You Cannot Comprehend My Utter Happiness

Posted by Castypher on Sept. 22, 2012, 12:56 p.m.

I can't believe it. I finally found a copy that works on Vista and 7. I'm dropping out of S4D to play this again.

I grew up on these games, and they'll always have a special place in my heart. Creatures was and still is an innovative game about artificial life focused around complex creatures. It's also where the roots of Lixim are placed. It's a real shame that the company went under ten years ago. These were some amazing games that didn't have the chance to reach out as far as they deserved.

Not only can you simulate intelligent, evolving life…. These games were designed around third-party development. There are thousands of breeds, add-ons, and objects to download, so you can fully customize your experience in the world.

Finally, the world art here is what I wanted to shoot for in Lixim. But it's 100% modeled and pre-rendered, and I simply don't have the skill to make beautiful environments like this.

This should keep me thoroughly entertained until Creatures 4 (and Rune Factory 4!) are finally released.

Comments

JuurianChi 12 years, 3 months ago

Yeah, I thought I would never need a 3DS, but among the other games that make me want to buy one RuneFactory 4 is near the top of that list.

Charlie Carlo 12 years, 3 months ago

Holy hell. I played like… the first one so long ago.

So so long ago. I thought it was a memory of a nightmare or something, I didn't realize this actually existed.

Nostalgia FTW.

ludamad 12 years, 3 months ago

Haha. I use to play this!

Rez 12 years, 3 months ago

Those graphics wouldn't be too hard to recreate using gm8's sprite editor and some elbow-grease.

Castypher 12 years, 3 months ago

Emphasis on the elbow grease.

But seriously, the world is one giant image of a giant model. There are no tiles involved. That throws everything I know out the window.

Rez 12 years, 3 months ago

I say make it in an minimalist style then, and have a lot of overlapping world sections you can reuse and play with. If you pile the game world if enough pillars and rocky holes, it'll look more interesting than one nice tile repeated over and over.

ludamad 12 years, 3 months ago

Not to mention that this game apparently uses neural networks and biochemistry simulations.

Castypher 12 years, 3 months ago

I've actually delved far enough into the biology aspect to get a basic understanding of how to replicate it. Very interesting stuff if you're into that sort of thing.

And Rez, I'd like an example of that. I mean, I knew from the beginning that repeated tiles would be a bad idea (and I never intended for the image I showed back then to be permanent, it was a placeholder for fuck's sake). So if you have any ideas at all of how to approach a large world using that, I'd love it. At this point I don't even care how long it takes me to do the layout. I just want to have a nice-looking world.

Iasper 12 years, 3 months ago

This looks pretty sick. Download link?

Castypher 12 years, 3 months ago

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/creatures_the_albian_years

It's a paid download, since this is still a commercial game. Buuuut if you have some money lying around, this includes the first two games. The last one is in a package called Creatures: Exodus.