Oh noooo we’re late!
Hi Creatures fans!
It’s time for a long overdue update.
Let’s start with the big bad news of the day. Creatures 4 is delayed until Q2 2012 (no date yet). I know, it sucks, but let me explain the reasons for this fairly huge delay and why it will be a good thing for the game.
And there’s some good news too…
Let me present the Hatchery. The first environment you’ll play in when launching the game for the first time and your central tool to bring the Norn eggs into the world. Hope you like it!
The Hatchery is pretty important in showing the kind of starting scenario your Creatures 4 experience will start with.
The real piece of good news is for the Android fans among you. We’re happy to announce that Creatures 4 will be released on your devices too! A lot of people requested it when we were at Gamescom and since the Android market is definitely growing, it ultimately made sense to Bigben and ourselves to get this going on.
So, let’s tackle the reasons for the delay and discuss where we are in regards to development right now.
There are two main reasons for the delay.
First, it simply took more time than we anticipated to reach our target quality and merge the Creatures engine into our own to bring the game to 3D. We’re very happy on how it’s going at the moment and we’ve finally reached a point where a freeform sandbox experience can run on its own without imploding into a black hole and suck in all of Belgium. What this means is that we’re finally adding our own layer of content to the game and it’s a very exciting time that feels like a new “aha” moment.
The second reason is that we want to release a game that is better than what we originally anticipated. Obviously our goal was always to deliver a great game, but our vision has evolved as the project took life. The first showings of the game and your feedback gave us new ideas which will ultimately allow us to improve our original design in several ways. The trade-off is that we need more time.
In regards to the development, we’re designing and integrating a brand new layer of content: that covers all those things that never existed in Creatures before and that will make Creatures 4 a good game by its own merits. We want to bring new interactions with the environment and bring a sense of palpable evolution to the Norns.
It’s clear to us that the focal point of the series is breeding generations of Norns which are increasingly more capable of handling themselves and their world. How can we encourage that, how can the world around the Norns react to their evolution, etc. These are the kind of things we’re dealing with right now. The ultimate goal here is to avoid the over-complexity of Creatures 3 while extending its gameplay.
And since it’s now the time to shoot for ideas, we have a couple of questions to which we think you guys will answer better than anyone. We’re genuinely interested in gathering a lot of great user experiences we know are important to a Creatures game player. So…
What is the coolest or the most advanced thing you’ve ever done, tried to achieve or wished you could do in one of the previous Creatures game?
It can be anything: breeding a über cool or super intelligent Norn, do something with the environment, messing up with the ecosystem, you name it. Though I’d like you to limit this to what the previous games offered as standard content and tools. This is not a “suggest the next feature” kind of thing but more of a “tell us why it’s cool for you”.
Inversely, what is the most boring/frustrating/disappointing experience you had?
That’s it, comment below and thank you for your support!
I probably said this before, but I think you should make it so that creatures can interact with as many objects as possible in as many ways possible, creatures should be able to eat foliage,animals or rotting material in addition to root vegetables and fruit, and there should be interaction scripts for anything a creatures can see, so creatures can adapt in as many diverse ways as possible, creatures could evolve to graze, browse or hunt for food, they could evolve to find decrease in boredom from ‘push’ing plants,animals and creature eggs, the possibilities are endless.
“Finally, it would be nice to have way to keep track of lineage’s. I tried to do it myself in the notes section of most of my creatures info windows, but it would be nice to have an easier way to do this. Maybe make it an optional feature, like a pedigree, so that those who want it can enable it, and those who don’t need it don’t have to worry about it (I can’t see it as a useful feature if doing a wolfing run for example).”
Oh, no, it’s *very* useful for a wolfling run!
What if you want to examine how a particular trait came to dominate your population (eg how is it that my gen 30 norns have 1 minute long pregnancies)? You could analyze the genetics of your norns to find when the mutation causing that trait first popped up, then track lineage to see if all the norns with that trait can trace ancestry to this one norn, or if the same mutation popped up independently in multiple norns. You can see natural selection in action – 1 minute long pregnancies mean less time before the norn can get pregnant again, meaning the norn has more babies, thereby passing on that trait to others. My guess is that trait would also only benefit female norns, so I’ll probably find no difference in offspring between male norns with/without that gene.
Of course, you need to make backups of most of your wolfling run creatures, instead of every few generations or a subset of each generation. And you need something that can monitor inheritance without a lot of prompting from the player. But let me tell you, I use lineage-tracking a lot in my wolfling runs!
“What is the coolest or the most advanced thing you’ve ever done, tried to achieve or wished you could do in one of the previous Creatures game?”
I’ve wished I could affect the ecosystem more. There’s a whole game in trying to balance the ecosystem, so I never understood why it was never done.
“Inversely, what is the most boring/frustrating/disappointing experience you had?”
