Under the Albian Sea
Written onWith summer just around the corner and so many aquatic add-ons for Creatures 3/Docking Station, I finally took the literal plunge to create an aquatic world! It took some getting used to such a different environment… I failed my first time due to a lack of food sources. Fortunately, I managed to succeed my second time around in creating a truly beautiful underwater scene for my Norns. I typically use a limited number of agents in my Creatures worlds. This time, however, everything was fair game! I had a little trouble coming up with different elements to complete my aquatic world. The majority of agents are geared more towards land-based gameplay. My list of additions included the following:
- Pearl Ocean Metaroom: Contains enough room for plenty of underwater adventures.
- Biodome Object Pack: Contains anemones and fish species to add a wide array of aquatic life.
- Fun in the Sun Object Pack: Contains crabs and floating fish toys to spice up the oceanic landscape.
- Converted Crabs: Contains C2 Albian crabs who are both a food source and detritus cleaner.
- Garden Box: Contains patch plants to grow endlessly underwater as constant food sources.
- Garden Box Sponges and Gumin Grass: Contains upgraded sponges and grass for the Garden Box.
- Oasis Shrimpton: Contains small aquatic bugs that swim about and can be interacted with.
- Elevines: Contains a customizable lift agent to connect the levels of the metaroom.
It was a difficult decision choosing which Norns to populate this world with, yet in the end I decided to test out Grendel Man’s Coral Reef ChiChi Norns. This set of four Norns quickly made themselves at home! In no time, there were a bunch of little babies hiding behind the aquatic plants and snagging delicious little shrimptons! First, I had to go in search of a very important change to one of the COS files in order to allow the eggs to hatch underwater in C3/DS.
I found several possible agents that could solve this problem, such as the Water Eggs, but my breeding COS files have already been updated several times with other fixes. Rather than risk losing those changes, I found a very helpful post at Creatures Caves where Grendel Man and Malkin explained how to make a manual change. Make sure to backup your creatureBreeding.cos and/or DS creatureBreeding.cos files before making the following update. There should be two instances of the following section in each COS file (one for Norns; one for Grendels and Ettins):
doif rtyp room ownr = 8 or rtyp room ownr = 9
* in water
tick 600
setv name “gonna_hatch” 0
stop
endi
These lines of code simply need to be commented out with an asterisk (*) in front of each line:
*doif rtyp room ownr = 8 or rtyp room ownr = 9
** in water
*tick 600
*setv name “gonna_hatch” 0
*stop
*endi
Voila! Now Creature eggs can hatch underwater! This is perfect for aquatic wolfling runs, or for any underwater world where hatching eggs on land is too cumbersome. Some breeds, like the Coral Reef ChiChi Norns, are not amphibious, so hatching on land could lead to a fatal outcome without any nearby water. This world will be more of a background wolfling run for me, yet I have a feeling I will have a lot of fun enjoying this underwater Creatures world!
I personally wouldn’t use the Biodome Anemones or the Yellow Crabs alongside critter-eating creatures like the Coral Reef ChiChis – they’re both classified as critter, but are inedible. The anemones can’t even be interacted with at all. As a result, they have the potential to cause massive instinct screw.
Other than that, it’s nice to see you actually document an aquatic world. If you need help with anything, let me know – a good chunk of my Creatures time is spent making aquatic worlds.
That might explain some of the issues that happened early on! Sometimes it’s difficult to know which agents are fully coded to be interacted with. My current population seems to be doing well… Seems like their diet mostly consists of seeds, mushrooms, and shrimptons! I like the anemones mostly for their aesthetic look. If there was a way to reclassify them or simple make them invisible to avoid problems with the instincts, that would be quite awesome!
I might end up documenting more with this world, or a similar one. The land worlds get the most attention, but I didn’t realize how interesting an aquatic world could be. I’ll definitely let you know if I have any questions… Chances are I will, so thank you for the offer!
I think you can fake-reclassify them with CATO. Creatures won’t know the difference. However, it won’t help if they breed.