I had this game as a kid, so it's great to see you cover it! It's a weird but interesting title that I enjoyed, though I never did finish the story, I'm no scientist unfortunately. Still, messing with the variables and making different creatures is fun, as was watching your digital life go around and eat and make the dots fill the screen and stuff. To correct an error in this video, though, you say that you don't know what Momentum does, and that the manual doesn't say either. This is wrong. A paragraph on page 61 explains what it is in the SNI Default Momentum section. Momentum is a number between 0 and 7. Higher momentum means a creature is more likely to walk in straight lines with fewer big direction changes, while lower momentum means a creature is more likely to walk in short lines with regular sharp direction changes. Additionally, page 58 says that unlike the other stats, Momentum is set for a creature for its entire life and thus changing Momentum in the Body Variables Panel screen will only change it for future creatures and not current ones. The manual's index page is definitely not comprehensive enough (momentum, among many other things, isn't in its one-page list), but the manual does cover most of the stuff in the game once you find the right page. (Yes, I had my Unnatural Selection manual handy. Who wouldn't?)
I just checked and you're right about that so I'll add that info into the video description in a moment, but take a look at WHERE that information is buried: The section in how to modify the game's assumptions while doing independent research, which is pointless reading unless you intend to mess with the defaults. For a game THIS loaded with mechanics you'd think someone would've put more effort into making the index actually INDEX things like that! :P
I love the fox blanket. I feel adding Sim to this name would have caused this game to get confused with Simlife, which I never could get the Windows version to work properly!
I've read about this game when I was a child in a brazilian magazine and became mildly obsessed with it. I remember that when I finally got internet access around 2005 one of the first things I remember was trying to find _something_ about this game, but to no avail. Actually, it has only been a few years since information finally sprung about this title and alas... it kinda didn't meet my expectations, even when compared to what I was expecting from it as a child. Still, this game holds a special place in the corner of my childhood memories and It is nice to see it so troughly explored here. Same thing happened to Transarctica, but it was pretty much what I was expecting it to be (except, of course, the box train was so much more badass than the actual transarctica), and it led me to read the first book on The Ice Company earlier this year, but well, transarctica is a whole other thing now.
I feel like the "breeding sim game" is one of those concepts that sounds good, but I just haven't seen many that felt like they were actually that interesting or enjoyable to play. Plus the hard limitations on how creative the creatures can be, within asset constraints. (This might be a genre that could benefit greatly from AI assistance...)
If you're interested in Minecraft as well then I would recommend looking into mod packs which focus on the Forestry and Extra Bees mods, as those mods together introduce an entire system of breeding bees with various genetic traits whom produce "combs" you can break down into raw materials, effectively making it possible to get infinite sources of nearly ALL raw materials in Minecraft given enough effort! (Which sounds OP and it certainly can be, but not after hundreds of hours of going at it, by which point you deserve to have OP resource gen!)
The nature of genetics is that meaningful changes takes generations to happen, so there's the big difficulty of making a game where you're not just waiting around. The big question is how do you get player agency happening? How do you get meaningful decisions from the player? Creatures fell foul to this big time. The AI in it was interesting with some clever systems going on. But playing it just felt like a screensaver that you have to babysit. It really wasn't that much fun, and playing with the genetics side of the game took hours since each creature lived for quite a while, and wasn't able to breed for an hour or so after being born.
@@deanolium Millennia: Altered Destinies does this with time travel. But you are tasked to evolve 4 species into spacefaring civilizations. It's weird and pretty unique. Maybe Kris will cover it some day.
Flabberghasted by the low resolution decision, because the game has quite miniscule details in some viewports that could actually greatly benefit of better reso. I mean Syndicate and other 1993 classics, like Falcon 3, would also been better with more detailed resolution, but those games were quite heavy to calculate even with low reso. This game has no such excuses. Thanks for the interesting vid, again!
