As per request, I'm posting an older version of my Highgen Generator script up here.
This one is much slower and sloppier, but as I mentioned before, the purpose of the script was to create highgens as fast as possible, and that meant sacrificing any interest in the actual creatures. Older versions of the script actually spliced creatures with themselves or parents/siblings instead of a random first-gen genome, which allowed for mutations to carry down the line. However, it came with a whole lot of problems, the most prominent of which being that since creatures didn't have to be alive to be spliced (and culling stillborns slowed down the process of getting highgens), I ended up with thousands of creatures that were not only dead, but mutated to ridiculous extremes.
I basically had a few choices-- I could be content with dead norns, I could set the mutation rate to zero and have the creatures never change through the generations, or I could splice them with first-gens instead of themselves. I found the latter to be the most interesting option I could choose without sacrificing speed, so that is what the current script does.
However, for those of you that care less about highgens and more about interesting creatures, I will provide this older version. It includes a check that culls stillborns, creates three creatures at a time instead of one (to provide as backups in case of stillborns), and exports about every hundreth creature instead of every thousandth (but instead of only exporting creatures that end in "00" it basically gives every creature a 1% chance to be exported, so the actual generations that are exported are random).
Keep in mind that creatures resulting from this script are still very likely to suffer a lot of handicaps, since they still don't need to be able to move, eat, sleep, breed, etc in order to be spliced. So you are still pretty likely to end up with sliders, creatures stuck in certain ages, creatures unable to perform basic functions, and so on. But hey, at least they'll be alive.
You can download the old script here. As always, use at your own risk. This version hasn't been tested very well at all.
Be sure to post some of your highgens and other interesting creatures to TCR and show them off! I'd be interested in seeing what creatures you guys are producing.
Showing posts with label downloads. Show all posts
Showing posts with label downloads. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Highgen Generator
The DS server is down, and I am bored to death.
So I've gone and written another script. Many of my scripts exist to accomplish a certain purpose as fast as possible, and this one is no different! This one just exists to generate high-generation creatures.
When you inject it, it starts by emptying your world of most objects so that it can spend most of its resources generating creatures instead of worrying about other scripts-- this includes removing elevators and doors, so you'll want to start a new world specifically for this purpose before injecting it.
The script will then check your world for the youngest creature. If there are no creatures in your world, it will attempt to import the last creature that was exported. If there are no creatures to import, it will pick a random genome from your genetics folder and make one.
The script will then either kill or export all other creatures in the world. It's set to only export creatures of generations in multiples of 1000, and kill the rest. Otherwise, the script would be generating thousands of export files, which can really take of space, not to mention just clutter things. Exporting every 1000th creature provides a bit of a save point in case the world crashes or your creatures get autokilled, and allows you, if you wish, to track the changes over time.
Once only one creature is in the world, the script splices the creature's genetics with a random genome in your genetics folder at an average mutation rate to create a creature of the next generation. That new creature is now targeted, and the script repeats itself indefinitely, creating higher and higher generations of creatures.
On my computer, in fast ticks, it generates a thousand generations about every 6-7 minutes. Of course, this will vary according to your computer's speed.
Keep in mind that worlds running this script tend to take up a bit of space since hundreds of genetic files are being generated every minute. If you run the script for say, days at a time, you may find your world's folder bloated to a gigabyte and beyond, so if hard drive space is an issue for you, keep that in mind and delete/recreate the world every so often. The script will pick right up from the last exported creature.
What did I do this? I don't really know. Part of me wondered if the generation counter would break at a certain number, I guess. Part of me just likes to see numbers go up. But mostly, I was just really, really bored.
Anyway, if you want to join me in this relatively pointless boredom-induced number generating, get your copy of the cosfile here. As always, use at your own risk!
So I've gone and written another script. Many of my scripts exist to accomplish a certain purpose as fast as possible, and this one is no different! This one just exists to generate high-generation creatures.
When you inject it, it starts by emptying your world of most objects so that it can spend most of its resources generating creatures instead of worrying about other scripts-- this includes removing elevators and doors, so you'll want to start a new world specifically for this purpose before injecting it.
The script will then check your world for the youngest creature. If there are no creatures in your world, it will attempt to import the last creature that was exported. If there are no creatures to import, it will pick a random genome from your genetics folder and make one.
