creatures caves welcome, guest
downloads   gallery   dev   community   creatchi   forum   mycaves
bookmarks | search | post new topic
Strangeo Forum
old
Do you see something and ask "just why"?   
cyborg

cyborg



  12/20/2020  3

Like that weird yellow animal on the elevator or that egg layer with legs in the Norn Meso? Like seriously Lone Shee why? Or those wasps?

Who puts a volcano on a ship? Who? And why would you put piranhas in a pond?

(I know the answer is "the developers" but let's pretend for a moment that this is all real.)

So any more examples of "just why" moments?

 
ylukyun
Patient Pirate

ylukyun

Manager



  12/20/2020  5

*Easy access to bodies of water for your incredibly dumb pets that don't understand what water is and can't sense they're drowning.
*Incredibly dumb pets that constantly encounter water and just sit around in it, but can't breathe underwater, even though they were genetically engineered.
*Multiple easy access points to a radioactive volcano.
*A radioactive volcano.
*Miniature rainbow sharks that eventually turn gray through the generations then die out.
*A single, immortal hawk that eats only one type of mammal.
*Very toxic mushrooms sprinkled throughout the gardens where your incredibly dumb pets feast.
*The stingers, which appear to serve no ecological function other than feeding trapper plants, and the trapper plants, which appear to serve no ecological function other than eating stingers.
*"Toys" that launch the unsuspecting user high into the air, possibly causing serious physical damage when they land.
*A machine that could theoretically vend any type of cheese, but only vends that one type of cheese with holes in it.
*Having to recycle cheese and bones to power an arbitrary selection of machines on your ship, even though everything else on it is apparently self-powering.
*The C2 Ettins.

Interestingly, I can't think of much in C1 Albia that fits this description. Even the mushrooms are pretty well-hidden and the water doesn't do anything. :P

Edit: Forgot about the power-ups. Those don't even fit with the external narrative/canon of the games, they just seem like elements thrown in there to make them more "game-like".

 
FieryBirdyThing

FieryBirdyThing


 visit FieryBirdyThing's website: CeeGee Toons
  12/20/2020  2

cyborg wrote:
And why would you put piranhas in a pond?


Because they cannot survive on land. [nlaugh]


CeeGee Toons | Club Nintendo Archives
 
Moe

Moe


 visit Moe's website: Creatures 2 to Docking Station
  12/20/2020  4

As far as C3 is concerned, and to a lesser extent DS, I'm assuming the dangerous elements of the biomes exist is because the Ark was meant to be a preservation of Albian wildlife and ecosystems (hence being called an Ark). Norns, Ettins, and Grendels were just a part of that ecology, and so incorporating dangerous elements was an ecologically egalitarian decision. The toxic mushrooms, volcanos, poisonous/dangerous animals, etc. were necessary to non-discriminately preserve the ecology/biospheres of Albia.

As for my own WHY moments:

Why weren't the doors to the biomes on the Ark locked to creatures? Norns and Grendels in particular have no business in the hallways, engine room, or bridge, much less in the Grendel terrarium!

For a race capable of genetic engineering, why didn’t the Shee adjust the Grendel genome to be less aggressive?

Why did the Lone Shee think sacrificing Albia to volcanic oblivion to launch his squid-ship into space was acceptable? What happened to the anti-grav technology that launched the Ark? The UFO toy on the Ark proves it’s a canon technology…

Why did we not see the Lone Shee in Creatures 1? If the eruption that changed the landscape between 1 and 2 was caused by the launching of the Capillata, then where is the Lone Shee?

Why the shift in technology for that matter? C1 and C2 technology were very machine-based whereas everything we see in C3/DS is organic. This becomes increasingly problematic if we consider that C2 occurs post-eruption (post C3/DS).

Why, if “an asteroid ripped through their space ark”, is there no perceivable damage?

Why did the Shee never retrieve the Ark from orbit of Sphericus? Or at least, why abandon it? It has transporter technology; they could have presumably beamed up and down at any time…

Why leave Albia in the first place?? It’s an idyllic paradise! I think I speak for most Creatures players when I say that I’d jump at the opportunity to live on Albia!

 
FieryBirdyThing

FieryBirdyThing


 visit FieryBirdyThing's website: CeeGee Toons
  12/20/2020  1

Moe wrote:
Why, if “an asteroid ripped through their space ark”, is there no perceivable damage?


This is actually quite interesting, and something that did catch my eye, but for a different reason: it contradicts the plot in the C3 instruction manual. In the backstory printed in there, it's said that the Shee escaped from the Ark because the Grendels attacked them! It's even implied that the Grendels were never meant to be there in the first place, even though the Shee took all the other dangerous creatures. The description of the Jungle Terrarium says it's perfect 'for stowaway Grendels to hide', and the description for the Grendels themselves says 'a Grendel mother has somehow gotten aboard', implying that someone or something put it there without the Shee's knowledge.

Sorry that I don't currently have my own 'why' moments and have so far just stupidly answered a few others.


CeeGee Toons | Club Nintendo Archives
 
Papriko
Peppery One

Papriko



  12/20/2020  1

As for why the Lone Shee ain't in C1, I believe the DS backstory explains that they were considered a weird fella, even by Shee standards. They hid away in a deep underground lab to work on the transdimensional warp technology (i.e. multiplayer feature).
They didn't even bother popping their head out of the lab right until the point after C1.


Lets play plants! Photosynthesis... Photosynthesis... Photosynthesis...
 
