Don

Don joined the Creatures Community back in December 1996 as the webmaster of AmberCreatures, a known developer for each of the games and our unofficial Creatures technical support.

She is a regular visitor to alt.games.creatures, CC Chat, Sine and the main community forums, and even featured in the first ever Much ado about Norns newsletter here in 2000. She is also a wikicities administrator and wikipedia user.

In RL, Don is an overworked CTO, having previously worked at Maxis as a Content Designer on The Sims, with a Masters degree in Software.

She has a keen interest in cross-platform software development, graphic design, web engineering and online RPGs. Don mostly programs in C++, Java, PHP and SQL, designs graphics & layouts in Photoshop, and all too frequently upgrades her computer to keep up with the latest technology.

During her time off Don tries to steer away from computers where she can, enjoying travel, photography, shopping and the usual socialising.

Obsession




Don has been a Creatures fan since the initial release of Creatures 1 and has followed the series fanatically ever since. The above photo shows the main bulk of her Creatures hoard, which includes every Creatures box set ever released for every system (even though she does not own a PlayStation).

Summary

 * Gender: Female
 * Interests: Programming, alife, tech
 * Causes: Animal welfare and Endangered species
 * Games: Strategy and god games
 * Main Platform: Windows 7 Ultimate
 * Location: Sunny old England
 * Docking Station ID: Don
 * email: don&#40;at&#41;computerpetz.com

Previous Aliases

 * The Shee Apprentice
 * Don the AmberShee

Affiliations, Past and Present

 * Community Ambassador for Creatures Online
 * Moderator for Sparky's DS Aftermath
 * Op in the CC Chat irc room
 * Siner/Op in the Sine irc lobby
 * Web Coordinator for the CCSF
 * NeoPets CC Guild Leader
 * CCP Project Coordinator
 * Manager at Creatures Caves
 * Member of the now closed Metacore
 * Responsible for C12DS breed re-conversion
 * Op for the now closed JRChat chat

Interesting Facts

 * Don featured in the first ever Much ado about Norns here
 * She won second place in the first Creatures Survivor game, two votes behind Gryph.

What's In a Name
The story behind the AmberShee...

Having begun in the community as 'The Shee Apprentice' in 1996 while gathering resources, documentation and programming tools to learn how become a Creatures developer, it seemed appropriate that once ready to start making her own cobs, breeds and worlds that she should take a new name. Don had always had a fascination with the stone 'amber' and the secrets it might keep from the age of the dinosaur; So, after having completed a number of small projects such as new butterfly and fish critters for Creatures 1, she decided she should evolve into the 'AmberShee', and began work on an ancient AmberCity world, reminiscent of the later Ettin temple in the desert of Creatures 2.

=Programming=

Development Platforms
Her main development machines are as follows:
 * Intel Core 2 Quad @ 4 x 3.0GHz - Windows 7 Ultimate
 * Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2 x 2.13GHz - Windows XP Pro
 * Intel Core Duo @ 2 x 2.0GHz - Windows Vista Ultimate
 * Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.4GHz - Ubuntu Linux
 * Mac Mini G4 @ 1.42GHz - Mac OSX Leopard & Tiger
 * Intel P4 @ 2.66GHz - Windows 2003 Server
 * In need of an Intel Mac OSX Yosemite next

For testing purposes Don also runs Windows 95, Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro, Windows 2000 Server, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Ultimate, Red Hat 9 (pre Fedora), Fedora, Mandrake 10 (pre Mandriva), Mandriva, Knoppix, Mac OS 7.5 68k, etc.

Developer Information
Don has developed addons for Creatures, Dogz, Catz, Oddballz, Babyz and The Sims games, amongst other things.

A-Life Projects

 * The Habitat - Artificial life computer game that was in development but has since been put on hold (see right).