The script will then either kill or export all other creatures in the world. It's set to only export creatures of generations in multiples of 1000, and kill the rest. Otherwise, the script would be generating thousands of export files, which can really take of space, not to mention just clutter things. Exporting every 1000th creature provides a bit of a save point in case the world crashes or your creatures get autokilled, and allows you, if you wish, to track the changes over time.
Once only one creature is in the world, the script splices the creature's genetics with a random genome in your genetics folder at an average mutation rate to create a creature of the next generation. That new creature is now targeted, and the script repeats itself indefinitely, creating higher and higher generations of creatures.
On my computer, in fast ticks, it generates a thousand generations about every 6-7 minutes. Of course, this will vary according to your computer's speed.
Keep in mind that worlds running this script tend to take up a bit of space since hundreds of genetic files are being generated every minute. If you run the script for say, days at a time, you may find your world's folder bloated to a gigabyte and beyond, so if hard drive space is an issue for you, keep that in mind and delete/recreate the world every so often. The script will pick right up from the last exported creature.
What did I do this? I don't really know. Part of me wondered if the generation counter would break at a certain number, I guess. Part of me just likes to see numbers go up. But mostly, I was just really, really bored.
Anyway, if you want to join me in this relatively pointless boredom-induced number generating, get your copy of the cosfile here. As always, use at your own risk!
Monday, June 7, 2010
Half-released cosfiles
I call these "half released" because they've technically been available in other parts of the CC-- usually in a thread where someone requests a fix and I upload it directly to that thread. But I've pulled a few of them together into this post for everyone to enjoy.
Again, these are cosfiles, not agents, but most of them are the sort of thing you'd like to drop in your bootstrap folder so they'll affect all your worlds anyway. They also have not been fully tested, so please do report any problems you have. Additionally, you may have to right-click and "save as" in some browsers to download them.
No Seasonal Gender Bias -- Gender, as you may or may not know, is affected by the in-game "seasons." You can't generally tell, as very few agents depend on them, but the world does go through an invisible cycle of seasons. In the spring, creatures have a 75% chance of giving birth to females, and in the autumn, a 75% chance of males. Summer and winter grant an equal chance. This can sometimes be frustrating, especially for feral runs that rely on a good male/female balance, so this modified egg-laying script gets rid of that and makes the genders 50/50 regardless of the season. (Someone requested this in CC IRC, and I can't for the life of me remember who. But I hope you find it, whoever you are!)
Bypass Import Cloning -- You know that annoying box that pops up and makes you clone and rename most creatures when you try to import them? It's there to stop the warp server from getting confused, as it tracks creatures that go through the warp based on their moniker, So if you try to import a norn that was not directly exported from one of your worlds, the game clones it, gives it a new moniker, and all is well. But norn tracking has been broken on the DS server for ages anyway, and it really can be frustrating to rename every norn that you download, so this modified script will import creatures without cloning them. However, it will still clone a creature if another copy of it already exists in your world (or has existed in the past and died).
Wolf Control Fix -- This is something that may not be needed much yet, but I honestly think will become more and more necessary as time goes on and computers get faster. I first noticed when trying to run small wolfling runs in near-empty worlds, I would come back to find that wolf control had thrown a strange "divide by zero" error message when left in fast ticks. I dissected the cosfile to find that RACE, which returns the time in milliseconds which the last tick took, was being divided to find the frame rate. When DS is in fast ticks on a fast computer, it is possible that a tick can occasionally take less than a millisecond, causing the game to try to divide by zero and crash. This fix simply checks to make sure that RACE is not zero before it divides it!
CV Shortcuts -- This is not a DS cosfile; it is actually for Creatures Village. Some people have reported problems with it that I have not been able to reproduce, so use at your own risk. This just adds a few keyboard shortcuts to make CV a little easier to explore-- Ctrl+0 will "disconnect" your camera from your selected creature, allowing you to scroll around the room as you please. Ctrl 1-9 act sort of like favorite place shortcuts and take you to various places of the world (you can edit the cosfile to easily change these). Shift+Ctrl+1 will teleport the currently selected creature to your hand, and Ctrl+Q will export the current creature, though I haven't bothered finding a way to import them again, so it's fairly pointless.
Hope you all enjoy! :)
Again, these are cosfiles, not agents, but most of them are the sort of thing you'd like to drop in your bootstrap folder so they'll affect all your worlds anyway. They also have not been fully tested, so please do report any problems you have. Additionally, you may have to right-click and "save as" in some browsers to download them.
