CDR

The Creatures Developer Resource

Last Updated on 18/02/2003

18/02/2003: No more updates. A brief goodbye.
06/04/2002: I'm still around, still doing the odds bit of Creatures stuff. Lately I've been busy with non-Creatures stuff. Hoping to get back to working on my utilities in the near future. Thanks for all your email asking about me!
02/05/2001: Genetics Editor source code available.
28/05/2000: Source code to C3 Lobe Study program now available.
21/05/2000: Program updates and more source code available.
12/03/2000: Update on future changes.

Welcome to the Creatures Developer Resource. This site is intended to share as much information as I have been able to find out about the technical side of the Creatures games. In particular, development of third party software that interfaces with Creatures and the internals of Norn brains. Most of the information on this site is valid for both Creatures 1 and Creatures 2.

Topics of Interest:

What's New: Information on the latest changes to this site.

Creatures 3 Utilities and Information: Some programs and information for Creatures 3.

New Norns: Some genetically modified norns that you may find useful in your world. There are Creatures 1 and Creatures 2 norns available here. The Creatures 2 Canny Norns are available here - these are norns that have new brain lobes specifically engineered to make the norn more intelligent.

Creatures 2 Utilities and Information: Most of the programs I wrote have been converted to C2 and are available here. There are also some C2 specific programs like GenomeInjector, S16Viewer and CobConverter. Information on some of the C2 file formats are here as well.

Brain Utilities: A number of utilities that I wrote plus some contributions from other people. Most of these utilities center around the area of monitoring what goes on inside the norns brain as it moves around Albia. Using these utilities you can find out what a norn is really thinking! I've found them very useful for doing genetic engineering of norns. The source code to most of these utilities is available on the Developer Information page.


Developer Information: If you've ever wanted to write your own kits like the science kit or write programs that communicate with the running Creatures program then this page is for you. It contains source code in Visual Basic and C++ showing how to do this. The source code to a number of utilities is also provided as examples to get you started.

Brain Lobe Information: The brain lobe structure of the Norn and other creatures has always been one of the most mysterious areas of the Albian world. Hopefully these pages will help explain what is happening inside the norns brain and information on how to modify the brain structure.

Genetic Kit Information: The Creatures 1 genetics kit enables you to change every genetic aspect of a creature. There is an overwhelming number of things that can be changed with very little documentation on what the changes do. I've tried to gather information on each gene here. Most of this information is valid for Creatures 2 as well if you can lay your hands on a genetics editor.

Tutorials: Tutorials that take you through the creation and modification of new brain lobes using the Cyberlife Genetics Kit. These tutorials are for Creatures 1 but the same principles apply to Creatures 2.


Papers and Discussions: A number of ramblings on various topics to do with genetic modifications and brain lobe adjustments.

Bookstore: The place to find books related to Creatures, Artificial Life, Programming and any other topics I can think of that are related.

Links: Lots of other places to visit in the Creatures world!
Thanks for visiting my site!