Software:Creatures 2

From HandWiki
Short description: 1998 video game
For the Commodore 64 game, see Creatures II: Torture Trouble.
Creatures 2
Developer(s)Creature Labs
Publisher(s)Mindscape
Designer(s)Toby Simpson
Composer(s)Peter Chilvers
SeriesCreatures
Platform(s)Windows
Release
Genre(s)Artificial life
Mode(s)Single-player

Creatures 2 is the second game in the Creatures artificial life game series made by Creature Labs, and the sequel to the 1996 game Creatures. It features three species: the cute, dependent Norns, the cantankerous Grendels and the industrious Ettins. The game tries to simulate life, and includes a complex two-dimensional ecology of plants, animals and insects, which provide the environment for the three main species to live and develop in. The player interacts with the world using a hand-shaped cursor, and tries to encourage the creatures' development by manipulating various objects around the world, guiding the creatures using the cursor and encouraging the creatures to speak.

Many new gameplay features included in Creatures 2 not present in the original game include a new physics model and a global weather system, along with brand new applets and a world twice the size of the Creatures 1 world.


Gameplay

Like the other games in the series, Creatures 2 is mostly open-ended, with no predetermined goals, allowing the player to raise Norns at their own pace. In each new world, the player begins in the incubator cavern area. The hatchery, one of the game's in-built applets, allows the player to add Norn eggs to the world, which can be hatched via the incubator. Norns may also be downloaded from the internet and imported in to use in the game.

Once Norns reach adolescence at around an hour old, they are ready to breed, and female Norns will begin an oestrogen cycle. When Norns mate, there is a long kissing sound with a pop at the end – known as a kisspop. Like real life, not all mating results in a pregnancy. The Norn reproductive process can be monitored via the Breeder's Kit.

At the beginning, the player is only able to navigate a small area of Albia. As their Norns explore the world, however, more areas will be able to be visited. If a Norn falls into water and is picked up, it cannot be placed in an unvisited area.

Like the previous game, every plant, animal and insect in Albia is a separate system called an autonomous agent, or just "agent" for short. Many user-created agents have been made, which can be injected into the world using the Injector Kit applet, which also includes an analysis page giving the opportunity to check new objects for potentially harmful contents before injecting them.

Albia, the world in which Creatures 2 is set, is a vast disc-world filled with a wide variety of flora, ranging from the Cacti that inhabit the desert to the exclusive mushroom-like Gelsemium plant that can only be found in a single cavern. Albia is also home to a substantial amount of animal life, such as bees which pollinate flowers and create honey, and Zander fish, which provide a food source for creatures near the oceans. Scattered throughout the world are various seed launchers, which can be used to replenish stocks if any life-forms become extinct.

Albia also has four seasons: Spring, Summer, Winter and Autumn, and boasts its very own climate, with weather such as snow mainly occurring during the colder months, and rain mostly during the Spring. The game also has an on-screen thermometer, allowing the player to monitor Albia's temperature at all times.

Development

Creatures 2's release was widely anticipated. It is likely that around 450,000 copies of the original Creatures had been sold by the time the game was released, and a huge following had developed behind it. The "Early Adoption Program", a promotion where 250 copies of Creatures 2 were given away prior to its official release in September 1998, was scheduled to begin in July 1998, but was pushed back as the game was not close to release quality at the point at which the EAP was scheduled to start. In the end, most received their copies several weeks after the release date.

The creatures themselves had been provided with "considerably more sensory input, more actions they can take, and improved brain dynamics".[3] The game world included a "complete working eco-system".[4]

Upon release, the game suffered from numerous flaws, such as a deficient Norn genome that lead to a condition dubbed "One-Hour Stupidity Syndrome (OHSS)", which caused Norns to forget basic survival skills such as eating and sleeping. The task of creating the new Norn genome was given to Sandra Linkletter (Slink), who was also a member of the Creatures community. During development, many problems emerged, most likely due to disagreements between Slink and the Creatures 2 team. Slink later claimed that her design had been compromised by the geneticist brought on to finish her work, Eric Goodwin, and later accused Cyberlife of deriving their update from hers.

Cyberlife later released a patch with an improved genome after several weeks had passed. Several users also created improved Norn genomes, such as the Canny Norn genome created by Chris Double and Lis Morris.

