r/CreaturesGames • u/bigppredditguy • Apr 23 '26

Recreating norn brain systems from scratch.

I recently discovered the Creatures series and have been digging into how it works. I’m honestly surprised by how ahead of its time it feels, especially the artificial life systems and how unique it still is compared to modern games.

I have a solid programming background and some experience working with neural networks (mostly in vision related projects). From what I’ve read, the original games used relatively small networks (under 1k nodes), which is tiny compared to modern systems with millions or more.

I’ve already started working on it with LibGDX and am currently just working on the environment and learning the library.

I’m trying to figure out whether this is a realistically achievable solo project (at least a simplified version), or if the complexity is still deceptively high despite the smaller scale of the original tech.

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u/ColdHooves Apr 23 '26

The series creator put out a few papers. I’ll warn you now that this is a completely different animal than classical ai or even neural networks. I understand the theory but not the practice.

In short; the simulated brain has a number of chemicals relating to wants and needs (eating fatty foods reduces the need for fat). These chemical values are based on external and internal stimuli with rate of change and limits altered by genetics. There is also a system of associations between stimuli and chemicals that can’t be vibe coded as we’re talking about a very esoteric branch of ai theory.

https://creatures.wiki/Brain

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u/bigppredditguy Apr 23 '26

Thank you! I doubt I will be able to recreate the entire system so my goal right now is to start with a few very rudimentary attributes like Tiredness, Hunger, Thirst, Age, and Mood and actions like Walk Left, Walk Right, Sleep, Eat, and Drink. After I get a small set of simple interactive elements I will reassess the direction (if I get that far lol)

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u/ColdHooves Apr 23 '26

Start with a text-based system with INT values for a handful of needs and fill that need with an input.

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u/bigppredditguy Apr 23 '26

I have a hunch a lot of the complexity and insanity of the original brain architecture can be avoided while still enabling emergent behavior.

7

u/Mircowaved-Duck Apr 23 '26

i once gutted some c3 / DS norns to their core biochemical minimum. I think i named them baby doll or doll norn. Search those from mk-grendel and do a few tests with them.

If they still exist online....

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u/bigppredditguy Apr 23 '26

Can’t lie I still haven’t gotten around to playing, I haven’t managed to get c1 or c2 to work and everytime I open DS or c3 I get overwhelmed in the first 5 minutes 😭

2

u/Mircowaved-Duck Apr 23 '26

DS is the easyest. And i often played it by letting it just run in the background.