CCSF 2012 Day 13: Activities Update

The CCSF 2012 is quickly drawing to a close, along with the activities. Many posts will be made tomorrow, on the final day of the festival, to announce the winners! Prizes will also be shown off, as one developer clearly put in a ton of effort! Many will be happy to know that since there weren't winners for all activities, extra prizes will be available for all! As a teaser, here are some of the names of the CCSF 2012 prizes:
  • Bondi Norn Doll
  • CCSF Globe
  • Genie Lamp
  • Harlequin Norn Doll
The wolfing run challenge results will also be revealed tomorrow! Unfortunately, it was not possible to do an in-depth video series, nor documentary, but hopefully the results will still be fun to read through. Perhaps another wolfing run challenge will be held after the CCSF, with tons of detail. This concludes today, but make sure to stop by for the exciting conclusion to the CCSF 2012 tomorrow! Thanks again to everyone who contributed!

CCSF 2012 Day 13: Dustdevil Grendels Pack


Created by Ghosthande for C3/DS (Grendel Breed)

We certainly couldn't finish our journey in the desert without a gigantic release! The Dustdevil Grendels are a new breed in and of themselves, but they also come with a ton of wonderful new agents!

Download the Dustdevil Grendels (5.2 MB RAR File)

From Ghosthande: "The Dustdevil Grendels are a new breed with genetics based on Vampess's CFE genomes, and they come with a variety of agents and a couple of fixes. They hail from the Ettin Desert, but overall have the same personality as your average Jungle Grendel. This breed is based on an original idea and concept art by Gobbo, with additional input from a lot of different people. Peer-reviewed Grendels, baby!"


Included with this download are the following:

Calendar Wheel (C3, C3/DS, or DS)
Crystal Skull (DS Only)
Desert Nursery (C3 or C3/DS)
Dustdevil Grendels (Grendel Breed)
New Gadget Dropper (C3 or C3/DS)
Succulent (C3, C3/DS, or DS)
Sunflower (C3, C3/DS, or DS)
Thorny Devil (C3, C3/DS, or DS)

IMPORTANT: Please note which type of world setup each agent will work in. The Dustdevil Grendels use Grendel breed slot X, often occupied by the Tiger Grendels. Make sure to uninstall any breeds in this breed slot before hatching a Dustdevil Grendel. More information is included in the Readme.


Calendar Wheel
Tells the date and time of day, and emits heat. Injects into the Ettin Desert in C3 or DS docked worlds, or the Norn Meso in undocked DS worlds.

How it Works: The calendar rings rotate so that the current season and cycle period are located at the top. The inner ring indicates which day it is within a season, as indicated by groups of circles; markers on this ring also indicate when it is early moring (rising sun) or late evening (crescent moon). The outer ring tells if it is spring (storm cloud), summer (sun), autumn (owl) or winter (bat).

Crystal Skull
May have strange effects on Creatures?

How it Works: The crystal skull is a gimmicky accessory for your Creatures to ponder over, but it also has some other properties. Will it infuse your Creatures with the knowledge of the ancients...?

Desert Nursery
Transform that dangerous pond into a friendly nursery for baby Creatures. The Desert Terrarium (Ettin Desert) metaroom must be present.

How it Works: The desert nursery transforms that pond on the right side of the Desert Terrarium into a warm, dry place that Ettins and other desert-loving breeds (like the Dustdevil Grendels) will consider home, essentially turning the room's death trap into a nursery. It also re-locates the Ettin egg layer, so that baby Ettins will hatch on a level that hopefully has some food, instead of in that barren lower corridor.

NOTE: If you were already using the Grettin Switch to disable the Ettin egg layer in your world, and you inject the desert nursery, you may need to turn the Grettin Switch on and then back off to reset it. Or just make sure the Ettin egg layer is active before you inject the desert nursery, and turn it off again after the injection is finished.

New Gadget Dropper
An update to an obscure but very necessary script in the Desert Terrarium.

How it Works: This agent updates a hidden script which normally forces Ettins to drop gadgets they're carrying once they enter the Desert Terrarium--preventing them from simply walking around with the same gadget in their hands forever. There was a drawback to the way this script originally worked, in that it targeted Ettins and only Ettins. Spliced hybrids which are classified as Norns or Grendels but still have the gadget hoarding instinct were not targeted by it. This update ensures that the script will target Norns, Ettins and Grendels equally. It will not target Geats, given that Gaius eats gadgets and it would not do for the script to constantly force him to drop his food. If you inject the desert nursery, creatures will release gadgets properly there, too.

NOTE: You MUST remove the New Gadget Dropper before you inject it, to clear out the old script version.

Succulent
A sweet treat young Creatures will enjoy.

How it Works: Designed to grow in the new desert nursery, it will also happily colonize the rest of the Ettin Desert or any other dry area to which it is introduced. This succulent is classified as fruit, and thus provides an extra food source for Creatures that are not naturally inclined to supplement their diet with bugs. Or those that just have a bit of a sweet tooth.

