Creature of Interest
Her name was Beaudry. A lovely little Bondi/Chichi crossbreed that would do only one of two things: Sleep and keep on walking to the right even as she bonked into the wall. With fourteen other norns to urge out of randomly playing statues until starving to death and preparations to make for the next round of breeders the odd behavior went completely unnoticed. Also, because there were three elders mingling with the little ones, I had been expecting the notification of death to be one them instead of a child. Having very little brain at that moment I made a few notes about it and moved on.
Fast forward to the investigation.
| Total # of genes: 1282 | Total # of emitters: 44 | Total # of stimuli: 116 | Total number of instincts: 67 |
| Total # of lobes: 30 | Total # of neuroemitters: 2 | Total # of genus records: 1 | Total # of pigments: 42 |
| Total # of brain organs: 2 | Total # of reactions: 103 | Total # of appearance genes: 6 | Total # of pigment bleeds: 9 |
| Total # of brain tracts: 58 | Total # of halflives: 1 | Total # of poses: 484 | Total # of facial expressions: 14 |
| Total # of receptors: 223 | Total # of initial concentrations: 25 | Total # of gaits: 32 | Total # of organs: 23 |
The minutes just sitting there staring in shock at those results in gene compare felt like hours. The poor little thing was a mere 509 genes away from having a full set of duplicates. The colored numbers in the table indicate where much of the duplication occurred. True, the game engine is programmed to give quite a few of them the Highlander treatment (Ahem. "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!") as far as active expression goes. But the fact that it happened and so early in the generations was what took little ol' novice me by surprise. Most especially with the brain. Wasn't that not supposed to happen? I guess, with Beirut having no brains at all, it most certainly can.
Hmmmn...
Now that I have mentioned him that does remind me of a few observations. Starting with a couple of things that I noticed when I was looking at my breeding log for group two. Firstly, most of my fatal mutations have happened in the Bondi female's offspring. Secondly, Beaudry and Beirut are completely related to one another as they share the same mother and father. Coincidentally they just may be the set of "twins" the Bondi had surprised me with after she finally reached old age. If that were indeed the case, then I think I know exactly how it came to be that Beaudry turned up with an incomplete second brain and Beirut turned up completely lacking in the grey matter department. Note to self: Hold that thought until motivation to investigate strikes again.
Goodness, I better get back to the subject!
As expected, the shock over the discovery soon gave way to curiosity, and it was then when I hatched a clone into the Lab world that I noticed the "walk right until continually wall-bonking" behavior. She was able to speak and did so quite frequently, but the only thing that she would stop for was sleep. Internet research into multiple brain organs yielded the cause as to why: The game engine is rigged to activate only the last brain organ gene of the list. With the case being that Beaudry's second brain was for the most part incomplete, it happened to be the last brain organ gene and thus was the one that had been activated. Poor girl, no wonder she'd keep walking to the right until sleepiness overwhelmed her!
Because her genome had a fully developed and functioning brain sitting there taking up space, the easiest solution to the problem was to do away with that second brain. A solution that, in my opinion, worked rather wonderfully in the second test clone. For the most part she still has quite the high number of genes, but she no longer does that keep walking to the right thing, fed and entertained herself with very little prompting, and was quite the sweetheart to the other test subjects. I couldn't help but fall for her! If for whatever reason anybody happens to be interested in her I wouldn't mind passing a copy of her along.
Wall meets an old pal, Brain
And now for the other half that I had made mention of. You experienced brain gengineers are free to point, cry "n00b!", snicker and snort at this part if you wish. I wouldn't blame any of you in the least if you did. For those are considered "n00bs" like myself, this could or could have saved you quite a bit of frustration.