Teaching every norn the same basic stuff again and again, only to find out the darn thing has no basic survival instincts/intellegence to live! What kind of a.i. lets the creature die from hunger because it’s too stupid to eat, or out of exhaustion because he won’t sleep?
“What is the coolest or the most advanced thing you’ve ever done, tried to achieve or wished you could do in one of the previous Creatures game?”
+Playing a life simulation game. I would like to be able to grow plants, and interact with the environment.
Having seasons would have been an absolute blast and a challenge – trying to grow enough food and teach your creatures survival skills for the winter! So please keep creatures close to nature. I hated the fact that they ended up in a space ship with all those stupid electronic gadgets that I didn’t even want. Also, the ecosystem should be self-sustainable if the player cannot/does not want to care for it.
+I love breeding them for new colors and other genetics.
+I liked being able to download other/different types of norns (aqua norns, etc).
+Genetics.
+I liked having grendels, though I wish they were more aggressive. It’s an added element, having this “threat” to your norns (even though norns are a threat to themselves sometimes).
Inversely, what is the most boring/frustrating/disappointing experience you had?
–Unteachable norns.
–not distinct enough; can we have personalities for norns? Even simple things, like this norn likes cheese, or this norn likes butterflies. This norn likes to wander, so you have to keep an eye on her…….I feel personalities would liven things up a bit; after a while, they kind of all blur together with the exception of their color/breeds.
Ryo remind me on something, specially the last thing he/she/it wrote – they should wander around, specially after they become adult (in c3 adult orns just walk around until they found an other adult and then start reproducing and don’t care much for food)
Also some other things; it is annoying if a norn is cramped and lonely at the same time, same for hot and cold – jsut take a look at the basic requirements – c3 norns had many mistakes in there (like cramped and lonely)
The most advanced thing I’ve done? I strung a load of agents together that meant pushing a button gave me a light-show before dispensing cheese. I never really attempted that advanced. The most frustrating thing, I think, was the fact that C3 ecology just did anything but thrive at times. When you’re young and don’t comprehend that perhaps it’s the game that has the issue and it’s not simply you being unable to do it right, it just makes it all the worse.
On that note? The hatchery is looking amazing. I wouldn’t care if it took you another two years to get this out so long as it’s something as remarkable as it appears to be now. I’ve got to admit, the way you’ve been handling this all has been absolutely amazing. Cheers guys.
Dearest Andrea Di Stefano,
first of all, thank you for bringing Creatures to life. Again!
I’ve played Creatures for over ten years, and I opened the very first Italian website dedicated to the game series. [are you Italian as well?] So yep, I’ve got some ideas.
BIOCHEMISTRY PROBLEM:
A big drawback in Creatures was that chemistry reactions were defined in norns’ DNA. In this way, it was way too easy to achieve things like Immortal norns (“Life” never decreases) or Sea norns (“Oxigen” generated from nothing). Since you can actually change reactions as you wish with no limitations, evolution processes are greatly damaged. It would be nice if chemical reactions are “fixed” (as in the real world), to avoid this nasty “alchemist” bug of creating/destroying them with no limitations. This will also make creature’s DNA much more smaller, making it easier to be manipulated with tools and kits.
OBJECTS:
Creatures gives to users the ability to create their own objects / scripts. This is a great feature, but was really abused. People created thousands of horrendously designed agents, most of them buggy and dangerous. I appreciate the fact that for the moment there won’t be this possibility. However, a limited set of objects will be very boring and annoying. The idea of “building and connecting” devices in Creatures 3 and Docking Station was really great, but not very well balanced. Ettins use to destroy everythings, and blueprints …were useless!
PERSONALITY:
Norns do not develop any real relationship with each other. I also guess that, because of how their neural network is built, they can’t even recognize different creatures. It would be nice to change this, giving [1] more PERSONALITY to creatures and [2] the chance for them to develop RELATIONSHIPS according to the stimuli that a norn receive from other creatures. I think this can be trivially achieved with a new “lobe” that has a neuron for every new creature, expanding the “noun” lobe as if every creature was a new “object category” itself. Of course, it’s just a suggestion. But it will tweak the gameplay a little bit more. Nowadays, creatures are and behave with no great differences.
GAMEPLAY and STORYLINE:
Some people are still arguing about what the Shee statues really does to creatures! 
So yes, including a strong storyline and many “in-game-hints” will be great. Also, I know that the tree-house you showed was from the demo, but I really hope that environments will be much more big and filled of “secrets”.
As many other already said, a big plus in Creatures 2 and Creatures 3 was the “discovery” experience. Both world were huge, dark and …full of mysteries!
ECOLOGY:
Despite minor attempts were made in Docking Stations, plants in Creatures were quite boring. The main problem is that they are not affected by evolution, and they remain as they are forever. It would be nice, as a 3D model can be easily manipulated, if evolutionary techniques would be integrated in ecology as well. So, for example, a red flower will have change to produce reddish offspring. Maybe a little bit more bright. Maybe with bigger leafs. Maybe with other dozen of hidden, non-trivial features (like drought resistance, etc…) that can be discovered only mixing them properly. Applying such technique to living creatures and plants will surely make the game more interesting. And reduce the boringness of always being surrounded by the same objects.
