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 Code Monkey evolnemesis  |
Well. norns with ee will also complain about their highest drive... the best way is to tell is to ask them 'what' they are thinking. But you are probably right, those norns were probably just quiescent, thinking basically nothing except occasionally 'express' which is put in their head by the game scripts, since they had no idea what to do to reduce their drive. But it makes sense it would be more of a problem for Gizmos, almost all their instincts involving boredom have been deactivated, and even if they randomly try stuff at first, not many stimuli really help boredom for them, so they aren't likely to know about any good alternatives to toys. I can either make a 'hungerly drive overwhelmsion' organ, or I can use the fact that any time that a drive is at all high, the drive's stress chemical will be around, so I can use the stress chemical to react away some of the drive chemical when the drive gets over a certain very high threshold with a reaction like 1xStress(anger) + 1xAnger = 1xStress(anger) + 1x[nothing], with the reaction rate regulated by the level of the drives themselves... (0 rate if the drive is under the very high threshold we want it to stay below, full speed if over...). This way with just a few genes we should be able to set maximum levels, and thus priorities, for drives. I think as long as hunger drive eventually gets greater than other drives, they will prioritize solutions to hunger. I shouldn't need to totally overwhelm them with a new organ and use the drive backups like fear and pain do, but I will have to see. Another problem with Gizmos I have noticed, is that they can starve about 3 times faster than other norns, but the rate their hunger drives go up does not seem to really be adjusted for this. They seem to starve just as they are realizing they are hungry. "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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 Feddlefew |
Unless the drive is reduced to negligible levels and stays that way, a starving creature will quickly become distracted by other drives if they happen to run across something that satisfies one of their other drives. I think that's why grendels will slap the norn dummy until they starve to death, since by the time they've recovered from a slap fest they're already bored again, and since they get more reward from reducing their boredom drive back to zero than navigating to food, they'll go right back to slapping the dummy. I think what norns need is a "stomach" organ, which suppresses other drives when they're hungry, and perhaps suppresses their apatite if they've eaten a lot. ETA: I think your cap idea is also a good idea, since it will prevent creatures from becoming completely overwhelmed with other drives, but it won't help norns go looking for food if there isn't any nearby. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
hmm... yeah, I kind of guessed that, I have added a drive overwhelmsion organ for hunger. However, I'm having a bit of a hard time because it is really three drives, the other drive overwhelmsion organs are digital, and have a receptor that shuts them off if their drive is low enough, and turns them on if their drive is high enough, then they start converting the other drives into their backups. For this, I'd need to figure out a way to factor in all 3 drives. EDIT: Think I figured it out... gonna test it, tweak the thresholds a bit probably, then I think I will post a few new creatures (0.3!)... These will also have the speech edits and slight behavior tweaks that my other enhanced norns like Private Balls have, and a hopefully improved Inhibin response so they can breed somewhat better. This hunger change should make them MUCH better at IQ tests I would think. I'll try to put in a fullness response too. I'm gonna definitely have to start moving stuff around soon now that I'm going really starting to get into more biochemistry, metabolism, and organ changes and immunology/toxicology stuff... I don't think these will be compatible with other CFEs much longer. This will probably be the last version that can breed outside of CFF... (I'm at around 50 new/updated genes already) "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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Feddlefew |
I might try to map out the immune system (not just the organ) on a basic CFE norn tonight. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Remember to have a very close look at the bacteria agent scripts too, they are a very big part of the picture of how the immune systems really work. "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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Feddlefew |
