Information and programs for Creatures 2 that you may find useful. Along with information available on the newsgroup alt.games.creatures the file formats for some of the files have been worked out and what I know of these file formats are described here.
If you try to run any of these programs and it complains that MSVCP50.DLL is missing then you can download it here:
MSVCP50.ZIP (170KB - 22/11/1998)
If any other DLL files are missing then you can download all the Microsoft runtime DLL files used in Visual C++ applications here:
MFC.ZIP (695KB - 21/03/1999)
You may already have these files on your system so you probably won't want to download them unless you try to run the programs and they say the files are missing.
RewardTracker (Version 1.0 - 14KB
- 21/03/1999)
A program for displaying the learning mechanisms that are working inside the
concept and decision lobes of a creature. You can get more information about
it, including a screen shot, on the RewardTracker
page.
Scriptorium Browser (Version 1.2
- 655KB - 15/01/1999)
A program for browsing the scriptorium - the place in Creatures 2 that contains
all the CAOS code from Cobs, and internal system functions. Very useful for
learning how things work. The user interface and functionality is pretty basic
at the moment but I plan to expand on it. You can get more information about
it, including a screen shot, on the Scriptorium page.
GenomeInjector (Version 1.1 -
8KB - 26/09/98)
A program that allows injecting an Egg into Creatures 2 containing a specified
genetic moniker. This should be useful for anyone who is doing hex editing of
Creatures 2 .gen files.
S16Viewer (Version 0.3 - 101KB - 06/09/98)
This program allows you to view the image files in Creatures 2. These files
have an extension of .s16 and most of them are contained in the images subdirectory.
It will allow you to view both 555 and 565 format images (the two formats used
in Creatures 2 that I know of). See below for the source code to this program.
Spr2S16 (Version 0.3 - 102KB - 11/09/98)
This program will convert Creatures 1 image files (with the extension .spr)
to the image format used in Creatures 2 (with the extension .s16). This is the
first part of being able to convert C1 cobs to C2. It will allow you to convert
the images over. Please note that it is a windows console program and should
be run from a dos prompt. It allows conversion to either the 555 or 565 image
formats.
CobConverter (Version 0.2 - 104KB
- 05/09/98)
This program will convert cobs that are in the Creatures 1 format to that used
by the Creatures 2 object injector. With this combined with Spr2S16 you can
create cobs for Creatures 2 using any third party cob authoring tool (BobCob
for example). Write the cob and create the images as normal using the authoring
tool and when you are finished convert them using this utility and Spr2S16.
Note that it is not a good idea to convert an existing C1 cob without modifications
as the chemicals and object classifications in C2 are different and this will
usually have very bad effects. This is also a windows console program and should
be run from a dos prompt. See below for the source code to this program.
LobeStudy (Version 1.6 - 45KB - 9/9/98)
LobeStudy includes a version for Creatures 2 as well as Terra Nornia and Creatures
1. More information about what it does is available on the Brain
Utilities pages.
ChemMonitor (Version 1.4 - 35KB -
12/9/98)
ChemMonitor includes a version for Creatures 2 as well as Terra Nornia and Creatures
1. More information about what it does is available on the Brain
Utilities pages.
BrainCellMonitor (Version 1.8
- 46KB - 20/9/98)
BrainCellMonitor includes a version for Creatures 2 as well as Terra Nornia
and Creatures 1. More information about what it does is available on the Brain
Utilities pages.
The above programs were written using my understanding of the file formats gained from study of the formats and help from information posted to alt.games.creatures. In particular, Sandra Linkletter posted the format for the C2 cob files and pointed out the existence of the 2nd image format (555) to me. Thanks Sandra.
The source code to some of the Creatures 2 programs are available.
CobConverter Source Code (Version
0.2 - 8KB - 20/9/1998)
Source code to the CobConverter program. Includes the project file for compiling
using Microsoft Visual C++ V5.0.
S16Viewer source code (Version 0.3
- 15KB - 10/10/98)
Source code to the S16Viewer program. It includes the project file for compiling
using Microsoft Visual C++ V5.0. It's written in C++ but does not use MFC -
just the Win32 API so it should compile under most Windows C++ compilers.