Of course, I have thousands of other ideas. :p But for the moment… I think this message is long enough! :p
This^
Also, the most advanced thing I ever tried to do was create norns that formed distinct groups(I failed). I could not do that because 1: I do not know much about the norns brains 2: because norns do not seem to distinguish in action between norns they love, blood relations, and norns they hate, being just as likely to kiss-pop thier detested mother as they are a completely unrelated norn they love. norns have the neurons to distinguish between their parents, children, and siblings, but they are unused, and the only way we know of to stop them from breeding with thier relatives is to set up a gene that injects libido lowerer whenever they so much as glance at a relative. This is inconveniant because it means that they cannot and will not breed if they are in remotely the same area as the rest of their family.
The most boring thing in creatures was the fact that how a creature looked did not affect how it acted, what it could do, ect. if some norns were bigger, smaller, had sharper claws, longer legs, and that made them better at something, that would be awsome. another thing was that there were only three species, and they were not that distinct, grendals weren’t really carnivores, just bullys, and norn-grendal hybrids were always successful. All ettins really did was wander around stealing stuff. grendals and ettins weren’t really hive based creatures, and they couldn’t be made that way. theres a script, by Amaikokonut, of which i enjoy using, and it allows a creature to breed with any other creature, regardless of species. However, While I like using that script, I would also like it to be so that if a creature was radically different genetically or phisically from another, it could be considered a different species from that creature (if genetically), or simply be incompatible (if phisically). My reasoning is firmly rooted in science. You cannot easily breed a chihuahua to a german shepard, and most Lion/Tiger hybrids are infertle,and/or die young.What i am saying is that it would be nice to start out with one species, and gradually be able to evolve seperate, distinct species from that basic template creature.
I wonder what would happen if you separated a few norns from the pack..like have a child norn be raised by some other species sort of like a monkey does with infinites … I just want the norns not feel dumb and actually have unique personalities but I also want the world around them to be living and breathing i don’t want it to be just a world for the norn but some other unique life forms too beside the classic three.
I loved the ecosystems… being able to immerse myself with every living thing in the metarooms – introducing new species from different areas and watching it all grow and thrive. I spent many hours not only breeding creatures, but exploring and finding new plants and critters – trying to work out what they do and how they live.
A big grip with creatures 3 was that most of the ecosystems eventually died out and was very hard to maintain.
I think a great point to have in this new game will be to have a massive amount of flaura and fauna available in the world and of course new plants and animals you can buy to add to your word.
Thanks
@ChosenPredator: It would depend on the animal, different species inprint in different ways. it would also depend on how different the animals in question are.
I think it would be cool if norns could interact with each other more. They didn’t seem to do much except push one another to breed in the previous games. For example, norns could try to teach and take care of their young. Or they could actually try to play together, and form opinions on one another. Like if one norn decided to repeatedly hit another creature, that creature would not like the other norn and try to avoid it. But it wouldn’t be afraid of every norn it saw or something like that.
I don’t know. Just an idea. :3
The most advanced thing I ever tried was completely reversing the genome of a norn so that it was entirely different from any other norn on my entire game. I used the Creatures 3 Genetics Editor (that’s what I think it was called) released by Gameware Development…it was really cool and pretty easy to use. Plus the game completely flipped out and gave one of my Norns one grendel leg and arm and one Norn leg and arm…it was cool! I hope this game is as genetically advanced as the previous ones. (I actually used Creatures 3 for my science project.)
i heard c4 will be “F2P” whats meant by this?
@patey
as far as i understand, this means you will be able for downloading it for free. There will be also two kinds of money, one that you get easily and one thats more difficult. You can use this money for upgrading your game, extra objects, special creatures and similar.
You will be able for buying those kinds of money, in case you don’t want to wait until you get the money on the hard way – but nobody forces you for that
so it wont be like 90% of the f2p games that charge money to do most of the stuff in the game?
I guess they try for making it different and i guess they won’t tell eerything right now, we have just to wait and see what happens….
Hey, thank you for the great feedback folks! Keep it coming!
Some things are definitely in our plans from the project start (improved splicing), some things made us think (ecosystem, personality traits) and some stuff will still be controversial until we can find a good way to do it post-release (modding).
Even though we’re not answering to everyone and everything, we’re definitely reading all your comments!
@Ettina
A “lineage monitor” feature is something we’ve been discussing a lot and in many forms (as an in-game feature, as an external/facebook feature etc.). My guess is that it won’t make the initial release of the game but we’re definitely keeping that in mind for later if that’s the case.