I've already got the bacteria scrips saved to a text file on my desktop. 8^) Live GMS is pretty frustrating to work with sometimes, since I can't see the entire gene with header at once. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Figured out a good fullness response, I think... using only two genes. - A Fullness lobe with one neuron that should act relatively similar to the area of the brain which the stomach signals with hormones when it is full, given the simplified hunger system in creatures. It takes the overall total of the hunger drives, and if the total is below a certain threshold, it activates this lobe's 'I am Full' neuron with a strength based on just how far below that threshold it is. - An overeating inhibition tract from the fullness lobe to the combination lobe. This tract functions similarly to the 'good action inhibition' and 'bad action inhibition' tracts that go from the friend or foe lobe to the combination lobe. Those tracts make the good actions, ('push/pull') less desirable the more the creature dislikes whoever they are looking at, and the bad action ('hit') less desirable the more the creature likes whoever they are looking at. This new tract will make the 'eat' action less desirable the stronger their feeling of fullness is. I have a good feeling about this... Testing 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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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Eureka! These next group of norns look like they are ready, and I figured out the Inhibin thing, it should be easy to tweak. As I have it, Inhibin slows the gonad, which slows the generation of arousal potential, slows generation of sex drive (which is the necessary piece of the puzzle to breed) and slows the breakdown of libido lowerer (in males, libido lowerer approximates the time needed after mating to be ready again... it destroys arousal potential, which makes it hard for their sex drive to go up)... In normal male norns, libido lowerer is only active for maybe 10 seconds after mating, so they are ready to mate again very quickly. I might have to look at Libido Lowerer separately, but inhibin at least I think is ready as it is, it slows the gonad based on how much inhibin is in the body (inhibin at 0.2, means the gonad works 20% slower, at 0.5, 50% slower, and so on... ). It has a pretty simple emitter, which kicks in when they are fertile, and can have either gain or sample rate controlled for different effects. The way I have it now, they can breed well, but still probably less than other norns... also, tweaking can be done a lot more easily now that I have a better understanding of their reproductive systems. Besides a fixed inhibin system, these have a fixed hunger drive that won't let them starve while thinking about some other drive, behavioral tweaks and edits to make them smarter and less noisy, and a fullness response system which makes them less likely to eat when their hunger is low (it doesn't stop them, but it lowers the priority of the decision to eat depending on how low their hunger drives are, making it a less desirable choice). Details going into the Genome Comparison (whew, a lot this time!). "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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 Malkin Manager  |
Is there an easy way to splice these genes into other breeds? My TCR Norns |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Hmm... the list of changes is getting pretty extensive, especially now with the new organ and lobe (going on 50 new or updated genes). All the latest changes are shown in the genome comparison post, but that doesn't really help all that much, especially for the new brain lobe and tract. I'll see if I can start making a resource that shows a good step by step with screenshots of the brain stuff (though I'm sure that resource will need some extensive editing once a lot of these genes move around or when I add some more.) The new norn download includes the latest .gen and .gno files with all the gene documentation as well as the 2 new norns. You can pretty much copy the genes from one file to another by opening both genomes in the editor and looking at all the details of the genes in the CFF genome and copying them over to corresponding genes in yours.. (the c3 genetics kit allows you to have multiple copies of it running at the same time, so you can look at the genes side by side). Right now, all the new genes are on the end of the genome, so you can pretty much just make copies of those and stick em on the end of yours... the altered genes will be a bit harder to track down, but they all still line up perfectly with the corresponding genes in any standard genome; you should be able to get the details and gene numbers for those from the genome comparison. Is there any specific breed you would like me to stick them in? I can probably manage that and upload a few. "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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Malkin Manager |
I'm most curious about the breeds with tempermental characters - Hardman, improved CFE treehuggers. (although I'm curious about adding these edits to ettins and grendels, too...) I'm finding that the emotional state of norns and how they manage those emotions can have a huge impact on their survival - so I'm really keen to see how the edits make the more emotional breeds fare! My TCR Norns |
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 kidhedera |
