Sunday, March 18, 2012

Hera: Tragedy? Already?

I... forget sometimes, that when left to run feral, norns can...forget that the hand is supposed to be their almighty authority. Amina was a wonderful example of this. In my quest to find her a friend, I attempted to verbally guide her through the motions of leaving her little den and venturing out into the world. Never have I felt so completely ignored by a norn! After a few slaps, I finally got her to look at the elevine, and start to walk toward it, but then she would get distracted, and start looking at the apples and carrots, still whining about her loneliness. I had to keep spamming Ctrl+S, and finally, finally she made her way to the surface and started walking out towards the bridge to the island.

A little exhausted and frustrated by all this effort, I went to check on the others. It looked like Xuxu had found a friend after all! The two were happily playing in a bounty of food, but Xuxu maintained a score of 100, the worst score one can have. All creatures start out with the worst score, and it was still early on, but it was still a little worrisome. Even Stella, who hadn't traveled far from her spot at all had managed to take her score down by 16 points already.

I was a little worried, yes. But I didn't expect him to....suddenly drop dead.
 

... What happened? I really wish I knew. They weren't slapping, the hoverdoc showed no signs of disease or high drives. Could it just be faulty genetics? It's possible, but it might also be that my script is being a little bit more aggressive than I hoped it would be. If a creature has a terrible score for an extended amount of time, its life chemical is supposed to slowly decrease, resulting in an overall shorter lifespan for creatures that don't care for themselves. But it certainly isn't supposed to cause sudden death! I'll let it slide this time-- any number of things can make a creature drop dead, but if it happens again, some tweaking may be in order.

And poor Stella; she seemed so upset...

 It was almost touching....

 .....
And this, my friends, is why I write things like the peaceful death script.
Ugh...Stella. I know instinctless norns are known for their openness and willingness to try new things but.... come on, really?

After that craziness, I was willing to go check on Amina again:
Excuse me while I bang my head into the wall.

After lots and lots of verbal guidance, ctrl+s spamming "right", I finally got her to wander over to the island and investigate the coconuts. There we fought, again. Eat seed. Eat fruit. But no, she wanted to eat leaf, a leaf that wasn't even edible, and when she complained of boredom, I tried to get her to push the horn, but as if in defiance, she lie down and took a nap, her score at its very worst. Agh. When did this become so hard?
But the circle of life continues, a lot sooner than I had predicted. Xuxu's demise left a slot open in the world; a slot the scenario script will soon fill. If all goes according to code, it won't be long before the two girls with the lowest scores will contribute their genetics towards the future. I wonder who it will be? One thing is pretty certain though... I highly, and sadly doubt it's going to be Amina.

13 comments:

  1. Wow... Eat ettin & eat self?... What is it with these silly creatures? A bunch of my creatures recently had started saying eat norn. It almost makes me want to make some meat & bone sprites for some type of creature cannibals agent... Sorry for the morbid idea, my brain goes to strange & dark places sometimes.

    Xuxu was cute, it's sad to see her die so soon. It will be interesting to find out if it was script that caused her early death or if it was something else. I look forward to seeing how this scenario script develops, I think I will be using it in one of my worlds as soon it is released.

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    1. Haha, I did mess around with a creatures eat script at some point! Should you ever draw up those sprites, let me know, I'm sure we could put something together, however morbid :P

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  2. Eat self Lol XD It's been a long time since i've had a good laugh caused by a creature. Thank you!

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    1. That cracked me up too XD I don't know what's going on; these creatures are insane!

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  3. Xuxu does look like she had aged since her pictures in your last post. Did you check what lifestage she was at when she died? If she was listed as "dead," then it's definitely a possibility that the script had something to do with it.

    As for the event itself: I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but laugh when Stella said "eat ettin." Nice job at ruining the moment there, Stella.

    Anima's situation is amusing. Never mind the Eat Elevator Syndrome - one would think that, being a CFE norn, she'd be more willing to listen.

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    1. She certainly looked older, but it would seem odd for her to age through old/ancient/dead so quickly. I wish I had thought to check the lifestage, heh. I did double-check the coding and it looks fine still.. I guess time will tell (I kind of hope it doesn't, though).

      Amina certainly has the genetics of some smart creatures... no idea why she would be behaving so oddly. I really hope she straightens out.

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    2. Last night when I went thru one of my older worlds I found several of the creatures in that world had different aging mutations that sped them thru a life stage or two in less than a minute, it made it look like they had skipped a life stage. The first set of aging mutation caused them to hatch from the egg at the child stage rather than the baby stage, then they aged to the youth stage before they were even a minute old. Once they reached the youth stage they seemed to age normally again. The other age mutation I noticed was where they grew normally until they reached the child stage & then they went thru the next two stages in less than a minute.
      If Xuxu had a similar mutation at the old or ancient stage that could be what happened.

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    3. I brought up her age because apparently the script alters the life chemical (which controls aging). I think it's possible that, as Xuxu was doing really poorly, the script decided to subtract a lot of her life chemical, dropping it to the point where she aged rapidly and died.

      What Mea suggested is also a possibility, though.

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  4. Re Xuxu: It's her genetics. I imported a copy of her and she was old at about 90 mins, ancient at less than 2 hrs, and died at 2 hrs 12 min.

    "eat ettin" on the body is very funny though!

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    1. Wow, well that solves that mystery. Thanks for letting us know!

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  5. Poor Xuxu! At least she had a friend around when she died... Even if Stella had thoughts of eating the Ettin on her mind! Amina sounds like she's turned into quite the handful. Oh, Norns. Maybe she'll snap out of her current state and turn out a little better. It's doubtful, though, even if I'm hoping for it!

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    1. I'm hoping too, even though my mind is still a little thrown off by Xuxu's death. I really was not expecting that to happen. But such is the life of creatures, full of surprises.

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  6. As far as I know a norn can still die from lack of life chem even if they haven't reached old or ancient.

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