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Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:52 pm Post subject: From the Creatures Wiki
Well, it's been three weeks, and what have we done at the Creatures Wiki? Lots! As you can see from the stats, we've written over 64,000 words, added 550 pages and there are almost 20 people who've contributed significantly (5+ edits) so far.
Anyway, I figured it was time to show you some of what we've been up to. I've picked out a few of the most interesting pages, but do explore - and if you think there's something that you could add to, just click that Edit button and type away!
* Ever wanted to know how Creatures started? Curious to know just how many companies have been associated with Creatures? Wondering when your favourite game came out? Well, you might want to go read up on the History - we have a timeline that stretches right back to before many members of the CC were born!
* It's hard to mention history wtihout thinking of the man who started it all - Steve Grand. But how much do you really know about the man behind the norns? Find out now!
* As it says on the Websites page (which now contains over 60 sites), without the web to distribute COBs, chats, hints and tips, our community would be virtually nonexistant. One of the most recent additions to our websites section has been Amanora's Creatures, edited by Amanora herself - how many of those site revisions do you remember?
* Speaking of COBs, we've already got information about over 100 C1 COBs! Feel free to add some more - just go to the Community Portal, read up on how links work, then try making one in the Sandbox and click it to get to your new page.
* Finally, some of you may remember River and Petal from way back. Others may not. Either way, we've got 'em, and we put them up just for you. Have a look!
Anyway, I hope I've got you a bit interested - it's fun stuff! If you want to see what we're working on right now, check out the Recent Changes page. The Creatures Wiki needs you, so don't hesitate to just drop in and add your favourite COB, site, or say a few things about someone in the community that you respect.
I'm getting back to editing now, but I'll let you all know how it's going soon! -- GreenReaper
Joined: Aug 25, 2003 Posts: 342 Location: Somewhere.
Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2005 2:45 am Post subject:
Seeing as I'm a expert wikiuser, you can ask me questions on how to edit. I'm just happy you guys picked one of the two wiki softwares I know how to use. If you want examples on how a wiki should work, I recomend The Homestar Runner Wiki and/or Wikipedia _________________ Also known as Shaon, for those sticklers who really don't listen.
Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 12:15 am Post subject: Update!
I promised I'd let you know how the Creatures Wiki has been going, and here I am! And what's the news? The wiki is big! We've reached several milestones - 22 contributors, 5000 hits to the front page, 750 pages (and they're bigger pages now), along with almost a hundred entries in the websites category. Indeed, it's turned out to be the busiest wiki on Wikicities!
Best of all, there's now information on 100 people in the Wiki. Each of these people has their own story to tell. Let's look at the most recently added person, one who's name may be familiar to you . . .
Markham Carroll joined the Creatures Community in its heyday (at least if you aren't a real oldbie - the Spring of 1998, a few months before Creatures 2 was scheduled to come out. He made several COBs and agents for his site, Markham's Norn Land (which some of you may know as Creatures etc.). But he wasn't just a COBbler! For a time, he was a member of ERFN, protesting against norn torture. Later, he was part of a 3D online community called [url=http://creatures.wikicities.com/index.php/Active Worlds]Active_Worlds[/url]. Memebers of the CC colonized two areas in Active Worlds - Albiaville and New Tiburon - and the buildings they made remain largely to this day. If you have the time, they're worth a visit!
One part of the community many of you probably won't know about is the Creatures newsgroup, alt.games.creatures. Over the last eight years this group has amassed an amazing 152,000 posts - that's probably more than all the other Creatures forums put together! One of the most prolific posters to this group was Lis Morris, although she left in mid-2002 - read her wiki page to find out why. Lis was also involved in Albiaville, and she hosted a world called Tiburon after Albiaville was abandoned. Indeed, she did many things in the CC, creating new genomes to cure OHSS and even writing some of the manuals for the games you play.
