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Playing Creatures 2?   
Merboy

Merboy
United States  


  1/29/2018  2

Like many of you I have Windows 10 and have downloaded the latest copy of Albian Years from GOG. Creatures 2 is my favorite game of all the franchise and I want to play it SO very much. Unfortunately it gives me the small furry creatures error from time to time and also it runs very slowly and with much lag.

Therefore I was wondering if there were any known ways to play the game that wasn't so... you know... impossible.

And of course there's Docking Station. I'd love to install DS so as to play C2toDS and also my darling Ainarda! But very, very, very sadly I can't get that installed either. I downloaded the most recent version of Exodus from GOG and tried to install it. When I do I get this message:

"Installation stopped. Trouble bzip2 reading from C:\GOG Games\Creatures Exodus\Docking Station\file_list_splash.txt.partial

You can resume the installation from where it left off by running Docking Station from the Start Menu.

Alternately you can uninstall it from Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel."

I uninstalled all the Docking Station stuff I have on my computer and attempted to install again but no dice. BTW, I'm going in to GOG Games > Creatures Exodus > Docking Station > and then clicking on "InstallBlast.exe" because I can't find any other file that looks like the installer.

Anyone know what the issue might be or how I can get these games to play on my Windows 10?

* As a side note, Creatures 1 and Creatures 3 work perfectly fine on my system. No issues a'tall.

* As another side note HOW IS EVERYONE!!! I have missed the Community very much. I hope you're all swell. <3

* As a third side note I just realized I posted this in General and not in Help. Any help from the site staff to move this to the correct forum would be much appreciated! Sorry about that!


The Lantern Light.com
 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  1/29/2018  2

Hi Merboy!

The Creatures Wiki's new location has some information about Creatures 2 and Windows 10 - I think it's been found that reducing your screen's resolution can assist in reducing lag.

For DS, do you have a file called 'engine.exe'? InstallBlast used be used in those long-gone days where Docking Station was being updated by Creatures Labs, but engine.exe is where the game is at now.


My TCR Norns
 
ylukyun
Patient Pirate

ylukyun

Manager



  1/29/2018

You might have better luck running Creatures 2 on a virtual machine. This topic has some information.
 
C-Rex
Lollipop Lord

C-Rex


 visit C-Rex's website: The Norn Nebula
  1/30/2018

Welcome back, Merboy! I have actually tried to use VirtualBox myself recently, but not only does it suffer from crackling audio (which I have been unable to fix), the game also refuses to run and tells me an error was detected during startup. You'd think by now that GOG.com would try and update the game to run properly on Windows 10, or at least add a warning to the page saying it has issues.
 
ylukyun
Patient Pirate

ylukyun

Manager



  1/30/2018

What about VMWare Player?
 
C-Rex
Lollipop Lord

C-Rex


 visit C-Rex's website: The Norn Nebula
  1/30/2018  1

I am actually trying out VMWare player now, as a matter of fact. I'll come back with my results.

Update: Yay! Creatures 2 runs great on VMWare Player. The only issue I've seen is the game starts up with the status bar disabled and text labels on the applet icons, but apart from that it runs perfectly. :D

 
Merboy

Merboy



  1/30/2018

This may be a silly question but what VMware program are you using? I’ve never heard of it and I’m at work so I just did a brief google of it on my phone and it looks like one needs to buy the product before using it for C2.

And thank you so much for the replies you guys! I hope I can get DS working when I get home tonight.

Oh and also C-Rex, are you able to disable the text labels on the applets icons via the top menu ribbon?


The Lantern Light.com
 
ylukyun
Patient Pirate

ylukyun

Manager



  1/30/2018  1

There are multiple VMWare products. VMWare Workstation Player is free, and although it has limited functionality, it should be able to run C2 (and the other games). You'll need a copy of Windows XP to install on the virtual machine. Windows 2000 and Windows 7 might also work, but try XP first if you can.
 
C-Rex
Lollipop Lord

C-Rex


 visit C-Rex's website: The Norn Nebula
  1/30/2018  1

Merboy: Yes, you can disable the labels, it's just I wasn't expecting them to be enabled when I started up the game. :P

And ylukyun is right, you'll need a copy of an OS before you can use the virtual machine, but pretty much any system from Windows 98 up to Windows 8 should do the job.

 
Merboy

Merboy



  1/30/2018

Welp... stickelbacks. I only have Windows 10. Oh well.

