Time Enough for a Post

Which-ever you all believe in, I hope you all had a very wonderful holiday. My only wish on what could have been different about mine was that the two little gremlins that I'm related to would learn to save their candy instead of eating it all at once! Of course, not battling a monster of a migraine and having more of an appetite would have been great too but I guess we can't win them all. At the very least I should now be a bit less busy and more able to get back to my dear little creatures. Well, unless I just happen to be running a game back at my usual haunting grounds. Besides my partner in crime dropping the entire collection of D&D-related PC games in my lap as a birthday present, it is the other part of my silence. For the meantime I have done about as much as I can do on the development end for the room that I now moderate and cannot make any further progress until the rest of the group chips in.

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Happy Holidays, Folks

I've been rather busy, so here's a pair of Norn Clauses. I still feel awfully guilty cutting them out of that wax paper for cookies.

Spooky-ish Carving

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Halloween Fun

"Oh no! It's an angry bird and it's charging. Run away!"

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Spriting, Spriting, Spriting...

Surprise! Well, probably not, since apparently the Spriting Bug is going around and I was going to get around to it eventually. What started as a personal project to fix a few agent-related pet peeves turned into "Hey, this is pretty easy, let's do some Creatures!" I've had a few concepts on my list for awhile but none of them had any appeal at all. After some looking around at the various sprite breeds out there this popped into my head: The grendels, ettins, and non-norn geats are seriously outnumbered. Norns! Norns everywhere!

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Catching up on Nornal-Ish

I hope you readers have gotten a chuckle out of last week's picture post, as that was one of two amusing moments that I was able to capture before it was too late. The other will show up at the end of the post, but first a little bit of catching up.

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Smile! You're on Candid Camera!

No kleptomania with this Ettin, obviously! She would much rather vend a near endless amount of cheese.

I'm not sure which one she was or what happened to her, so I can't check the genome or anything to see why so much cheese. But by the time she left that vender alone there was enough of the wedges of fatty goodness to thickly cover the length of entire ship from the far end of the bridge to the far end of engineering.

Thank goodness that all three species appear incapable of constipation! (I think.)

No Brains, Two Brains

Red brains, blue brains! Sorry, I could not resist doing that. It had been an interesting and slightly frustrating two weeks both in and out of the Lab and I'm feeling a little goofy. On the interesting side: I had found that one of my second generation hatchlings had nearly double the normal amount of genes in her genome. On the frustrating: After I discovered that I could open multiple genomes at once in the Genetics Kit, I decided to tackle making a whole brain and at the time without internet access it was seriously kicking my butt in the Update Sequence department. As much as I would love to vent some more of the week's frustrations with this breeding program, I'm going to keep on the subjects here. Starting with the late discovery after the jump.

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Norns of Nornal-Ish, the Second Generation

Oh, the joys of life! I thought I was going to get away with not having a sinus infection this season but apparently Nature had other plans. And decided to throw a summer cold right on top of it too. Right when I was in the middle of writing this blog post. So, about three weeks late, here it be!

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Genetic Challenge: Beirut the Slider

And here I deliver my promise of something actually Creatures related! Today's post subject is Beirut, a little male norn who is half Chichi, half Bondi. Out of the second generation in my rather haphazard breeding program in Docking Station he is fatal mutation #3. To clear any future confusion I number my fatal mutations by birth order instead of death. There were five fatals and two other mutations in store for me in those eggs, but they all were very surprising to me and very much welcome. Back in those far-off days, any notable evolution on all of my Arks were painfully slow without throwing someone else's mutated creature into the mix. This group's second-generation eggs were quite the change. I blame the two oddities on having my roleplay haunt on my brain as I hatched and named all ten first generation norns, as three of them were named after particularly evil characters. Why I mention this is that, well, my two surprises happened to have spontaneously acquired grendel parts, one of said surprises happens to have the same sire as poor little Beirut, and said sire was one of those three "evil" norns. In fact as of now he is still alive and kicking around my Nornal-Ish ark at the dusty old age of eight and a half hours old.

Bah!

With that out of my system, let's move on to poor Beirut and my blog title, yes? See, in my time with this series I have never in my life done more with them than care for and breed my creatures and install world  customizations. Oh, I wished I could build my own worlds, objects and breeds, and look into their genes of course; but at the time if the tools weren't free they read to me like they were written in Ancient Greek, especially without use tutorials. And the official programs that had free tutorials? Well, without the programs to look at as I read along those were practically useless to me. Nowadays that's not much of a problem and I have been tinkering a little in the genetics department. Even though it is deviously simple Creatures 1 has boggled me, so I moved to the more recent and I believe I have fared so much better. I think with a bit more time and some more challenges to get my hands dirty with I should be able to understand Creatures 1 when I get back to it; as I have some interesting norns I want to look at and figure out for myself!

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About the Blogger

Goodness it has been hot this past week, so much that even most of my mental functions were pretty much shot the moment I wake up in the morning. A house with no air conditioning past opening every screened window and door and a handful of strategically placed box fans can do that to a person. Or in this case, an entire household. But never fear, in the substantially cooler evenings I have been a busy little lurker, but never too busy to forget that I have a blog to write! To be honest I had a difficult time deciding what I was going to write next. (Or figure out how to do for that matter.) So I did what I do best besides over-eagerly jumping into things bass-ackwards and way over my head; I procrastinated. And what better way to do so by continuing with one of the haphazard breeding programs I had been conducting in Docking Station. In the midst of naming and recording the hatchlings of the new generation, it hit me.

An "About Me," and in a different post, a challenge that had suddenly appeared at that exact moment. Just a warning before you decide to read more, I have the tendency to rant and ramble. Don't worry, I promise to try to keep it out of the sciency posts.

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An Introduction

Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to my blog. Take a seat if you wish, I don't bite. Well, I nom but that's more of a friendly gesture, I swear it is! I also promise that the virtual dust from chipping away at its appearance will settle soon. But in the meantime, I'll answer as many questions as possible in the best that I can.
I bet you all wonder what this one is all about. Well, if you came in from the Creatures Caves website or some other Creatures related website you will know exactly what this blog is about and you may skip the "Read All" link that may appear beneath the dotted line, unless you happen to be very bored and lack something to read. But if you came from elsewhere, like dropping in out of the blue from a search engine or I have passed on the link here to you personally, I urge you to click that link. Or just read below the dotted line if it doesn't appear. This being my first time writing a blog, it is now obvious that I have much to learn about how these silly things work.
So, about the future contents of this blog and why it doesn't -look- like it is for a beloved series. I'll explain that second part first since it's very simple: It's easier on the eyes than the offerings the gallery provides, or at least it is so on mine. And pretty. In time it will change little by little. As for the contents, it's pretty much as the above says. Bubbles and brainfarts of new ideas for COBs, Agents, and creature breeds have been drifting around my head and I have this very strong but foolish determination to sprite and code them all! I hope that one day I will be able to share them with the community, but right now that day will not be any time soon. With that said, one is more likely to find posts about the variety of mutations I've encountered in my breeding programs. Maybe an old story from Memory Lane from time to time. Definitely some Creatures-themed artwork. I can already say that I have one crafty post in mind for the future. I just have to work on mastering the method a little more before even embarking on what promises to be a fun yet frustrating experience. My only hint to you on what it is that its something to keep the norn plushies created by the pattern released for the CCSF of 2006 company.

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