Noun Computer COB

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Here's an unreleased COB that I have had lying around for quite some time. It is a computer that injects into the rope bridge in the jungle and teaches your creatures some essential nouns.

It isn't as useful compared to the Drive Computer, but creatures find it entertaining to play with the computer regardless. You could also teach the Grendel with it.

Classfier: 3 3 108



The nouns taught by the Noun Computer are as follows:

1. vendor
2. hand
3. button
4. herb
5. food
6. drink
7. lift
8. mover
9. weed
10. music
11. toy
12. bigtoy
13. computer

C2 - Science Kit Mixtures

The Science Kit in Creatures 2 allows the user to inject "Mixtures" in its basic mode, requiring the upgrade before it allows them to inject any singular chemical in the game. The thing is, these "Mixtures" are moddable through a bit of text editing. They have little practical use besides setting up a list of chemicals to be injected all at once.

How to use/make custom mixtures in five steps:

1. Go to the folder named Applet Data in your Creatures 2 folder.
2. Find a file called ChemMixtures, the one you edit depends on the language of your Creatures 2 installation. If you're using the English version just use the file "ChemMixtures" with nothing after it.
3. Open the file in notepad. (Don't forget to back it up!)
4. Make/Paste the custom mixture on the next line below the existing mixtures, as said at the top part of the file the format is: name|description|red|green|blue|chem0|conc0|chem1|conc1|...|chemN|concN
5. Save the file (making sure you overwrite the existing ChemMixtures file) and test it out in game.

The description of chemicals don't seem to serve much purpose, as it isn't displayed in the science kit. 

Example mixture

Antibodies|Protects your creatures from antigens.|100|255|255|240|50|241|50|242|50|243|50|244|50|245|50|246|50|247|50

One-way room layout

The pond in the ettin desert can be used as a one-way ledge, in spite of how low the surface of the pool is compared to the adjacent slope.

By changing the permeability of the doors lining the surface of the pond (as pictured above), creatures are still able to enter and exit the pond as if the doors had a permeability of 100.

But, if you were to drop the creature onto the pond...

They will walk along its surface. When the creature walks out of the pond this way, they will drop onto the slope and cannot walk back onto the surface of pool, walking through it and submerging themselves as shown in the earlier screenshots.

This is a very unusual oddity which you can try out for yourself. I think this happens because the floor doors are only checked for collision when they are being walked on and instead the open door leading into those rooms is checked for collision, and having a permeability of 100 it allows the creature to enter, even though the door is very small! This has the potential to be used for intentional one-way ledges in map design.

Tinted text in a catalogue file

Did you know it is possible to tint your text in a catalogue file? While I have seen my fair share of tinted text in DS, (usually in official CreaturesLabs/Gameware agents) I haven't seen a lot of user-made agents making use of it. So here's how you can add a splash of colour to your agent help files:

Once you have opened the catalogue file that you want to edit, you can add tinting with <tint R G B>. This will make it so that all text after it in the string will be tinted depending on what numbers you enter. For example, <tint 255 0 0> will make the text to the right of it red and <tint 255 255 255> later in the same description will revert all following text to plain white again.

So now that we have our catalogue file set up, let's test it ingame:

Ta-da! Tints may also be applied to ToolTips, but I wouldn't recommend tinting your ToolTip text because of the bright blue box that ToolTips are usually contained in. It might not mix very well compared to the colours of the agent help window.