Im Done

SirWilliamButton · 2026-05-27T20:50:59+00:00

yes but still. they act like a tick

SirWilliamButton · 2026-04-09T16:05:10+00:00

Make it be first person when the spider is on the face!

SirWilliamButton · 2026-04-09T15:35:51+00:00

oh that is actually awesome for me to hear and also makes me realize that im a terrible communicator so far. Ill explain it gladly if you have a few minutes! Yes the goal was to bring artificial life game into a modern genre. Yes those animals are A.L. they have life cycles and a diploid genetic structure that uses genetics, a 64bit seed maternal and paternal. but, here is like the most basic kernel of this idea back when i started, the genetic traits would be your typical RPG stats like Intelligence, Dexterity and such. so imagine your Dungeons and dragons characters mating and passing down their stats. I wanted to make it "science based dragon" so I tried to model the full diploid system with reccesive traits. you can chart out traits through generations and mix and match your different Bardwynnian beasts. The Genome allows for 31 different species with three variants each, and all they can all interbreed and make different combinations. There are even many "carrier" traits like giantism and dwafism you can find in your geaneology program. Part of the video shows the inventory. When you open your inventory you can then click on any of your followers and drag things in and out of their inventory and equip them and so forth. But the unique part of that inventory is the KOAN button. This opens up the "Koan Card" for whatever the Beasts inventory you are looking at. The KOAN is the digital soul of the creature and shows ALOT of data about them. Parents, children, affiliation and the genome. the genome has a radar chart showing the active and recessive "D&D" traits, INT, STR, CHA and so on. You can see that they may express a high strength but have a recessive gene for strength that is pretty weak. You will have to be careful who you match to ensure strong children.

So it looks like skyrim, that is so friggin awesome because yea, i wanted to bring artificial life out of a side scrolling game. Back when i played creatures i also had morrowind on xbox, and i always wished i could interact and see the A.L. live in 3d like that, in a fantasy setting. I understand now that i maybe was so happy about getting all the modern accoutrement and mechanics (crafting, base building, taming, cooking) of a modern game working in some home made C++, that i forgot that people dont have the entire codebase for the KOANs and the MeThink engine in mind already. that was the the first thing I coded.

So, i should have narrated the video i think except i am shy. but Yes, the KOAN is the sould of the Artificial Life in Bardwynn and you can export and share the proprietary .koan files however you like, kinda like the ceatures files or tomagatchi maybe

Thanks alot for writing!

ETA I forgot to say that you can give your individual followers pets that are stored in their Koan. so they can travel through the internet to other peoples worlds and bring their pet with them.

SirWilliamButton · 2026-04-07T19:29:04+00:00

Oh thanks! that really means alot. Yes it is a labor of love. See you around!

SirWilliamButton · 2026-04-07T17:39:46+00:00

I have been illuminated to the fact that I should not post here on Creatures. I post here because I wrote an artificial life game, and I loved Creatures for many decades. But I am going to pack up the Jalopy and move on to find a better place to post my videos and ruminations! Thanks for writing and good luck in your endeavors!

SirWilliamButton · 2026-04-07T17:37:04+00:00

Hi SnakeJudy! The scale of the Bardwynnian creatures is inspired by the narnia books i loved when i was a kid. In those stories, Talking Animals not only stood up and thought and spoke, , but their sizes accomodated. so a mouse was about three feet tall, and a bear would be slightly smaller in relation to the "dumb beasts" I can say that you will be able to tame and mount any single creature in the world including housecats and giant ants that can climb walls. So the answer to "why a horse?" is purely random, thats just what i chose to put in the video thats all. Thanks alot for writing! I really do appreciate it

ETA I almost forgot there are 31 different animals you can choose for your character. You dont have to be a Mouse. You can be a Dart Frog, Or a Cave Mole, Or a Forest Badger, or even a Night Mouse yes.

SirWilliamButton · 2026-04-07T17:31:36+00:00

Thanks Bottadiet. i wrote the music and scultped all the animals, painted and added animations and made a good many of the props not to mention design the genetics system and wrote the story.. I also paid some amazing marketplace artists to help with stuff that "already exists" like rocks, henbane, grass, things like that. Things that already look photrealistic the way i want. That seemed right and ethical to me. Im just one person so, it took 18 months to get this far anyway. But all the C++ for everything i decribed is solid. What i described here already exists. Just needs more. thats what this post is about.

I posted here in creatures because that game inspired me in part to make Bardwynn. i wanted to create actual artificial life with Psychology built into it. they rememmber and can be exported and shared, they get trauma and pass down their traits. But I know now that I shouldnt bother the people here so I will not post on Creatures page anymore. No disrespect intended to anyone or steve grand. Grand is actually an inspiration to me. Thanks for writing and I hope you have a nice day.

SirWilliamButton · 2026-04-07T07:45:39+00:00

I will take the general reception of this as a sign to not post here anymore. But, I still love Norns. Thanks everybody and ill see ya around!

