Happy genome tinkering with Alien

First: let me explain some terms

Genom = totality of all genes

Gene = small unit where informations are stored, informations about how a creatures should look like, how his organism is organised etc.

Pigment gene = A part of information of how a norn's fur colour should be. If you want to have a norn keep his colours during the whole life, you'll need pigment genes for all of it's life stages. And there must be three of them for each of the life stages. Why three? Well, that leads us to ...

Addition colours or: how to determine a colour of a norn

Look at this diagram:

There are three so-called addition colours. The basic colours are: Red, Green and Blue (big circles). The area where they overlap each other are the mixtures of those colours. A mixture of green and red will get yellow, red and blue get pink. But what happens if we mix all of the three basic colours? Look on the middle area where all three circles overlap: the result is White!

What did you say? "But my water colours are different when mixed!" Right. BUT: Water colours are so-called subraction colours. But norns have addition colours. So forget your water colours, they won't help you at all in finding the right colour for your norn!

But then, what's helping me in finding the right colour for my norn?

You'll need only one program which will make us able to look on addition colours. Did you say "I'm sure, I don't have this program"?. Wrong! You got it on your computer. Look under the start menu > accessories > paint. Paint? Yes! Paint! That's all we need right now.

Open it up! I'll look much like this:

In the menu bar, go to "options" and then in the drop down menu on "edit palette" (sorry, my program's in German, that's why it looks like this on the picture!)

Now a new window will pop up with some tiny colour boxes. Ignore these and click on the button "define colours" Now the whole box will look like this:

The area with all the rainbow colours you can move the little cursor around in order to find a colour that suits you. In the picture above you can see it in the yellow area. You can see the chosen colour in the bigger coloured box beneath it. Of course, it's yellow! On the right side of the rainbow colour window you can see an brightness scale. Move the small arrow up and down to make the colour brighter or darker. You will always see the current chosen colour in the bigger box underneath. Try it out, move the cursor around, make it brighter or darker. Get yourself accustomed to it. Can you find a nice bright violet?

- Break point-

Ready? Shall we go on? Okay.

Now, you decided for a colour. As the picture above shows that nice yellow, I'll take that one, okay? Now, did you notice the big red arrow in the picture? Of course you did and you were wondering all the time what it means! Okay here comes the explanation: It points out three little boxes, for Red, Green and Blue (read from the top). Does that ring a bell? Yes! I mentioined exactly these colours as our basic colours for addtion colours! The numbers in the boxes tell, how much red, green and blue have to be mixed to get the colour in the bigger box on their left side. Think of it like a recipe: for the yellow I choose it needs a value of 222 of red, 239 of green and 16 of blue. The maximum value for each basic colour can be 255. The higher the value of the three colours the brighter the colour gets.

So, what values did you get for you violet?

Now, let's do some Norns!

As I said, colours in norns are addition colours. Each pigment gene contains information about one of the three basic colours. And that's why it needs three pigment genes, each for one of the basic colours to determine a single colour you can see on the screen. A norn needs those informations for every life stage, so for every life stage a norn gets in it needs three pigment genes. A norn can have seven different life stages: baby, child, adolescent, youth, adult, old, senile.

Let's reckon quickly: three genes for each of the basic colours (red, green, blue) and a norn's life contains seven different life stages...well 3 times 7 equals 21. So we will need 21 pigment genes in order to maintain a colour in a norn during its whole life.

Enough theory, let's get practial!

Okay, let's make a Norn that will have a yellow colour during it's whole life. We noted down the information of the colour table from the paint program, 222 for red, 239 for green, 16 for blue. (If you haven't done before, please download now the needed files and unzip them).

1. open the Genetics Editor

2. In the menu bar click on"File" und then click on "open".

3. Browse through your folders and search for the file called "bunt.gen" you downloaded before from this page here.

4. double click on the file "bunt.gen"

5. In the left window click on "Description" . Now all the genes will be sorted by their function. Makes it easier to find all the pigment genes!

6. Find the pigment genes (scroll down the list)!

7. This genome we loaded is kind of a "template" and already contains 21 pigment genes.

8. Okay, the pigment genes could be sorted a bit better, but we will make it anyway. We already know that each life stage needs the full information for the colour (yellow) we wanted to have for the norn. As the norn should keep it's colour during all life stages, we have to set each of the three pigment genes for the three basic colours the same way for each life stage.

9. Find the first ot the pigment genes in the list. "Pigment gene Blue" . Just click on it to open it.

10. Now you can see the settings of that gene in the window on the right side. If you want to know what all that means, look on my Genome Editor page.

11. Do you find the term "Pigment Data" ? Good, and I think you already found that box with "Blue" in it. Okay, now we know this gene must be a blue pigment gene. And there's another box, titled "Intensity" and a ruler and a box with a number besides that. The number is "0" (zero).

12. Do you still remember what we noted down for our yellow colour? It was "16", wasn't it? Okay, then change the number in the intensity box from 0 to 16. You can also move the ruler to increase the intensity.

13. Congratulation! You changed you first pigment gene! How do you feel, Mr. Frankenstein? :-)

14. Now let's go on, we haven't finished yet. Click on the next pigment gene in the list in the left window. It's also a blue one. Do the same as we already have done with the first pigment gene. When you've done that, take the next pigment gene and do the same again.

15. Click on the 4th gene now. Oops! That's not a blue one, now it's written "Red". Don't worry, just a short glance on our list for the yellow colour and it tells us we have to change the intensity to 222!

16. And the next pigment gene in the list is a green one. What do you do? Exactly! You change the intensity value to 239, the value we wrote down for our yellow colour.

17. Next one. Red pigment gene. Change again the intensity value to 222 as you did before with the last red pigment gene.

18. And again the next one. Go on and change all pigment genes just as you did before: blue ones to intensity 16, red ones to intensity 222, green ones to intensity 239.

19. Phew! Bit boring, isn't it? Well, but you have to concentrate, otherwise the colour won't be right in the end!

20. Finished? Changed all genes? Excellent!

21. Now comes the hard part! No, just kidding. :-) In the menu bar click on "File" and then "save as". And now attention! Save that file in the folder Programs> Creatures3 > Genetics! Give it a new name...err... what about "bunt2.gen"? Okay, not very inventive, but it'll do for the moment. Important: the name of the file must not exceed 8 characters! Then click on OK. Please make really, really sure that the file is saved in the right folder as mentioned above!

Phew! that took quite a long time! But how do I get now my Norn??

Do you happen to have the EggMaker from JayD in your world? You can also download it from Mummy's HP . Unzip the downloaded .zip file and put the Eggmaker.agent file into the folder "My agents". The file named "replicator.cos" goes into the subfolder "001 World" in the folder "Bootstrap".

No open your C3 game and your world.

Go to the agent injector and inject the Eggmaker. It looks like this:

Done? Good, then let's go on!

1. Click in the text area below the name "Egg Maker". Now type there: bunt2 (or the name you gave the before saved genome) Please note: you don't have to type the file extension ".gen", just the name of the file.

2. Press "enter" on your keyboard.

3. See that small symbol "female"? If you click on that it will change to a "male" symbol and that's how you determine the sex of the norn you want to "produce" with the Egg maker. Err...let's make the egg a female one, okay?

4. Click on the red button (below the button with the arrow on it)

5. An egg!!

6. And now?

7. Hatch it!!! :-))

Have fun!