I've been playing with the latest set and they are great! What sort of feedback about them do you need? I'm up to generation 3, and they are a bright and clever bunch mostly. Each one seems to have a bit of personality which is cool. I've had one baby die just after hatching, and one female who seems infertile/reluctant to mate. Other than those two, they are all healthy, clever, and able to norn.  One question I had was do they have any particular instincts involving curing their own illnesses? One of the second gen boys (a loner called Thoth who hangs out in the jungle terrarium alone unless I force him to move) got sick with glycotoxin poisoning and instead of just sitting around dying he actually left the jungle terrarium, walked to the meso and fetched some of those pink cakes that cure glycotoxin poisoning. He ate them and cured himself. All with no intervention from me. It seemed like a remarkable coincidence, and I was curious to know if that was instinctually motivated, or just a random happenstance. (Maybe he finally got lonely enough to seek out other norns and just happened to eat some food although he wasn't hungry?) |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Malkin: It should help out hardman a lot... they had problems with anger overwhelming their desire to eat, this should be taken care of (though it just backs up the anger so once they aren't too hungry anymore it should come back). I haven't played with treehuggers too much but if they have similar problems it should help them too. I think I am ready to start adding these fixes to grendels and ettins too and might want to start soon. kidhedera: Hmm... well, they can't actually tell the difference between types of items called food, so I tend to think it's a coincidence, but it is possible, were there any other 'food' items in the ship? the norn terrarium really has none except the cheese dispensers normally, just fruit and seeds, so it could have just been craving food and those are the only things sitting around making food smell, but if it got glycotoxin poisoning before in the meso, it is quite possible it learned that eating 'food' helps when it feels ill. I have noticed in my time playing C3 that norns tend to really strongly remember when they are ill and the things that helped them (like i had a world where the only gadget in the norn terrarium was the bacteria sprayer, and when a norn would get sick it would beeline for it and spray itself)... I've also seen ones that have been cured by me before go right for the medical teleporters or walk straight to the doc station in the bridge then lie down right in front of the chamber when sick. I have also noticed norns living in the meso seem to tend to go for the lemon dispenser when sick if they have been helped by them before (the vitamin c in the DS lemons helps them break down antigens and make antibodies to get better faster). They are probably just associating fruit with getting better, and not the lemons in particular, but they do seem to remember that kind of stuff. I've also noticed them being very grateful to the hand (saying 'like/love hand' even if they haven't had much interaction with it before) after being cured at the doc station, even though all it did was stick them in a box where they got a bunch of painful shots, so they do really seem to make very strong connections with things that make them feel better from being sick. "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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kidhedera |
Interesting. I didn't think they could tell the difference between different kinds of foods, but his beelining for the pink cakes and ignoring carrots, tuba's, and awkward creeper growths along the way made me wonder about it. Maybe it was the action of pushing the dispenser that he thought was going to help cure him, since he didn't pass any other dispensers on the way? So far he's the only illness I've noticed. I've had 3 starve to death now, just cos they were too dumb or lazy to move to a food source. Pah, let natural selection take them! I'm not being terribly scientific about things at this point but if you want any specific kinds of data let me know. |
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Malkin Manager |
The natural lemons have antibodies and antihistamines - to get some Vitamin C in your lemons, you'll have to get my Scurvy-Fighting Lemon Pod. My TCR Norns |
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Feddlefew |
Word of warning: if they're infected with antigen 5 vitamin C can be deadly, since the immune reaction for antigen 5 makes it decay into antibody 5 and wounded. |
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Malkin Manager |
I'm finding that a lot of my female norns in V3 die in adulthood on the heating pan - is that true for anyone else? My TCR Norns |
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Senior Wrangler Nutter |
While they're pregnant, or just being there as a result of overheating? |
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Malkin Manager |
They're surrounded by eggs in their death photos. I've seen a couple of these female norns seem to get 'stuck' with boredom there - I added a high-bounce rubber ball to the area which tends to stay nearby.  My TCR Norns |
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Feddlefew |
Homesickness will override all the drives because the instincts relating to it are so strong, from my experience, and it doesn't have a drive backup associated with it. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Yeah he definitely couldn't have been looking specifically for the cakes then if he passed all that other food, but it seems the dispenser was what he thought would help (or he was just bored after walking all that way through empty hallways and pushed the nearest machine... it's hard to tell) Feddlefew: Hmm, I think that I saw that problem with homesickness with one of my norns... another possible fix. I guess they didn't put a backup for it because the other drive backups were used only when afraid or in pain, and they thought it wouldn't be a bad thing for the creature to want to head home if hurt or scared. But at least in the case of hunger, I think there should be a way to back up that drive. Won't antigen 5 always turn into wounded? I always thought the best bet was to get antibody 5 high enough to kill the bacteria quickly and vitamin c accelerates that. As long as the antigen isn't continually entering them from an infection, the wounding should decay fast enough that they don't die (at least I've never seen one with antigen 5 die or get significant extra wounding from a vitamin C shot, their wounding usually starts to go down according to the medical bay monitor). Malkin: Hmm so the normal DS lemons have antibiotics and cough medicine in them? That's weird... I always thought they had vitamin C, since I thought that just made sense for them to have. But maybe they did it that way because of what Feddlefew said, it kills the bacteria without having to react away more of the antigen to build up the antibody naturally, which can introduce more toxins or wounding. "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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Feddlefew |
It's a case-by-case problem with antigen 5. Depending on the "genes" carried by the bacteria, Vitamin C may be good or bad. If antigen 5 is only being produced in small amounts, it's okay to give them vitamin C. But sometimes, if they have a lot of antigen 5 built up in their system or the bacteria are still on them and pumping lots of antigen 5 into them, giving them vitamin C can be dangerous since the amount of wounded produced will outstrip the creature's ability to heal. The problem is most apparent in feral or wolfling runs where there's vitamin C fortified edibles available, since it's hard for norns to detach bacteria* on their own. *From my understanding of it, they have to reach a threshold for the antigen which is checked every so many ticks, and then there's a probability based on how high over the threshold for that bacteria to be shaken off or killed. And, to make things more complicated, the thresholds are based off of heritable variables that differ from bacteria to bacteria. |
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Malkin Manager |
What happens if they have a large amount of Vitamin C in their bloodstream? My TCR Norns |
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Feddlefew |
Vitamin C accelerates antigen breakdown, but I'm not certain if the receptors are on/off or it scales with the amount of vitamin C off the top of my head. Because of how Creature's immune systems work, it means they have a faster recovery but experience worse symptoms since the side-effect chemicals from the breakdown of antigens to antibodies accumulate faster in their bloodsea. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Checked... It's analog, scaling slowly with the amount of vitamin C... Looks like the normal antigen breakdown rate is about 85% of maximum, vitamin C can increase it up to maximum rate, and that takes a full dose...So, taking that 85% as the base rate, at a maximum dose of vitamin C, the breakdown occurs about 17.5% (15/85) faster than normal, and releases toxins and antibodies that much faster. Looks like it's time to use Comfort Drive backup to let hunger overwhelm homesickness too. It's there in the chemical list... kinda funny that they don't use it in the genome. "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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Malkin Manager |
And as Vitamin C doesn't break down, if a norn has foodstuffs available to them, they could potentially be walking around with a full mole of Vitamin C in their systems. My TCR Norns |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Huh... that's interesting... yeah, max halflife too... so one shot of it stays in their bodies forever, no reaction gets rid of it and it never decays... that's kind of wrong I think... "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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Feddlefew |
There's a recurring immune system problem (it's probably also elsewhere in the genome, I've just looked at that section the most) where things which should logical react away don't or have max half-lives. Vitamin E also has a max half life, and a lot of the toxins don't play fair, so to speak. For instance: 1 Cyanide + 1 Energy -> 1 Cyanide at rate 9. ATP D, meanwhile, uses the reaction 1 ATP + 1 ATP D -> 1 ADP + 1 ATP D at a rate of 11. It's also nearly impossible to save a creature with cyanide poisoning because the reaction between sodium thiosulphite and cyanide is 1 Cyanide + 1 Sodium thiosulphite -> Nothing at the rate of 14. So unless a creature already has a large amount of sodium thiosulphite in their system, they're doomed. As an added SU, both of these reactions also drastically reduce the rate of ADP->ATP conversion, which is unnecessary since the toxin reactions on their own far outstrip the rate of ATP production, and having 0 energy or ATP will kill a creature. |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Well, Vitamin C it seems in humans reaches a saturation point in many organs and tissues, including many involved in the immune response, and has a halflife in those tissues that increases steadily as saturation lowers up to a maximum of about 83 days, which hold concentrations of 50-100 times what remains in the blood... it takes about 4 months of a person having no vitamin C in their diet to have almost none in their system and to begin showing signs of deficiency... Assuming these are the tissues involved in helping the immune response (which does make sense, spleen and leukocytes and lymph nodes are some of these tissues where vitamin C stays in humans), then to make it realistic, we just have to figure out how long 4 norn months are, and make a halflife where it will decay from full to 0 in that time. I know there are seasons and days in the game, so it should be possible to calculate it. Then again, norns don't get scurvy, so it's possible their organs can hold on to it even longer. "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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Feddlefew |
