Ummmm...Oops.

I didn't mean for this blog to go quiet for this long! But then again, I haven't been playing much nor have I reset myself up for coding ever since I switched laptops. I still don't feel any coding nibbles although artistically I've been feeling some itching. So there might be some art posts in the near future. For those curious as to what happened to the creatchi blog I began, I deleted it due to low interest in continuing that endeavor. Not like there was much on there to begin with! So nobody should really miss that one.

Friendly Nornish Spooks

I put the blame squarely on Laura at the Creatures Caves. The avatars below remind me quite a fair bit of the Ghosties in Pac-Man. The first of the pair was actually made on my mobile device using only Sketchbook Mobile Express by Autodesk. It was a quickie, using only flood fill on the default Creatures Caves avatar and the airbrush for drawing the little face. Not feeling up to figuring how to make animated gifs on it, I took to the laptop and had a wrestling match with Gimp. As you can see below, I won. Despite the smile being crooked I am quite satisfied with it. After all, who gives a care if a whimsical Halloween smile isn't perfect!

     

I hope that whoever made the default Creatures Caves avatar doesn't mind that I put it through the Halloween filter and decided to share!

A Creatchi Post

Partly the reason why the first centaur pelts are taking so long! To keep myself from burning out on the sprite files I've been doing something in between them. Those who visit the Creatures Caves may have seen one of them. (This one, if you are curious but do not wish to look too hard.) Those familiar with the Caves also may be more familiar with a fun little feature called "Creatchi." For those who are not, the next section below is a very simple explanation that may satisfy your curiosity.


What is Creatchi?

As I've said before, Creatchi is a fun feature of the Creatures Caves website. It is a game where you take care of a Nornchi, Ettinchi, or Grendelchi. They are, respectively, the online equivalents of Norns, Ettins, and Grendels from the Creatures games. This web version is created by the site's admin, Rascii, with sprites made by Ghosthande of Breeder's Beware. It was unleashed upon the Caves community on April 4th, 2013. So far into its young life it has been growing rather smoothly, with very few minor hiccups that are dealt with swiftly upon being discovered.
Like Creatures, Creatchis come from eggs. An egg hatches about three hours after being picked and the hatchling, regardless of the species, starts out with three of their needs at about 3/4 of the way full. These needs, which are important to Creatchi health, are Hunger, Fun, and Social. Filling these bars is easily remedied by feeding your Creatchi with the provided piece of cheese, giving it a teddy bear to play with, and finding other Creatchis to socialize with. From that point onwards, caring for them is very simple as each of those needs drop about once or twice a day. Health only starts dropping when those needs have not been taken care of after a day. While new, the only thing the Energy need really does is make it a little more challenging to socialize. If it drops, its much more likely that your Creatchi will fall asleep on its own; preventing you from caring for it! The only way to remedy this is to wait until the Creatchi is awake for you to put it down for a nap by giving it the sleep mask item, which is unlimited and only appears when the Energy need drops. Speaking of the sleep mask, it brings me to note that the items provided to you (Apple, Cheese, Ball, Teddy Bear, Medicine, and Elixir) are not unlimited. You must be active on the Creatures Caves website in order to find these items for your Creatchi!

But what about socialization? Surely, there must be a reason behind it!

Well, there is! In addition to fulfilling your Creatchi's Social needs by prompting you to find friends for it to play with, it also gives your Creatchi a chance to breed once its old enough. But, there's a few requirements to the breeding aspect. First off, the Creatchi in question must be the same species. Second, the lucky Creatchi in question must be the opposite gender of your Creatchi. (As there is, at this moment, no "gene splicer" available and no way to change a Creatchi's gender.) Third, the Creatchis must be either Adolescent or Adults. And finally, the relationship score must be at level 5, which indicates that they know each other well enough to consider breeding! There is even more to Creatchi breeding, however. Unlike their Creatures counterparts, Creatchis are monogamous and can only breed twice in their lifetime. The level at which the second egg can be produced must be level 8 or higher and the Creatchis must not be senile at the time the second request is sent. (Although there have been documented cases of Senior pregnancies, and even a couple where the egg has been laid some time after death, many of these conceptions happen anywhere within two days before they turn senile.) After the second egg they can no longer breed and are free to mingle with others, if they so wish.
An average Creatchi without a best friend lives for 23 days, while a Creatchi with a best friend lives for 24. With that in mind caring for these digital creatures is a bit of a responsibility. So, remember to check in on your's at least every other day!