No Seasonal Gender Bias -- Gender, as you may or may not know, is affected by the in-game "seasons." You can't generally tell, as very few agents depend on them, but the world does go through an invisible cycle of seasons. In the spring, creatures have a 75% chance of giving birth to females, and in the autumn, a 75% chance of males. Summer and winter grant an equal chance. This can sometimes be frustrating, especially for feral runs that rely on a good male/female balance, so this modified egg-laying script gets rid of that and makes the genders 50/50 regardless of the season. (Someone requested this in CC IRC, and I can't for the life of me remember who. But I hope you find it, whoever you are!)
Bypass Import Cloning -- You know that annoying box that pops up and makes you clone and rename most creatures when you try to import them? It's there to stop the warp server from getting confused, as it tracks creatures that go through the warp based on their moniker, So if you try to import a norn that was not directly exported from one of your worlds, the game clones it, gives it a new moniker, and all is well. But norn tracking has been broken on the DS server for ages anyway, and it really can be frustrating to rename every norn that you download, so this modified script will import creatures without cloning them. However, it will still clone a creature if another copy of it already exists in your world (or has existed in the past and died).
Wolf Control Fix -- This is something that may not be needed much yet, but I honestly think will become more and more necessary as time goes on and computers get faster. I first noticed when trying to run small wolfling runs in near-empty worlds, I would come back to find that wolf control had thrown a strange "divide by zero" error message when left in fast ticks. I dissected the cosfile to find that RACE, which returns the time in milliseconds which the last tick took, was being divided to find the frame rate. When DS is in fast ticks on a fast computer, it is possible that a tick can occasionally take less than a millisecond, causing the game to try to divide by zero and crash. This fix simply checks to make sure that RACE is not zero before it divides it!
CV Shortcuts -- This is not a DS cosfile; it is actually for Creatures Village. Some people have reported problems with it that I have not been able to reproduce, so use at your own risk. This just adds a few keyboard shortcuts to make CV a little easier to explore-- Ctrl+0 will "disconnect" your camera from your selected creature, allowing you to scroll around the room as you please. Ctrl 1-9 act sort of like favorite place shortcuts and take you to various places of the world (you can edit the cosfile to easily change these). Shift+Ctrl+1 will teleport the currently selected creature to your hand, and Ctrl+Q will export the current creature, though I haven't bothered finding a way to import them again, so it's fairly pointless.
Hope you all enjoy! :)
Friday, June 4, 2010
Agent: Population Control Options
A thread came up on Creaturetopia recently regarding a feral run, and one of the topics covered was population control. I did make some cosfiles a while back to help with population control, but I was inspired to construct them into something a bit more tangible:
This options panel provides you with several options for population control within your world. It can be toggled on and off with the keyboard shortcut shift+ctrl+O
For the most part, the options are self-explanatory-- click on the buttons to turn them on (green) or off (red). The blue numbers are editable and can be tweaked to your desire.
The first four options are export options-- naturally, if these are switched on they will override their infertile counterparts. The first option exports creatures automatically once they hit old age. The second is a bit complicated; it exports creatures of the lowest generation once the next generation is established with as many male/female pairs as you define. For example, if the number is set to three, the agent will watch your population and export all generation one norns when there are at least three male and three female norns of a higher generation than one. Keep in mind that it does not (yet) distinguish between species, so if you have the grendel/ettin egglayer running you will probably get a lot of generation 1 grendels and ettins in your exports folder.
The next two options are gender-specific; you can choose to have females exported once they have laid a certain amount of eggs, and choose to have males exported after fathering a certain number of children.
The fifth option should be used with caution, if at all. If you are leaving a wolfling run for a long time and/or your creatures are multiplying very quickly, the large amount of export files can add up fast. This option allows you to export only a fraction of the creatures meeting the criteria above, and painlessly kill the rest.
The remaining options are similar, only they attempt to keep the creature infertile instead of exporting it. Under normal conditions creatures will be unable to breed when they meet the selected criteria; however, if the creatures are exposed to fertility agents, it is not impossible for the infertility to be overridden, so use caution.
Keep in mind that this is a beta and hasn't been tested completely, so please report any bugs you come across, and as always, suggestions for future versions are welcome!