It has one excuse: DISK SPACE. The majority of the data across the seven disks are graphics and audio; there's very little code or data. Going up to just 16-colour 640x480 VGA would DOUBLE the amount of graphics data needed, so you'd probably now be up to 11 disks assuming 4 of the original disks are graphics data, and if you wanted SVGA instead well that's another doubling so now we're up to 19 freaking disks... This game also came out right at the tail end of the majority of games coming on disks and CDs starting to become a thing for game distribution so it would've been expensive with a more restricted user base going with ONLY CDs at that point... In many ways, this game would've fared better if it came out just one year later. :P
@@Pixelmusement Although true, decision to use the space on clay animations is a design choise. So, it is excuse, if the decision was making the game worse as a whole. I had a few games with about 10 3.5 disks - surely it was a pretty common trend at the monent the game made it appearance. So, it is not very good excuse either, saving money. At least, it sounds a cheap excuse. I remember it to be pretty exhausting to play with games that had multiple dics. It really break the immersion on some games (like Blade Runner, altho CDs and Ultima Serpent Isle), and was just plain annoying in others. The changing, installing, and the constant fear of disc errors, were omnipotent - Or did someone really made copies of their discs? I mean before the disc copy protection generalized to common practise. It was expensive too, to make copies. I have to eat, you know - that is an excuse..
Ah, Maxis. Wonderfully experimental... sometimes indulgently so. I didn't know about this one but it fits right in to their post-Sim City success and pre-EA purchase style of output.
...minus the low-res graphics. That, and the way the sound was done this REALLY does feel like something which has Disney origins and just didn't end up with them for whatever reason, as evidenced by just how closely it feels like other Disney releases of the time like Coaster. :P
So I just got done re-watching the pilot movie to the 1978 Incredible Hulk series, where there was a lot of science done at computer terminals. Then I get on youtube, find this video was just uploaded, and as soon as I see game footage I'm like "this looks like something bad waiting to happen."
It seems that digitizing to to less than 256 colors (since it can't use to much colors from the available palette) makes the thing you digitized look less real. It didn't even occurred to me that some of the monsters from Doom were originally made as posable figures and then got digitized.
The Doom clay figures weren't used verbatim; once digitized they were artistically enhanced. I think that's probably what's going on here is that the original clay figures were given a digital makeover. :B
Hum. I'm slightly reminded of Evolve! It was a very zany life simulator with a sense of humor/whimsy and the interface here reminds me of ShadowForce. (Both of these, as far as I can tell, have nigh impossible to find registered versions.) Speaking of games with digital DNA, would you consider covering Creatures 0/Small Furry Creatures?
Every DOS game is fair-game to cover on the show, but do please send requests to the eMail address you see in the credits of these videos so I can track those requests properly; They're too easy to miss and too hard to track correctly from TH-cam comments. :P
Oh, Clint's got me beat on receiving stuff from fans by like, 10,000%. From what I understand he has to turn down over 90% of the things he's offered because he just doesn't have the space for it all! :o
@@Revikra After what "RMC the Cave" achieved, Clint was thinking in doing something similar in the future, but was more an alternative plan if making videos stopped for some reason.
So, what's the ultimate goal of the game in-universe? There are suspicious creatures on islands, and the answer is to replace them with meaner and more badass creatures of the same type? How does that make anything better, again?
The reasoning of the story itself is that Dr. Skinner has gone rogue whereas Dr. Jackson and Dr. Andrews haven't, and one of the cruxes of these creatures is that they can be held in stasis through radio frequencies, meaning when all is said and done, the "good guys" can just pull all of their creatures back, no problem, whereas no one knows what Dr. Skinner has planned, but since her creatures are continually getting physically stronger better to take 'em out now than let her reach whatever her ultimate goal is. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of "twist" later in the story but there was no way I was ever gonna see it given the level of play required to make any story progress. :P
It's a little intimidating but the fact that everything you click on has an effect when you click on them, even the DigiLife logo, shows that a lot of thought was put into the UI to make sure players don't get completely lost. The worst UIs are the ones where clicking on things will do nothing if the conditions are not "correct" or where the results of a click are hidden from view. :P
I had this game as a kid, so it's great to see you cover it! It's a weird but interesting title that I enjoyed, though I never did finish the story, I'm no scientist unfortunately. Still, messing with the variables and making different creatures is fun, as was watching your digital life go around and eat and make the dots fill the screen and stuff.
To correct an error in this video, though, you say that you don't know what Momentum does, and that the manual doesn't say either. This is wrong. A paragraph on page 61 explains what it is in the SNI Default Momentum section. Momentum is a number between 0 and 7. Higher momentum means a creature is more likely to walk in straight lines with fewer big direction changes, while lower momentum means a creature is more likely to walk in short lines with regular sharp direction changes. Additionally, page 58 says that unlike the other stats, Momentum is set for a creature for its entire life and thus changing Momentum in the Body Variables Panel screen will only change it for future creatures and not current ones. The manual's index page is definitely not comprehensive enough (momentum, among many other things, isn't in its one-page list), but the manual does cover most of the stuff in the game once you find the right page. (Yes, I had my Unnatural Selection manual handy. Who wouldn't?)