The Big Reveal!

With that out of the way, let's move on to the real subject of the post: My tracking sheets! As many of you in the community know, I've been keeping an eye on what colors and combinations appear within each species of Creatchi. While I could tell you what I have been seeing, week by week, I would much rather show you and let you see for yourself what has been found. These sheets are accurate as of October 8. Please bear in mind that they only show the colors and combinations that have been found, and in which gender. If you want the numbers for each, you will either have to wait or do the count yourself!

Because of how big these are, you will have to click on them to see the full view.

Clippity Clop, Clippity Clop

Nope, you are certainly not hearing things. That is the sound of a future update clopping around the lab. Its a rather impatient one, but soon it will the importance of waiting until I'm done with it!

Spring in C12DS

Taking a break from Guild Wars 2 and Ovipets, I decided to run DS for awhile and see if I could nudge Amaikokonut's Magic Words back into functioning. I managed to do so, though now I've forgotten how I did it, and have fixed my problem areas in the C12DS world. The centaurs are now no longer "climbing" things that they shouldn't be climbing. As you can see I've also been playing with Garden Box again. Seen here is TheSecond's Garden Box contribution, Sakura Flowers. I only set them for Spring, however, but soon they will give way to Laura's Bouncing Plums for the Summer and Autumn seasons.

Another Week, Another COB!

Yes, I've done it again. I made another one. A seemingly never-ending basket of radishes for C1 world everywhere! Well, at least I hope they turn out compatible for most of them. As far as I know they haven't given me trouble in both Albia and Terra Nornia outside of the testing phase. My fuzzy unnamed test subject sure enjoyed giving the basket a push. As you can see below, there's something a bit odd about the way things layer on that raft in the tunnel underneath the garden.

Here is where you can get the C1 Radish COB. If you're up to coding and need sprites, remember to check out Mea's blog. I know I sound slightly like a broken record by repeating myself, but that is where all the lovely sprites used in my COBs so far came from.

I hope I can get around this artist's block that's in my way relatively soon. I need to finish my mushy food machine!

Surprise!

I just unleashed my first C1 COBs upon the CC! Go check it out here in the downloads section, even give them a try if you're brave enough. As far as I know I've gotten all of the kinks worked out of the both of them but if they somehow blow up your house, leave a note either here or in my e-mail. The next one, and related to the first, is a vendor that I'm still trying to work the bugs out of.



I must say, dear readers, that coding the radishes was quite the learning experience. I have so many COBs for C1 that I had to lean on GirlySatan's COB index to narrow down the ones that I needed to look at as I tried to make sense of the old tutorials and documents that could be found. And to pick the appropriate class, of course. It would be quite silly to pass off a vegetable as a drink or a toy instead of a food. In a way, the C1 life-forms are lucky to not be able to tell the difference between objects of by sight. Imagine the confusion if they could! In speaking of food classified as a drink, I did notice in the index that a long time ago someone else had also made a radish COB. Classification and looks aside, I hope that mine are different enough to stand out on their own. It took a few days to get the animation in the second variant close enough to being satisfactory enough for me to leave it alone. In that part, I feel that I have a good start.

Mea's sprites feel right at home the C1 world; even if I did have to tweak with the leafy greens to get them to show up in the "One Stop Sprite Workshop" as the beautiful things that they are instead of dark, vaguely leaf-shaped, blobs that they kept turning out to be. Unfortunately, I can't remember how I accomplished that. At the time I was working on it I was trying, very unsuccessfully, to fight the drowsiness/dizziness side effects of the medication I had been put on for my sinus issues. But it sure made filling in the gaps in the growth cycle (Something that I did not feel like trying to alter, for the sake of my sanity.) feel like a cakewalk in comparison. If you're a coder who can't draw to save their soul, or can but are in a creative slump, and are looking for sprites to use in their project I definitely recommend taking a look through Mea's site, Caos of the Creatures Realm. And if you find something there to use it doesn't hurt to remember to give proper credit.

All in all, I hope that those who do decide to try out the radishes will find the second variety as amusing as I had found them during the testing process. Since I still have radishes on the brain that won't be the last ones you'll see!