On this page you will find a few hints and tips about how to handle some more or less common problems you might encounter with Creatures. Personally, I have had quite a lot of problems when I first installed the program. At that time, my computer was a Pentium 90 MHz with 32 MB of RAM and a 2 MB graphics board. I thought that this would be good enough to run Creatures...

First of all, the installation process always quit when it came to install the Direct X drivers. After installing them manually, I could install and run Creatures, but it crashed very often without any apparent reason. I had problems to type in commands to speak to my norns, they often turned out as "ssssssss". After installing the update to version 1.02, Creatures wouldn't start at all. My graphics board couldn't handle Direct X properly, and there wasn't any newer drivers available. After loosing a number of norns, lost in parts of Albia that were no longer accessible due to multiple graphic problems, I decided to upgrade my machine to a Pentium 200MMX with a 4 MB graphics board that came with Direct X drivers. Since then, I have still had some problems, but never again the disastrous crashes from the beginning. So make sure you always have the newest drivers for your graphics and sound cards.

Most problems I have had since then were due to cobs. The super speech toy was responsible for the worst crash I have ever had, because I didn't know at the time that it could crash Creatures when the program tried to autosave while a norn was using it. This crash left behind an unrecoverable Albia, all the norns in the world were lost. So be careful when you use it if you don't have the cheats activated (were your world isn't autosaved). Since then, I prefer to use the encyclopedia nornica, and I have even noticed that the norns seem to have much more fun using it, too.

As a beginner, I didn't like to have a grendel in my world, so I tried numerous cobs to get rid of him. I don't know the reason why, but the grendel guard very often crashed the program. This is odd, because I know of people who have used it over weeks or even months without any problem. Anyway, if you use it, please keep in mind that about every ten minutes it removes a grendel from your world, a grendel that leaves behind a sprite file of 136 kb and a gene file of 10 kb. I have once deleted about 32 MB of vanished grendels from my Creatures directory. Every time you play Creatures, it clutters up your hard disk, and if you wonder why there is less and less space left, take a look at your Images directory and you will know the reason why. If you are sure that you don't want any grendels in your world, you should consider to delete the grendel mother with BORG. Or get grendelworld from Slink's Specials which has the grendel mother removed to allow grendels to breed. Or download one of my worlds which do not have a grendel mother in it.

Be careful when you import norns, always make a copy before you import them. If they die of sudden import death syndrome or the program crashes immediately after importing, you can try to import the copy. I have had very few deaths due to SIDS so far, but I have heard that it happens rather often to some people. The cause of death in these cases is still unknown, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Be also careful when you export norns, if they fall asleep just at the moment when you press enter, they will be in a state of coma when you reimport them. I have had a few cases like this and the only way I found to reanimate them was extensive slapping. They didn't even react to the wakeup pill. Since then, Elisabeth Kootz has informed me that Holo Doc is able to wake them up, too. As I don't use this cob, I didn't know that it would be helpful in such cases.

I once had a very odd experience with the hot air balloon. I didn't know that it could only land on the garden level, and when I noticed that its passenger was sick, I tried to land it on the island to take care of my norn. This was a very bad idea, because it came down in the ocean between the island and the watch tower, and the norn stepped out... When she was back in the balloon again, it went up so high in the sky that I couldn't see it any longer. I had to export the norn and remove the balloon, but in some way the world was messed up and I had to start a new one. Really stupid. ;-) So don't forget to choose the right place for landing when you use this great cob.

From time to time I watch some floating lemons in parts of Albia were there should not be any lemons at all. This seems to be a common problem, but AFAIK it is not really a serious one. If you leave them alone, they will disappear after a while. If you try to pick them up, Creatures might crash, so just ignore them.

I have noticed that a program crash could damage some of the essential program files. This is why I always keep a copy of creatures.exe and mfc42.dll in a separate directory for quick access. If there is a series of crashes (alas, this can happen for various reasons), I copy these two files to their appropriate directories to replace the existing ones. In general Creatures will run smoothly again for a while, if it doesn't, you have a more serious problem. In general, I don't have to reinstall the whole program.

Some last words:

Creatures 1, 2 and 3 are often called games, but they are in fact the most complex (and entertaining) simulations of life available at the moment. There are a lot of people who refer to their norns (and grendels) as living beings, and in fact, they have a life cycle like every living creature in our world. They hatch, they learn how to get along in their world while they are young, they reproduce, become old and finally die. I was sort of relieved when I discovered that the Life Kit norns in C1 had a gene that caused them to die of old age, because my first generations of norns spent a great part of their lives as seniors and lived up to 30 or 40 hours. There is no progress without change, and norns should die like all living things and leave their places to further generations. This is the way evolution occurs, through minor changes from generation to generation, at least in Albia. ;-) In the real world, the mechanisms of the evolutionary process are far more complicated. The world in which the creatures live is very different from ours, it can't evolve at the current stage, but it is not a paradise. There are poisons and diseases that can threaten their lives, and they have to learn to handle them. Even though Creatures 1 is not as complex as we would like, it is still an exceptional program. Creatures 2 and Creatures 3 include a primitive ecosystem, but Creatures 1 still has a lot to offer. So, if your machine is too slow to run C2 or C3, just enjoy playing with your C1 norns. At least, they are much more easy to handle, and some people even say that they are smarter than than their successors.

Last changes: 28/03/05