Let me begin by expressing my greatest displeasure with Creature Labs for excluding this functionality in Creatures 3/DS. –_- If Norns are supposed to be the most advanced biological/artificial life simulation in the world, why on earth don’t they need to drink water? In fact, they completely removed the “drink” classifier from Creatures 3/DS, it’s closest equivalent now being “potion”.

Ok, sure, some animals get their water demands from eating fruits and such, but Norns eat cheese, carrots, and the occasional lemon or apple. They certainly shouldn’t get enough water from these!

So what am I to do with all these water pumps and fountains in Creatures 2? Make them “potion”? Does C3/DS creature biochemistry even require water? What purpose will they serve if not? I guess I’ll decide when the time comes…

Daily Bibbles: Engine Speed, and other Velocities.

2010-05-08T00:33:00.000-04:00

Creatures 2 and Docking Station are two very different games, and through the development, I find myself constantly discovering dissimilarities.

One of the first things I noticed is the speed of the engine! Ticks in Creatures 2, and the engine in general, run much slower. When I tried to match lifespans of plants from Creatures 2 to Docking Station, for instance, I found them growing too fast!

Another thing that’s dissimilar are the physics. They are completely different, though much improved. The red and white stripped beach ball for example bounced to the ceiling with C2 physics settings in DS! But on the flipside, you’re actually able to throw the ball a substantial distance. Creatures 2 left something to be desired in this respect. Mind you, anything was an improvement on Creatures 1’s instant falling!

Another thing to note, is Creatures 2 gravity system is far superior to Docking Station in one respect: water. Objects in water actually fall slower in Creatures 2. It’s a shame this wasn’t carried over in Docking Station.

Welcome!

2010-05-08T00:03:00.001-04:00

Hi, I’m Moe. Welcome to the Creatures 2 to Docking Station development blog. Through this blog you’re going to get a chance to follow the development of Creatures 2 to Docking Station- the largest 3rd party project ever undertaken.

I’ll take you behind the overlays and through the scripts, to show you how I’m bringing Albia to life in Docking Station.

To answer a few quick questions:

What is “Creatures”?

Creatures is an artificial life series. For more information, visit the Creatures Wiki, or Gameware Development.

Is this a derivation of other C2 to DS projects?

No. This project is entirely new, created from scratch.

Will it include breeds?

At the moment I do not plan to port the breeds. Many have already been converted however.

How faithful does it remain to the original game?

Very, but with enough added content to make it an entirely new experience.

When will it be released?

It’s just me developing for now (and to be honest, I rather prefer it that way), so it’ll take as long as it takes. I will say however, that I’m making good progress!

I will answer more questions as they are asked. Please, enjoy the blog.