Sports Games

Developed in 1996 in Cambridge studies CyberLife, a division of Millennium Interactive Creatures has quickly spread around the world, selling in a short time than four hundred thousand copies (a record for a title so special), becoming the greatest success in the field of artificial life for the PC. Douglas Adams, the late author of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", he declared that the software used to develop Creatures was the most exciting discovery of the evident traces of life on Mars. The title of CyberLife, praised by the entire scientific community, managed in order to combine a sophisticated system with a structure of artificial life game then definitely innovative, creating a fun experience that was unprecedented. After several follow-shelf and the arrival of other virtual creatures from the behavior easier to predict, the number of Creatures has disappeared from public view, leaving only traces in the academic world, until the Belgian developer Fishing Cactus, along with Bigben Interactive , has decided to bring it back to the surface with a new chapter, updated to current technology: a polygon motor and dynamics of social games (already in the originally spontaneous organization Creatures online community of users). The complex system of artificial life, however, has remained the same origins, and it is from that code and the research that has divided the development.

The player's task is to adopt and raise a Norn under its wing: So can monitor your health and communicate with him using simple phrases - suggesting what is good and what is evil, reward him with affection and rebuke him for protection from harm. But no weight on his fate. No Norn was planned and there is none like aa another, everyone makes their own choices, learn from past mistakes and has its own will. A Norn emerges from the egg, through childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age in about a dozen hours of play. Eventually his remains will rest in a virtual cemetery. During the period of life can mate with other Norn of the opposite and sire offspring. The most effective way to teach a Norn is to communicate with him via the keyboard and interaction with the game scenario. It is already aware of the basic concepts, such as picking an object and press a button. These concepts can be associated with other, so you can give birth to more complex and unpredictable behavior. The Norn are in fact able to generalize and, drawing from past experiences, can guess how a new object. You can also teach them to recognize objects and group them into categories. Since the Norn interagisono between them, the knowledge is transmitted from one to another.

Creatures From the first, each Norn has a particular gene (the result of crossing over), a biochemical structure, influenced by parameters such as pain, hunger, sleep, fatigue and boredom, and, finally, a brain, composed of sixteen cells that compete with each other to recommend a course of action (in the original game was possible to test for the system of rewards and punishments could affect the activation of a certain course of action). In later episodes, the brain structure of Norn has been enhanced, allowing them to be more aware of the surroundings and communicate with more complex sentences, their body has become a different set of organs such as heart, liver, lung and gland thyroid. In addition to the Norn Creatures of the world is also populated by two other independent races, the Grendel and Ettin, not always well disposed towards our puppies.

How much of this is left in the fourth episode? Much more than you might think and, above all, have introduced new gameplay elements to make the simulation even more complex and multifaceted. But just under the bark, though! Because the most difficult task for Fishing Cactus has been to make the experience much more accessible, immediate and fun (leaving, for example, the ability to customize their pups or to decide which traits will be inherited from parents), and then to offer to users a range of options "social" to share with others their experiences of farmers (even creatures exchange for reproductive purposes).

Contrary to what you see in the various Sims and Nintendogs , though, the development team seems to point to a much more radical business model, providing free game (on PC and iPhone OS platforms), and focusing on microtransactions to get access to new equipment, and map areas of genetic elements. And just because the authors believe strongly in the project, the launch was postponed to the second quarter of next year, to be able to file my imperfections and add new content and above all, make it usable even on Android platforms. As soon as we develop, we will keep you informed.