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 Code Monkey evolnemesis   |
There seems to be a strange problem in CFFs (I think only the later versions) where some can get the 'near death' track playing when they are on screen, but for no discernible reason, and then it never goes away for that creature after that, no matter how well they eat or take care of themselves... Has anyone else noticed this? Does anyone know exactly what triggers the near death music to play, or have any ideas on what might be going on to cause this? There is really no obvious clue I can think of in their genetics... and I even the made 1.0 and 1.1 with pretty weak fullness responses in case malnourishment, like a lack of glycogen or something, was the problem, but it does not seem to be... they can definitely eat when full if they really want to, and the music seems to continue even if they eat a lot and take care of themselves really well after it starts. They have very few changes that could affect anything key in their metabolism that I know of... The biggest I can think of is that illness takes some glucose from them when their immune systems form antibodies from antigens. Still, theoretically, they should be able to recover any lost nutrition by eating, if this were the case... It doesn't really make sense that the music would keep up on ones with good diets. Also, I'm not sure, but I think that this music problem was also noticed in 8.1 Evos, who did not have any nutrition loss from illness. It kind of seems I need to look at their internal chemistry vs normal norns with a fine toothed comb, but thanks to not knowing exactly what triggers the music to play, it's hard to even know where to look. "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan |
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 Arnout |
I've noticed this issue too. The music plays when your Creatures' chemical 4 level (Glycogen, I think?) gets too low. I had a bunch of CFF Norns (About 25-30) and I heard this 'Near Death Theme' quite a lot. - About 4 of them were actually sick. (Antigens, Glycotoxin) - 7 young Creatures had this weird habit of refusing to eat seeds (or they never learned to eat them) and I had to lock them up with a bunch of seeds before they started to eat them. I had 4 generation 1 Creatures whom were healthy their entire lives, so I can't tell if it's because of their CFF genetics. In all cases their glycogen levels never increased again after they got healthy. (Tracked with the Single Chemical Graphing Gadget) I injected them some extra glycogen from the Medical Pod, and the music went back to normal. As a temporary fix I altered all DS/C3 seed cos files to contain some extra glycogen (0.1 per seed) and the problem occured far less often. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Hmm, I thought low glycogen was what the music signified... Then it seems likely that something to do with how much illness depletes them is the culprit, since the problem did seem to start with some 0.8 related genomes, which is when I first added that nutrition loss... and I'm not sure if the problem happens with 0.8.1 Evos, like Janeway & Picard, who don't have it... That would be worth checking out. Since it takes glucose to make antibodies, in the short term it will all be taken from glycogen stores, potentially depleting them pretty quickly... It's still kind of odd that they can't build these glycogen stores up again though, but then again I've never paid much attention to glycogen levels at all before, so I'm not at all sure if even normal ones really recover it if it gets very depleted. I imagine that one of these near death types could be in pretty serious trouble if they got infected again, but that actually makes sense... the music basically means the creature is weak, either from malnutrition, glycotoxin, or in the case of CFFs, illness as well. They're unlikely to starve as long as the other nutrition stores in their bodies are holding out, at least, but it's troubling that they don't seem to be rebuilding their glycogen stores on their own. This might be a fix I've overlooked even, since it might affect normal creatures who have had really bad glycotoxin exposure as well. It would be informative to know if this music problem is still prevalent in CFF creatures raised in a completely bacteria free environment... This way I'd know if that was it, or if there was some other factor as well... maybe they eat detritus a lot or something (though I'm pretty sure it hurts most so they should stop after a while), or have a hard-to-notice eating disorder causing their nutrition to be insufficient. "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan |
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 Sanely Insane RisenAngel Manager  |
None of my worlds have bacteria in them and I've still had it happen. In my case, I had a similar issue to Arnout where the creatures somehow didn't want to eat seeds. I'm pretty sure it's a CFF issue. I've never seen something like this happen for most first generation non-CFF creatures (unless it's something like a GoM and thus is based on a mutated high-generation genome). I do think it's possible that the groundwork for this issue was there in non-CFF creatures and the CFF edits are just exacerbating it for whatever reason, though. Risen Angel's Creatures Blog |
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 Wrong Banshee Dragoler |
I think the problem is that your alcohol receptor which i'm assuming was suppose to cause injury is actually reducing the clock-rate of the liver anabolic functions, which controls glycogen and adipose tissue storage. I discovered this while experimenting with warmblooded creatures. my 1st beta prototypes had a regular liver anabolic function and died 30 mins in from heart disease... but after switching it down to the lower CFF clock-rate they became very prone to starvation. (i'm guessing it somehow slowed the mitochondria, which lowered body temperature and caused death from hypothermia before their receptors could detect it.) Creator of the TWB/TCB genome base.  |
