[FuzzieDice]

Congrats, KT. What was your name in there so I can add you to my friends list?

I recieved a girl from someone with a name that starts with an "S" but forgot the name (would recognize it if I saw it again). I sent back a couple of them when I woke up the next morning and disconnected as it was time to get some serious work done and Megatron was already on his scheduled virus scan process. Even at 2GHz, he does slow down a little when scanning. I normally don't leave my computer on all night anyway. I usually power down to save electric and in summer to keep the machine cooler.

Maybe if I have time to get on again, I can look you up. I would feel bad though sending a bacteria-ridden norn out. Or recieving one and having it die of bacterial infection. It's like I don't know -- like someone entrusts me with this life form to take care of it (like a cat, etc.) and it gets sick and I can't save it. Happens but sad.

I think I have mostly older girls and a few young boys right now. I do know how to disinfect / heal I think. But I think letting them go now and discover is best. Though I may introduce some to the lemons in the upper level of the ship sometimes when is ill. According to the help file, it is supposed to help them get well.

If I ever find money, the full version would be interesting to have. But money is tight and will get tighter as Cell phone and DSL contracts are  up the end of the year and may raise in cost (as will rent), plus school fees. So I'll have to see how it all goes.

[KnyteTrypper]

Wherever I go, I'm KnyteTrypper. Makes it easier to keep up with who I am, that way.  :azn When I get norns I don't want-which is most of the time, since there are always new folks making too many of the same 1st gen. chichis I can make in my own egglayer - I just routinely feed them, heal them, teach them to talk, and send them back. My own bloodline has about reached gen. 49,000, and I usually make worlds devoted to specific projects, so I don't want random genes in the pool. But as long as I'm not pressed for time I don't mind doing a young norn a favor. Anyway, go back to DS Central and log in, and you'll see a new menu for members, which includes the option to add people to your buddy list. Add me, and click once on the smiley on the ship's contact screen, and it will designate me as a friend and let you now when I enter/leave the warp.

Creatures 3 is nice, and if you look around Amazon or Ebay, you'll sometimes find it for a buck or two. But there are so many free metarooms to add onto your ship that you can play forever and never miss it. The C1 to DS metaroom I told you about is easily twice or three times the size of DS, and is an outside, planet-side environment, which means the norns are real happy there, too. Besides C1 to DS, Terra Reborn is another good land room, and Aquatilis Caverna - due for re-release during CCSF- is a truly enormous waterworld. Not having C3 is not much of a handicap.

[FuzzieDice]

Thanks for all the info. I'm taking a lunch break from work so I've bookmarked this thread. I'll add you when I get the time to get back into DS again.

So basically what you're saying is that I only need the patch and don't need to buy C3 at all to get a "fully" working version? Right now, the only thing I can make is the Chichi's.

[KnyteTrypper]

The series features four species- norns, ettins, grendels, and geats - and A-Z breedslots for each species, making a total of 106 possible discrete breeds. Creatures animates much like cartoons or stop-motion animation, so each slot basically denotes a unique set of images used in the animation process. There are also MANY "genetic breeds," which use standard images from other breeds, and differ primarily in genetic description, to produce different biochemistries or behaviors. So there's a virtually infinite number of possible breeds. You need to consult a good "by the slot" breed list like the one at SeeYou7.net and select some breeds to download. The "official" Gameware breeds, and a couple of the 3rd pary breeds, are commercial products, but the vast majority of them are free contributions of breeds created by Creatures players past and present. There are overlapped slots, where you have to choose one of two or more breeds that have been placed in the same slot and forego the others so that you don't create filename conflicts in the program. But there are a lot of potential discrete breeds to form a genetic pool from.

I'm somehow bothered by what you're referring to as "the patch." There are metarooms-there are dozens of those, too-and in the case of the Creatures 1 to Docking Station metaroom, it was hurried into release in time for last year's CCSF, and later a patch for it was released with some extral breeds, bugfixes,etc. So you have to have the metaroom, and then the patch brings the room to full functionality. Both are freeware, but the patch per se won't do you much good without the room it's a patch for.

I played for a couple of years -I've been playing this game off and on since '03 - without ever buying anything, and the only drawback is that if a creature's description specifies images you don't have, it substitutes "nearest-neighbor" images from what you do have. So your creatures will look different than they do in other ships. A lot of the breeds are based on the standard Creatures 3 breed images, so that's a small handicap for the frugal, lol, but not an untenable situation.

[FuzzieDice]

I'm confused now. You posted a link to some patch to apply to the Docking station here if I believe? The file name is this:

C1toDS-Patch-2005.09.05.2328.zip

Is there something else I should get and apply before this one?