@Alan Zucconi
As far as environment size, since we’re a multiplatform game we have to somehow limit the size due to performance concerns and gameplay. Still, the next environments we’re showing you (hoping to show you a new one in January) are somewhat bigger than the Treehouse and a lot bigger than the Hatchery.
@MK_Grendel
couldn’t say it better myself, thanks
@Patey
F2P is a fancy acronym for “free to play”. As MK_Grendel said, this means that the game will not require you to pay to play but you will have the option to complete some stuff faster and convert some golden eggs (basically “the resource you exchange for real money”) into coins to buy stuff from the store if you haven’t earned enough coins in-game.
We haven’t yet set in stone exactly what will require some golden eggs and what won’t (we need a good testing phase before being 100% sure about that), but we will definitely aim to reach a good balance between pleasing those players that only have a superficial interest for the game and those that decide to invest in it (ie. buy/use golden eggs).
@MK_Grendel
Actually a lot of the balancing of in-game currency and purchases comes from testing and balancing and we’re about to launch the focus/testing process. Game developers usually design/balance stuff and play testing regularly tells them how their design sucks
This will certainly be the same on Creatures 4 so that’s why more solid info is yet to come…we still need to get it ourselves!
i hope the focus test group happens to be the most hardcore creature players in the universe, lol.
@Andrea Di Stefano
There will be a beta / testing version of Creatures 4?
The only one seen so far was at Gamescom 2011, but I guess it was just to show the early gameplay.
My real question is… there will be a beta version that WE can test? *_*
If yes… :p …where do we need to sign? :p
It would also be nice if you can publish a video to show how the game really looks like in High Definition. The few videos available are really poor, unfortunately. :’(
@ChosenPredator
we should make a contest, that way we can find the most hardcore creatures gamers!
Please bring back the cable car from C1? I loved that.
The non-elevator vehicles in general (submarines, rafts) were just very cool.
You killed the creature game.. It looks like some game meant for six year old/facebook game/or an app small short and tiny for your phone. This isn’t a pc game and this isn’t the creatures 4 everyone has been waiting for. You downgraded the graphics by a few fifteen years of expansions, you killed the norn image, you dumb-ed the game down, and your making the world small because your trying to fit it on hand held games. So you trying to make a run at angry birds here because this looks like it couldn’t out shine the real creature games even if you threw it at the sun.
Shouldn’t bother putting it on pc. Should just slap it up on facebook, sure it has enough power behind it to run the game fine.
Michelle – I don’t think it’s going to be that bad, I think they know hands down that for them to even survive they will be highly dependent on the hardcore community to expose this game for them and market it, it’s a very vocal community and their risking a lot so I’m pretty sure their just refining it and making it better and more accessible and taking the best and improving them and taking the complicated things and simplifying them so the community can expand and grow larger.
I don’t think this is going to be as vile as say, turning “shadowrun” a highly beloved and renowned game and turning it into a FPS game and totally disregarding the hardcore community and ending up failing heavily for changing the entire game into an abomination it was never suppose to be.
I think it is going to be that bad. Their dumbing down a game to make it kid friendly. We have enough kid games, now their taking a game teens and adults liked and turning it into some Jumpstart looking game.
I played all the creatures games since I was little. Sure their hard when your little but their still fun and when you get older you can start looking into their DNA and start building your own Meta-Rooms. I wrote my college paper using Creatures 3 and was delighted to pass and show the game to my friends and teachers. This game seems shallow and just silly compared to the real life like qualities of the originals. It doesn’t help the graphics got changed to cartoons to impress kids even more.
The world looks really small, and doesn’t look like it offers much in exploring or gaming. Looks like you will be doing repetitive actions to get coins to get new things then rinse and repeat.
Then the fact in the demo when you put your courser over anything there is some funky white line glow going around objects and creatures, that just screams that their not thinking of the original pc gamers but the new ones they can get for ipads and the like.
I have seen no sign that the norns are even smart any more, of course creatures 3 you got stupid norns but through breeding they got stronger and smarter. Culling was needed sure but the creatures thrived after a while. Then I have seen no sign of bacteria, or anything else making me think they took it out to dumb it down even more. Goodness forbid children need to learn while playing a game now. I learned biology in elementary from creatures games alone and by the time I was in college when they started talking about it I was a top student. The only top students I see coming from this game are kindergarteners who colored stripes like their norns had.
In the con they said it seemed very popular with women and children. Yea I bet it would. Women looking to see if it’s safe and cuddly enough for their sheltered kids, and kids looking to see the cute little cartoon creatures.
Now all of the above is not to say I won’t get the game. I have played every creature game out there even the one for the Gameboy and PlayStation. So I will be getting this one to. I have little hope that this is a true continuation of the series; I think this is rather a spin off like the village game that failed. The whole world is dumbing everything down, from schools to games and TV shows. This is what the hardcore gamers get for hoping we would truly get a continuation for the creatures game. Still, Grandroids will likely prove to be something like what creature fans have been waiting for. Well we will see, in the end it rests on Cactus and what they want more. Real gamers, or kids who play things like PetVill on Facebook.
