Creatures Caves

I bought Creatures, and I fell in love with the introductory movie, and with the idea of artificial life. Then I got Creatures 2 and Creatures 3, though I didn't play them that much - I was getting too interested in programming, and had little free time due to school. I did love the images in them, though, and as I was skinning then, I asked about making a skin - finally I got permission from the right people and made the skin - and, a while later, a few logon screens to go with it.

At the same time, I was getting more involved with the community, even as it seemed to be tailing off, for reasons that weren't really obvious at the time. I started chatting in JRChat, and quickly got frustrated with the lack of a message beep to tell me when someone said something. This led, sooner or later, to the creation of JRNet, which soon developed a reputation as the coolest (and, sometimes, buggiest) JRC client known to man or norn. With the help of JacketFan and a few other brave testers, the bugs were overcome, and over the next few years I spent an average of eight hours a day in JRC, watching over things as the ops slowly dwindled, until I'd logged over a million lines. I've probably spent more time in there than Lummox JR himself, and over the last seven years I've seen many people foretell the death of the community - but it hasn't happened yet.

Of course, some had good reason to do so. In 2003, the unthinkable happened - Creature Labs, aka Cyberlife, aka Entraline, finally shut up shop. For the longest time I, along with others, wondered how this could have come about. Thanks to a few dedicated post-employees (and a lot of luck), the servers remained in operation, and the community stayed alive. Without that and the repackaged games, I don't think it would have happened. At the same time, I was finishing university, and I'd chosen to do my final-year project on something very close to my heart - the music of Creatures. I desperately wanted to be able to play it for myself, and for others - and eventually, I managed to do so. Who says you can't get a First while having fun?

Over a year later, people were starting to realize that Creatures Community sites were disappearing fast, and if we didn't start writing down our history, it would be lost and forgotten - perhaps along with the community itself. As it happened, I was effectively unemployed while waiting for a work visa, so I joined up with Sgeo over Christmas 2004 and the months after, and helped create the Creatures Wiki, using my free time for the painstaking research it took to write about all those old pages websites and creatures and COBs and metarooms . . . and making a small tool for sprite viewing at the same time. The wiki gets around 300 visitors a day, which I consider well worth the effort. I like to think some of those visitors find their way here. And, just before I left England, I took a trip to Gameware and laid a few old questions to rest.

I have a job now, and another, bigger, furrier, wiki to take care of - but I still have a creature or two hanging over my desk, and in my heart, and I help keep JRChat alive (by poking Lummox JR) for those who enjoy it most now. And I never forget the simple wonder in a creature's eyes as it bounces its very first ball. The CCSF has shown there are plenty of people who share that vision, so I'm sure Creatures will live on - perhaps for another 10 years.