Warming Up the C1 Updated Cheese
The cheese looked perfect in front of the fire. Before I could snap the picture, my Norn test subject popped in to get a closer look! Christmas may be long gone, yet this Santa Norn was still enjoying the gift of testing out this updated cheese. It wasn’t a difficult job, and he helped me out immensely! The other day, I posted a CAOS lesson with some of the updated coding for this cheese. I’m always looking for feedback, and a huge thanks to Malkin for posting! She reminded me about the Creatures 1 Grendel, who typically has a small supply of cheese in the treehouse. I edited the code so that cheese is now injected in the kitchen and treehouse. Equal cheese eating opportunities for Norns and Grendels!
One of the coolest features of Creatures is something players will typically never notice, because it works so well. What is it? The interaction between CAOS, genetics, and biochemistry. We’ve seen the CAOS behind eating a piece of cheese. This translates into chemicals, as pictured in this graph. Genetics also play a role, right from the moment the chemicals enter a Norn’s or Grendel’s system. This relationship is always there in the background, and I never really thought about it until I started diving deeper into CAOS and genetics. This is also why it’s so important to carefully plan the chemicals injected with CAOS. Why don’t all food items inject the maximum level of starch and hunger decrease? Why don’t I swap glycogen for starch? Genetics, which also influences learning!
On a related note, I changed the values of chemicals for the cheese. NFP decrease has gone from 10 to 30, because this was a little too low. It matches the amount in all of my previously released updated food items, aside from the lemons. These only have 20 NFP decrease for a little diversity, and because lemons are not particularly good at inducing happiness! Hunger decrease has gone from 250 to 150. This is a large drop, but remember that 255 is the absolute maximum amount of a chemical. This seemed much too high. The updated cheese will also last for two bites, meaning that a very hungry Norn or Grendel would get to the same result by eating the entire piece of cheese. This encourages more eating, though, and should teach Creatures to eat more often. Finally, starch remains the same at 150 units. This is quite high, yet I believe it’s important to have a sort of emergency food source on hand for very ill Norns or Grendels. Cheese does not grow like carrots and lemons, but I have plans to release a refrigerator COB to make sure that it won’t run out entirely! Onwards we go. Leave a comment if you have any thoughts about the progress on the cheese!
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Grendels strikes again! :D I’ll miss the Cheese Cellar COB when the cheese gets upgraded – it really made it easier to do feral runs or just grab a really nutritious snack for those sick norns.
Grendels certainly deserve fair treatment, especially in Creatures 1. I know they were designed to be dangerous… But the fact that they’re not basically makes them Norns with a different appearance!
I actually have had issues with that COB: It seems to inject the cheese in the wrong place, although I might be thinking of something else. I would love to create updated versions of COBs like this that are basically rendered useless with these updates… I could always provide tutorials on how to do this. Last thing I want to do is to step on the original creators’ toes, but I also don’t want to lose the use of these COBs. Might be time for a little work in attempting to contact some people from long, long ago!
The Cheese Garden COB seems to inject the string of cheese a little high, but for me, the Cheese Cellar COB injects in just the right spot for norns to grab a bite to eat while they drink some hootch. I’d love to read a tutorial on how to update some of the vendors to vend updated cheese – there have been so many to solve the problem of ‘not enough cheese’ that I’m sure people might have their own favourites. Steerpike’s, BRF’s Slot Machine, Grey Knight’s Cheese Plant and the BOBCOB Wishing Well and LummoxJR’s tutorial cheese vendor come to mind.
Thank you for those examples! I can certainly put together a tutorial on how to update some of these to use the updated cheese. Maybe that will get more people interested in CAOS, since it’s not so bad once you get the hang of it! I’ve been busy with the Doctor’s Page update, but the new and improved cheese should be ready by the end of the week!