@Michelle
@Alec
I can understand your frustration. We all wait for Creatures 4 even since before DS came out… so we are really FULL of expectations! Maybe *too much* expectations!
I don’t really mind the fact that C4 norns don’t look like C3 norns anymore, as long as the game will be good.
The graphic is very nice, but it doesn’t seem to be as advanced as many other 2011 games. Although, again, this is not really an issue for me.
Actually, what SCARES me at most is the fact that probably the “philosophy” behind the whole Creatures series has been changed. I remember that when the game came out it was by Cyberlife to be claimed a “non-game”. In fact, it was a very well designed artificial life / intelligence / ecosystem simulator, with a fancy graphic. I’ve always liked *THIS*!
I would be quite disappointed, as a Creatures fan, if the game would end up like either THE SIM (= no SIMulation at all!), SPORE (= no… NOTHING at all!) or PET SOCIETY (= crazy micromanagent overcompensate with eyecandies for kids). Of course this doesn’t mean that it will be a failure, but probably that old fans (like us!) would not be as supportive as Fishing Cactus is expecting us to be.
In these 15 years, game styles have completely changed, so they are creating a product that is biased in this new “social direction”.
I think that this puts and end to the previous Creatures games. The fact that they were oriented to a very advanced audience. And, for this reason, a reduced one. Everyone can play a car game, but few people can understand the deep architecture behind Creatures. What I mean is that not always quality products are the ones that win.
I am a little bit upset by what ANDREA DI STEFANO said, about the fact that the world would be relatively small. Exploration and mysteries played a key role in the whole Creatures series. I think it would be a mistake to remove this factor. In my opinion (and yes, I’m a programmer!
) it would be much more interesting if different environments were available on different platforms. So, for instance, you would have the hatchery and the small tree-house on a mobile phone, but GIANT other spaces in the PC version.
Actually, now I come to think of it…. Are we gonna get more story? Because I swear I will give you all my money for some well-written lore. I’m assuming we’re on Sphericus now, so that’s going to be interesting to see. Not to mention more about the Shee- Are they still around? Are they still on their quest for good tea and biscuits? How do they react to no longer being stuck in a ring of inhabitable space?
Oh, who am I kidding? I’m probably going to give you guys all my money anyway.
@Sfot I wouldn’t mind that either but ONLY if it’s well written and not slap together, like gaining a fantastic writer and making him play a few of the games and figuring out some of the mechanics and conjuring up some sort of interesting story.
I am with a few of the above guys I just don’t want a dumb down game but something that is easy yet if you look deeper into it has complexities that can satisfy even the most hardcore creature fans.
I just want the Devs to have cojones of steel and their willing to take risk instead of doing everything safe.
‘living breathing world’ just not ‘objects’ for the creatures to play with there should be things with their own intelligence interacting with the creatures as well – even if its seasonal thing so it doesn’t overwhelm the game …just keep it dynamic switch thigns up make rare appearance happen from some sort of different species..it makes people talk and take pictures and discuss the game…curious about future appearance of unknown species or new plants..so on so forth..they can do so much to make this not only the best creature game but one of the best games of the year.
First, my two cents on modding: modding is absolutely what’s kept the Creatures series going strong all this time, and I think it’s a necessary part of the game. If the issue is business-driven rather than programming-driven, you might consider implementing it in a way such that you can still gain income from it. Maybe something like a modding market that goes through Fishing Cactus with small Golden Egg “listing fees” to make your work available for download?
I’d like to agree with the people who’ve said that more fully fleshed-out ecology, and more individualized Creatures would be great.
If creatures could somehow retain their genetics while behaving more distinctly, and maybe having more personal preferences, I feel like it would add a lot to the game. As it is, one of the problems is that in past games, every Norn was the same – there was nothing to really care about.
Perhaps food and toys (etc.) could have hidden flavor/entertainment values? Maybe it’s too complex, but then a Norn with (maybe even hereditary) preferences for spicy foods and loud toys would prefer to eat peppers and play with drums, and a Norn with a preference for sweet foods and soft toys would prefer eating pears and biscuits and playing with plush animals.
I love the idea further upthread that someone had for a seperate lobe to let creatures identify one another seperately, although I have no idea how feasible it is. I’d also love it if they could somehow form packs or tribes in some way.
Maybe a Norn’s preferences could be in two parts – genetically determined “hard” preferences, and then “soft” preferences determined by their environment? This way it’d even be possible for Norns to mutate to have allergies, or to be exclusive carnivores/etc, but it would also mean a Norn in an environment where only fruits are available might also grow to prefer fruit to other foods.
I have no idea how feasible that would be – but man, that would be so cool! It’d open up a lot of new possibilities for behavior.