Sunflower
Turn any dry area into a field of sunflowers. Seeds are a good source of starch.

How it Works: The sunflower is a tall plant that needs to be pollinated by insects. Balloon bugs will perform this role nicely. The Albian Sunflower has the peculiar habit of "following" Albia's sun, despite the fact that they are many generations removed from the disc world.

Thorny Devil
A prickly, heat-loving lizard that will help keep your desert nice and tidy.

How it Works: The thorny devil is poisonous if Creatures mess with it--but harmless as long as they leave it alone. It likes warm areas, and will occasionally eat stray raindrops and cacbana seeds so that you won't end up with so many of them littering the Desert Terrarium. (The C3/DS "collision script" that tells an agent when it has hit a surface such as the ground, is itself buggy and does not always activate when it ought to; this can lead to agents like the abovementioned raindrops and seeds to accumulate over time.)

Developer's Notes
All right, here's the deal. I could not get the adult/elder heads to work, but I am not going to scrap the entire breed because of it. So here they are. The Dustdevil Grendel sprite sets are complete for the Baby/Child and Adolescent/Youth life stages, but the sprite sets for the Adult and Elder life stages do not have heads of their own. This means that as adults and elders, they will continue to use the teen head sprites. The teen heads are slightly smaller in proportion to the body than the proper adult and elder head sprites would be, but this is the best compromise I can make for the time being. I'm hoping that the difference won't be too heinous in appearance, and hopefully the agent pack will make up the difference.

CCSF 2012 Day 13: Updated Bugs and Bank


Created by Malkin for C3 (COS File)

The Ballon Bugs from the Desert Terrarium were often just floating about with no way to interact with them initially, until a wonderful update came along! Now that update is available with a fix to the Ettin seed bank. No more autokill issues to deal with!

Download the Updated Bugs and Bank (5 KB RAR File)

From Malkin: "This is an edit to Creatures 3’s Balloon Bugs, making them more interactive for your Creatures. Creatures can now push, pull, eat and squish the bugs, making them much more entertaining overall, especially for Treehugger, Bondi and Draconian Norns, and Grendels of all kinds. Originally made for the CCSF 2009. C3 only. Now with a fixed Ettin seed bank!"

CCSF 2012 Day 13: A Way Home in the Desert


Written by Jessica as Part of the Shee Journey Series

Fuzzy outlines and blurred images made me wonder if I was stuck in a dream. Or perhaps I had crossed over to the other side... The pain across my head told me otherwise, and I let out a short cry of pain. I was alive: Possibly the luckiest Shee at the moment. I pulled myself into a sitting position, and found that the vessel was upside-down. Wonderful. The on-board communicator chattered, and I recognized the voices of my assistants. With a shaky hand, I touched the button to respond. The screen came alive not only with their familiar faces, but also with the concerned eyes of the Creatures. After a systems check, it appeared that the vessel had simply gone off course and crashed itself. I knew I couldn't trust the devious thing. Yet it had saved my life in the way it crashed into the sand.

Sand, indeed. There was nothing visible outside the window but a great expanse of sand. I was told to stay put and await the emergency rescue vehicle, but I couldn't risk another vehicle. This vessel merely needed to right itself with the push of a button... I failed to negotiate the barrel roll, and ended up in an untidy heap on the floor. My head still ached like it never had before, yet nothing was broken. It was a curious thing the vessel had done. Before I could guide it back to the spacecraft, it jetted off at a perilous speed to pick up something it had been vastly interested in collecting. This had to have a mind of its own. I was convinced of it all, and a little frightened.

Yet the desert world was soon a small marble behind us as we returned to the spacecraft. Though I had only been gone for about a day, it was the most heartwarming reunion I had ever experienced. There was even a cup of tea waiting for me, and I could honestly say that the Norn who brewed it had done a great job. Just as we started to go through the objects brought back by the vessel, an incoming transmission came in. It was the institute. The vessel's crash had initiated an emergency beacon that had traveled back home. It was simply assumed that our off-course position was due to a problem, and that our journey would have to come to an end.

They knew we had found the Creatures they so desperately wanted to study. The exploratory vessel had been sending information back to them covertly this entire time. I knew there was something traitorous about it. Under section 728 of the Shee Intergalactic Research Institute's code, the automatic guide was initiated from home. We had no way of controlling it, and I felt a nauseous wave fall over me. Our plan to keep these Norns, Grendels, and Ettins from the grasp of greedy researchers was doomed. I would be welcomed as a hero: The best of the Shee. It meant nothing to me. I could not abandon these Creatures as my ancestors had. My hands were tied. Unless...

From Jessica: "Amazingly, the Creatures Community Spirit Festival has almost reached its conclusion! However, the storyline still has a number of twists in it. The Shee survived the crash, but what will happen next? Today's theme continues with the desert world, though don't expect to be bored with the same monotonous sand! Expect some excellent releases today and tomorrow! Also, don't forget to read Ask Laura, and send in your questions!"
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