I hope the Wiki can continue to grow until it contains most of the information about Creatures on the web - or at least links to it! For this to happen, we need people to find the wiki so they can contribute what they know. If people are looking for Creatures, they're going to search for it, and search engines look at which related sites link to each other - so if you have a creatures website, please consider adding a link to the Wiki ( http://creatures.wikicities.com/ ). If you use button images, you can use this one from the Creatures Wiki page:
- it's less than 1k, so shouldn't slow your pages up.
I think it's pretty cool how far the wiki has come in just over one month. With your help it can continue to grow; if you have something to share, get on there and write about it - the more the merrier!
Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:24 pm Post subject: 100,000 Words!
Just thought I'd let you guys know, thanks to you all we have reached 100,000 words on the Creatures Wiki - not bad for the six weeks it's been up!
Most of the improvement has been on existing articles, but there has been significant work done by Alien in adding information and pictures for all of her norn breeds (my favourite are the C2 Gargoyle Norns), as well as for her site, Alien's Creatures World. Take a look!
There has also been much debate about slink and the Creatures 2 genome, which caused a big fuss way back in 1998, although I suspect a lot of people here won't remember it because they weren't around (myself included! ).
At the same time, Creature Labs were developing Origin, a system similar in some ways to Active Worlds but with a real underlying artificial life simulation - in Origin, everything was Alife. This system was famously used to model the behaviour of fighter jets for the Ministry of Defense! As for Creatures, work had already begun on putting the inadequacies of the C2 engine to rest with the Creatures Evolution Engine, which ended up being the foundation of all current Creatures games.
Anyway, the next big number is 1000 articles, which we might just reach by the end of the month, with your help. Remember, if there is something you think is worth recording and isn't in the history page, put it in!
Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 3:46 am Post subject: Creatures chosen as Featured Wikicity!
Big news - Creatures Wiki has become the firstFeatured Wikicity! Out of the 134 Wikicities on the site, they chose ours to showcase as an "inspirational" wiki that "reflects well on Wikicities as a whole".
The administrators decided "to feature this one since it has developed a far larger community than WikiMac", so this honour goes to each and every person who contributed to the Wiki. All I can say is . . . GO US!
Just because we've been featured doesn't mean that the wiki is anywhere near complete, though, so if you've not yet tried your hand at editing, get on there and start helping out - hopefully there will always be new stuff to add!
Oh, and next time anyone tells you that the Creatures Community is dead, just show them this . . .
Known Projects has also been greatly expanded, now including such projects as Edynn, Gardenia, The Canopy, Openc2e, and MapEd. I, personally, can't wait for The Canopy and MapEd! Both will be fantastic, by the sounds of it.
Of course, there is still LOTS to do! You could have a look at the Wanted Pages, or Stubs! There is ALWAYS room for more!
The fanfiction section could use a little filling out, as well, and we thank Officer 1BD1 for her endless contributions to that section.
There are also a growing number of mysterious project pages, for projects no-one really knows about.. Such as Drifting Grounds, Norn Media and the CCDN... I wonder if its some sort of conspiracy... *looks around nervously*
I might even put up a teaser of my current project at some point...
Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 2:04 pm Post subject: New doings at the Creatures Wiki . . .
Wow - it's been a busy month over at the Creatures Wiki! I'm pleased to say that we've had over 60 contributors, 160 people pages, 150 Websites, 125 C1 COBs, 1,250 pages and more than 150,000 words in the wiki database.
So what have we been doing? Well, much of the work has been on steadily improving the pages that we already have. This is a process that never really ends - there is always something else to add! Don has been doing a lot of work in this area, but as Google has finally indexed us we are also getting quite a few people (both old and new) surfing in and contributing the odd edit, which is nice. It seems that some of the nice folks at Gameware have been watching, too.
However, there have been concerted efforts in many areas. If you've done something big and I've missed it out, my apologies - let us all know below! Without further ado, here's a few highlights:
Gryph has been trying to document the entire official ecology of Creatures 3 and Docking Station. So far 36 separate items are done, with more on the way, complete with pictures, descriptions, and links to both predators and prey for each.