Creatures 2 is running fairly well at the moment for me. Not sure why or how but it seems almost exactly as it was once upon a time. It doesn't display the drop-down windows quite right, doesn't show the status bar, and I have no idea when it saves (which means when I close I may reopen my world to a minute ago or three hours ago).

*cracks knuckles* But I'm so ready to dive in! I LOVE Creatures 2!!! Where do we keep all the good cobs these days? I've looked around wikia but that's almost completely broken links. The most cob's I've found are here at Ccaves.

Wooo I am so excited!!! Thanks again to you all!


The Lantern Light.com
 
C-Rex
Lollipop Lord

C-Rex


 visit C-Rex's website: The Norn Nebula
  1/31/2018

Back in 2013 I compiled a list of must-haves if you're interested. :)
 
Norngirl

Norngirl


 visit Norngirl's website: Norngirl's Temporary Storage
  1/31/2018  1


Yeah,it's sad that C2 is the only one that is hard to run on modern computers. Looking trough topics related to C2 running on win10,
answers varies from some had more luck,while some had less.

I myself included asked about this since wanted to run C2 on my sisters indows 10 - haven't done so yet as life got in the way and the whole thing got quite confussing.
It's a shame it's so picky to run when it comes to newer computers.
Creatures 2 is my fav as well. Simply love the graphic overall of te game: the Norns & the nature of the world itself,simply just beutiful!
As well the relaxing music.

Hopefully one day it may be fixed up to be able to run problem free.
It's quite funny how C1 and C3/DS/Creatures Village -all of them run perfectly except Creatures 2.

I'ts good to hear that you was able to run your'e C2 again,Merboy!
Hope you will have a great time being able to play Creatures 2 again!



@C-Rex, Thats neat! Didn't know you had - Look useful!
Just a heads up- maybe you could fix my link to my PMN fix,
as it's a direct link and not propely linked to my site,
would be much appreciated.


 
C-Rex
Lollipop Lord

C-Rex


 visit C-Rex's website: The Norn Nebula
  1/31/2018

Maybe someone could compile a list of essential downloads that players could download in order to get themselves started with their respective games? The only problem is that some users may object to having their downloads hosted away from their original locations and so would need to be contacted beforehand.
 
Merboy

Merboy



  1/31/2018

I agree C-rex.

You know, I really wish there had been a bigger push over the last twenty years (holy moly - TWENTY years!) for third party developers to allow their creations to be redistributed by an official main hub so as to keep everything available. I 100% understand people wanting their stuff to be exclusive but the nature of the internet is such that things get lost into oblivion if the original source is deleted or expires.

Oh well, we live, we learn, right?


The Lantern Light.com
 
C-Rex
Lollipop Lord

C-Rex


 visit C-Rex's website: The Norn Nebula
  1/31/2018  1

I can understand some people not wanting their stuff to redistributed - that's fine in my opinion as long as they keep it online. Once thing I certainly don't agree with is paid content, especially when the addons in question cost more than the actual game(s)! But I digress.
 
ylukyun
Patient Pirate

ylukyun

Manager



  1/31/2018

I doubt any of those developers thought people would still want their stuff in twenty years, if they thought that far ahead at all.
 
IzumiSabi

IzumiSabi



  2/2/2018

As far I can understand,Norngirl have her downloads up as long her site is up and working - I tested download and it worked fine! Just wanted to add in,since this sound like it came up because she pointed out about her sprite fix and mention of her site.

Yeah,it's sad when files vanish and can't be obtained anymore,
but archive the files as they are and credit the owner who made it in a respectfull way if possible,
is a thing you do when the sites dosn't exist any longer.
Contacting first is always polite,otherwise it's understandable if the person can't be contacted or haven't answered in many years.
I mean you do show respect towards people who made the content for us all to use. I know that there is many people and some can you not keep track of,but does that at least have it clearly shown can't be missed.

(by the way - are we not going off-topic by the way? I thought it was about Merboy's C2 questions)

@Merboy Sounds great you was able to run C2,
How did you do to make it run? [nquestion]

@C-Rex You allready posted up youre must have list,
why posting up more?
Did you mean that more people should make theyre must have lists here on the forums? Would that not clog the forums up,unless you make a single topic about everyone posting theyre must haves?

