C2: First Impressions(October 1998)Even though this page is rather outdated now, I have left it in the archive for completeness.
The world itself is much bigger than Albia 1: Even after two weeks there are still white spots on the map, rooms that I haven't yet visited. During the first albian year I didn't pay much attention to the ecosystem - all plants that grow in my present world do so by themselves. Like many others, I was soon overrun by cacti - for the moment I have eliminated them all with Slink's nocactus cob.
My first breeding program was sort of a disaster. I wanted to cross my C2 female with a C1 male to get some interesting norns (and I know that other people have done this successfully), but three out of five babies died about a minute after hatching. I had the time to take a look at their vital functions in the science kit and I think that they were nearly braindead when they hatched. Nearly all the organs were gone and they died in the moment when the brain stopped functioning. I hope this won't be the rule when breeding C2 norns...
Last changes: 10/04/03 |
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First
of all, I think it was a good thing that Creatures 2 was available in German stores only a
month after the U.S. release. Therefore the German version had already some bugs
eliminated. This time, the installation was a piece of cake compared to the installation
of Creatures 1 a year ago which was a real adventure. I have immediately installed the two
object packs from Cyberlife, too, because I didn't want to hatch any norns that had the
original DNA that came with the game. The new ones have some 200 additional genes - there
must have been some serious problems.
Unlike other players
I didn't hatch any new norns right at the beginning but converted some of my C1 norns to
C2 norns. I wanted to activate all the additional kits before starting my breeding program
and decided that I would try to activate the famous powerups with a well trained C1 norn.
I'm still not sure why Cyberlife has put these powerups in the world, but at least they
gave me the occasion to explore the new Albia before doing anything else. The new graphics
in 16bit color are great, and the program seems to be much more stable than C1. At least I
have not had any major crashes so far. I could activate all the kits except the
neuroscience kit; I couldn't get my norn to go into the room where it was located. After
several successless attempts I gave up and used Lee Gaiteri's quickpower cob to activate
this last kit.
Then
came the great moment when I hatched my first C2 norn, a cute, whitehaired female. Since I
didn't like the German words that the computer taught my norns, I injected Slink's
encyclopedia nornica to teach my norns English, just as in Creatures 1. After restarting
the program I have had a big surprise: the whole encyclopedia had changed to German! I
admit that I was really annoyed. First I couldn't find a way to change the words in the
computers, and then the English dictionary was converted to German... Now my norns will
have to learn German, I can't help it. It seems to be hard-coded in the updated
executable. [This problem has been solved in version 1.0.38.]
Now the first
albian year is over - it's summer for the second time in my world. The new norns don't
seem to like to explore the world by themselves like my C1 norns. Most of the time, they
stay in the incubator room and on the level below it, if I don't lur them away. Perhaps
this will change in further generations, at least I hope so. For the moment, I have only
two norns in the world for breeding, because of all the new dangers that arise in this
new, changed Albia. Perhaps I will have more in the future when I will be more familiar
with the game.
