Sorry about the late update, it was meant to be posted Friday but we were a bit busy… anyway, let’s have an overview of Creatures Online’s ecosystem today!
Here’s how the player can interact with ecosystem: - Tap on a critter to wake it up - Critters can’t be drag & dropped directly, but it is possible to move them like decoration elements after clicking on the corresponding icon on the interface allowing you to move / sell agents - Small critters (such as insects) generally can’t be interacted with - …but some can still be drag and dropped (for example, fishes) - …and you can still tap on some other ecosystem-related things, such as bee nests
And here’s how the Norns can interact with it: - Even though the players can’t interact with every insect, Norns can. Sometimes they hit or eat some insects, which you can reward or punish. - Flowers, mushrooms & grass patches grow naturally and are randomly placed. - Ecosystem varies depending of the environment. For example, the Hatchery consists mostly of flowers and butterflies. Thus, placing an insectivore critter may be a bad idea as butterflies tend to stay out of reach (yes, you can see the critters eating grass / insects)
This week I’ll simply do a summary regarding the game’s shop.
As you can see on the picture above:
(1) Spotlight: More and more objects are available in shop according to your current level. This category shows the latest items unlocked. (2) Resources: In this tab you’ll find coins and golden eggs. (3) Genetics: You can buy here genes pack to use with the Splicing Machine. (4) Toys: Self-explanatory. Toys mainly relieves Norns’ boredom. (5) Decoration: A lot of items are present here, which are purely for decoration. Though actually there may be some exceptions. (6) Ecosystem: You can buy here plant pots (to grow fruit plants) and critters. Naturally occurring flowers, grass patches and insects can’t be bought as they depend of the world. (7) Others: You can buy here coin machines and nests for your Norns to sleep. (8) Hide / shows a small description of the concerned item. (9) Upon buying an object, the game let you place it. However, you can stock objects you don’t want to place immediately. That’s why you can see a “Use” button here: I already have one of these objects in stock.
Sorry about the absence of weekly updates! Here’s one with a short video displaying the Splicing Machine:
As you can see in the video:
Each Norn has 8 cosmetic genes, each one impacting the appearance of the Norn. Changing the 1st one will have an impact on the belly, the 2nd one on the pattern the Norn has and so on.
There are 12 possible genes
There are 4 body types, each gene corresponds to one of them. The body of the Norn is an “average” created from these genes. See for example how the body shape changed when I replaced Bananou’s genes with Feral genes.
Two Norns with the same genes will look the same in the Splicing Machine as the preview shows you how the Norn should look with these genes. That’s why Bananou and Brugno seem similar.
However, once spliced they can have small differences even with the same genes. If you look carefully, in-game Bananou has 2 white spots on the hips, while Brugno has a white mark on the right arm.
The pattern on Norn fur is defined by genes #2 and #3, but the color for these patterns are defined by genes #5 and #6.
Time required for splicing depends on the number of genes modified (and the type of these genes).
This week I’ll present you a small summary regarding the Hatchery Machine interface:
When opening the Hatchery machine, you’ll see 2 different sections: - The “My Eggs” section, which contains your eggs - The “Eggs Store” section, which allows you to obtain new eggs
From the “My Eggs” section, you can see your eggs and hatch them if you want to (1). You can also see the 8 appearance genes of this egg by clicking on (2), allowing you to have an idea of how the Norn may look without hatching it. If your game is linked to a Facebook account, you can also send this egg to a friend (3).
You have a limited number of egg slots, but you can buy some more using coins or Golden eggs (4).
Click on (5) on the “Eggs Store” section to see which appearance genes each egg can contain (6). Eggs can be bought with energy, which refills automatically with time.
Unfortunately it becomes harder and hard to find something to say in the weekly update without saying “debugging” and “fixes”. So, from now on, it will mostly consist in some explanation / recap of some game features.
So, let’s start with an overview of the world monitor:
1/ Tap on a world to select it. When selected, the small description as well as the Norns displayed in [2] will be updated. Tap again to go to this world (you can also use the “Go to region” button). Worlds are unlocked through progression.
2/ All the Norns present in the selected world. The maximum number of Norns depends of the world.
3/ The magnifying glass button opens the menu [4]. You can also see an icon representing the current need of the Norn. If the Norn has no important need, nothing is displayed. In case of high hunger or high pain, the icon is displayed in red and a “!” is displayed on the world’s picture.
4/ “Go to Norn” will lead you to the world the Norn is in, “Teleport Norn” will teleport it in the current world.
Concerning the main advancements of last week: - We fixed a bug with the “rubber band” (the line you can draw from a Norn to an object on mobile device to give orders more easily) which was not displayed - We also fixed some compilation errors (Unicode related)
…and that’s all. Sorry to have only some debugging information to share with you once again, but debugging is mandatory (unless you would like to have this kind of Norns).
Have a nice week!
Most plants can’t be grown underwater, but some of them can.
This week, we added possibility to switch worlds by tapping on the teleporters. Before that, the only way to change the current world was by using the world monitor (the interface allowing you to see your worlds and in which world each of your Norn is).
We also tweaked the volume of some sound effects. Some were quite piercing.
By the way, I would like to answer to these two questions / concerns I have encountered regarding the latest video: - There are different Norns voices, one of them being much like the old classic Norns voices. Simply, none of the Norns in the video had it. It depends of the Norn. - If you don’t collect coins / XP by yourself, they will be automatically collected after some seconds, you actually don’t need to collect them one by one.
Nothing too juicy to share with you this week, as we are not working on really interesting things, but rather on debugging and stabilizing the mobile version. However, for those who missed the Twitch session before the Christmas holidays, we recorded a gameplay video (nothing new for those who watched the Twitch session though, it is a similar gameplay).
This week we continued working on the game, mostly on technical fixes. Some in-game animations, triggered when Norn do specific actions (watering a plant, playing with a toy…) were broken and the issue was more important than we thought (we had to fix the system handling animations, and not animations themselves).
Most importantly, the date for the Twitch session is finally set! Sorry about the delay… It will take place December, Thursday 11th at 8PM CET. For information, Central European Time corresponds to GMT+1:00.
The past weeks were focused on fixing bugs such as the following ones: - Some speech bubbles are invisible - Incorrect orientation for some cinematics - Thought bubbles are displayed near Norn’s portrait - Norns staying idle on ladders - Some objects become gigantic after repair - Norns are incorrectly placed when sleeping in nests - Player’s order to the Norn is not displayed - Nests do not rotate correctly - Tatous are walking weirdly (they seem to do the moonwalk) - No cursor displayed on the main menu - Bridge on the plaja level is not correctly placed - When selling an item, the selling feedback is not displayed - …
We also updated some icons and descriptions for the item kit products. Science kit descriptions have now colored chemical names allowing a better basic understanding. We also changed the order informations were displayed on the level up screen, as it was somewhat counter-intuitive.
Concerning the Twitch session… We still have no information regarding the exact date. Of course, we’ll keep you updated!
Fishing Cactus creates games for mobile and digital distributed consoles and desktop games. On a B2B side, we develop Smart Games for a variety of clients.
- 3DS certification for Shift DX
- Chapter 4 on Epistory Typing Chronicles
- Working on Transmedia project Urbance
- Improving our pipeline and processes