Regardless, yes lets hope C2 will soon run on windows 10 and modern computers! There must be a way! :D




 
C-Rex
Lollipop Lord

C-Rex


 visit C-Rex's website: The Norn Nebula
  2/2/2018

As far as I am aware I only linked to my Must-have list once, unless you are referring to my other message, which I probably worded wrong - I should have said a zip file really, rather than a list, like the Creatures Community Disk or whatever it was called, which the user can simply copy and paste into their game folder.
 
Laura
Tea Queen

Laura

Administrator


 visit Laura's website: CC Chat
  2/2/2018

This topic is about helping Merboy enjoy Creatures 2 again on Windows 10, so any replies relating to Creatures 2/COBs are fine and aren't straying too off-topic. Sometimes it's okay to just let the discussion flow naturally and not be too rigid. Just like it would be in an everyday, face-to-face conversation. :)

Are you having any luck, Merboy?

 
IzumiSabi

IzumiSabi



  2/2/2018

@C-Rex - Well I was thinking about the one you posted here,then you mentioned about others to make theyre compile a list of essential downloads,but perhaps I missunderstood that phrase?
To me it sounded like others should make theyre own suggestions of theyre must-have list.

@Laura - Ah,I see.
Im used to forums being strict to topic titles having only related to what it says on the tin.
I couldn't help but to to me it was going from C2 running on Win10 to suddenly how fan made contents and files should be or could be handled.
Sorry about it - I didn't meant anything offensive when I added my reply. :)

Hopefuly he have,Im hoping he might share his secret how he manage to run his C2 on his Win10 :D

 
Laura
Tea Queen

Laura

Administrator


 visit Laura's website: CC Chat
  2/2/2018  1

That's fine, but just to clear up any confusion, Merboy then asked where he could find the good C2 COBs, hence the discussion about must-have downloads that followed.

Merboy wrote:
Where do we keep all the good cobs these days? I've looked around wikia but that's almost completely broken links. The most cob's I've found are here at Ccaves.


I'm sure he'd appreciate any suggestions you have! :)

 
Merboy

Merboy



  2/2/2018  2

Yes!!! I am very happy to say that my Creatures 2 is running beautifully. Or at least beautifully enough. I encountered a few errors (which is inevitable with C2 and we've all known this since 1998 lol) but with a little ingenuity the game works quite well.

A few tips I've learned in the last day or so since picking up C2 again:

1. Set up your world before you introduce any creatures. This means install any cobs you want, disable the grendel mother if you prefer, inject the holodoc, et al. Get the world exactly the way you want it (for me this takes about 1 hour to 1.5 hours because I'm quite particular). Then once you have everything set up go to your folder where the World.sfc file is located in My Documents and see when the last save was. If it's recent (that is, the Date Modified is some time after you finished setting up) then close Creatures 2 and make a copy of the World.sfc file. Then, if you like, label the file with the date and time it was saved. This allows you to have a savepoint in case your world crashes. Thanks to ylukyun for pointing out to me that the World.sfc file in the GOG folder is NOT the file you want to back up!

2. Set up teleportation cobs EVERYWHERE. I have the Traveler's Orb v2.0 by Jay Dino set up in just about every room and every level (sometimes two of them). However, these are portable and often creatures will pick them up, hold them, activate them while holding them, and then be whisked all around Albia until they drop it. Hence why I also have Jay Dino's Orbs of Teleportation. These are very pretty, work just as well as the Traveler's Orbs, and best of all they can't be moved (however this also means even you won't be able to move one after placing it - unless you remove all of them with the Remove feature). I have an Orb of Teleportation in every place I originally set up a Traveler's Orb and within an hour only the Orbs of Teleportation remain. Note: Jay Dino wrote in the description of the Orbs of Teleportation that you must have at least two in the world before activating or else the world will crash; also, in the description for the Traveler's Orbs he says the Orbs of Teleportation must be set up first or else the world will crash. I've not experienced this but if it's in the description I would take heed.

3. Set up food sources! This is obvious, but some of my favorite food cobs are the Cornucopia Bush (also by Jay Dino) because it's beautiful and natural and produces constant, varied fruits. You can place these anywhere and they look great and serve an important purpose. I also like to place several Food Vendors (v3.0 and by Jay Dino) in areas that are more tech-themed. As well I toss around plenty of golden tomatoes (by Jessica) because they're pretty and Wine-Berry Pears (also by Jessica) for the same reason, though these only grow in specific areas.

4. Neptune's Womb v3.0 by Jay Dino (can you tell he's a favorite) is a favorite cob of mine because it's handy and allows for any egg to be manually hatched regardless of population.

