Notice: Hits Haven’t gone Down

WordPress have done something funny to the Total Hits feature, and it is now only displaying how many I have accumulated so far during 2009.

For the record, my actual hits record at the time of this post is: 563,530

I think… Could’ve sworn it was more than that. Anyway, I’m gonna go check if I can change it back or something.

-legoless

Edit: I think it was fixed or something… hits are back to normal anyway, as far as I can tell.

Spore Post #2 – Creature Stage

Don’t forget to read Spore Post #1 and my overall review on Spore if you haven’t already.

When you crawl out of the sea, a freakish cross between a micro-organism and a thing with legs, your species will built a nest. And the first thought that will pass through your tiny little brain is….. food.

If you’re a herbivore, just toddle over to the nearest fruit bush. The tall ones are no good since you don’t have any arms, so even if you’re tall enough, you can’t grab the fruit use rocks or sticks to knock fruit out of them. If you’re a carnivore, there’s a dead creature near your new nest. It’s normally a fairly evolved one, so it will last for a while. Don’t eat it all in one go, unless you need it. If you’re smart and you became an omnivore, you can pick either two (I personally enjoy the rotting carcass).

Now that you’ve either got a full stomach, or have puked your guts up by eating the wrong food, you get a few more goals. One is to get a new part. The other is to meet a new species. To get a new part, you can break open one of the piles of bones surrounding your nest. The other way is to befriend or to kill another species. If you choose the latter, the second goal will be completed while working on this one. If not, use your map to locate another nest and simply click on a different species to complete it.

To befriend a species, click the green ‘friendly’ icon at the bottom of the screen. At the start you will only have a level 1 singing action. As listed in my review, there are four actions altogether, each ranging from level 1 right up to level 5.

• Sing: Your animal will “sing” and, depending on its vocal skills, may perform a mini opera for the other species.
• Dance: You will perform a different dance depending on your dance skills.
• Charm: Unlocked at the start if you add an Electric sack to your creature. You will make dinging noises and yellow sparks appear around you. If you have higher charm levels, you may even perform a little dance.
• Pose: You put out your hands (and feet, if your skill is high enough) and confetti flowers burst out of them. The higher your skill is, the more flowers appear, and the louder the sound that comes with them is (a kind of trumpet ‘tadaaaaaaa’).

By using these skills to copy the other creature’s actions, their disposition meter goes up. If you both reach the top (or in some cases you go flying past it) they like you. If not, you’ll have to try again. When you get enough creatures to like you, the species becomes your ally. There are three ranks in a typical nest. Regular creature, baby creatures and alpha creatures. They each have a different order of actions (if they have more than one to chose from). The baby is the easiest, a alpha the hardest. However, by befriending the alpha, you get a new part. The more evolved the creature, the higher value the part is. (Same with bone piles – the larger the pile, the more valuable the part is.) When you become allies with a creature (and when your brain gets big enough) you get add them to your pack. They’ll follow you around and help you hunt or socialise with other creatures. Note that some species hate each other, your follower will attack no matter what. This can completely ruin relationships with the other species. You can also heal at your allies nests.

If you prefer to turn other creatures into your dinner, you can hunt them to extinction. First you must kill enough of them. To kill them you need to click the red target button at the bottom of the screen and attack them using any of the following skills:

• Bite: Does exactly what it says on the tin.
• Spit: The heat seekers of nature. You launch a number of purple poison balls at the target. The higher your skill, the more balls there are and the more damage they do. This can be unlocked by adding a poison sack to your new creature at the start of creature stage.
• Strike: You slash at your target with your claws, causing a lot of damage. My personal favourite.
• Charge: If you’re far enough away, you run at the target, paralysing it for a moment. The higher your skill, the longer they remain stunned. You can get this attack at the start by giving your new creature a spike.

Again, if you kill the alpha you get a new body part. However, babies usually aren’t easy targets. They run away, and unless you have spit it’s very hard to catch up to attack. And adult creatures defend their young, so you’ll probably end up fighting them either way. One the species becomes extinct, the remaining ones float up into the air and disappear. If you’re lucky, there will be an egg at their nest. This will give you lots of extra DNA points if you eat it. You are also free to heal at the abandoned nest.

Now that you’ve eaten, gotten some DNA points, and maybe a new body part or two, it’s time to get rid of that geeky cell look. Head back to your home nest and find yourself a mate. Use your mating call and click on the creature who responds. You will then lay an egg and be brought into the Creature Editor.

