Dev Logs: Hallway Grendels (Attempt #1)
GOAL:
Establish a genetic breed based on the image I use for making sure the sizes of pathways in metarooms are wide enough for the largest possible vanilla sprite combination (Bruin body and Jungle Grendel head, arms, legs, and tail). It has to be able to breathe both on land and in the water, as well as successfully make use of a swimming agent to reach all areas of aquatic rooms. The ability to breed on their own, take care of themselves well enough, maintain good health on normal foods, and generally be adaptable to many room types is important. Some pretty colors and "stabilizing" their genome for additional use is a bonus. Nature should be allowed to select for the best traits, but going in at certain stages to ensure certain features is fine if it's required.
WORLD INFO:
Name: AutoWolf-Hallway
Type: DS (Undocked)
Additional Metarooms:
- Aquatalis Caverna V4
- Aquatalis Caverna 2
- Aquatalis Pod
Mobility Options:
Other Features:
- Egg collecting and timed hatching setup
- Population Control Panel
- Supersplicer and Eggernator II for splicing
- Autovocab
STARTING GENOMES:
- gren.aqua.swimming.17.gen
- gren.colorful.standard.ivory.17.gen
- norn.cs.bruin.hardy.gen
DEV LOGS:
Session 1:
- Establishing an automatic wolfling run from a world template I made recently. Setting up a template world with certain settings and then keeping it to the side for copy-pasting really helps sometimes.
- Selecting starting genomes that encourage the sprites I want as well as ambitiousness and swimming. Will probably start the run in water specifically to ensure these traits stay consistent.
- Get some basically perfect aqua/colorful grendel mixes on the first few tries that are already capable of breeding on their own in the Aquatalis Pod metaroom. I'll use those as the "grendel half" of the breed and as a stable metric for a breeding population. Many other awful rounds of splicing between the starter genomes occur in The Big Struggle to add the bruins in.
- Aquatalis Caverna 2 has been chosen as the main room. All amphibious creatures that aren't Literally Trash are moved there to chill out during setup.
- Skimming a particular creature's genome (004-tail-gvj53-frmrf-pxk5p-ve76.gen) to clone and re-contribute to splicing since they rolled the exact sprite combination I wanted.
- Taking a pair at a time and putting them in the Eggernator II while frozen in order to pre-screen and create offspring using its preview panel. Finally have the population paired down to the right basic traits (amphibious, swimming, correct sprites) after Much Struggle and some splicing of rejects into otherwise appropriate specimens for that genetic diversity.
- Encouraged breeding once to make sure they, uh, worked. No problems after that! Some have proven that they can happily breed on their own without any aid. Time to let them wolf unattended for at least a few dozen generations and see how they fare.
- Update: I Lied and noticed some grendels were taking passive organ damage. EXPORT! EXPORT!! Gotta make sure the founding population isn't liquefying from the inside. Also exporting creatures that are basically boneless and meatless...
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| Pictured above: GABS (Grendels After Barely Surviving) |
- I'm down from a population of ~24 to 6- (watches a female die literally while writing this) -5. Wait, it's 4. I need to do some emergency inseminating. Oh god, 3. One male, two females. Crossing my fingers I can pull this one back up, but at worst, I DO have all the Organ Funky exports that can be used to revive the population with some out-crossing.
- The new babies have been born and the original 3 are still with us. I'm going to manually feed them all extra because it's about to get Sloppy in here with the inseminator.
- I have since discovered that the lone male is a Terrible Husband and likes to beat his wives and new children. He'd better watch out because I'm going to replace him. Since writing the first 2 sentences of this bullet, he now lives in a corner of the room, alone, where he belongs.
- After screening the current creatures, I'm pulling a Magic Words "age all adult" to get them all to breeding age. Once they pad out again, I can ACTUALLY leave them alone.
- Another Update: I left them alone to use the bathroom, use the microwave, and start dinner. There are 6 left again, and my wife witnessed a family slaughter in that time. I really may have to add something else to the gene pool to reduce aggression. Friendels maybe? I'll think on it - ONE BIT THE HAND. Yeah it's gotten bad. Also been witnessing new hatchlings beating each other fresh out of the egg. I really, REALLY need to intervene genetically. Depending on what happens in the next hour or so, I may simply start over with a better genetic spread, or at the very least, outcross AGGRESSIVELY.
- Unfortunately, it would seem this run needs a restart, though I'll make sure to export all the remaining grendels, who honestly seem to still be alive because they maintained "territories" off to the side and didn't end up coming to blows as often. I'll link them here for anyone who's interesting in adopting them. <3
Session 2:
- I've decided there won't be a section session of this particular run. I'm going to make another attempt with a different setup very soon, and I'll be sure to link to it from here once it's started. I've also learned that there are plenty of things in the aquatalis rooms that don't stim correctly, so it may be better to grab a more stable room to test in for attempt #2.
