CDR

What's New

02/03/2011
Steve Grand, the original creator of Creatures, has started working on a new artificial life project. Currently named Grandroids, he's raising funds through a kickstarter project. The description sounds great and there is a video on the kickstarter page with details. Please pledge your support if you can! Steve's blog announcement is here.
25/08/2005
The Creatures Community is still alive and kicking it would seem. The Gameware Creatures Forums are very active with lots of great things going on. I've even had the chance to post myself a few times. I still fire up Creatures occasionally but most of my time lately has been spent playing around doing homebrew development on the Nintendo DS. Hmm, maybe some Creatures utilities on the DS would be fun?
18/02/2003
Unfortunately I never got around to doing more work on my Creatures utilities so it looks like I never will. I want to say thanks to all those who used and still use my programs and have found my articles useful. I'll keep this site up indefinitely as a resource. As I say on my weblog it looks like Creatures has reached the end of its current life and it has been a lot of fun being a part of the Creatures Community. Thanks everyone! Chris.
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
I've released the source code to most of my Creatures 3 utilities that were written in Dylan. They are available for download from the DylanLibs SourceForge project. This includes source to the c3-engine DLL, Genetics Editor, Gene Comparison programs, Genome Injector, etc. If you can't wait for me to port them to Docking Station, you can download the source and do it yourself - or help maintain the code with me. These programs can be compiled using the 30-day trial version of Functional Developer.
20/12/2000
Five days till Christmas 2000, yahoo. Just a quick note to let everyone know I'm still alive and still use Creatures. I haven't done anything for awhile worth updating about so - no updates lately. I've been mainly working on programming which you can see from my Dylan, Common Lisp and Smalltalk pages. I'm looking forward to Docker and you can expect some new tools to appear and old tools to be updated that support Docker. Apart from that, Merry Christmas and have a cool, groovy and Happy New Year!!
28/05/2000
The source code for C3 Lobe Study is now available. Download it, modify it and have fun exploring the brain structure of C3 norns.
21/05/2000
I've updated many of my C3 programs, fixing miscellaneous bugs and re-compiling under the new Dylan development system, Functional Developer. I've made the source code available for the DLL I wrote to access the C3 engine and the source code to the C3 genome injector program as an example of using the DLL. An evaluation version of Functional Developer can be downloaded from the Functional Objects website and this source code can be used to build your own programs that communicate with Creatures 3.

I will also be making the source code to my other programs (including the Genetics Editor) available soon, so those that want to use it as a base for their own development of C3 utilities can do so.
12/03/2000
Creatures Labs have released the official C3 Genetics Kit. At the Creatures Developer Network they have provided the file format for the .gen and .gno files which should allow me to update the GeneCompare program to report on the gene types it currently does not support.

I don't currently have plans to add the new gene support to my C3 Genetics Editor in the near future. I don't like working on things that are already available elsewhere and now that the official genetics kit is out it isn't really needed.
31/12/1999
I've written a C3 Genome Injector utility. This program lets you inject genomes (.gen files) into the game as eggs.
30/12/1999
Some very minor and unimportant changes to some pages. Really just an excuse to wish everyone a Happy New Year - so, well, Happy New Year :-)
29/12/1999
Small change made to GeneCompare to fix a problem where it would sometimes stop displaying information after the Genus gene. This would occur on some child genomes. It looks like I've got the format of that gene slightly wrong so I now dump the data as unknown bytes in the listing.
29/12/1999
New program added. It is a utility that allows you to load a genome and view a detailed listing of the genes within the genome as a text description. You can then compare that genome against another genome and see the differences between the two. It provides for Creatures 3 what Sandra Linkletters' D-DNA Analyzer did for C1 and C2. I've got two samples of the output from the program here. One is a detailed listing of the Civet genome (169KB), and the other is a list of the differences between the Civet and Grendel genome (92KB).
28/12/1999
Updated the C3 Genetics Editor to version 1.0.7. This version includes support for the half lives gene in both Creatures 2 and Creatures 3 genomes. It also includes support for reading the new comments information in the .gno file for C3. There is no longer a hard coded dependancy on the location of the description data in the .gno file. When viewing C3 genes that have the additional comment information you will see a new tab appear in the right hand pane titled 'C3 comments'.
27/12/1999
Added a page to hold information about the Creatures 3 brain lobes and related genetics. Currently it has information on my attempts at working out how state variable rules work in C3 brain lobes.
26/12/1999 (Part 2)
Updated the C3 Genetics Editor to version 1.0.5. This version will display information on the NeuroEmitter and Brain Tract gene types. Read the readme file contained with the program for details on the changes.
26/12/1999
Updated the C3 version of my LobeStudy utility to version 1.1. This fixes a problem where some of the lobes were incorrectly labelled. I've also added more cell descriptions for the lobes that previously displayed 'unknown' for a descrtipion.
25/12/1999
Updated the developer information on the shared memory interface page.This includes how to use the mutexes properly, how to use the process id of the creatures game engine, what the format of the memory buffer is and how to execute CAOS and install scripts.
25/12/1999
Added a new program - a C3 version of my LobeStudy utility. This program allows you to view the data in the lobes in a C3 norn, view the state information for each cell, and to single step through the game as the brain state changes. I wrote it to help me understand and explore the C3 brain model.
24/12/1999
Updated the Creatures 3 CAOS Injector to use the mutex facility in the same manner as the update to the Scriptorium Browser on 23/12/1999.
24/12/1999
Added a page to hold the Creatures 3 utilities.
23/12/1999
Updated the Creatures 3 Scriptorium Browser (~760KB) to work better when run alongside other applications that use the Creatures 3 interface. This involved capturing the mutex and checking the process handle of the Creatures 3 program. The CA interface page has not yet been updated to reflect these changes. I hope to do this over the Christmas break.