As much as it's fun to look at the obscure past, for new users there are more important questions to answer, like "How can I get my creatures to eat cheese?" and "what on earth is that big green thing?!" Fortunately, furrykef has transferred and updated his Creatures 3/Docking Station guide to one of our sister sites, the Gameinfo Wiki, linking it into the Creatures Wiki so that interested surfers can easily learn more about the games.
Meanwhile, Alien has been busy adding a multitude of C2 and C3/DS breeds. I'm not sure which my favourites are - it's currently a tie between the Giraffen and the Morrigan's Lake Norns, although I think the Season Norns are cute too. We now have a staggering 80C2 norn breeds, and almost as many for C3/DS - it's a shame there's no world big enough to fit them all!
In related news, the Konnichiwa Norns were released just a month or so ago, and they've already proven quite popular here, although I don't know what I'm going to do with all that bamboo . . .
Some of you may have played a country management game called NationStates . . . but did you know that there were Creatures users on there? Yes, our very own Albia is a region in this great game, although it is currently in decline - perhaps if there are any players here, you could transfer in and clean out the carrot patch?
Frimlin once mentioned a breed idea that unfortunately never came to be: the Cookie Ettins. However, due to the magic of the CC, they have a complete breed story! Officer 1BDI has kindly permitted us to put this story up, as well as a picture of this rare breed. Perhaps now someone would like to make them a reality? I personally think they would look fabulous as either a C2 or C3 breed. There are too few ettins in the world!
Most recently, I've added my very own Creatures Sprite Thumbnail Viewer to the Wiki. As the name suggests, it allows Windows Explorer to show thumbnails of sprite files, just like other picture files. Useful when you're trying to find one out of the 1500 sprite files in your directory! It works for all Creatures games, and for all versios of Windows since 98, so don't hesitate to try it out.
And last, but by no means least, we have been granted a very special favour by the original Creatures 1 musician, Andrew "Barn" Barnabas. During my research I found out that Andrew had gone on to make an album of the music created during his work at Cyberlife; among other things, this included one 11-minute track called Creatures Montage. Naturally, I wanted to hear this track (especially after listening to the teaser samples), but of course the CD it was on sold out years ago. With this in mind, Andrew has been a great sport and agreed to let us host the entire track on the Creatures Wiki. Download it now, and then check out his site - Bob and Barn - for more top-quality game music!
In other good news, Wikicities as a whole is booming. Although we're one of the busiest wikicities, we pale before the recent addition of Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki repository - as you can imagine there are a lot more Star Trek geeks around than Creatures fans! Indeed, it's so busy that the Wikicities peope got three new servers to manage the increased load, so now the rather slow response times that had developed in the last month are a thing of the past. As you can see over at Alexa, it's made a difference!
It's definitely all go at the Creatures Wiki, and with all the old websites dug up recently, there's more to be done than ever before . . . so please, join in and help us make it even better!
Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 2:30 pm Post subject: Wall Street Journal mentions Creatures Wiki
Something I didn't mention in my last update (because it hadn't yet produced results) . . . about a week ago, I had a phone interview with a reporter from the Wall Street Journal. Wikicities is getting to be big news, and as one of the most popular wikis, the Creatures Wiki deserved a mention. So, one week later, here's the article!
I am the rather ominously-named "Mr Parry" and "his friend" (who had the idea to start up the Wiki in the first place) is Sgeo. I *did* give the reporter our usernames - as well as quite a few others! - but I guess for some reason they felt a real name would look better.
Joined: Aug 10, 2003 Posts: 1763 Location: With the Man in the Meadow
Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 10:14 am Post subject:
Woah, that is quite impresseive!
But then so is the Wiki.
Seems a good time to say this: Congratulations to everyone whos contributed something significant!
Im still working on finding time, and something I actually know worth mentioning. But I think the Wiki is a brilliant idea and ive already started using it a lot to get information. _________________ Remember in this game we call life that no one said its fair.