In the Creature Editor, you get to add, remove and modify your creature. You can add some cool feet to your legs, make yourself a bit taller, add some arms, maybe some wings, and of course remove your stupid cell stage mouth. All the new parts you’ve unlocked from bone piles and alpha creatures will be highlighted with yellow stars. These might be new legs, some body parts that increase your level in a certain skill, or even something as pointless as new eyes. Eyes in creature stage are a ripoff. Keep your old cell eyes, unless you wanna waste 5 of your hard-earned DNA points. The only point in new eyes is for look, which isn’t very important. You are also able to change your skin pattern and colours.

Some new skills might be unlocked with new parts. Here is a list of a few of them:

• All six extra skills for socialising and fighting can be unlocked without extra parts.
• A pair of fly wings can also be added to your creature to give it both the jump and fly ability.
• If you’re not interested in flying, there are other parts which will enable just jump on its own. Not much use in my opinion. You can unlock jump at the start by adding cilia to your new creature.
• Some parts and feet allow you to sprint, which increases your speed for a while. You can unlock this at the start by adding a jet to your new creature.
• A few parts allow an ability called sneak. Your creature turns partially invisable. You can unlock this at the start by giving your creature a flagellum.
• If you give your creature some arms, they can grab food out of the taller plants and throw rocks and sticks at higher fruit or other creatures (normally it just annoys them though).

There are probably a few others, but I’ll let you find them on your own.

Also, depending on which path you took in cell stage (or if you even did it), you will unlock a unique skill.

Herbivore: Siren Song is your super power. You can charm even your most hated enemies into liking you for a while. You can then socialise with them like normal, and even make them your allies!

Omnivore: Your super power is Call Pack. A swarm of little flying creatures come to your aid. You can’t socialise with them, but they follow you around and help you kill or socialise with other creatures. Normally their only strenght is their numbers, but if you’re lucky the species might be fairly evolved (though they doesn’t use any of their other skills if you don’t already have them).

Carnivore: You get Ranging Roar as your super power. If you’re completely outmatched in a fight and you need a quick getaway, you can perform an extremely loud roar which will send any nearby creatures fleeing.

The aim of creature stage is to gain DNA points and evolve. To get DNA points yo umust befriend of kill other creatures. You can get bonus DNA points for doing things such as moving to a new nest, eating another creatures egg, or by killing or becoming allies with a rogue creature. Rogue creatures are rare creatures, who hunt alone. They are much stronger and bigger than other creatures, and are soemtimes incorrectly referred to as ‘mini-epics’. However, unlike true epics, they can be socialised with, and make very good allies.

Epics are gigantic versions of another creature. They can normally kill anything in one hit (though rogues may endure multiple hits from an epic). They are of limited intelligence, not being capable of socialisation, and rely on roaring, stamping, swiping and picking up creatures, biting their heads off and throwing the carcass away in battle (which, in fairness, are some pretty decent moves when each is normally a fatal hit). If you manage to kill an epic in creature stage, you get the ‘Epic Killer’ achievement (if you have an online account).

Killing epics is a dangerous business. As they are so big, you must stay far away from them in order not to get hit. If you want to get them stuck somewhere, you can either lead them under trees (which doesn’t always work) or lead them to your nest 9which is a better option, as your nest-mates will help kill it, and you can heal yourself there if you somehow manage to survive a hit.

When you manage to lure one back to your nest, it will usually get stuck there (especially if it’s a more advanced nest with little walls around the corners) and you are free to hit at it. To be safe, you should only use the spit attack in case it manages to hit you. It’s usually too busy hitting at the other members of the nest, as they normally decide to get up close and personal and bite at their feet. If you’re lucky, they may get stuck in the epic’s feet, which lets the creature swipe all they want at the epic without it being able to do anything about it.

Remember the epic isn’t your only priority. You still need to eat. if you’re a herbivore or omnivore, this won’t be a problem as there will probably be some fruit bushes around. If you’re a carnivore, it will be much harder. Luckily, when the epic dies, you’ll have food for months.  Note that epic killing is quite pointless, as they never show up as extinct in your Sporepedia, and you don’t get any DNA points (which might be a good thing as you’re creature’s timeline would probably drop right down to Predator (which might be a pain if you want the other two). The only use you get off killing an epic is the achievement, tonnes of food, and perhaps some cool screenshots if you’re that way inclined.

