I’ll let someone else fill you in a bit more, cos I have a busy day ahead, but it’s important not to think that you “have to do” anything at all. You’ve come in part-way through the project, so there’s very little you CAN do yet – I’m still working on it. But I just make artificial life forms and a world for them to live in. What you choose to do with them is none of my business! 🙂

Having done this before, thirty years ago, I know that if I do my job well enough, people will find a huge variety of interesting things they want to do with their creatures. It’s a big sandbox. It’s kind of like, “I’ve just bought a pet dog; what am I supposed to do with it?”, you know? Pet dogs aren’t a game; they’re living things, and what you get up to with your pet dog depends on you and the dog. There are no rules.

It’ll be fun! But it’s very sterile and empty yet, because I’ve been working so hard on the really, really, really tricky bit, which is how do I make a “pet dog” in the first place? How can I make artificial animals that are REAL, have genuine thoughts and intentions, and are complex enough to fall sick, learn new things, give birth, etc., etc. Hang on in there, and things to do will emerge all by themselves, as you and the others figure out what you can get up to with an artificial life form.

Maybe someone from the Creatures community can describe some of the things you guys got up to with norns? @Mabus?

I played around with the game a bit recently. I would recommend treating the movement like a car (left/right look is “steering” for backward/forward movement) and going to the “castle”. I wandered around a long while, and I think that’s where the bollies (Bollys? Bollopodes?) are supposed to spawn initially.

Posted by: @steve

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I know that if I do my job well enough, people will find a huge variety of interesting things they want to do with their creatures. 

Maybe someone from the Creatures community can describe some of the things you guys got up to with norns? @Mabus?

I already got a rought idea, I am curently working on a new map that will have different levels/tunnels. Trying to turnn the creature 2 and creatures 1 background art into 3D

Just because their background looked amazing. Specially the art style of c1. 

Right now i am trying to puzzle together the different areas of those two worlds in a meaningfull way. 
Yesterday i spend way to much time placing viewpoint cameras, because i need fixed viewpoints to recreate the background mouintains. Probably have to redo all the mountains, because everytime my camera moved, everything shifted… beginer mistake… 

So far i could stay true to the source images, except the big c2 mountain and NO LIFTS! NOT A FUCKING SINGLE LIFT WILL BE THERE!!! THOSE ARE DEATH TRAPS!!!!

I am curently as far in development 

Soon i will be able to tile the world, hopefully, then the backgrounds will take shape quickly. (it delayed because i  had to tile a wine celar in RL in my hollydays…)

After that is done, I will either import it into VR chat and fill it with objects and stuff, or if steve released a version, start directly modding it into the game. 

Since steve told me once, someone just needs to buy some software to do so, it shouldn’t be an as big problem. But i cross that bridge once i arive there.

That is the point i hope to gain help from the community, creating objects to fill in an empty world. Thanks to AI, generating the 3D assets should be doable ina resonable timeframe. And if people complain about AI generated assets, i give them a cleaned up version, free from all AI ad ask them to please make a human made version – after all there is just one thing better than one extra world – that would be two extra worlds!

Once the first places there are usable, the real fun can begin. Creating a death system for the player. Standing ona cliff without fear of falldamage is boring, also creatures need a way to hurt/kill the player as well. Just to be on equal footing.

While I do that, many others of the community will develop new breeds/species and tinker/impriove/mess around the genetics of the bollys. 

Meaning 1-2 years after first release of steves pesentable alpha, we should have a nature simulation where you can play with animals, watch wild animals, garden some agents to feed yourfarm or have a hunting game with smart intelligent creatures that can also kill you or runaway in a way that makes the hunt interesting. 

And that’s just my plan. Others got different plans.

Back in the creatures community days, many of us had more fun modding the game (brain, genetics, agents, new skins for creatures, world background etc) than actually playing it. 

Those few indididuals will enrich this world quickly. 

This is what i mean by aligning the mouintains. Once i switch to the norn view point, those outlines align perfectly. However once you slightly shift, they don’t. The first time i just eyeballed it. Now i have to redo all of those placements and shift them and make sure that the view from that position lines up exactly with the background out of the game. 

….this kind of obsession is the kind of fan steve has to deal with… 

…and his previous work has impressed us as much, decades later we still yearn for a 3D version:

Thanks to steve, all NPCs in any other game i ever played feel hollow. Including all LLM based stuff. 

oh and nearly forgot to write what i did back in creatures;

creatures 1 (when i was a small child, my dad used the magazine of the game to motivate me learn reading);

– play with cute little pets

– trap the grendel on the island

– try to keep them alive, play with them and fail to breed them

– constandly try to capture them, because they always ran away

– truly enjoying a CD i bought full with already tought norns! They where way better than the self hatched ones (i was still a stupid child)

creatures 2 (early puberty started)

– explored the world

– played with the creatures (mainly c1 norns from the CD transfered to C2)

– started to play woth grendels as well

– started a little garden, taking care of the plants

– using cages on my breeding norns, heavily restricting their movement “for their own good”

– having a lot of fun with gene splicing

– started modding the game, extra breeds, objects and similar

creatures 3 (when i was mentally developed enough to understand creatures)

– teaching the norns, as i should have from the start

– wandering with them across the world

– playing a lot with the world around the norns

– using the gene splicer a lot

– messing around with their genetics

– making my own breeds/agents/skins

– falling in love with grendels

– building a nuclear bomb

The one thing that made me always fall in love with creatures, was the fact that they always suprised me. If i tought i understood them and know how they would react, they suprised me. Just like real animals. 

It is hard to explain, more something you habe to experience. 