On the topic of ecology: I loved the idea of C3′s ecosystems, but I hated them in practice. The “web of life” diagrams they had on the old website were fascinating to me as a kid, and it was so disappointing that they didn’t work anything like that in the real game.
Unless you modded the game, you never even got to see half of the fauna because the food chains were so broken. Take the C3 Norn Terrarium as an example: the kingfisher was meant to eat trout, which were meant to eat dragonfly nymphs – but without outside intervention, the trout very quickly go extinct, because there aren’t dragonfly nymphs around often enough to sustain them.
It’d be great to have more depth and variation in the ecosystem, even something as superficial as the changes the bramboo from Docking Station had, but it’s most important to have a functional ecosystem in the first place.
And I can understand the concern of some commentors over some changes in direction with the series – but I also understand that the market for PC games and simulation games is not the same as it was 10 or 15 years ago, and I hope that you can all remain true to some of the underlying things that give the series its lasting power while still finding new audiences in addition to the old.
However it goes, it’s still good to see the Creatures series getting a true new sequel, instead of just a Game Boy Advance platformer with reused art assets from older games.
Good luck!
I’m not really worried about a small area upon release, since that kind of stuff can be added to later. The stuff that they can’t really fiddle with without breaking compatibility with the released version is more of a concern. Well that and how I don’t want to sign up for Twitter/Facebook/Wordpress, but I would presume that kind of stuff is optional.
Probably my favorite things were taking care of specific lineages of norns that would pay special attention too, and building elaborate mechanisms. I liked watching a few creatures fairly closely and figuring out why they would do particular things. I watched them change a little over the generations, but usually wouldn’t be able to go through that many. I also enjoyed building fairly elaborate mechanisms and seeing how well they actually worked and held together.
Something I tried to do was engineer a kind of creature with significant sexual dimorphism, specifically having the males gather food and placing it near the home area so that babies would have more food. I don’t think I quite succeeded on that. Another thing I wanted to do was make bramboo berries that varied in nutrition as well as color, but I didn’t quite have the scripting ability to do it. I’ll have to see if I can go back to that now that I’ve tried some other programming/scripting systems.
One of the more frustrating things is that creatures tended to not be aware of certain aspects of the environment, not noticing where bodies of water are, and lack any sort of secondary attention, in that they don’t really scan around as much as decide whether or not to interact with whatever currently has their attention. The ability to more carefully decide when and why to switch attention, or at least to deliberately ignore distracting objects, would probably help fix a number of behavior issues.
I also have to agree on chemistry being too directly DNA controlled, though there’s only so much realism that can be gotten without a complex protein system. Such a thing would probably also allow for diploid genetics, but I think that’s enough for me to talk about this late at night.
P.S.: Your captcha system does not seem to be working in Opera.
OK maybe it was just me entering the wrong thing over and over again from being tired.
@Lyn
I agree with you about the fact the the modding and scripting part of the previous Creatures Engine was one of the aspects that keep it alive for so long. Unfortunately I think that Fishing Cactus is worried that giving to people the chance to “mod” the game will make “coins” useless. However, I think that the right direction could be creating a “market”, something like an AppleStore for Creatures objects. People can create them, submit them in the CreatureStore and then people can download paying coins. Users can earn these coins as well, and Fishing Cactus will earn even with no taxation because many users will pay for coins.
However, I am worried that this could change the game from an “open” one to a very closed and frustrating “The Sims”. Only with norns.
Also, it is true that C3 ecosystem is too fragile. Having only two or three fishes and a couple or dragonflies is not enough to make it auto-sustainable. I really hope that they will introduce some king of genetic algorithm inside the ecosystem, so that even the shape of new plants (as well as flowers colours in DS) could slowly change and adapt. Just so you know, for example something like “yellowish-leafs means drought resistance”, “greenish-leafs means that likes humidity”, or “reddish-flowers attract certain type of insects”. Yep, it would be lovely if insects could “brings” pollen and mix genetics of plants. It is not extremely difficult, as models are 3D and can be changed on-the-fly as they already did for the norn. There could be six or eight different genetic characteristics that makes plants unique, and each one could be associated with some eyecandy (leaf and flower colours, size and shape, spikes, poison, …).
I would be a little bit upset in seeing chameleons that, even if lovely designed, looks exactly all the same. Otherwise, there is little or no point at all in using 3D models instead of sprites! :p
And yep. I would love to see C4 on Sphericus… :p
I was always a huge fan of this series, and I’m super hyped to hear it being resurrected! It sounds like it’s in good hands too. You guys seriously seem interested in it. So, as a long time player, here’s my 2 cents:
What is the coolest or the most advanced thing you’ve ever done, tried to achieve or wished you could do in one of the previous Creatures game?
