Resonance || Musings

Good afternoon, world! How has life been treating you? How has the weather been where you live? Have you read any good books recently? It's been a while (again), hasn't it? I've decided to embrace making posts like this. I hemmed and hawed about it for a while, but I figure making yet another "hi guys" post is better than just abandoning the blog out of embarrassment. Something is always better than nothing, especially in a community as small as ours. I hope you think so, too.

Below the cut, you'll find some personal musings on where I've been, where I'm at, and what I'm planning to do. For those who aren't interested, tl;dr: I'm starting a new Docking Station world that I intend to leave online for long periods. There will be incoming/outgoing portals for creatures to come and go as they please. Cheers! 

Vermillenia || What a year...?

 

Where did 2022 go? Has it really been more than a whole year since my last post...?

Uh, here I am... again! I'm sure every "hey, I'm back, for the 5th time!" post gets a bit old for anyone who still happens to read my blog, so instead I'm just going to give an update on things, where I'm at, and what I'm planning to do next.

Another Time || Short break!

Apologies for the short notice on this one, but Another Time posts may be delayed for a day or two! I've fallen a bit behind on them and have decided that rather than trying to rush out some quicker or shorter posts, I'd like to continue writing at my own pace. 

Posts will still be continuing (I promise!), but I'll probably pick them up more after my winter break from work starts about halfway through this week. (Nothing like having piled up "use-it-or-lose-it" days at the end of the year...)

Thanks for your understanding and continued support of the Pappus Café! I'm so glad that everyone's been reading the series so far and stuck around, despite all of my stumbles. Thank you!!

- Pixis

Crestfall || Moving Worlds... Again?!

 

Well, I can't say I saw this one coming!

I know, I know, we're in the middle of the CCSF here, and I'm in the middle of a Creatures 1 blog series... but I wanted to interrupt things very briefly to highlight that Docking Station is now officially available for free on Steam, with the Mall breeds and Science Kit available as free DLC, plus Creatures 3 as paid DLC!

You can check out the game's release announcement and a list of updates and bugfixes that were included with the release by clicking here!

Needless to say, as soon as the Steam release was available, I once again began the process of moving Crestfall. While it's not ideal to have to move worlds this many times, I'm really ecstatic about the Steam release and want to use it from now on! I'll be taking some time over the next day or two to move all of my favorite agents and breeds over, as well as getting all of the breed sprites back in order so that most of Crestfall's creatures should come out of the move unchanged.

Since C2toDS is probably also not an ideal location (unfortunately... as much as I love it...) for a large population like this right now, I'll go back to using the Ark, alongside maybe a smattering of small and interesting metarooms for my creatures to explore!

Real short update here, but that's all for now - I just wanted to help get the word about the Steam release out, in case anyone hadn't heard about it yet!!

|| Previous ||

The Beauty of Post-Apocalyptic Albia

 

For all my playing of C3/DS, one would think that it's probably my favorite game. And you'd be mostly right - I like the way C3/DS feels and plays the most, the way it works, how easy it is to navigate, how not-difficult it is to play on a modern computer, and all sorts of other things.

However, there's something I think I haven't talked about enough yet, and it's how my favorite Creatures game - aesthetically, musically, and pretty much everything-else-besides-the-actual-gameplay-wise - is Creatures 2.

The Winter Festival on Our Albia - Post-script

Hello everyone! This is Pixis. I hope you guys liked this year's CCSF story! I just kind of went with what I could think of and had fun with it, I hope it was fun for you guys too. I wanted to share a couple of fun facts about things that happened while I was working on it.

Over the course of the series, there were:

• 7 metarooms involved in pictures
• 17 creatures alive during the main part of the series
• 25 baby creatures born
• 2 creatures actively involved in the story died and had to be replaced (lol)
• Although I spent about an hour-ish on writing each post (I know they're short, but I'm picky, haha), only 2 hours and 34 minutes total passed in the game's world

In addition, I also encountered a strange occurrence in which some of the C3 Yule Crackers spawned Ettin eggs when opened! Yes, really. I don't know why or how this happened. Here are the babies:

I hope everyone has a great holiday season, and enjoy the rest of the CCSF! <3

- Pixis

|| Previous ||

To Tiana

I'd like to dedicate this post to my very first Norn, who came to life around fifteen years ago (as of 2020, at least).