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 Allekha |
I ran a quick experiment with the biochemistry kit and a plain old regular Chichi norn. I injected it with glycotoxin until its glycogen got very low. The near death music starts playing when glycogen gets down to about 0.040 or lower. Then I injected it with arnica and let it eat plenty of food - its glycogen bounced right back up with no trouble and the near death music eventually stopped. I then injected it with glycotoxin again, and this time its glycogen didn't go up again after it was cured - because its liver was dead. So - yes, normal norns can recover from very low glycogen stores as long as their livers are still functioning, but very bad glycotoxin exposure kills their livers and prevents this from happening. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Have you tried that experiment with a CFF? But that's good, at least I know glycogen will recover on its own from a good diet as long as everything else is okay... so leaving in the nutrition loss from illness shouldn't really be bad on its own... the real issue is whatever seems to be stopping it from recovering in the CFFs. Anyway, it looks like there are a few changes I can try that may fix this issue... I will mess around, do a little testing of my own, and then make a breeding pair of test subject ChiChis with these changes and put them up in adoptions... I will name them 'Glen & Glenda' (GL names for glycogen, lol)... Please test these and let me know how it goes... I hadn't thought of the extra liver gene, but it's a definite possibility... it's actually copied from C2, but it didn't appear when I put it in that it should be affecting their liver function if they have no alcohol in their system. "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan |
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Wrong Banshee Dragoler |
I can guarantee you your culprit is that alcohol receptor. Creator of the TWB/TCB genome base. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Well, if that's the case, then that's great... Looks like then all I need to do is take out both the new heart receptor (since normal metabolisms seem to build adipose to what would have been fatal levels, and without messing with their metabolisms severely I don't think I can change that) and the new liver receptor. Those were the changes I was going to try, since I haven't heard of this problem occurring before I added those genes along with the ones for illness... Well, just for kicks, I'll put up Glen & Glenda with these changes, give them a try... Oh well, so much for those 2 realistic organ responses that were in C2, lol... "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan |
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Wrong Banshee Dragoler |
You don't have to remove them, you could slow down the trig to adipose reaction or add a receptor to it (I added a receptor to make them gain more weight when its cold, but otherwise gain weight very slowly). You could also find other ways to get them to burn it, like adding a reduction to an active stimulus (walking, pushing, pulling etc). Creator of the TWB/TCB genome base. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Yeah, I'd rather not interfere with metabolic processes that were already working just to shoehorn additional weaknesses into their organs, even if those weaknesses were in previous games... I thought these 2 genes were a nice idea if I could get them to work with the rest of the genome, but I'm not about to mess with a bunch of other genes just to accommodate them. I don't think it's really worth it, especially since doing that will also have another side effect of making them worse at storing nutrition, and less resilient to periods with no food. "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan |
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 Wingheart |
And maybe remove the alcohol receptor since it seems to always kill the liver even when no alcohol is in them (maybe a typo?) |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Yeah they are both going out of the genome I think... at least if Glen & Glenda work as they should. "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan |
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Wrong Banshee Dragoler |
As it was the liver anabolic wasn't functioning at all, I don't see how singling out the adipose reaction is more disruptive than shutting down an entire organ... but OK, whichever way you want to handle it. Creator of the TWB/TCB genome base. |
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Sanely Insane RisenAngel Manager |