And even when i understood one, they learned as well. Suprising me later, because they just learned something unexpected. 

Compare that to any NPC out of any game, where a braindead goldfish could exploid their “AI” with the same way over and over again….

Oh and this video explains well what creaturs is and what phantasia will be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmgIUGU12Co

i recently purchased you series of the creatures game. ill say i find myself second guessing myself if what im doing the right way for these norns. apart of me also want to just give them free reigns with zero assistance from myself with zero interference and see how they thrive. i havent even go to a hour mark because of how i feel about the choices i decided on. im also going into it so clueless i feel more useless for these creatures than i feel like i could benefit them so im on pause  right now…. thank you all for your responses, i must say i appreciate what youve done and accomplished. my mind still cant wrap around it. its very impressive

and im a huge fan of this. i cant wait to see your new game complete ill continue supporting it all to…i hope the best for you friend and it all pays off. you deserve the finish product you dream of.

@shmoo Leting the creatures run on their own is called a wolfing run. They are quiet popular.

In creatures 1 i recomend downloading an extra agent for food (i use a clover, it matches in style nearly all places)

In creatures 2 place barriers before the oceans, those are death traps and need constant monitoring! 

In creatures 3, just start

Also if you got 1-3 creatures you get invested into the single creatures. If you get the maximum amount, you don’t see them as individuals and instead as a breeding population

@genesis i can see that becoming the case. i feel that i would much more enjoy having less to give my focus too but i also don’t want to force that option on them as far as keeping their population in a controlled state ive been thinking about the things id like to do before i actually get back into the game. id much rather nudge them toward sustaining on their own. ive also been wondering if its possible to hide the hand from them from the start where they dont know the hand even exist.

@shmoo  there is an option in each game to make the hamd invissible. Enable the viewpoint of the modules and you can easily do that with a click. Saddly the steam version had that disabled as default.

And there is no wrong way of playing, so just do as you feel like. 

There are also immortal and partially imortal creatures, if you fall in live with one. Or just inject the “life” chemical to prevent them from aging every few hours. Because if you find a norn special, 5-10h of life feel like nothing…

@genesis let me ask you, has there ever been a case where the norns on their own developed more neural network than they was originally designed with/given? how limited is this as far what im capable of making a norn do or not do if at all? has there ever been a norn that was actually more sophisticated in its neural network than what was intended for it or maybe allowed, hopefully you understand what im trying to ask.

@genesis cause it seems as norns seem just intelligent enough to be pets has it ever been where a norn didnt stay in this same loop and developed its own “agenda” like a break away norn or rouge norn or some would call the black sheep of the family. have they ever gained enough intelligence to even have the thought of “breaking away” or i guess you could say “wanting out”?

@shmoo happend all the time in creatures 3, dublication of the brain/whole genome. That short circut them and they are mentally retarded in the truest semse of the word.

But the community made a few improved norn brain variants for all games

However some norns just use their brain better and that makes them smarter

Oh and they constandly develop their own agenda and do whatever THEY want.

Recently i downloaded a norn genetically made more obidient and tought by someone else to follow comands.

Because i didn’t pay attention to her for a few minutes and let her be with an other norn, she started ignoring the hand and i had to import a second copy of her… a black sheep of a norn would be one that actually does what you want! 

@genesis

I’d actually argue that the black sheep Norn is absolutely the one that doesn’t listen.

Every Norn has its own personality, learning patterns, drives, and genetic quirks. Most can be trained to respond to the Hand to varying degrees, but every now and then you get one that simply refuses to follow the same path as the rest.

That’s what makes it the black sheep.

A Norn that consistently obeys commands, seeks out the Hand, and responds to training is behaving within expected parameters. It may be more or less intelligent than others, but it’s still fitting into the role the player is trying to teach.

The black sheep is the Norn that develops priorities that directly conflict with that training. It’s the one that wanders off in the middle of lessons, ignores commands it clearly understands, gets distracted by other Norns, or decides that whatever it’s doing is more important than listening to the player.

In your example, the genetically obedient Norn started out following commands but quickly abandoned that behavior once exposed to another Norn and a different environment. To me, that’s exactly black sheep behavior. It broke away from what it was bred and trained to do and chose its own path instead.

Being a black sheep doesn’t necessarily mean being broken, stupid, or suffering from a brain duplication defect. Those are technical problems. A black sheep is an outlier. It’s the Norn that stands apart from the rest of the flock.

If you have ten Norns that come running when called and one that looks at the Hand, ignores it, and goes to push the cheese vendor for the fiftieth time, you’ve found your black sheep.

A black sheep Norn is the one that understands the rules and simply refuses to play by them.

From your perspective, the entire appeal of Creatures is that Norns develop their own agendas and become increasingly independent. If that’s considered normal Norn behavior, then a Norn that remains unusually obedient despite all those influences could be seen as the real outlier. I can definitely see the logic there.

I think we’re just defining “black sheep” differently. You’re looking at it from the perspective of what is unusual for Norns as a species, while I’m looking at it from the perspective of a group of Norns in a world. In a world full of reasonably trainable Norns, the one that refuses to listen is the black sheep. In a species famous for independence and unpredictability, the one that stays obedient could be considered the black sheep instead.

So I don’t think either interpretation is wrong—I just lean toward the stubborn troublemaker being the black sheep because that’s the individual that’s breaking away from the behavior expected by the group around it.

@shmoo yeah, ses like i got a flock of black sheeps…

However there are always two ways to move a norn, second one is with fear, let them move away from the hand instead of towards them. 

…i know why i like grendels more (my old alias was MK-Grendel)