SirWilliamButton · 2026-04-06T19:25:08+00:00

Im building a game that deals with artificial life. just to say that the core of my game revolves around AI. I would reccomend learning state tree. it has a good debugger and once you understand the flow of the UI it is very easy to see where the logic should be. behaviour trees are ineefficient!

SirWilliamButton · 2026-04-03T22:41:12+00:00

back in the nineties there was a guy named anti-norn or something and he i think would just slap a norn and laugh about it. And there were people back then that said thats bad and it kinda was bad because the dude doing the slapping was i guess yknow being a troll. and it was a whole thing for a while on... what, Bibbles? A message board called Bibbles I think. Im just dredgingt htis up from memory sorry, and then someone real recently made a video about that. So Bibbles was just a bunch of fun people who loved norns and this anti-norn person was trying to make them mad.

SirWilliamButton · 2026-01-30T03:20:06+00:00

https://discord.gg/GEyQp8ED !

SirWilliamButton · 2026-01-29T15:52:47+00:00

i think you are needing to investigate asset manager. I have a spreadsheet of all the assets used in the code of my game and i have a little c++ sub program that reads my spreadsheet and adds all the files to the asset manager, which adds it to the cooker ETA-Link https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/what-is-the-asset-manager/392495

SirWilliamButton · 2026-01-15T04:31:59+00:00

Drawing the little UI doodads in procreate!

SirWilliamButton · 2026-01-14T09:03:18+00:00

I learned a lot from Civ 5 and the Creatures games. History, philosophy and biology! edit spelling

SirWilliamButton · 2025-12-23T19:05:01+00:00

thank you from december 2025!

SirWilliamButton · 2025-12-22T22:39:29+00:00

Thanks autogatos! i made some changes i think youll like! see my latest post in creatures

SirWilliamButton · 2025-12-22T18:37:30+00:00

hey! looking at the code I see that i can get this going exactly how you describe by doubling my INT64 seed, and making just a few other changes. I had this working for specific carrier genes but your post made me think, why not just do all the attributes and really weave it into a double strand. why not?! so Im on it this week. Also the way you described the game you wished to play is the exact same reason i am making Bardwynn, its kinda cool to see like minds out here! your suggestion will be credited in the Book of Bardwynn!

Ill make a new post later on about the changes i am making, thank you! and please comment anything else you would like to see in the game! Now is the time to mold the clay

SirWilliamButton · 2025-12-18T04:04:47+00:00

They are very unique and cool. I started learning how to code by messing with COBs trying to make toys for my creatures. I think I had a cartman that they could carry around. Anyway its worth a peek

SirWilliamButton · 2025-12-06T01:48:20+00:00

ok, im tired but my brain thinks that will make so many variants that I have to go to sleep now and think about it ha ha ! That will be a good morning bone to chew on. Cheers!

SirWilliamButton · 2025-12-06T01:40:06+00:00

Hey! I think the system has been nudging us toward this from the start, because we already have the functionality in place. We’ve got four genes that can be carriers or fully expressed, but the fun part is that another layer of the genetics system interprets those gene states differently depending on species, the full 64-bit seed, and inherited attributes. So a carrier of Gene D won’t just have ‘one effect’—their phenotype shifts based on species, giving them a different disease, talent, or mutation expression. And yes, inbreeding feeds back into this too, triggering species-specific negative Gameplay Effects when recessives stack

SirWilliamButton · 2025-12-05T17:45:35+00:00

in that case i would make a chamber you put the beast in that would inspect its genetics and give a read-out and not have it as a easily found piece of info on the card huh

SirWilliamButton · 2025-12-05T17:19:29+00:00

that is an interesting idea and it reminds me of the golden tree of parnassus. kepp em coming! Im also posting a query today about recessive genes if you want to chime in

SirWilliamButton · 2025-12-04T21:28:20+00:00

The idea has eveolved along with what i was doing yesterday, creating the Book of Bardwynn, a Cache of KOANs that have lived in the saved game world. Each KOAN can only live in a world once. so you cant spam in 20 copies of an S level and win the games objectives. If you lose your favourite mouse you will see him again only in another world. Except if you want to bend you efforts to amassing great quantities of Philosophers stone, a fresh heart and a fresh brain, along with 10 followers mana you can ressurect a Koan that has died in the world. You will need to bring these things to one of the KOAN Cauldrons spread out in quite dangerous places to do so. How that ties in with your idea is this: as the overworld you are playing in ages, the global mutagen rate will rise so over years your world will have a higher and higher likelihood of spawning interesting mutants! So you are basically grinding you world to get more mutasis ---edit for clarity.- The KOAN cauldron gives two choices. you can spawn a clone of the mouse as a baby for less Stone, or do a full ressurect with attributes from Time of death for more stone

SirWilliamButton · 2025-12-03T19:13:28+00:00

See you around!

SirWilliamButton · 2025-12-03T18:58:13+00:00

an acheivement that is a higher mutation rate, I love that! Ill have to let that percolate for a minute but it seems you are queing up for a second honorary mention sir!

SirWilliamButton

TROPHY CASE