You don't necessarily need to remove either gene. In fact, I can explain exactly what the problem was with the alcohol receptor in particular. It all ties into a pesky thing in receptor genes: the nominal value. The nominal value, in case you didn't already know, is basically a "baseline" value - what level the receptor operates at when the chemical it's tied to isn't present. In the case of receptors that affect organ clock rates and reaction rates, the nominal value affects the rate said organ or reaction normally works at. You'd think that the nominal value here would balance out with the default clock rate or reaction rate, but from my experience it actually seems the nominal value of a receptor has a stronger effect on the organ or reaction than the default value does. Change it around, and you can alter the rate at which an organ or reaction functions dramatically. Which brings me to the alcohol receptor. It had a nominal value of 0, which effectively shut off the liver anabolic organ entirely unless alcohol was present in the creature's system. In other words, CFF creatures with this gene intact needed to get drunk to turn glucose into glycogen (among other things). If you'd like to keep that gene around, the fix is simple - change the nominal value to something higher so that the organ functions again. The default clock rate for the liver anabolic organ is ~0.5 like most organs, so setting the nominal value around there should get the CFF liver anabolic functioning normally. You'll probably need to tweak it a little to get the most "normal" looking result, however. Furthermore, did you want alcohol to slow down or speed up the rate at which the liver anabolic functioned? If the former, you also need to make sure the "Output REDUCES with increased stimulation" is checked. One final note: all of the above only applies to receptors set to alter organ clock rates or reaction rates. For receptors set to injure or repair organs, nominal should be set to 0 unless you want those receptors to constantly injure/repair the organs they're in. Risen Angel's Creatures Blog |
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Wrong Banshee Dragoler |
I think the problem Grendel man is that when that organ functions normally creatures gain adipose tissue far too quickly. Keeping the nominal of that receptor low would allow the organ to function and keep the adipose down... but it would also slow down all the other processes. It is defo doable, CFFs have already proven that creatures don't NEED that function to be constantly active. Creator of the TWB/TCB genome base. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Dragoler wrote: I am singling out the adipose reaction because it seems to be fatal to any C3 creature with a working liver, because they seem to build up adipose to high levels normally... I am not trying to make huge physical changes to the entire metabolisms, just add genes that are fixes... changing how they store any kind of nutrition, or making them store less, is disruptive and can be hard to balance, as the effects from this liver gene are showing... Grendel Man: The nominal is set at 1 not 0, so they CAN metabolize without alcohol, just slowly... and as near as I can tell, alcohol is supposed to speed up the processes in that organ, which among other things should age it a little faster, and make them have to pee more while drunk... It definitely has the right setting in the check box to increase the speed with alcohol in their systems. If you look at the genes in C2, the settings for the organ itself, including clock rate, are exactly the same as in C3 (50%)... and the alcohol gene is the same as well. If, as seems to be the case, the nominal value in the alcohol receptor is mostly responsible for establishing the baseline speed for their liver relative to its clock speed, at a value of just 1 in CFF and in C2 genomes, then C2 creatures must have had livers with a MUCH slower nominal reaction rate than normal C3 creatures... I guess the reaction speeds of all their liver reactions must have been very different, probably faster to account for the much slower liver clock rate. Since that seems to be the case, it seems very tricky now to figure out how to set this value properly, there is no other guideline or baseline I can think of to look at to figure this out, considering the 2 genes in question are the same between the games... which is why I think it just simpler to remove the gene rather than go through many iterations of testing with different values, and then still possibly running into problems down the line... "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan |
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Wrong Banshee Dragoler |
I think you misunderstood what I said, its that or i'm lost. I suggested singling out that reaction so you can add or change one gene that doesn't effect the entire liver. I have a 3 hour old creature in my test world now that has a fully functioning liver anabolic and 1 gene reducing the adipose reaction with no ill effects, but you could just as easily reduce the nominal and gain on the trig receptor without adding in a single new gene. Creator of the TWB/TCB genome base. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Oh yeah, I get it now... I meant the adipose reaction in the heart... Still, that is really worse than just getting rid of the gene I think... The problem with that suggestion is that then, the creature would need at least TWO genes together to maintain a normal metabolic rate... the new alcohol receptor AND this new changed receptor or extra gene that counteract part of its slowing effect on metabolism... It would be much more prone to genetic problems if it inherited only the one or the other. (Also, it could be the case that the slower metabolism is partially what is making them hold on to all that fat... I'd have to really look at all the other reactions and receptors as well to make sure there are no other detrimental effects, part of why I thought it just simpler to remove the alcohol and the heart receptor) I think the track Grendel Man is on might be best though, the alcohol receptor might still be salvageable without having to change anything else if i can fix that gene so it's making a relatively normal or better liver metabolism (this way, inheriting it or not inheriting it won't make any major difference to their metabolisms or have any major effect on the workings of other genes)... I did just figure out a good way to establish a baseline to see how to properly set the values for