Hah, and it seems that they've locked it away under subscription! Wasn't like that yesterday, they seem to have a "one day free content" thing going . . . well, it wouldn't be right to post the whole of it, but here's the bit that concerns Creatures:
One of Wikicities' most prolific users is Laurence Parry, a 22-year-old computer programmer in Caterham, England, who co-founded a wiki dedicated to a computer-game series called Creatures and now spends up to several hours a day updating the site. Before the Creatures wiki existed, fans of the game swapped tips in scattered online forums.
Then Mr. Parry and his friend heard of Wikicities. The Creatures wiki has become one of the most robust sections of Wikicities, featuring the history of the series, summaries of each game and links to outside Web sites where users post their own updates for the games. "I mean, I don't know everything about Creatures," says Mr. Parry. "But I've learned an awful lot over the past three months."
Told you it was short! The rest of it talks about a few of the other wikis, and there's more about comparing it with Wikipedia (which doesn't have advertising, and which is more restrictive about content).
I think DSAftermath is missing out on these posts, and there may be a few people there who could contribute to the Wiki. _________________ Don AmberCreatures
I think DSAftermath is missing out on these posts, and there may be a few people there who could contribute to the Wiki.
Well, I considered posting it all on there, but I don't think it's such a good idea, because either people will complain about having long posts with lots of text links or for posting in HTML. It's not really the right medium for such posts.
I will send a short message suggesting that people have a look at one of these forums.
Posted: Sat May 14, 2005 3:05 pm Post subject: Creatures Wiki reaches 1500 articles!
Whew. Well, I've been busy stockpiling some cheese for the summer months, and when I looked back there were over 1500 articles on the Creatures Wiki, accompanied by over 750 images! 200 is a popular number, too - we now have 200 C1 COBs, as well as just over that number of breed images, people and websites! I strongly recommend you have a look at some of the latter - there are many cool sites still out there to enjoy. The C1 Norn Breeds category has also hit 20 breeds - quite astonishing when you consider that there are only 10 norn breed slots in the game!
Much of the month's work has been done by Don and Malkin, who have each made over 500 edits to articles on the wiki. Of course, we shouldn't forget Sgeo, Alien and Liam, who have each made over 100 non-article edits (usually uploading images). Our newest member, Syrra, also deserves special mention for adding all the COBs and agents at Helen's Bibble Directory in one night! In total, 12 of our 74 users have contributed over 100 edits to the Wiki, and half of them have double that. You can see everyone who's contributed at the statistics page - why not help out and get on there yourself?
And now a word from our sponsor . . .
Green? Depressed? Norns getting you down? Why not wash away those sorrows with a refreshing Norn-Bru? After all, you can't live on hootch forever - we tried! Comes in three original breed flavours!
Norn-Bru: It's the taste of a new generation!
Thist quenched? Good! If you're interested in more norn products, check out this newsgroup thread . . . just don't blame us if you find Equal Rights For Norns on your tail!
Now, time for a little fun and games! As you may be aware, people in the CC get bored quickly - just like norns! - and need regular doses of amusement. One of these, Acrophoboia, proved most popular with regulars from JRChat, one of whom had already achieved notoriety on alt.games.creatures with her creation of the Creatures Community Purity Test - a somewhat earlier counterpart to the What Creature are you? quiz!
While they're not off adventuring, there's nothing norns like better than a good sign-along, and since they're not so good with lyrics, many notable Hands have helped them by writing songs - what's your favourite? Others prefer to spend their time writing stories, including Lis Morris' Chronology Series, Alyssa's Grenorn series, Harlander's Bibbelon 5 and the various works of jcarrcwalk's sister, Anna Carroll.
Well, that's about all we have time for, but one last tidbit - some Creature-lovers, fearing that the bibble of norns was being lost among the stars, joined the search for messages from outer space by forming a SETI@home team. Let's hope they find Sphericus one day!
The Creatures Wiki is written and edited by people like you, the ordinary members of the Creatures Community - why not come join us?
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- the Spring of 
- it's less than 1k, so shouldn't slow your pages up. 
).