Creatures Development



 * C2 Script Range: 15,201-15,401
 * C3 Script Range: 15,600-15,700

=Creatures Collection= 

Norndolls and Norn Beanies
Don is the proud owner of a hand made Butterfly Norn Norndoll (shown right), designed especially by her good friend Data back in May 2003.

She also now has twenty two (22) official Norndolls measured at around 6.5 inches tall each: the group consists of ten purple Blueberry Norns, ten green Norns, and two brown Norndolls.

Merchandise
Don owns the full collection of Creatures posters: the four Creatures 2 posters and one Creatures 3 poster, both Creature Labs and Gameware Development mugs, the Creatures mouse mat, The Forest Scene background model, and a couple of souvenirs from the Hatchery model. 

Creatures Titles Owned


List of Titles
Don is a long term supporter of the Creatures series and therefore her complete collection includes thirty unique titles, twenty-eight box sets and two electronic-only releases:

Creatures 1 &#42;, Creatures 1 Life Kit #1, Creatures 1 Deluxe , Creatures 2 , Creatures 2 Life Kit #1 , Creatures 2 Life Kit #2 (electronic) , Creatures 2 Deluxe , Creatures 3 &#42;&#42;, Docking Station (electronic) , <font color="#000000">Creatures Internet Edition , <font color="#000000">Creatures Gold , <font color="#000000">Linux Creatures Internet Edition , <font color="#000000">Creatures Trilogy /<font color="#000000">Gold , <font color="#000000">Creatures Adventures , <font color="#000000">Creatures Playground , <font color="#000000">The Albian Years (Remastered) , <font color="#000000">Creatures Exodus (Remastered) , <font color="#000000">Creatures Village (Remastered) , <font color="#000000">Creatures Triple Pack , <font color="#000000">Creatures Exodus (Mac) , <font color="#000000">Creatures Village (Mac) , <font color="#000000">Creatures Exodus (Mac + Win) , <font color="#000000">Creatures Village (Mac + Win) , <font color="#000000">Creatures (PlayStation) , <font color="#000000">Creatures Raised in Space (PlayStation)  and <font color="#000000">Creatures (Gameboy Advanced). Plus the eleven <font color="#000000">Creatures Mall breeds, <font color="#000000">Creatures 1 Strategy Guide and <font color="#000000">Sea-Monkeys.

&#42; Three different versions, two of which are <font color="#000000">Windows and <font color="#000000">PowerPC Mac  dual-format games (see below). &#42;&#42; Full sized box release and DVD boxed <br clear="all" \>

Screenshots
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Clay Creatures
Back in 1998 Don, being the artistic type, even had a go at making a few Creatures 2 Norns of her own. The small tribe of clay creatures she produced were around 2cm high and included purple, brown and blue Norns. It wasn't long before she decided to try her hand at Grendels and Ettins as well in order to complete the miniature scene. See right.

Don's DIY Norndolls
Back in July 2010 Don began wondering how difficult it might be to make a Norn, so she bought a pack of felt and some supplies and, despite having not made a plush toy before and not being willing to take any of her dear Norns apart, nine attempts on here are the results:

<br clear="all" \>

The following gallery shows Don's progress on designing her own Norndoll template pattern and starting a small new Norn colony, with a little Nornish help holding the pieces ;)

The first Norn was nicknamed Beta Norn, then came an Aqua Norn, Burgundy Norn, Fuchsia Norn, a black Ninja Norn and a Ruby Norn. You can find the template v5.0 with full instructions, released during the CCSF 2010, here with prior preview photos here.

Related Links

 * AmberCreatures
 * WebPetz

Supported Creatures Groups

 * http://www.facebook.com/CreaturesCommunity (page)
 * http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2401342738 (Creatures Community group)
 * http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18158048076 (Docking Station group)
 * http://twitter.com/CreaturesFans
 * http://groups.myspace.com/creaturescommunity
 * http://community.livejournal.com/creaturesseries/
 * http://albianarchive.deviantart.com/
 * http://ccchat.creaturesvillage.com (CC Chat)