5. Plato's Project, Ocean Bridges 1.1 (Jay Dino), Barrel Room (and Barrel Drinks), and Helen's Treehouse Barriers and especially her Treehouse bridges are must-have expansions. I know there are more and one day perhaps I will try them but these are the ones I find most useful, indeed integral to gameplay.

6. I encountered an error that said a sprite file was missing. In my case it was sprite 7UZR.S16. I looked in all my folders and couldn't find it so I copied a random sprite file, renamed it to 7UZR.S16 and it resolved the issue. It temporarily made the torsos of all my creatures float outside of their bodies but soon this corrected itself. I have no idea if this is an appropriate fix but it is a fix.

7. Any windows that pop up in front of the game (such as importing/exporting norns, the creature's eye view camera, drop-down menus, etc) will flicker irritatingly and be mostly unreadable except unless you look really hard. Looking really hard is fine for saving your favorite areas in the bookmarks but when you're going trying to import a norn and you're having to look through many files, then a simple work-around is to decrease the size of your Creatures 2 main window and move the import/export window over to the side so it's not on the game anymore. This is common sense but I thought I'd throw it in here all the same.

8. Edit the population amount so that you can have lots and lots of norns. I know not everyone has a system that can handle it but I like to have roughly 40 or so norns in my world at a time.

9. The artificial Inseminator v2.2 by Mr n'Stuff is one of my all-time favorite cobs. This version not only allows you to breed any two creatures regardless of species, breed, or sex but it immediately produces an egg. I have to restrain myself from going overboard with this but sometimes I just need to see the offspring of two favorite norns. And sometimes I need variations of the same coupling. And of course sometimes I like to breed a norn with itself if that norn becomes too old or is sick. And sometimes I even breed a newly-deceased norn with other norns if I like it's appearance - this usually results in more dead norns but sometimes it also results in norns that shake off the fatal flaws of the dead parent yet retains its beauty.

And that's it! The rest is all just personal preference. But I'll say that I was surprised that Creatures 2 runs at all on Windows 10. I did download the most recent version from GOG (which was free because I purchased it a few years ago) and it runs quite well. Again, as I said before, Creatures 2 is prone to crashes and macro errors so please know that your world WILL crash at some point. The trick, therefore, is to be prepared. Have your pre-set up world at the ready. Back up savepoints. Export your favorite norns, make a copy, and then import again. These are all work-arounds but they make the game functional which is something I thought was impossible on Windows 10. The last bit of advice I can give is to install new breeds. As many as you can. Variety is the spice of life and having a more diverse population is a delight that reinforces itself with each new baby!

Here's a list of some of my other favorite must-have additions:

Pick Me Up (by Don)
Albian Sunflower (Jay Dino)
Auto-Activate Vendor
C2 official Halloween Pack
Spirit's Halloween Pack (although the graphics don't work for me anymore)
Egg Finder (by Ernest Julyan)
Gabrielium Herb v2.0 (by Jay Dino)
Grape Vine (by NornGod)
Grendel Mother Remover (sorry to Gren-lovers out there but I can't stand them)
Holo Doc v9.0 (by Mr. n'Stuff)
Imperial Goldfish (by Jessica)
Instant Vocab Infusion (by Helen)
Kill Pitz! (sorry, I just have no use for Pitz and find him mostly annoying)
Sea Horse Launcher
Nutrient Plant 1 and 2
Pikachu v2.0 (by Jay Dino - because I love Pikachu)
Quick Power (because life is too short)
Spade (by Helen)
Zummy Fish Launcher (by Jay Dino)
Underground Sweepers (by Jay Dino - these I find more effective than the Critters)
Water Carrots (by Jay Dino - for water-norns but Holo Doc prevents water-norns)
Water Doozi (by Rick Krebs and J Vara but same situation regarding water-norns)
Zander Venor (by Jessica)

I'm still wishing I could find several cobs that I remember but I'm afraid they've been lost. The one I think I miss the most is a cob that deleted anything, be it creature, nature, implement, plant, toy, whatever. It straight up removed anything and was amazingly valuable. And of course there are the lost breeds (I'm still searching wayback machine archives for the Mickey Norns, Daffodil Norns, and Goat Norns). I'm not sure if people are still making new areas/worlds, breeds, or flora/fauna for C2 but I do hope so. If GOG would release a more stable version of the game I expect more developers would sink their teeth into it. It really is a wonderful game and I love playing it even all these years later.