I sent many a poor norn to a watery death in the attempt to breed a line that could survive underwater. I was eventually able to accomplish this with editing software, but breeding them never seemed to work. Amphibious norns were a bit of an obsession for a long time that I was never able to realize, and I’d love another shot at it! I also loved to just let the norns run wild and see what happened after a few feral generations, and it sort of worked, but had certain complications such as…
Inversely, what is the most boring/frustrating/disappointing experience you had?
Elevators. I HATED those damn elevators. One norn could become obsessed with them and doom his entire species by hitting the button non stop, and trapping an entire crowd of norns inside until they all starved to death. I’m sure this would be far less of a problem in a 3D environment, but it was always the thing that frustrated me the most. The second most frustrating thing was seeing a beloved norn that would not or could not breed. I understand why pregnancy had to be a somewhat rare event, but it seemed like norn sterility was a bigger problem than it should have been. Was never sure if it was a bug, or just a nasty mutation I ran into repeatedly, but it drove me nuts!
85,371 views for Castle story – give creature some type of USER creation mechanic with a in depth rating system – if you want to create things for creature you have to pay to upload it that way it will only allow the best of the best to get through…maybe a dollar a pop
The best thing about Creatures for me was always attempting to breed norns that looked a certain way. I liked that in Creatures 3 I could look at the pigment genes and breed toward abnormalities in those. I liked to breed them towards colors.
My least favorite thing about previous games was how frustrating it was to have a norn wander into a dangerous place while I was working with another norn. That was frustrating. I’d be doing something else, and all of the sudden my best norn had walked over to the grendle and let it beat him to death.
Thanks for making the game android compatible, btw. I’ll be sure to get a copy for my phone!
@ChosenPredator
I like the idea, but I thought that for the dynamic that they want to realise, a “Free to upload new stuff”, “Pay coins to download them” would be better. There are few developers and several end-users. For this reason it would give to Fishing Cactus more economic income. A rating system and “most downloaded on top” will automatically put constraints on quality.
@ Everyone
Are you going to implement portals like in DS? They are really interesting and surely gives a boost to Creatures Series! 
Since the start of this conversation, no-one mentioned one of the most important (for me! :p ) features of Creatures. PORTALS!
@Alan Zucconi
portals only in case fast agers and imortal ones are nearly impossible, or aoption for not allowing fastagers enter your world – in DS i end up testing every new creature if it is a fastager or immortal
@Michelle
@Alec I agree with both of you!
@Alan Zucconi – there is still hope for a highly complex game, Steve Grand is writing one with a higher functioning AI. Google his name.
Kay
I’m very excited that a new Creatures is being released! Like others, I have some concerns about how watered down it may become. I for one enjoyed the complexity of the previous games, even if I was too young at the time (young teenager) to fully grasp all of the details. The most recent “AI” and “life sim” games that have been put out for Wii, DS and other consoles have been abysmal, so hopefully Creatures 4 can wake up the world to what life sim games are all about.
What is the coolest or the most advanced thing you’ve ever done, tried to achieve or wished you could do in one of the previous Creatures game?
I enjoyed breeding for certain traits while trying to weed out others that were not as desirable. I had always enjoyed downloading the norns from the internet that had been altered to have higher pigmentation. I would import one into my world and watch the next generation have a nice color change! Unfortunately, I never felt this was possible to do this by breeding the norns that came with the game…always needed one of these extremely colorful norns from the internet to achieve this.
I see that users will have the option to edit the color and other features of their norns in this version. I can’t say I like this feature very much, it sort of takes away from the excitement of breeding. I think it would be nicer if their features had various mutation rates so that their offspring would slowly look different from the previous generations. I just think it would make the game more exciting, rather than allowing the user to change all of these things freely from the get-go.
Inversely, what is the most boring/frustrating/disappointing experience you had?
Norns not eating, or forgetting how to eat. My norns always managed to find the weirdest places to hide out (usually alone) and often times starved themselves. Despite their hunger levels being at peak levels, the norn would just continuously walk into a wall or just lay down and sleep until their life force reached 0%.
Well first of all, the game looks really great!
What is the coolest or the most advanced thing you’ve ever done, tried to achieve or wished you could do in one of the previous Creatures game?
In regard to this, the best thing in the game is the complexity. One of my favorite things was the breed the norns and no that no two norn was the same. I wish it had been a little more apparent their character differences, but overall the game was perfect for me. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not dumb down the complexity of the game; then it will be more like Creatures Adventures which bored me half to death. Creatures 3 was my favorite and I loved how the dna code was shown and how there were all those possible diseases. I also loved the mystery of it all and trying to find out how everything worked. Also, if the norns had more advanced social behaviors towards norns they loved, hated etc. that would be much better. The health center agent (not sure exactly what is was called but where you could put the norns in and inject them with things) was amazing. I also loved having grendels and ettins, and the norn breeds! Having norn breeds, especially some made by other people was also equally amazing (also the easiness of getting the content into the game.) Trying to think of what annoyed me – I definitely agree with the lineages, I had to write them down on a paper and it just got obnoxious. Also being able to interact with the environment would be awesome! I tried so hard to kill off the nasty bugs in the grendel jungle and make it a better place for my norns and I never could. My main point is dont try to dumb down and de-complex Creatures 4 because that is the best part and I would rather wait then get a Creatures Adventures type game.