Download the Population Control Options here, then head over to The Arch and read up on ArchDragon's feral run that inspired the agent to begin with!
This options panel provides you with several options for population control within your world. It can be toggled on and off with the keyboard shortcut shift+ctrl+O
For the most part, the options are self-explanatory-- click on the buttons to turn them on (green) or off (red). The blue numbers are editable and can be tweaked to your desire.
The first four options are export options-- naturally, if these are switched on they will override their infertile counterparts. The first option exports creatures automatically once they hit old age. The second is a bit complicated; it exports creatures of the lowest generation once the next generation is established with as many male/female pairs as you define. For example, if the number is set to three, the agent will watch your population and export all generation one norns when there are at least three male and three female norns of a higher generation than one. Keep in mind that it does not (yet) distinguish between species, so if you have the grendel/ettin egglayer running you will probably get a lot of generation 1 grendels and ettins in your exports folder.
The next two options are gender-specific; you can choose to have females exported once they have laid a certain amount of eggs, and choose to have males exported after fathering a certain number of children.
The fifth option should be used with caution, if at all. If you are leaving a wolfling run for a long time and/or your creatures are multiplying very quickly, the large amount of export files can add up fast. This option allows you to export only a fraction of the creatures meeting the criteria above, and painlessly kill the rest.
The remaining options are similar, only they attempt to keep the creature infertile instead of exporting it. Under normal conditions creatures will be unable to breed when they meet the selected criteria; however, if the creatures are exposed to fertility agents, it is not impossible for the infertility to be overridden, so use caution.
Keep in mind that this is a beta and hasn't been tested completely, so please report any bugs you come across, and as always, suggestions for future versions are welcome!
Friday, November 20, 2009
CCSF '09 Releases
Well with the awesomeness that is CCSF having come and gone, I suppose I ought to release my own agents on my own site, eh?
SERU Contact Button
It has been years since the invention of the wonderful technology that is the Warp, and years since the adventures of the Lone Shee. These days Shee young and old are gallivanting through space in their new, used, and home-grown ships, searching for adventure around every star. Unfortunately, the great number of space traffic in this age means a great number of space collisions, and an even greater number of unfortunate norn, ettin, and grendel eggs scattered to the stars.
Luckily, we at the Stray Egg Rescue Unit (SERU) are constantly patrolling the galaxies, searching for creature eggs floating in space that may still have a chance of survival. We collect these eggs and give them to loving volunteers who try to raise these unfortunate creatures to live the best lives they can. But while SERU is rescuing thousands of eggs every day, there are not nearly enough volunteers to care for them all, and each day we are regretfully forced to toss several eggs due to lack of storage space. We desperately need your help. All you need to do is install the mechanism below onto your ship, and it will establish a direct line of contact with us so that we may warp these eggs to you upon request. You never know what will come out of your rescued egg, and it can be challenging as many of them are damaged, mutated, and unpredictable, but the feeling of giving a helpless creature a second chance is worth it.
Download the SERU Contact Button (now with a beautiful new beam sprite by Borg12345!)
This agent was the most unexpectedly well-received, I think. Originally it wasn't something I planned on releasing at all, it was just a genetic experiment I was playing with that somehow turned into a silly story. The more feedback I get on it though, the more I'm considering updating it now and again, perhaps adding a more complex storyline and some extra options. We'll see!
New Shortcuts
This was another one of those cos files I made for my own purposes just to make my life easier, and decided to share it. Just drop the cosfile in your \Bootstrap\010 Docking Station folder and use these new keyboard shortcuts in all new worlds you create:
Ctrl+0 -- Create a random egg
Shift+Ctrl+0 -- Create a random creature. Useful for quick random runs, or when you just need a few creatures around to test something without the hassle of hatching eggs.
Ctrl+9 -- Make all creatures fertile and tell them to breed
Shift+Ctrl+9 -- Make all creatures angry and tell them to hit
Ctrl+8 -- Teleport all creatures to hand (except for those currently held by something else, such as an elevator or the containment chamber)
Ctrl+7 -- Freeze all creatures, make them pose to face you. This can be useful for a ton of things, from getting a decent group picture of creatures to forcing all creatures to stop what they're doing so you can inject a behavioral script without getting "old script in use" errors.