Each planet is unique. Some have landmarks. There are tonnes of landmarks, but the few that I’ve encountered are:

• Stacks of orange rocks (as seen on a type of storybook planet).
• Gear-shaped rocks (again, can be seen on a type of storybook planet).
• A crashed spaceship.
• A volcano. If you manage to get up to the top and have a pair of wings, you can get a massive flight boost.
• Red spice geysers. Always red. These give you a bit of a boost too if you have wings (if not, it’s still a pretty nice view… until you hit the ground).
• Giant meteors.
• Tentacle rocks (from yet another storybook planet).

Apart from creatures, there are also a few hazards you should watch out for.

• Volcanoes. If you’re stupid enough to jump over the top without wings, you’ll find out why pretty soon.
• Sea monsters. Even though it is technically a creature, it doesn’t show up in your Sporepedia and cannot even be fought. When you swim out to deep waters (even if you’re in a lake) a giant green monster will jump up out of the water and eat you whole. No way to avoid it.
• Meteor showers are annoying events. They usually only take place once during creature stage, but if you’re in the middle of a fight they’re a real nuisance. Not only do all the creatures run around screaming, not letting you fight them, but if you get hit on the head b ya meteorite you will get dazed for a while (as if someone used the charge attach on you).
• Aliens. They like to scare creatures, and abduct one or two sometimes. Irritating if you’re trying to socialise and the creature gets sucked out of the air. Aliens never abduct you or your companions. Also, if you’re lucky (or should I say unlucky) it will be a Grox ship. This way you can have a close look at their unique ship without having to fly to the centre of the galaxy.

Anyway, once you get more DNA points you’re brain will get bigger and your stature grander. By the end of it, you’ll look pretty cool, and have a massive amount of health. When you’re ready to move on to tribal life, click the advance button. If you wanna stick around for some achievements or something, you’re free to do so. It’ll be fairly easy to do now, too, since you have so much health.

When you click the advance button the timeline is displayed, and your trait will be decided. Depending on whether you killed off many creatures, made friends with everyone, or had an equal mix of both, you’ll get either the Aggressive, Friendly or Neutral trait. You’ll then get one last chance to edit your creature, to decide what it will look like for all time…

That’s all for now!
-legoless

Also, don’t forget to read Jamie’s Chrome Experiments post and woof’s comic if you haven’t already.

Chrome Experiments

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from my 3 years on the internet, it’s that things grow fast. Take YouTube for example. It has a massive community, but I bet you wouldn’t guess it was founded in 2004. Just 5 years and look how big it is. And then look at Twitter. It’s user base expanded by 500% last year. That’s like doubling it, doubling it again, and adding what they already had to that. And the next great thing has just come along. And it’s name: Chrome Experiments

It’s developed with the new Web Browser, Google Chrome, in mind, taking advantage of it’s huge Javascript abilities. But it seems to work fine in most browsers. It’s basically a vast collection of Mini JavaScript apps, that run in your browser. Let’s take a closer look at a few of my favourites……

Starfield

Starfield is one of those things that’s always fun. The direction that the stars move is determined by where you mouse is on the screen, meaning they can go anywhere. You can also blur them, so that they have a comet like tail, by holding down your left mouse button.

Monster

This is one of the more unique apps. It starts off as a very simple cube, but changes rapidly as you use the given controls. You can stretch the X, Y, and Z values, make it curve more, create protrusions inside it, and change the background colour. This could be one of the greatest JavaScript creations ever. If there was a little bit more customization involved.

Ball Pool

This was the first Chrome Experiment I ever tried, and probably the reason I checked out more. You create balls by clicking and dragging the cursor, and then you move them, shake them and get rid of them. By double clicking the background, you can also change the colour of the balls and background.

Browser Talk

All you need to make this app work is a Microphone connected to your computer. You then choose you microphone, choose a character, and you’re off! As you talk, the mouth on the person will open and close accordingly, making it seem as if they are talking. I absolutely love this Experiment, and can’t wait for some more character’s to come

Ball Droppings

Ball Droppings is really quite unique. A hole drops balls continuously (at a rate you can change), and you can then direct the balls by drawing lines. As a ball hits a line, it makes a noise. The further down the screen a ball gets, the lower the noise. You can also change how gravity affects them, and, if you like, make them travel up instead of down! If you really wanted too, I suppose you could even make a song using lines and editing the gravity with this…….