Having gained a little more confidence with my ability to work with the Genetics Kit and in my understanding of the brain, I had felt that it was finally time to tackle giving Beirut a brain of his own. Adding the genes and editing most of the functions was the easy part. Editing the "Update Sequence" was an entirely different story, especially since right in the middle of it all the house lost internet access for a week. The problem with that that I had been having was getting certain genes (For example here: the Vision, Smell, and Drive lobes) to update with each other and only each other instead of every single brain gene in the list. As usual, the solution was something so diabolically simple that it took me losing count of how many times I had to clear everything and restart before it hit me.
To explain it, let's use the Vision, Smell, Drive lobe genes as the example since I've already mentioned them. And let's say that you're like me and building a whole brain pretty much from scratch. You've got everything but the Update Sequence set into place and to start with you are trying to hook up the lobe genes into updating together. None of the brain genes have the Update Lobe/Tract box ticked. For reference on which genes should update with which and in what order you have a second Genetics Kit program window running with a base genome open. (Yes, it is possible to open two different genomes at once with that program. Even GEL does it, if you happen to have it installed. But for the sake of clarity let's stick with the Cyberlife/Creatures Labs editor. Also, keep an eye out in the near future for pictures to go with each step. It often does not occur to me to screencap as I work!)
What you do first, and this feels somehow important in ways that I can't quite explain myself, is open the Attention Lobe gene and tick that Update Lobe box. At first you won't see that having any effect on the selections below it, but if you click on the close button and reopen the gene you will see that those selections will now be active. The only selection in the drop down menu should be "Unused Update Slot." Click on the "Just after" radio button and close that gene.
The second step, open either of the three lobe genes (Drive, Vision, or Smell; it doesn't matter) and tick that Update box. Click on the "Just before" radio button. The drop down menu should be showing the attention lobe, but if not you should select it. Close the gene.
Third, open the next gene. Do as you have done to the previous two; only this time select "Update with" and the last gene you had just edited (Which, depending on the gene that you picked, shows up as "driv," "visn," and "smel," in the drop down menu). It's predictable in what comes next: Close it!
Now here's something I've found to be pretty nifty. Open up the first of the genes that you were actually trying to get to update with two others and take a look at the Update Sequence section. Notice that it has changed from "Just before" and "Unused Update Slot" to "Update with" and whichever gene it was that you last edited. Pretty cool isn't it? You don't even have to go back and make changes, program does that for you! Now just close it and go on ahead and change that third gene. It's a lot like what you were doing to the second only this time you're selecting the previous two genes from the drop down menu, they should be appearing together in one selection.
And there you have it, fellow brain-building newbies. How to group together brain genes to update with each other!
But why change the Attention lobe gene first? Well, first off, the breed I decided to model Beirut's brain upon was the Bondi. I haven't made a full comparison between all the CL breeds yet (It is on the to-do list though, never fear.) but just between them and the Chichi's the "Update Time" column in the Brain tab there were noticeable differences. But what exactly is "Update Time"? Is it how often the lobe/tract updates per second, or is it the order in which it updates? I am just as clueless as any other brain newbie. Maybe any experts in the field that might possibly be reading this would care to shine some light on what anything in that tab means. But it was the lobe with the highest number in that column, the only one that updated on its lonesome, and I found that the "Unused Update Slot" doesn't appear anywhere in the drop down menu if you save that particular gene for last. I've also noticed that by fiddling around with the before/after/with options and the drop down menu in the Gene Edit tab, and then returning to the Brain tab, the numbers in the Update Time column change. If that confuses you, as I am not the best in the world at explaining things, try it yourself to see what I mean.
Maybe now is about time I open up that Brain in a Vat thing to see if it answers any of my questions; both the mentioned and the unmentioned. The more experienced in brain matters are free to chime in, so long as its constructive I welcome the input. (If it isn't too apparent I'm terribly shy when it comes to forums, even when I can see that nobody will bite if I ask a question that I can't find an answer to in the forum search. While getting any responses is a gamble I feel a bit more comfortable posting my questions in my blog. Perhaps because it is much easier to track my own progress in a blog than it is in a forum.)
1 comment:
This is really good :)
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