Two expansion packs, Life Kit 1 and Life Kit 2, were released for C2.[5][6]

Reception

200,000 copies of Creatures 2 were immediately shipped upon its release.[7] Creatures 2 was considered "much more difficult" than C1,[8] and the new, more challenging environment and Norn biology was described as frustrating, but that after installing a new genome and going through successive generations, the Norns seemed smarter.[9] Nick Walkland described the gameplay as a "labour of love", noting that the challenge was to sustain your Norns' lives.[10] Sid Fisk of Gamezilla criticized the audio for Creatures 2 for not alerting him when his creature was near-death, but playing a "funeral dirge" as the body left the screen.[11]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Win Creatures 2 on PC". The Independent: pp. 220. September 19, 1998. https://www.newspapers.com/image/720122170. "Creatures 2 is published by Mindscape this month for PC-CD ROM (Windows 95 and Windows NT), priced at £39.99." 
  2. ↑ Gentry, Perry (August 28, 1998). "Weekend Releases". http://www.gamecenter.com/News/Item/0,3,0-2055,00.html. 
  3. ↑ "Creatures 2". Next Generation: 23. July 1998. 
  4. ↑ "Features - From Creatures to Androids". https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/from-creatures-to-androids. 
  5. ↑ "Creatures 2 Life Kit 1". Gameware Development. http://www.gamewaredevelopment.com/downloads_more.php?id=447_0_8_0_M15. 
  6. ↑ "Creatures 2 Life Kit 2". Gameware Development. http://www.gamewaredevelopment.com/downloads_more.php?id=34_0_8_0_M15. 
  7. ↑ Cliff, Dave; Grand, Stephen (1999). "The Creatures Global Digital Ecosystem". Artificial Life 5 (1): 77–93. doi:10.1162/106454699568683. PMID 10421678. 
  8. ↑ Clarkson, Mark (February 1999). "Creatures 2: Power-ups and Help on How to Keep Your Norns Alive". Computer Gaming World (175): 258. 
  9. ↑ Jepsen, Dawn (January 1999). "They're Dead, Jim: Natural Selection Goes Awry in This Depressing Update". Computer Gaming World (174): 364, 366. 
  10. ↑ Walkland, Nick (12 Aug 2001). "Creatures 2". ComputerAndVideoGames.com. http://m.computerandvideogames.com/2856/creatures-2. 
  11. ↑ Fisk, Sid (24 November 1998). "Creatures 2 by Mindscape & Cyberlife Technology Ltd.". http://www.gamezilla.com/reviews/c/creatures2.asp. 
  • Creature Labs
  • MobyGames is a commercial database website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes over 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms.[1] Founded in 1999, ownership of the site has changed hands several times. It has been owned by Atari SA since 2022.

Features

Edits and submissions to the site (including screenshots, box art, developer information, game summaries, and more) go through a verification process of fact-checking by volunteer "approvers".[2] This lengthy approval process after submission can range from minutes to days or months.[3] The most commonly used sources are the video game's website, packaging, and credit screens. There is a published standard for game information and copy-editing.[4] A ranking system allows users to earn points for contributing accurate information.[5]

Registered users can rate and review games. Users can create private or public "have" and "want" lists, which can generate a list of games available for trade with other registered users. The site contains an integrated forum. Each listed game can have its own sub-forum.

History

Logo used until March 2014

MobyGames was founded on March 1, 1999, by Jim Leonard and Brian Hirt, and joined by David Berk 18 months later, the three of which had been friends since high school.[6][7] Leonard had the idea of sharing information about computer games with a larger audience. The database began with information about games for IBM PC compatibles, relying on the founders' personal collections. Eventually, the site was opened up to allow general users to contribute information.[5] In a 2003 interview, Berk emphasized MobyGames' dedication to taking video games more seriously than broader society and to preserving games for their important cultural influence.[5]

In mid-2010, MobyGames was purchased by GameFly for an undisclosed amount.[8] This was announced to the community post factum , and the site's interface was given an unpopular redesign.[7] A few major contributors left, refusing to do volunteer work for a commercial website.{{Citation needed|date=June 2025} On December 18, 2013, MobyGames was acquired by Jeremiah Freyholtz, owner of Blue Flame Labs (a San Francisco-based game and web development company) and VGBoxArt (a site for fan-made video game box art).[9] Blue Flame Labs reverted MobyGames' interface to its pre-overhaul look and feel,[10] and for the next eight years, the site was run by Freyholtz and Independent Games Festival organizer Simon Carless.[7]

