If only evolution actually worked like this.

On the way to the current generation of 210 in ColorRush, several things have happened.

For one, the siamese norns seem to have managed to out-evolve the IQ test. That is, they don't seem to have to eat to survive long enough to breed anymore, and many of them are perfectly content to sit around on the top floor of the workshop (at least they can work the elevator) and complain about their hunger.

They're clearly not immortal though-- at least not by drowning >> I'm sure ERFN-types wouldn't be too happy to know that since I do want this to be a pure siamese run, I've been manually culling norns that have mutated bruin heads, grendel legs, etc., by dropping them in the nearest body of water.

On the other hand, I've been loving playing around with the Wolfling Monitor. To make sure my norns don't get off too easy, I have it set to check the run every 15 minutes and export norns that have high hunger/crowded/boredom drives. It's also been exporting norns older than 90 minutes just to keep the generations progressing, but as I slowly lower the drives threshold I am considering removing that criteria to allow the creatures that are fulfilling their drives to stick around and breed a bit more.

Ironically and contrary to the name, I haven't seen a lot of color mutations. There are a few here and there but the general population still has a default pigment.

On a somewhat amusing note, my folder of creatures exported from this run contains five thousand five hundered and thirty seven norns. 332mb of norns. I wonder if that's some kind of record?

I'm going to keep this run going a while, but I have some other ideas for future runs too. I'd like to try an ettin run, just for a change of pace... and maybe a bruin run in which I actually encourage sprite mutations until the entire norn looks nothing like a bruin.

After I've done several runs I would like to take a few norns from each run and put them in different mesos in DS docked and see which ones end up mixing and which ones die out and which ones breed in their own little group.

On a side note, I wish there were more Creatures blogs out there. I think it's interesting to follow the progress of these things. But the CC is tiny enough as it is.. you can't expect them all to be bloggers too :P