I just checked and you're right about that so I'll add that info into the video description in a moment, but take a look at WHERE that information is buried: The section in how to modify the game's assumptions while doing independent research, which is pointless reading unless you intend to mess with the defaults. For a game THIS loaded with mechanics you'd think someone would've put more effort into making the index actually INDEX things like that! :P
I love the fox blanket. I feel adding Sim to this name would have caused this game to get confused with Simlife, which I never could get the Windows version to work properly!
Actually, the blanket has six different kinds of animals on it: Fox, Wolf, Bear, Rabbit, Owl, and Lynx. :B
I used to love this to death
I've read about this game when I was a child in a brazilian magazine and became mildly obsessed with it. I remember that when I finally got internet access around 2005 one of the first things I remember was trying to find _something_ about this game, but to no avail. Actually, it has only been a few years since information finally sprung about this title and alas... it kinda didn't meet my expectations, even when compared to what I was expecting from it as a child. Still, this game holds a special place in the corner of my childhood memories and It is nice to see it so troughly explored here.
Same thing happened to Transarctica, but it was pretty much what I was expecting it to be (except, of course, the box train was so much more badass than the actual transarctica), and it led me to read the first book on The Ice Company earlier this year, but well, transarctica is a whole other thing now.
Not what I expected. Love it when you cover obscure titles like this.
I still own this on floppy but haven't played it in over 30 years.
Suddenly I don't feel so guilty having a few dozen untouched titles in my GOG library. I'll play them soon ok!
I thought i would never have to think about bee breeding again, but here we are.
I mean... the Forestry mod for Minecraft was pretty much my introduction to genetics and I'll bet a LOT of people's introduction to it too. :B
What? I didn't expected that I wouldn't know one of the Maxis games 😅
I feel like the "breeding sim game" is one of those concepts that sounds good, but I just haven't seen many that felt like they were actually that interesting or enjoyable to play. Plus the hard limitations on how creative the creatures can be, within asset constraints.
(This might be a genre that could benefit greatly from AI assistance...)
If you're interested in Minecraft as well then I would recommend looking into mod packs which focus on the Forestry and Extra Bees mods, as those mods together introduce an entire system of breeding bees with various genetic traits whom produce "combs" you can break down into raw materials, effectively making it possible to get infinite sources of nearly ALL raw materials in Minecraft given enough effort! (Which sounds OP and it certainly can be, but not after hundreds of hours of going at it, by which point you deserve to have OP resource gen!)
The nature of genetics is that meaningful changes takes generations to happen, so there's the big difficulty of making a game where you're not just waiting around. The big question is how do you get player agency happening? How do you get meaningful decisions from the player?
Creatures fell foul to this big time. The AI in it was interesting with some clever systems going on. But playing it just felt like a screensaver that you have to babysit. It really wasn't that much fun, and playing with the genetics side of the game took hours since each creature lived for quite a while, and wasn't able to breed for an hour or so after being born.
@@deanolium Millennia: Altered Destinies does this with time travel. But you are tasked to evolve 4 species into spacefaring civilizations. It's weird and pretty unique. Maybe Kris will cover it some day.
Can we please comment on that 3.5" floppy disk drive in the lower right of the screen..? Lovely.
Flabberghasted by the low resolution decision, because the game has quite miniscule details in some viewports that could actually greatly benefit of better reso.
I mean Syndicate and other 1993 classics, like Falcon 3, would also been better with more detailed resolution, but those games were quite heavy to calculate even with low reso.
This game has no such excuses.
Thanks for the interesting vid, again!
It has one excuse: DISK SPACE. The majority of the data across the seven disks are graphics and audio; there's very little code or data. Going up to just 16-colour 640x480 VGA would DOUBLE the amount of graphics data needed, so you'd probably now be up to 11 disks assuming 4 of the original disks are graphics data, and if you wanted SVGA instead well that's another doubling so now we're up to 19 freaking disks... This game also came out right at the tail end of the majority of games coming on disks and CDs starting to become a thing for game distribution so it would've been expensive with a more restricted user base going with ONLY CDs at that point... In many ways, this game would've fared better if it came out just one year later. :P
@@Pixelmusement Although true, decision to use the space on clay animations is a design choise. So, it is excuse, if the decision was making the game worse as a whole.