Shift+Ctrl+7 -- Unfreeze all creatures
Download New Shortcuts
Vocab-Bot
This agent some of you might remember I created on a whim while running my Mixed Nuts world. Several people requested that it be made into an agent, so I did so. What is particularly awesome though is that this agent was released for CCSF on the same day that Vampess' teaching updates were released, and the two go hand in hand quite nicely for those who just miss the old-fashioned way of hand-teaching their norns.
Anyway, this toy injects as a random color (just for kicks) and teaches surrounding creatures a random (non-noun) word when it is pushed.
Download the Vocab-Bot
Splicer DS
Ahh yes, the noble legendary DS splicer that has been pending release for way, way too long. This one almost didn't get out, to be honest, I had some horrible issues getting it to PRAY together properly, but it was just barely rushed in at the last deadline.
If you don't know, yes, this splicer does require C3 to be installed, as it makes use of the C3 splicer sprites and sounds. However, it must be injected into an undocked world or else it will clash with the C3 splicer and all sorts of messed up things will happen.
The following video should take you through the various special functions fairly easily. It is capable of much more than an ordinary splicer, including creating random creatures for you to splice and automatically splicing all creatures in your world.
Download Splicer DS -- a million thanks to 3kul, D.L. Yomegami, jdownie2, GodKira, and Officer 1BDI for giving their time to test this agent!
Note: Splicer DS got an update on 12/7/21-- update post is here. If you want the original version, you can still download it here.
This CCSF was really the best we've had in a long time-- maybe I'm biased, since it was the first time I actually participated, but it was really a ton of fun and a lot of innovative content came out of it. I hope the rest of you had as much fun as I did!
SERU Contact Button
It has been years since the invention of the wonderful technology that is the Warp, and years since the adventures of the Lone Shee. These days Shee young and old are gallivanting through space in their new, used, and home-grown ships, searching for adventure around every star. Unfortunately, the great number of space traffic in this age means a great number of space collisions, and an even greater number of unfortunate norn, ettin, and grendel eggs scattered to the stars.
Luckily, we at the Stray Egg Rescue Unit (SERU) are constantly patrolling the galaxies, searching for creature eggs floating in space that may still have a chance of survival. We collect these eggs and give them to loving volunteers who try to raise these unfortunate creatures to live the best lives they can. But while SERU is rescuing thousands of eggs every day, there are not nearly enough volunteers to care for them all, and each day we are regretfully forced to toss several eggs due to lack of storage space. We desperately need your help. All you need to do is install the mechanism below onto your ship, and it will establish a direct line of contact with us so that we may warp these eggs to you upon request. You never know what will come out of your rescued egg, and it can be challenging as many of them are damaged, mutated, and unpredictable, but the feeling of giving a helpless creature a second chance is worth it.
Download the SERU Contact Button (now with a beautiful new beam sprite by Borg12345!)
This agent was the most unexpectedly well-received, I think. Originally it wasn't something I planned on releasing at all, it was just a genetic experiment I was playing with that somehow turned into a silly story. The more feedback I get on it though, the more I'm considering updating it now and again, perhaps adding a more complex storyline and some extra options. We'll see!
New Shortcuts
This was another one of those cos files I made for my own purposes just to make my life easier, and decided to share it. Just drop the cosfile in your \Bootstrap\010 Docking Station folder and use these new keyboard shortcuts in all new worlds you create:
Ctrl+0 -- Create a random egg
Shift+Ctrl+0 -- Create a random creature. Useful for quick random runs, or when you just need a few creatures around to test something without the hassle of hatching eggs.
Ctrl+9 -- Make all creatures fertile and tell them to breed
Shift+Ctrl+9 -- Make all creatures angry and tell them to hit
Ctrl+8 -- Teleport all creatures to hand (except for those currently held by something else, such as an elevator or the containment chamber)
Ctrl+7 -- Freeze all creatures, make them pose to face you. This can be useful for a ton of things, from getting a decent group picture of creatures to forcing all creatures to stop what they're doing so you can inject a behavioral script without getting "old script in use" errors.
Shift+Ctrl+7 -- Unfreeze all creatures
Download New Shortcuts
Vocab-Bot
This agent some of you might remember I created on a whim while running my Mixed Nuts world. Several people requested that it be made into an agent, so I did so. What is particularly awesome though is that this agent was released for CCSF on the same day that Vampess' teaching updates were released, and the two go hand in hand quite nicely for those who just miss the old-fashioned way of hand-teaching their norns.