the alcohol receptor... I can just make a 'baseline reaction' in the liver that works to decay some unknownase, and put it into 2 test genomes, one normal and one CFF... Then I can graph and inject this chemical to compare the rate of this reaction in the 'normal' norn vs the one with an alcohol receptor. This will let me figure out the right nominal value for the alcohol receptor. EDIT; PS: If they still get fat too quickly after this fix, then that could definitely be another fix for CFF, probably as you said, a tweak to some gene in there involving fat breakdown or creation, but it doesn't make sense to tune this tweak to accommodate some weird liver metabolic rate caused by another gene... Fixing the alcohol gene and getting the overall metabolic rate to be normal again I think has to be first... then we can look at the other liver genes separately. "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Remembered one more thing that could be contributing to them getting obese... I had made them 25% more efficient at getting glucose from starch, as part of trying to figure out the issue with the near death music in 0.8 versions. Thanks sincerely, everyone, for the help figuring this out and the encouragement to not give up on these genes (I mean, the alcohol thing is even mentioned in the C3 manual... it does really make sense for it to be there...) I'm uploading a Glen & Glenda Chichi pair for testing... They have the following features: 1. Alcohol receptor nominal value changed to .498 (from .04) Testing with a baseline reaction shows this value once again makes their liver metabolic rate normal, indistinguishable from other norns. Alcohol will still speed up this organ while it's in their systems, causing it to slightly speed up its reactions and age a little faster while they have enough in their systems (about two drinks worth). This change should fix the music issue, and let them recover glycogen normally. 2. Glucose creation from starch in foods fixed to normal value. (4 glucose for every starch instead of 5) This being too efficient could be the key to why they got fat so easily when their metabolisms were sped up by disabling the old alcohol receptor. 3. Heart adipose receptor unchanged for now. I really need to test the effects of these other changes to come to a good conclusion about this gene. These can still get heart disease, but hopefully the other changes stop them from getting that fat so easily... This receptor will only have an effect if the amount of adipose goes over 95%... Definitely keep an eye on their adipose levels and heart health and let me know if there are still issues 4. Pigment & pigment bleed genes... duplication now disabled for these genes as well. This can help avoid unnecessary extra problems in higher-gen creatures, as discussed in the CFF thread. "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan |
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Arnout |
I'm glad you've been able to figure this one out. I just did some testing with the new Norns that you've uploaded and their livers are working well now. However, their adipose tissue gets to a very high level; so they don't live long. Perhaps decrease the rate at which the Creatures gain adipose tissue, or increase the rate at which it depletes? |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Yeah, looks like obesity is an issue... hmm... and different species also do different things regarding fat metabolism... I really don't know about that heart disease gene... Applying fixes anywhere else to stop it from killing them by using other genes that way (changing how they metabolize or deal with adipose, or changing an organ rate, or a chemical half-life or reaction) still leaves the serious problem of a creature inheriting the heart disease gene but not whatever life-saving gene(s) that control their fat levels. It's actually good we noticed the issue with the liver alcohol receptor gene, since the problem was making it act as a 'saving gene' for this heart gene... meaning any creature getting the heart gene and not the liver gene was doomed. Unless the heart disease gene can be fixed by itself, without using other genes, it is pretty much just a deadly liability that will kill at least ~25% of all crosses (and since there is genetic drift even inside a breed due to gene locations commonly shifting from duplicating or cutting of other genes, it can even easily prove fatal in later generations of purebreds that happen not to inherit the 'saving gene'...) Since adipose seems to get to full by itself normally in C3 genomes with even just a decent diet, it doesn't look like this heart gene can be fixed this way if it's going to depend on adipose. I think this one may have to go, unfortunately... C3 creatures just are apparently good at building up a healthy store of blubber so they can last without food (So THAT'S why they are more 3-dimensional!). Even if I were to change their metabolisms to fix how they store fat, it can't be done as a way to save their lives from this heart gene, because that would still leave potential deadly issues that will be fairly common. "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
As an interim fix, just give them lots of booze if you hear them getting the near death music and then feed them... It's actually good for them, their livers work better while they are knackered. If you can keep them drunk for a while, the music should go away. "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan |
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Missmysterics |
Yeah I did notice CFF norns never really seem to replenish their glycogen, as long as they don't get ill it doesn't seem to effect them though. |
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