I had a few games with about 10 3.5 disks - surely it was a pretty common trend at the monent the game made it appearance. So, it is not very good excuse either, saving money. At least, it sounds a cheap excuse.
I remember it to be pretty exhausting to play with games that had multiple dics. It really break the immersion on some games (like Blade Runner, altho CDs and Ultima Serpent Isle), and was just plain annoying in others. The changing, installing, and the constant fear of disc errors, were omnipotent - Or did someone really made copies of their discs? I mean before the disc copy protection generalized to common practise. It was expensive too, to make copies. I have to eat, you know - that is an excuse..
Ah, Maxis. Wonderfully experimental... sometimes indulgently so. I didn't know about this one but it fits right in to their post-Sim City success and pre-EA purchase style of output.
...minus the low-res graphics. That, and the way the sound was done this REALLY does feel like something which has Disney origins and just didn't end up with them for whatever reason, as evidenced by just how closely it feels like other Disney releases of the time like Coaster. :P
So I just got done re-watching the pilot movie to the 1978 Incredible Hulk series, where there was a lot of science done at computer terminals.
Then I get on youtube, find this video was just uploaded, and as soon as I see game footage I'm like "this looks like something bad waiting to happen."
never ever understood how the game worked. And still that hasn't changed now
It seems that digitizing to to less than 256 colors (since it can't use to much colors from the available palette) makes the thing you digitized look less real. It didn't even occurred to me that some of the monsters from Doom were originally made as posable figures and then got digitized.
The Doom clay figures weren't used verbatim; once digitized they were artistically enhanced. I think that's probably what's going on here is that the original clay figures were given a digital makeover. :B
When you want to make a comment about Spore but nothing comes to mind.
Hum. I'm slightly reminded of Evolve! It was a very zany life simulator with a sense of humor/whimsy and the interface here reminds me of ShadowForce. (Both of these, as far as I can tell, have nigh impossible to find registered versions.)
Speaking of games with digital DNA, would you consider covering Creatures 0/Small Furry Creatures?
Every DOS game is fair-game to cover on the show, but do please send requests to the eMail address you see in the credits of these videos so I can track those requests properly; They're too easy to miss and too hard to track correctly from TH-cam comments. :P
@@Pixelmusement Of course. I will formalize my request if I feel an urging need to put you into a queue.
My requests list is over 300 entries long to say nothing of the multiple requests for the same games, so don't worry about that! ;)
Ancient Dos Games also known as Lazy Game Receiver?
Oh, Clint's got me beat on receiving stuff from fans by like, 10,000%. From what I understand he has to turn down over 90% of the things he's offered because he just doesn't have the space for it all! :o
I'm glad after nearly a decade you're still using what I gifted, the most recent being Avoid the Noid.
@@Pixelmusement sounds like Clint could open and curate a CompUSA museum.
@@Revikra After what "RMC the Cave" achieved, Clint was thinking in doing something similar in the future, but was more an alternative plan if making videos stopped for some reason.
@@GYTCommnts interesting! I'll have to check that out.
So, what's the ultimate goal of the game in-universe? There are suspicious creatures on islands, and the answer is to replace them with meaner and more badass creatures of the same type? How does that make anything better, again?
The reasoning of the story itself is that Dr. Skinner has gone rogue whereas Dr. Jackson and Dr. Andrews haven't, and one of the cruxes of these creatures is that they can be held in stasis through radio frequencies, meaning when all is said and done, the "good guys" can just pull all of their creatures back, no problem, whereas no one knows what Dr. Skinner has planned, but since her creatures are continually getting physically stronger better to take 'em out now than let her reach whatever her ultimate goal is. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of "twist" later in the story but there was no way I was ever gonna see it given the level of play required to make any story progress. :P
Not gonna lie, the game looks interesting but I don't know if I could wrap my head around that interface.
It's a little intimidating but the fact that everything you click on has an effect when you click on them, even the DigiLife logo, shows that a lot of thought was put into the UI to make sure players don't get completely lost. The worst UIs are the ones where clicking on things will do nothing if the conditions are not "correct" or where the results of a click are hidden from view. :P
I misread that as Natural Selection.
Same.
There is NOTHING natural about this game! ;)
Yeah Maxis put out some crappy non sim related games leading up to EA buying them (Like Read A Rama which LGR reviewed a while ago)