Speaking of Christmas, Merry Christmas!
14/12/1999
A small change to the Genome Editor (~580KB). The stimulus gene used to display some chemical values as 'Unknown', now it displays the correct chemical details. Thanks to Francis Irving from Cyberlife for providing the necessary information on the CDN newsgroups.
21/11/1999
I've made a few changes to the Genome Editor (~580KB) to fix some problems. These problems were:

20/11/1999 (part 2)

My genetics editor has been updated to support Creatures 3 genomes. Download the Genome Editor (~580KB) to view and edit C2, C3 and CA genomes. It doesn't currently display all genes in the genome as I haven't worked some of the genome file format. The majority of genes are their though.

Like some of my other recent programs it requires the Harlequin Dylan runtime library to be installed. You can download it here (~4MB).

20/11/1999

Creatures 3 Scriptorium Browser (~700KB) added. It has the nice facility of all the descriptions being looked up from the C3 catalogue files. Meaning they have the correct names. I also display the help text for the agent as well as the source code to make it a bit easier to understand.

My site needs a reorganisation. I've added quite a few programs recently that are only linked in this What's New page. So you might want to read some of the older entries in case you missed some files.

09/11/1999

I've converted the Creatures Adventures CAOS injector to C3 - I think. I don't have C3 yet but the engine is the same and should just require a change to the 'game name' for it to work. So I changed the 'game name' from 'Creatures Village' to 'Creatures 3' and apparently it works. It's available for download here (~61 KB). Follow the same useage instructions as for the CA CAOS injector, but use the files in the C3 injector archive instead.

Apparently C3 has an in-game CAOS injector so it's not all that useful - but it demonstrates talking to C3 which was its original intent.

20/10/1999

A program to view and possibly edit Creatures 2 and Creatures Adventures genome files is available. GenomeEditor (~500KB) is only linked from this What's New page at the moment.

It started life as a Creatures 2 genome editor about a year ago and I've done some quick modifications to get it to read Creatures Adventures genomes. Much of the CA genome is a mystery to me so any unknown CA data is either displayed as raw bytes or not displayed at all. In particular, brain lobes and the two new gene types have very little information displayed. More information is available in the readme file in the download.

It's very much alpha level software but does load, display and save CA and C2 genomes. I wouldn't guarantee that the saved or edited genomes will work as desired in the game though! I'm making it available at the current level of use as I will not be able to do much work on it or CA for a few weeks and thought others might find it a useful tool until Cyberlife or other third party authors update their more full featured genome editing programs.

Like the caos injector program, it requires the Harlequin Dylan runtime library to be installed. See the caos injector page for details or download it here.

17/10/1999

A program to run CAOS commands into Creatures Adventures and view the results using the shared memory interface. Worked out how to wait for the result of a request correctly and have updated the shared memory interface page with the information. I've also updated the Creatures Adventures Scriptorium Browser so it doesn't have the artificial delay waiting for results. It is now much faster.

17/10/1999

Documentation of what I've worked out of the interface to communicate with Creatures Adventures in the same manner as the scriptorium browser is now available on the CA interface page. Documentation for other versions of Creatures is available from the Developer Information page.

17/10/1999

Creatures Adventures has arrived and I've been trying to work out how to communicate with it via third party applications. It does not use DDE or OLE like Creatures 1 and 2. I think I've worked part of it out and to test it I've ported my Scriptorium Browser to Creatures Adventures.

It has a few quirks as it was a quick port. I don't know a lot of the CA descriptions and the formatting of the CAOS scripts is not being done as the format of the scripts returned from CAOS is slightly different. But it does work! Download the Creatures Adventures Scriptorium Browser (~700KB) if you want to explore the world of CA and the upcoming C3.

I'll be documenting the means of communicating with the CA engine soon and providing a CAOS command line execution program as an example.

08/10/1999

Minor style sheet tweaks for better display of text in IE5. Various minor text changes to some pages to remove questions that have answered, etc.

06/10/1999

Added information on the file format for the Creatures 2 .exp file. This is the file that holds information on an exported norn.

05/10/1999

The GNO file format table had an error. The Gene Sequence Number is 4 bytes not 2 bytes. It is a DWORD. I miscopied the data from my GNO file format reader source code. Thanks to Michael Milburn for pointing it out.

25/08/1999

Updated the readme.txt files for the various programs available here to reflect the new site address and email address. I haven't changed the programs themselves, so if you already have them there is no need to download them again. I haven't changed the 'about' box details on the programs yet - I'll wait for an update to the programs themselves before I do that.

24/08/1999

Yes, The The Creatures Developer Resource is back in business. I've bought a new domain name (after selling the old one) and will begin to update and get this sight back into shape.

At the moment all the information is exactly as it was when it closed. Some of the links may not work, or may still point to the old domain name as a result. I'll work on getting this all working. I hope you enjoy the site being back!

Earlier
Previous What's New entries are available.