That conclude’s my review of Chrome Experiments, which you can find at http://chromeexperiments.com

Jamie

Also, check out Woof’s Post below

da goggles, dey do nothing

comix be made

-woofeh

Club Penguin: Revisited

After not going on the site in about… what, nine/ten months? (Apart from the occasional rumour of a half-decent party going on.) I got a shock when I decided to log in again (I heard there was a ‘Box Party’). Firstly, there are lil ninjas running around the place (I remember going on when this came out – I was all ‘ZOMG ORANGE NINJAS JUST WHAT I ALWAYS WANTED), and some beardy dude at the Dojo (which actually has an outside!) Oh yeah, now I remember, there was like an avalanche that messed up the place. I kept owning woof at the card game. Only half-decent game on there other than Aqua Grabber. (Wootz my penguin is 725 days old! That’s like… ancient for a bunch of pixels! I’m surprised it hasn’t keeled over and died yet…)

Anyway, the first thing I noticed was… woah 31 new messages! Most was just junk, I think there was a holiday postcard from woof, some rubbish from my puffles, and a bunch of old events and ‘you’re membership will run out in 37 days’ warnings. One card was saying something about a member party in the night club. There’s two new games there. A DJ yoke and a dance signup table. It looked stupid, but it turned out my penguin was a natural at the Riverdance.

“Penguins watch in awe at the might of T67yu Nm76’s dance moves.”

After not seeing a box in sight, I went off to go cry in the pet shop. Then I noticed a little egg in the corner of the screen. After running around for a while finding more eggs I got some pink bunny ears. Oh the joy.

<—— CLICKIT!!1

Just found a party from a few weeks back. This must be that member party thing (to be honest I didn’t even know what it was – I was just taking a picture of the desk thing. You have to document things like that – you never know when a screenshot will save your life.)

And another one. (Dear God what did they do to the forest?!)

That party sucked. A free item I already got was the only thing of interest. And the pin I suppose. Didn’t bother to find it though, so…

Oh, and here’s a picture from the Stage. Check out the blue side. They used my ‘BLUES BLUES THEY NEVER LOSE!’ slogan. Maybe I didn’t make it up after all. Or maybe I did and I should be rolling on the ground going ‘OMG CP USED MY IDEA IM GONNA BECOME SO POPULAR EVEN BILLYBOB WILL BE CROWDING ME’. Either way, pretty nice picture, don’t you think?

And puffles aren’t as stupid as they used to be! Now they don’t sleep on the floor as much, and enjoy drinking from fishtanks, toilets, and stagnent pools of hot chocolate.

And there’s a new book in the book room where you can put socks on a guy. So awesome.

And look at this for an artistic puffle. That looks exactly like me.

…

So as I was saying, I got some pink bunny ears. Then I found a chocolate bunny pin on a rock somewhere.  I went to the dojo and got up to purple belt, whupping newbs left and right. And then I run into Spider880, an old friend. He doesn’t go on WordPress much anymore, but he still played CP and (I think) Poptropica. I told him about my box problem and he told me to go to an igloo on the map. I arrive there and low and behold… a box. But not any ordinary box. These were one of those April Fools boxes from some party back in 06 (and juging from the *cough* new look of this guys igloo, this year’s party too). I step into the box and….

ZHOOM! Spider then procedes to give me a tour of the box demention. Not much of a tour, though. “The tour isn’t meant to cover the box demention I’m confused…” But on the bright side, the music was ok and your snowballs go all wobbly! Then the owner of the igloo came in, and I beat him up. But when I tried to nick his box a big message popped up saying ‘members only’.

So I went off sulking. Luckily for me, I ran into a bunch of chocolate bunny penguins. One was walking… a white puffle? Damn. I wanted orange. After discovering the white puffle was a vicious as he sounded and watching him eat a bunny penguin whole, I decided to move on.

And then I found a pink bunny ninja!

After a long day making fun of people and being angry at CP, I retired to my igloo… which had turned back into a block of ice since my membership ran out. And I had to share it with 7 puffles. Woof apparently got kicked out of his house again for not paying the rent, so he decided to camp out in my basement. Whcih was removed with my membership. So now I was sharing my igloo with 7 puffles and a fat penguin thing that smelt like wet feathers and candy floss. I even had to read him a book to get him to shut up talking to the puffles all night.

Well, there you have it folks. Club Penguin is now under the control of white puffles, chocolate bunnies, ninjas and evil member boxes.

-legoless