Anyway, this toy injects as a random color (just for kicks) and teaches surrounding creatures a random (non-noun) word when it is pushed.
Download the Vocab-Bot
Splicer DS
Ahh yes, the noble legendary DS splicer that has been pending release for way, way too long. This one almost didn't get out, to be honest, I had some horrible issues getting it to PRAY together properly, but it was just barely rushed in at the last deadline.
If you don't know, yes, this splicer does require C3 to be installed, as it makes use of the C3 splicer sprites and sounds. However, it must be injected into an undocked world or else it will clash with the C3 splicer and all sorts of messed up things will happen.
The following video should take you through the various special functions fairly easily. It is capable of much more than an ordinary splicer, including creating random creatures for you to splice and automatically splicing all creatures in your world.
Download Splicer DS -- a million thanks to 3kul, D.L. Yomegami, jdownie2, GodKira, and Officer 1BDI for giving their time to test this agent!
Note: Splicer DS got an update on 12/7/21-- update post is here. If you want the original version, you can still download it here.
This CCSF was really the best we've had in a long time-- maybe I'm biased, since it was the first time I actually participated, but it was really a ton of fun and a lot of innovative content came out of it. I hope the rest of you had as much fun as I did!
Saturday, July 25, 2009
A COS for every occasion
I have to say I'm very satisfied where my desire to learn CAOS has gotten me. It's now pretty easy for me to write simple scripts from scratch to suit whatever purposes I have. But I don't ever really make these scripts public, mostly because I'd rather release them as agents than scripts. But I know some people will find them useful even in .cos form, so I might as well make them available.
I would like to eventually devise an elaborate, expandable options panel that contains on/off switches for all these little tweaks since manual injection is generally a pain. But until then-- here, have some cos files!
Use these at your own risk! Some may be buggier than others.
AutoAge: Check your world every few minutes for creatures that are not adults, and make them adults. Probably the first script I ever wrote for DS, with the help of Fuzzie
AutoEgg: Monitors your creature population and automatically creates a random norn egg if the population drops below four.
AutoTab: Made especially for Live Nornish Action. Automatically cycles through norns so you're not stuck watching the same one (really, really annoying if you're trying to play normally though.
EggLimit: Checks for females that have laid more than four eggs and keeps them infertile. This has only barely been tested-- you have been warned.
Generation Check: Checks for the lowest generation in the world and exports all creatures of that generation-- but only if it will be leaving behind at least 3 creatures of each gender.
Infertility: Attempts to keep all youth, old, and senile creatures infertile, making adulthood the only possible breeding time.
Enjoy :)
I would like to eventually devise an elaborate, expandable options panel that contains on/off switches for all these little tweaks since manual injection is generally a pain. But until then-- here, have some cos files!
Use these at your own risk! Some may be buggier than others.
AutoAge: Check your world every few minutes for creatures that are not adults, and make them adults. Probably the first script I ever wrote for DS, with the help of Fuzzie
AutoEgg: Monitors your creature population and automatically creates a random norn egg if the population drops below four.
AutoTab: Made especially for Live Nornish Action. Automatically cycles through norns so you're not stuck watching the same one (really, really annoying if you're trying to play normally though.
EggLimit: Checks for females that have laid more than four eggs and keeps them infertile. This has only barely been tested-- you have been warned.
Generation Check: Checks for the lowest generation in the world and exports all creatures of that generation-- but only if it will be leaving behind at least 3 creatures of each gender.
Infertility: Attempts to keep all youth, old, and senile creatures infertile, making adulthood the only possible breeding time.
Enjoy :)
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Belated Warp Week 1 Video Journal
I don't know if I mentioned it at the time, but during the first Warp Week I kept a little daily video journal, detailing the highlights of the days. I finally got around to compiling it into a single video file which you can download at this link, if you so wish.
Granted, it is a bit long (21 minutes, hence why I didn't stick it on YouTube or anything) and a bit large (78mb, but that's quite a feat considering the raw AVI was nearly five gigs). It's more for record-keeping/archival purposes than entertainment value. But if you want to listen to me ramble on about norns for 15 minutes followed by five minutes of hundreds of norns being spliced in super-speed set to insane DDR music, you're welcome to it!