When I was about eight or nine, I received an Amazon gift card for my birthday from my aunt. I was in the second grade, and having not spent much time online (especially not by myself), I had no idea where to start. But I'd always liked animals, and video games, so after my parents helped me search for "virtual pet" games - all the rage at the time, you see! - we came across a game called Creatures 3.

Housekeeping, or what on Albia is actually happening here

How many times can I make a comeback post before it starts to sound like my comebacks are having comebacks? Ha.

Well, in any case, here I am once again. It feels like this entire year's passing me by without my permission, and knowing current events it's not hard to see why! For anyone who might happen to be reading this post far in the future from now - yes, we are still in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Life updates (again) plus some blog housekeeping/announcements under the cut. For those not interested in the life stuff, the blog housekeeping is in a series of bullet points at the bottom of the post.

Hello Again, or things finally coming into place

Good evening, everyone! I hope you're all well. I have some real-life updates for you guys as I work on the next posts for the Café! Feel free to pass this by if you're not terribly interested in my goings-on outside of Creatures, but do know I plan on having some fun things come this way soon!

I will be working on the next Crestfall post this week, as well as getting things underway for a story series I've had in mind for some time now that I think would be just perfect to release when October rolls around. <3

OK, life updates below the cut!

Crestfall || Much Ado About Graduation

Hello, everyone! It's been three months, how has everyone been?

I'm going to get straight to the heart of things here - over the past few years, I have been a college student doing the usual college-student thing. This current semester is my final semester of college, and in two months, I will be graduating!

Yay for graduation, but also, I've been having a lot of trouble getting any big projects for the Pappus Café off the ground. Between school and other things I'm involved in, it seems like big, comprehensive posts detailing a full year of ingame time on-the-clock are a no-go. I am very happy to have an internship lined up for after I graduate, but I imagine that my transition into the "real world" will also mean less time playing Creatures!

Never fret, this not an announcement of the Café shutting its doors! Quite the opposite, actually - I really do want to start making posts here on the regular. However, it seems the big, lengthy story-based posts are not gonna work for me, so instead...

Allow me to introduce Crestfall, a new world I'll be starting with the intent of playing casually. This will be a docked world + C12DS, with maybe some smaller metarooms sprinkled in. I will be doing things pretty much as I like, setting up the world how I like it and turning some Norns loose. I want to start a personal world and see where it takes me!

Of course, I'm still going to do my best to narrate and faithfully tell the story of this world as it unfolds, but I will not be monitoring it so closely and precisely as previous worlds. I think this will be a world I leave on for a long time while doing other things - maybe even while I'm away at classes for the day, it'll be fun to see what I come back to and share it with everyone!

Please look forward to it!

Take care,
Pixis

|| Next ||

I'm Not Dead, or what I've actually been up to

Hello hello! It's, uh, been a while, huh? I hope you all are doing well!

I've been spending the past few months doing schoolwork and admittedly not a whole lot else - though I've got plenty of free time to spare, I haven't had much motivation to do anything particularly creative or engaging lately. And that's not very fun!

Admittedly I took a bit of a break from Creatures after ending New Albia, as I found myself terribly frustrated with Creatures 2 and lacking the drive to engage myself in another project for the blog right away.

However, the Creatures Community Spirit Festival is coming up! For that matter, that means the one-year anniversary of the Pappus Café is coming up! That's no time for sulking, now, is it?! Though the fire for Creatures in my heart has never quite gone away, seeing everyone beginning to gear up for the CCSF has added some new kindling. I've been playing around with a few ideas, and I think it's high time a new world began here, too! When the CCSF starts, I'll be opening a new storybook to the first page...

See you soon!
Pixis

A Series of Unfortunate Events, or why you shouldn't reinstall when you're tired

Hello everyone! Um, it is with a heavy heart that I have to admit I've made a terrible mistake.