Sorry for the grammatical errors and typos, I was just trying to get some ideas out quickly.
heya everyone. Just a quick hello to say we’re not dead. Most of us just went back from holidays and we’re back into production. More information as soon as possible of course!
Happy new year to all of you Creatures fans and as always, thank you for your support
(even those that don’t really support us but care enough to voice their opinion!).
Cheers!
Oh shoot! I just noticed that for some reason our blog stopped sending us comments notices thus 5 or 6 comments went unpublished. That should be fixed now, apologies for this
@Andrea Di Stefano:
Please, release a HD video of the gameplay. The only two videos available so far have a very poor quality!!! :p
So you’re not dead!
Quote …I agree with you about the fact the the modding and scripting part of the previous Creatures Engine was one of the aspects that keep it alive for so long. Unfortunately I think that Fishing Cactus is worried that giving to people the chance to “mod” the game will make “coins” useless. However, I think that the right direction could be creating a “market”, something like an AppleStore for Creatures objects. People can create them, submit them in the CreatureStore and then people can download paying coins. Users can earn these coins as well, and Fishing Cactus will earn even with no taxation because many users will pay for coins.
@Alan Zucconi
My fear with this is that fishing cactus will not use coins but golden eggs ie real money. this has been the bight mare for these “Free to Play” games. The greed and bragging take over the environment turns negative and the user usually ends up paying a lot more money than they ever intended. The game turns into crap.
Then as soon as the money drop the company can decide to pull the plug and we are left with nothing. this has already happened to many games despite the promises of “admin” it was inevitable. It started little at a time and then finally it was all about the money, the coin items were becoming crappier and crappier. I already saw comments that hint to money only items. and the fact that if the company decides that they are not making enough and to “retire” or “sunset” the game we are left with no game, nothing for our purchases. In the past we had our versions to hang on to and continue without a company, this game is not that.
I’d like to say that I’m Psyched that the Creatures saga is continuing! I fully intend on buying the special edition when this comes out (for the updated Creatures 1/2/3 if nothing else
).
I do have one request- don’t ruin my favorite franchise by turning it into some idiotic SIMS game or Farmville thing. That would make me extremely sad. I’m just fine with waiting for the game, but I expect a quality game in return. If I wanted a repetitive MMO I’d play WOW, and if I wanted a fake-social game, I’d play Farmville. The reason there is still a Creatures community is because we were ACTUALLY a community, who actually valued the Creatures series (which is a big reason why Gameware failed with the franchise- nobody wants a dumbed down version of Creatures (AKA Creatures Village). My apologies for the soap box, but I worry since this seems to be a trend with other PC game companies.
Now:
What is the coolest or the most advanced thing you’ve ever done, tried to achieve or wished you could do in one of the previous Creatures game?
—I played around with making an agent (just a simple yoshi toy, but still), and made a functional ecosystem in C3/DS using a combo of in-game critters with a few Agents. It was a ton of fun to make something self-sustaining, and I would prevent my creatures from leaving each terrarium. I’d breed what I felt was a good norn for the terrarium and try to get interesting colors from natural breeding. I remember it was a ton of fun to try for “just the right combo” of a Treehugger/Hardman so I had a peaceful norn that ate nothing but critters!
Inversely, what is the most boring/frustrating/disappointing experience you had?
—Honestly, the most disappointing experience I had was Creatures Village, in general. I thought my favorite franchise was going to dumb down and turn into a casual game, which almost broke my heart. I became a biologist because I loved this game. I remember when I only knew enough to play “Creatures” like a Tamagotchi, but in high school I was the only kid who knew what glucose was or what a defibrillator did.
As for the coolest…
I really, really loved the ecosystems in the game and especially in user- made rooms. Critter species interaction and their daytime/ nightime activity as welll as seasonal activity was delightful to find out. Seeing the virtual world change gradually – flowers develop, catepillars turn to butterflies etc. Was really the icing of thecake for me.
As for the most frustrating…
Teaching for the basic skills was really boring after a while. Also, some user-induced items made the game crash and trying to pinpoint which item it was was frustrating. I think I eventually stopped playing C3 not because I got tired of the game, but because it continued to crash because of add-ons, and I couldn’t find the reason for it.
Keep up the good work, I’m so going to get this when it comes out.
Oh, and one more thing! The ambient music in Creatures, especially C3, was one of the best ones I’ve seen in any game! At times I left the game running just to hear it.
I’m sure you are paying attention to the music and sounsd as well and it is going to be just as beautiful.
I really hope the next update is a HD commentary video…feels like forever since there has been anything to talk about.