Creatures Community

Introduction
The Creatures Community is what we see around us every time we we browse Creatures Caves, Albia 2000, or Gameware Development's Forums. It is the thing that has made the Creatures series so successful - and is one of the most loyal fanbases there is. It has been going strong since 1996, when the first Creatures game was released. There have been many, many things that have influenced the Community. Feel free to add stuff in!

The Beginnings
It all started on a balcony in 1992, where Steve Grand thought up the first inklings of what would once become the Creatures series. Work started on the game in 1993 and the first game was released in 1996 (mid-1997 in the US). Creatures was adored by both genders of all ages, and was a virtually instant hit - especially in the US, where the UK release had been getting rave reviews. Cyberlife released a number of addon-packs for Creatures, including the Purple Mountain Norns, and a number of new kits, including the Observation Kit, and the Injector Kit, which allowed you to inject Cyberlife's COB packs. Soon after, CL made a Life Kit, and sold it at their Creatures Mall. It included 2 entirely new Creatures breeds, and a number of Cobs. Another thing they made and sold at the Mall was the C1 Genetics Kit, which many people found extremely useful in their developments.

These caused positive waves throughout the small but growing community, and soon, as always happens, people were looking to create addons for the game. No-one knew how to do it, though, and it was an Alexander Laemmle who came up with the solution. He called it a .cos file, standing for Creatures Object Source. He built a program called the Creatures Object Editor (COE) to make .cob files from these .cos files and .spr files, which you could alter in the program, as well as copy/paste (which enabled people to make graphics in other programs and then copy it into the program). COE was met with great success, and soon other programs were springing up, including Cyberlife's COB Maker and the later BoBCoB by BoBWare. Another fantastic program to spring up was BORG, again by Alexander Laemmle. A fantastic program which is virtually invaluable now when people play Creatures 1.

This signalled the first 'Era' in the Creatures Community, an era of development, excitement, and discoveries.

A host of COB makers (or COBblers) sprung up, each intent on creating the best addons they could for Creatures, including Alexander Laemmle, LummoxJR, Slink, SteerPike, Stefan Kuske, and Steve Dismukes.

Lis Morris

Lis Morris was, and still is, one of the most amazing developers in the Creatures Community.

Her more notable projects include the Canny Norns, the Hippy Norns (a Creatures breed which turned drive decreases into energy), and the Infirmary, the first third-party metaroom for Creatures 3. Many of her projects influenced the way the developers of today look at genetics and CAOS.

HomeCreatures

HomeCreatures originally came about in the summer of 1999, with only a large 'Coming Soon!' splash and the promise to become one of the most successful community hubs to date. It was one of the first 3rd party sites to have its own domain (one other being CreaturesLife.net) and soon a message appeared on CL.net about its forthcoming 'sister site'. About this time, many rumours were beginning to fly about this now-famous site.

Soon Miff was offering hosting at HomeCreatures, and many who had been use Geocities and Xoom jumped at the chance of hosting at www.yourname.homecreatures.com

Miff, of course, was helping the rumours along in JRChat and a few forums by dropping tantalizing hints. People were still completely in the dark however, and wanted to know more about HomeCreatures.

...

Unfortunately, HomeCreatures went down and took a lot of sites down with it. Some were revived, but others are only a fading memory, which most of us will fondly cherish.

One of the first uses of the term "Creatures Community" was by Toby Simpson in a newsgroup posting, although Lis Morris suggested that it only came into popular use after CptSiskoX and the Avenger Squadron attacked alt.games.creatures.

--- There is also a Creatures Community (neopets guild) at Neopets