Due to some minor issues arising with my Docking Station, and a few major ones beginning to show up afterwards (including some bizarre issues showing up in newly created worlds), I decided it was time to reinstall the game. However, upon reinstallation and moving some of the files over, some of the problems still persisted, so I uninstalled again to reinstall again... and realized that I had moved, not copied, the old files over when attempting to move into the new installation.

So, the uninstaller removed my things, and because I didn't copy my things over properly, I have lost all of my current worlds. This unfortunately means that the ends of the stories of the worlds that were being posted about on the Pappus Café before this point will remain untold. I want to apologize to everyone who has been reading Applewood Fields and the Waterworks, as these worlds have been lost forevermore. (Along with all of my personal ones, I'm afraid!)

Well, if anything else, I suppose this serves as a good lesson for why you shouldn't do something like this when you're feeling pretty tired!

Since I no longer have any data I need to be preserving, I'm going to be taking this opportunity to do an entirely fresh reinstall of the game. When I moved into this new laptop, I simply copied the old data from the old laptop into the newly installed game folder... so now is a good time to give everything a hard reset. I'll be taking some time to get the fresh installation settled in, as well as thinking up some ideas for new worlds. I also want to come up with some kind of fun mini-features, but I'm not sure yet whether or not that'll work out. (In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions as to types of worlds they'd like to see, I'm interested in hearing!)

Thank you for continuing to read the stories here at the Pappus Café, and here's to the new worlds we will see going forward.

Take care,
Pixis

To Infinity! On Happy Endings and the New Frontier

Hello again, everyone!

I am absolutely pleased to be able to report that I am now the owner of a new computer, and the process of moving all of my Creatures things in has been relatively painless. I was a bit apprehensive about moving to digital copies of the Creatures games, as I have been playing directly from my CDs all these years; but alas, my new laptop has no CD drive, so it had to be done.

Thankfully, there were almost no growing pains, and everything's gone smooth as butter. Aside from a few minor bumps in the road I was expecting to encounter, I have successfully been able to relocate my worlds to a brand-new digital copy of Creatures Exodus, and both Applewood Fields and the Waterworks are functioning properly with every Creature intact. (I've included a picture of Ember taken after the move for good measure!)

However, I have even more exciting news to report! Because I have brand-new digital copies of everything, I now have working copies of Creatures 1, Creatures 2, and Creatures Village!

I am absolutely thrilled that Creatures 2 in particular is working, as C2's atmosphere has always been a favorite of mine, but I'm incredibly eager to explore all three games. It has been years since I've had any of them working (I'm especially impressed C2 worked immediately upon install) and I've never extensively played outside of C3/DS, so this is an exciting new frontier for me!

I'm looking forward to documenting my experiences in really exploring these games for the first time, and I hope everyone will be happy to go on the journey with me!

To Infinity!
Pixis

On Technical Difficulties and a Short Hiatus

Hello, everyone! This is a rare post in which I will be speaking to you directly.

As some of you may already know, I have been having difficulties with my computer as of late. Recently, for better or for worse, I was finally able to get the problems with my computer properly diagnosed.

In short, either my computer is irreparable or it will be significantly expensive to fix. The tech help service I was using has decided to send it to the manufacturer for a free check-over, but if the tech help service's diagnosis is correct, it is likely my computer is about to bite the dust.

Fear not for the worlds featured here in the café, for I was aware of the technical problems before the computer went completely bust and backed up everything prior to sending it in. Applewood Fields and the Waterworks are both preserved along with all of my other worlds, agents, and so on. As far as I am aware, there should be no progress lost!

That being said, in the coming weeks I will not have access to a personal computer, so they will remain in limbo. I am hoping it won't be very long before I have either a fixed computer or a new one, as I am a college student in a technical field and having a personal computer is very necessary. (This really bites!) But until then, the Pappus Café will unfortunately be on hiatus.

Thank you very much for your support in my adventures in Creatures storytelling so far, and I hope I will be able to return soon!

Take care,
Pixis