On November 24, 2021, Atari SA announced a potential deal with Blue Flame Labs to purchase MobyGames for $1.5 million.[11] The purchase was completed on 8 March 2022, with Freyholtz remaining as general manager.[12][13][14] Over the next year, the financial boost given by Atari led to a rework of the site being built from scratch with a new backend codebase, as well as updates improving the mobile and desktop user interface.[1] This was accomplished by investing in full-time development of the site instead of its previously part-time development.[15]

In 2024, MobyGames began offering a paid "Pro" membership option for the site to generate additional revenue.[16] Previously, the site had generated income exclusively through banner ads and (from March 2014 onward) a small number of patrons via the Patreon website.[17]

See also

  • IGDB – game database used by Twitch for its search and discovery functions

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Sheehan, Gavin (2023-02-22). "Atari Relaunches The Fully Rebuilt & Optimized MobyGames Website". https://bleedingcool.com/games/atari-relaunches-the-fully-rebuilt-optimized-mobygames-website/. 
  2. ↑ Litchfield, Ted (2021-11-26). "Zombie company Atari to devour MobyGames". https://www.pcgamer.com/zombie-company-atari-to-devour-mobygames/. 
  3. ↑ "MobyGames FAQ: Emails Answered § When will my submission be approved?". Blue Flame Labs. 30 March 2014. http://www.mobygames.com/info/faq7#g1. 
  4. ↑ "The MobyGames Standards and Practices". Blue Flame Labs. 6 January 2016. http://www.mobygames.com/info/standards. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Miller, Stanley A. (2003-04-22). "People's choice awards honor favorite Web sites". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 
  6. ↑ "20 Years of MobyGames" (in en). 2019-02-28. https://trixter.oldskool.org/2019/02/28/20-years-of-mobygames/. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Plunkett, Luke (2022-03-10). "Atari Buys MobyGames For $1.5 Million". https://kotaku.com/mobygames-retro-credits-database-imdb-atari-freyholtz-b-1848638521. 
  8. ↑ "Report: MobyGames Acquired By GameFly Media". Gamasutra. 2011-02-07. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/report-mobygames-acquired-by-gamefly-media. 
  9. ↑ Corriea, Alexa Ray (December 31, 2013). "MobyGames purchased from GameFly, improvements planned". http://www.polygon.com/2013/12/31/5261414/mobygames-purchased-from-gamefly-improvements-planned. 
  10. ↑ Wawro, Alex (31 December 2013). "Game dev database MobyGames getting some TLC under new owner". Gamasutra. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/game-dev-database-mobygames-getting-some-tlc-under-new-owner. 
  11. ↑ "Atari invests in Anstream, may buy MobyGames". November 24, 2021. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-11-24-atari-invests-in-anstream-may-buy-mobygames. 
  12. ↑ Rousseau, Jeffrey (2022-03-09). "Atari purchases Moby Games". https://www.gamesindustry.biz/atari-purchases-moby-games. 
  13. ↑ "Atari Completes MobyGames Acquisition, Details Plans for the Site's Continued Support". March 8, 2022. https://www.atari.com/atari-completes-mobygames-acquisition-details-plans-for-the-sites-continued-support/. 
  14. ↑ "Atari has acquired game database MobyGames for $1.5 million" (in en-GB). 2022-03-09. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/atari-has-acquired-game-database-mobygames-for-1-5-million/. 
  15. ↑ Stanton, Rich (2022-03-10). "Atari buys videogame database MobyGames for $1.5 million". https://www.pcgamer.com/atari-buys-videogame-database-mobygames-for-dollar15-million/. 
  16. ↑ Harris, John (2024-03-09). "MobyGames Offering “Pro” Membership". https://setsideb.com/mobygames-offering-pro-membership/. 
  17. ↑ "MobyGames on Patreon". http://www.patreon.com/mobygames. 
  • No URL found. Please specify a URL here or add one to Wikidata.

Template:Atari





Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Software:Creatures_2&oldid=4135608"