C2toDS Beta 3 Released!

For all of you who have been waiting so patiently for the next release, thank you for sticking with us!

Release 3 is designed not for Beta Testers necessarily. That is, we know what the bugs are for the most part, so we aren’t in need of bug reports. This release is purely for the entertainment of the community.

Such additions in this release include:

• Expanded wildlife. Almost every critter in C2 has been converted with only a few exceptions. The oceans in particular are teeming with life both new and old.
• New additions to C2 including critters based off of familiar and favorite COBs…
• New vendors!
• Some Lifekit and Object Pack Additions!
• Atmospheric effects to liven up the world!
• More secrets...

Download Creatures 2 to Docking Station beta 3 now!

The Granary

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.

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!

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

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

 

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

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!

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!

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

 

 

 

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!

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

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:

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

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…!

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

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.

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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…

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!

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...

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...

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...