Update: Muco, learning machine and dragonflies.

We have just deployed an update to add a few improvements to the game. With Steam, this update should be downloaded and applied automatically. The changes will then appear in all worlds created afterwards.

Here is what we did:

- We added some small improvements to Muco, the egg laying machine. A small new button between the existing gender buttons will randomize the gender of eggs laid.

In combination with the "Random" breed added in a previous update, that means you can now use Muco to create norns of a certain breed with a random gender, a random breed with a certain gender, or randomize both breed and gender of eggs.

You can now also scroll backwards through the breed list with a right click on the breed portrait.

- The holistic learning machine is known to sometimes captivate creatures who proceed to use it over and over again. To discourage this behavior, the learning machine will now detect if a creature has previously used it and eject it quicker and further away.

- We did some research into the more fickle parts of the Creatures 3 ecology. Stickletrout in the norn terrarium are particularly known for dying out quickly and many remedies have been attempted that focus on the stickletrout by providing them with more sources of food.

However, we determined Stickletrout population typically dies after one of their main food sources goes extinct - the dragonflies.

And dragonflies, we found, can die out very quickly if there is even a slight gender imbalance in their population. The reason for this was a bug that caused peculiar behavior in the dragonflies: If dragonflies get hungry, they start looking for a target to hunt and eat. If dragonflies want to reproduce, they start looking for a mate.

However, if a dragonfly that was looking for a mate gets hungry, it believes it already has a target to feed on - its mate. During a gender imbalance in the dragonfly population, the gender less represented becomes a bigger target for dragonflies seeking a mate by the majority. Now, if those dragonflies get hungry, the population quickly goes extinct.

By fixing this bug, the dragonfly population becomes more stable, and so does the stickletrout population in turn. We also fixed a rare issue in their collision script that could result in bounding box errors.

Of course this does not mean they will never die out now - the balance of ecology is a precarious thing - but addressing this simple bug does increase their stability by magnitudes on average (we're talking about hours vs. minutes of survival).

We're looking forward to see what your experience is to consider more potential changes in the future!