Granted, it is a bit long (21 minutes, hence why I didn't stick it on YouTube or anything) and a bit large (78mb, but that's quite a feat considering the raw AVI was nearly five gigs). It's more for record-keeping/archival purposes than entertainment value. But if you want to listen to me ramble on about norns for 15 minutes followed by five minutes of hundreds of norns being spliced in super-speed set to insane DDR music, you're welcome to it!
Monday, May 4, 2009
Agent: Mind Arrows
You know, with all the messing around I've done in CAOS, I don't think I've ever actually compiled a complete agent before. Not for C3/DS anyway. But just for the sake of my own learning and amusement, I spent the better part of the day scripting these Mind Arrows.
They're quite simple, and contain some of the concepts I mentioned in a previous post about mind control. If a creature comes within range of the arrows, his mind is bombarded with very strong suggestions to go right or left. I dropped a sezz line in there too, just so I could tell easily if the creature was acting out of his own will or under the control of the arrows. I suppose I might comment that out in future versions if it gets too annoying.
Scripting the commands for the up and down arrows was a little trickier; after trying multiple solutions I finally set the agent to first check if it is touching a lift-- if so, the creature will be told to push/pull it in accordance with the arrow's direction; if not, the creature will be told to push the call button until the lift appears. For this reason, arrows pointing up or down need to be place in a position where they will be touching the lift when it is called; otherwise the creatures will be pushing that call button until they starve.
They're astonishingly effective. I was able to use the arrows to get all my norns in the meso crowded into a single corner fairly quickly. If I do develop this further I would like to add a similar concept to the left and right arrows for doors and teleporters, so the "walkways" don't have to be limited to the metaroom.
What you actually do with this agent is up to you. You might use it as sort of mental forcefield to keep creatures away from a certain area, or as a way to encourage norns to travel more if they start crowding together in one place. I think I'm going to see if I can create a path that wraps around the entire C12DS world so my norns can take a tour of the world rather than sitting by the incubator all day.
Of course, in case you couldn't guess it already, I created this agent as a very, very early prototype for that mental barrier I was thinking about in my last post.. you know, for that metaroom I'll never actually be able to make? Despite my complete lack of skill I've been plotting it out anyway... you know, just in case I end up with the necessary skills someday.
So I do plan on expanding/specifying this agent...trying to figure out how to only make it activate in certain seasons, how to make it distinguish between male and female norns. It's got a ways to go, but right now it's a fun little toy for getting your creatures where they need to go.
Anyway enough rambling. Download the Mind Arrows here!
They're quite simple, and contain some of the concepts I mentioned in a previous post about mind control. If a creature comes within range of the arrows, his mind is bombarded with very strong suggestions to go right or left. I dropped a sezz line in there too, just so I could tell easily if the creature was acting out of his own will or under the control of the arrows. I suppose I might comment that out in future versions if it gets too annoying.Scripting the commands for the up and down arrows was a little trickier; after trying multiple solutions I finally set the agent to first check if it is touching a lift-- if so, the creature will be told to push/pull it in accordance with the arrow's direction; if not, the creature will be told to push the call button until the lift appears. For this reason, arrows pointing up or down need to be place in a position where they will be touching the lift when it is called; otherwise the creatures will be pushing that call button until they starve.
They're astonishingly effective. I was able to use the arrows to get all my norns in the meso crowded into a single corner fairly quickly. If I do develop this further I would like to add a similar concept to the left and right arrows for doors and teleporters, so the "walkways" don't have to be limited to the metaroom.
What you actually do with this agent is up to you. You might use it as sort of mental forcefield to keep creatures away from a certain area, or as a way to encourage norns to travel more if they start crowding together in one place. I think I'm going to see if I can create a path that wraps around the entire C12DS world so my norns can take a tour of the world rather than sitting by the incubator all day.
Of course, in case you couldn't guess it already, I created this agent as a very, very early prototype for that mental barrier I was thinking about in my last post.. you know, for that metaroom I'll never actually be able to make? Despite my complete lack of skill I've been plotting it out anyway... you know, just in case I end up with the necessary skills someday.
So I do plan on expanding/specifying this agent...trying to figure out how to only make it activate in certain seasons, how to make it distinguish between male and female norns. It's got a ways to go, but right now it's a fun little toy for getting your creatures where they need to go.
Anyway enough rambling. Download the Mind Arrows here!
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