I'm done with work for tonight so maybe I'll play around in the ship awhile...

[KnyteTrypper]

That's the filename of the patch to upgrade the Creatures 1 to Docking Station (C1toDS) metaroom. The metaroom, itself, is a different download http://clucky.sts.winisp.net/Agents/C1toDS-2005.08.13.1927.zip. After installation you can access it either when starting a new world - there will be a new option on the splash screen to start a new world with or without C1toDS-or you can inject it from the agent injector into an already created world. But metaroom first, then patch for the metaroom after.

Full text of my "10 Things You Need For Your DS World" is now online at the CCSF website.

[FuzzieDice]

Thanks KT. I think I'm getting the hang of it now.

[Freddy]

I got Docking Station working, when I get back from work tonight I'm re-reading to see what I am missing if anything.  So far this is great though - I like the way they learn things:)

My nickname is 'digitalgirl' and I have a world called 'nirvana' btw.  Had some probs with my firewall, but should figure that out later so I haven't got chat or the other connections working yet...

 :cool

[KnyteTrypper]

I'm still having chat/firewall conflicts, lol, but the messaging always works fine for me.
I think the fact that they learn from experience is what's kept me interested. The little rascals are way to cute for me to be able to tolerate them for long, ordinarily, lol. But they use language, and they learn. They're like little autonomous bots, each with its own unique personality, and that's just utterly fascinating to me.
Check out my article for beginners at the CCSF and do yourself the favor of acquiring some needful things before you suddenly and desperately need them, lol.

[Freddy]

I got chat working ok, can't figure out how I add contacts, though a player found me somehow and sent me some critters  :smiley, now I have multi-coloured ones!

I spent about two hours getting them to eat starch lol, I think they are telling each other now.

....figured out the contacts - didn't realise in was via the site  :smiley

[KnyteTrypper]

Here's a list of basic good advice. They'll express various other states and conditions, but except for  sick, they mostly won't require comment or action. Ones you want to instruct them about, so they'll go forth knowing the right thing to say, lol are:
Hungry for protein   eat fruit
Hungry for starch   eat nut
Hungry for fat     eat food
Lonely     go to norn
Friendly  touch norn
Homesick   go to meso
Angry    hit grendel
Tired     sleep now
Sleepy   sleep now
Bored    get toy
Crowded    retreat from norn
Scared    retreat from pest

Some groups say "maybe," some say "suggest you" depending on what language catalog files are in their world. Whichever one they use, they won't learn the other one without the catalog file.

[FuzzieDice]

I had to save that post for future reference. Thanks KT.

Freddy - I'll have to look you up next time I fire up Omicron1 (my world). But it might be awhile. I'm super-busy at work now with new projects and things that need doing quickly. So I won't be spending much time playing for a little bit.

They ARE cute! And fun to watch. The thing is, with all the eating they do, how is it they never go to the bathroom? You'd also think hygiene and where to go would be just as important. LOL!

[KnyteTrypper]

I once asked "Anybody seen a norn pee?" in a forum, and the amount of clamor and revulsion the question elicited told me why there's probably not a graphic for it, lol. Oddy enough, some chemicals do produce things like urea when they degrade, and my sometimes genetics tutor tells me that deep in the depths of digital genetics she's found a gene titled "pissin' in the wind."
But urea, ammonia, etc., accumulate for a while, then they're gone. Maybe it was considered as likely bad form to depict, or maybe it's just something very subtle I haven't been just exactly on time to catch, yet.

[Freddy]

Well, I now have about 50 of them lol, who needs hamsters!  I got the outside world, they seem a bit nervous of travelling far, I'm waiting to see them travel around on the ski-lift thing hehe and in the diving bell.

Some one sent me what looked like a normal creature but after a few hours it mutated into a monster, now I have a norn with a kind of turtle shell from cross breeding!

[KnyteTrypper]

 You said you had C1 to DS. Your "monster" is probably a grendel. That metaroom, being true to the original Creatures game, always creates one grendel in your game. If you kill it, another will hatch. The only way to get rid of them is to catch an unhatched grendel egg (or maybe two) and put it in water, where it wil not hatch. In the tree above the western end of the ocean with the ferry and submarine, is where they'll hatch from. The "Grendel Mother" is in the leaves above the top platform. Grendel eggs look sort of like golden snake eggs. The C1 grendel is just mean and stupid. It will beat your norns to death if it can, and there's not much you can do to retrain it.

You'll remember my "Hunter Norns" on my site, lol. They're norns specially bred to be tough enough and have the instincts to seek out and kill grendels, so that they don't menace the other norns. One of my better efforts, so far.