4 norn months are 1/3 of a year, which in C3 is... 8 hours, I think. So around 2 2/3 hours? |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
okay, well it takes 8 halflives for a chemical to go from full (255) to negligible amounts (<1, undetectable by genes...), so, looks like the average halflife is about ( 160/8 ) somewhere around 20 minutes... so, vitamin C's halflife should be... (checks genetics kit)... Closest slider value: 102... 20.1 minutes... "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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Senior Wrangler Nutter |
There's also the fact that humans are unusual in not being able to make their own vitamin C - most animals can, and in quantities far higher than the amounts we normally consume. (We've developed scavenging mechanisms over the millennia so we excrete less.) That said, Vitamin C for us is an essential, not an optional extra, so I don't know how much of a benefit it would be to a norn to make their own... |
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Feddlefew |
Vitamin C is mostly used in creating structural proteins (collagen and carnitine*, to be specific), the metabolism of amino acids, and to un-stick certain types of hormones from their receptors. Norns don't use any of those because of game limitations, so they technically don't need vitamin C. *Membrane protein that moves fatty acids into the mitochondria for ATP synthesis. ETA: Mind if I add your 0.3 CFF edits to the Gizmo CFEs? I prefer the gizmo personality and health edits. ^_^ |
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Code Monkey evolnemesis |
Not at all, in fact I like the gizmo edits more myself, I was just starting from a standard genome to make testing the differences a bit easier, I'm not quite as familiar with Gizmo personalities and behaviors... I do know they starve more quickly as babies... I think the hunger drive overwhelmsion system should allow Gizmos to pass IQ tests with a good rate now though. I was thinking of incorporating some of those myself... or making a gizmo version. I think that if you do that, you probably should add comfort backup to the hungerly drive overwhelmsion system, and add a reaction similar to the other drive maintenance reactions to restore the comfort drive back from the backup. I'm adding those into the CFF genome myself, and I think Gizmos have additional homesickness and instincts regarding it that other norns don't (they get it when they pick up eggs) As for them not needing vitamin C, I think it's more that those functions are just not visibly simulated in them, due to a kind of a hand-waving that is done on a lot of the more complex stuff to keep the size of the genome down... They might get sufficient amounts of ascorbate from normal food, or make it themselves, and that's just assumed... The vitamin C chemical you can see in the game may just represent a surplus of it, or only the amount in their blood, like seen with humans in mega-dosing... if that's the case then its halflife should be even much shorter, since any extra like that tends to leave the body very quickly and get passed with the urine. Malkin: Animals producing much larger amounts of vitamin C than we use is not exactly the case, it's just that the parts of the body that retain vitamin C hold 50-100 times what is normally seen in the bloodstream... A person needs to consume a decent amount of vitamin C every day to keep the tissues saturated at that level, and the amount we eat in a day or which is in the bloodstream at any time is very low compared to how much is in the organs and tissues which absorb it... most other mammals always have that saturation in their tissues, which is what led to the conclusion that they make that much more of it than us, but their blood and tissue levels of vitamin C are not really much more than you would see in a person eating a lot of fresh fruit/vegetables or taking regular vitamin C supplements. "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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Feddlefew |
Sadly, gizmo norns cannot survive until childhood without eating, so IQ testing them requires moving them into the testing area at childhood. It makes it a bit harder to do wolfing runs with them. On the plus side, gizmo norns have a lot of biochemistry edits and hardier organs, so they're a good starting point for when you start taking a look at those systems. Humans don't store much vitamin C- we actually pee out most of it. Which, if you've never taken vitamin C supplements, has some interesting effects if your intake is very high.* It's possible to OD on vitamin C if you are taking it intravenously and someone gives you a few orders of magnitude higher of a dose of what you're supposed to get. *It turns your urin dayglow yellow! 8^D |
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