The Lantern Light.com
 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  2/2/2018  1

Merboy wrote:
Welp... stickelbacks. I only have Windows 10. Oh well.

Creatures 2 is running fairly well at the moment for me. Not sure why or how but it seems almost exactly as it was once upon a time. It doesn't display the drop-down windows quite right, doesn't show the status bar, and I have no idea when it saves (which means when I close I may reopen my world to a minute ago or three hours ago).

*cracks knuckles* But I'm so ready to dive in! I LOVE Creatures 2!!! Where do we keep all the good cobs these days? I've looked around wikia but that's almost completely broken links. The most cob's I've found are here at Ccaves.

Wooo I am so excited!!! Thanks again to you all!



If you're looking on the Wikia, that's the old location. The new location for the creatures wiki, creatures.wiki, has had a bunch of link fixes applied since the move.


My TCR Norns
 
Merboy

Merboy



  2/3/2018

Yes I was looking at creatures.wiki.


UPDATE: Creatures 2 continues to maintain its reputation for crashing. I am saddened to report that my method of keeping a world going (which worked GREAT for about a full day of hours and hours and hours) did not, in the end, enable me to play indefinitely. My world crashed after about 11 hours of total play time. I got back in and exported all my norns (this process took hours itself as the game would not allow me to export a norn that was not officially named and would throw an error for a missing sprite or failed macro). Once I got my norns exported I deleted the corrupted world and replaced it with my already-set-up world "GENESIS.sfc". I copy and pasted GENESIS.sfc and renamed it to Virgo.sfc (the name of my world - I like to think Albia is actually a planet in a constellation) and then proceeded to load the game as usual. However, after a full day of getting each norn exported (see also: I like to have lots of norns in my world at a time) my game still froze up repeatedly and eventually crashed with the SMALL FURRY CREATURES error, even though it was a fresh and new world with no creatures (aside from the ettin - btw is there a way to remove Ettin from your world? I don't believe I've seen a cob for that, only for Grendels).

So I'm not sure if the game stores information somewhere on my computer so that even if I delete a long-running world and open up a new, fresh one it still lags as though it has a ton of information to pull - but in any case my game is now super slow and I don't know what to do. My plan is to back up my norns and cob's and attempt to backup my world and then delete all of Creatures 2 from my computer and redownload the game from GOG. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. Either way I'll report back here with more info just in case anyone is interested. Or even if you're not interested.

Also, the Spice Girls are reuniting to work together again.

Update: Yes, that worked beautifully. All is well now.... Except I need to remember how to change the limit of norns I can import.


The Lantern Light.com
 
GimmeCat

GimmeCat



  2/4/2018  2

Merboy wrote:
2. Set up teleportation cobs EVERYWHERE. I have the Traveler's Orb v2.0 by Jay Dino set up in just about every room and every level (sometimes two of them). However, these are portable and often creatures will pick them up, hold them, activate them while holding them, and then be whisked all around Albia until they drop it.




Not to toot my own horn or anything, but if norns picking up the teleportation objects is an issue, you might want to try the Traveller's Hub. :)

For an additional food source that can grow basically anywhere, my strawberries actually use a realistic propogation method in which the ingested seeds pass through a norn's disgestive tract and are deposited some time later, allowing new colonies of strawberry plants to pop up in locations norns have travelled through.

I also have a cob to auto-activate seed launchers, and turn them invisible to creatures to stop them being carried around.

While you're at it, you might as well also fix the hatchery water pump and the big waterfalls so that norns aren't constantly wallbonking trying to reach them.

</shameless_self_plug>

(I'm just excited to see more people playing C2 lately!)

 
Merboy

Merboy



  2/4/2018  1

*downloads all of them*

Actually I already have the auto-activate seed launchers and love it! These are excellent, GC, thank you so much for your work! I'm super happy to be playing C2 again I really hope others dive in as well. If anyone out there wants to fire up their own game post any errors or problems you encounter here and we'll see what we can do. It took a few simple tricks to get mine working as I posted above but it's not hard. And like GC said, it's so exciting to have people playing!!!

<3 <3 <3


The Lantern Light.com
 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  2/6/2018  1

I've been playing C2 (and only C2) on-and-off for the past 20 years :)

Unfortunately, yeah, it crashes a lot :/ You can also have the bad luck of hatching an egg with some funky gene mutation which crashes the game. Nothing that can be done about that.

 


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