Moe

Moe


 visit Moe's website: Creatures 2 to Docking Station
  12/20/2020

FieryBirdyThing wrote:
This is actually quite interesting, and something that did catch my eye, but for a different reason: it contradicts the plot in the C3 instruction manual. In the backstory printed in there, it's said that the Shee escaped from the Ark because the Grendels attacked them! It's even implied that the Grendels were never meant to be there in the first place, even though the Shee took all the other dangerous creatures. The description of the Jungle Terrarium says it's perfect 'for stowaway Grendels to hide', and the description for the Grendels themselves says 'a Grendel mother has somehow gotten aboard', implying that someone or something put it there without the Shee's knowledge.



You're right! Even the tooltip for the Grendel egg-layer in C3 says as much. I think there was something about Grendels in the lore of C1 also suggesting that the Grendel "mother" is her own entity independent of all the Shee genetic research on Ettins and Norns.

In that case, with the Grendels being so well-known and the Bridge's ability to track lifeforms, why would the Shee not have been able to prevent Grendel invasion? There's even a mud-gun in the Norn terrarium! I guess that goes back to learning how to lock the doors...

 
Dragoler
Wrong Banshee

Dragoler


 visit Dragoler's website: TWB Development Thread
  12/20/2020  1

Isn't it insinuated that the Grendel mother was installed upon the Ark by the Banshee? Banshee meddling could go some way to explaining why the Shee were unable to react in time.

Creator of the TWB/TCB genome base.

 
Jabber

Jabber



  12/21/2020  5

There's a lot of attempts to add danger to the Creatures worlds that just don't do it for me. Either they're unavoidable in the base game without being present at all times to lead your creatures away, or they're so avoidable you can basically turn them off... not much problem solving involved. For as robust as the creatures' AI is even to this day, the design of the world they live in feels really disorganized, like there were a lot of good ideas that weren't fit together very well.

Is it taboo to talk about 3rd party content? I deeply question Trix's decision to only make baby sprites for some of her breeds. If they only had adult sprites, some decent placeholders for the rest of the life stages could be made by scaling those down (and making them greyer for old age), but scaling up wouldn't work nearly as well, and so unless someone really wants to make the rest from scratch they will be forever baby-only.

 
FlyingEttiNorn

FlyingEttiNorn



  12/23/2020  2

While on the topic of mods: Everything Mannkind has ever made. just... why??

For context: all of his C1 COBs either mix up the type and quantity strings for the STIM command, making them inject chemicals that make no sense, or they inject totally ridiculous amounts of chemicals by spamming STIM multiple times. and he made the Scorpio genome, which is an utter disaster

 
Linnet

Linnet


 visit Linnet's website: my neocities page
  12/23/2020  1

I think it's good to keep in mind that community content was all created for free by hobbyists who may have been learning as they went, often by people who were pretty young at the time. There's going to be some confusing decisions and mistakes there, but it's not really fair to hold this stuff up to the level of paid work.

I was always confused by the C2 Shee Statue which doesn't really feel consistent narratively. I guess the characterization of the Shee as a bunch of mad scientist genetic engineers was more of a C3 thing?

 
Jabber

Jabber



  12/24/2020  2

I wish "root" had returned from C2, even though only two(?) objects used it. If it'd be too intensive to let creatures conceptualize every object species, having more genii feels like the most logical thing to do.
 
cyborg

cyborg



  12/24/2020  1

Please remember we're criticising the Shee and what the Shee did canonically. Hobbyist work isn't canon, it's fanmade.
 
ylukyun
Patient Pirate

ylukyun

Manager



  12/28/2020  1

Linnet wrote:
I was always confused by the C2 Shee Statue which doesn't really feel consistent narratively. I guess the characterization of the Shee as a bunch of mad scientist genetic engineers was more of a C3 thing?



See, I don't think it is. The whole C2 world gives off mad scientist vibes. The Shee Statue is out of place in that world. I was going to mention it but couldn't put my finger on what it was that bothered me about the thing.

Maybe it was intended to serve some function not articulated in canon, or maybe they just felt the game needed a "mystical" element. :P

Edit:

Moe wrote:
Why leave Albia in the first place?? It’s an idyllic paradise! I think I speak for most Creatures players when I say that I’d jump at the opportunity to live on Albia!



The canon explanation for this is that they were looking for a spherical world.

 
Moe

Moe


 visit Moe's website: Creatures 2 to Docking Station
  12/29/2020  1

ylukyun wrote:

The canon explanation for this is that they were looking for a spherical world.



Yes, but why... Albia was wonderful just as it is...

ylukyun wrote:

..The Shee Statue is out of place in that world...



I always thought the Ettins built the Shee Statue in reverence. We see in the C2 intro that they built the temple and were called "industrious", so I just assumed they were responsible for Shee worship.

 
ylukyun
Patient Pirate

ylukyun

Manager



  12/29/2020  3

A religion designed by C2 Ettins? That explains the starving to death part. :P
 


downloads
cobs
adoptions
creaturelink
metarooms
breeds
 
gallery
art
wallpaper
screenshots
graphics
promos
sprites
dev
hack shack
script reservations
dev resources
active projects
dev forum
 
community
links
advice
chat
polls
resources
creatchi
 
forum
bookmarks
general
news
help
development
strangeo
survivor
mycaves
log in
register
lost pw
1 online
RisenAngel
creatures caves is your #1 resource for the creatures artificial life game series: creatures, creatures 2, creatures 3, docking station, and the upcoming creatures family.

contact    help    privacy policy    terms & conditions    rules    donate    wiki