Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
In Creatures, the user 'hatched' small furry creatures called Norns into a world called Albia, and had to teach them how to talk, feed themselves, and protect themselves against vicious creatures called Grendels.
The program was significant as it was one of the first to code artificial life organisms from the genetic level, upwards. This meant that the Norns and their DNA could develop and evolve in increasingly diverse ways, unpredictable by the makers. By breeding certain Norns with others, traits could be passed on to following generations. Most interestingly, the Norns turned out to behave similarly to living creatures. This was seen as an important insight into how real world organisms may function and evolve. Earlier ALife programs had worked by giving their organisms a limited set of commands and parameters, and seeing whether the way the subjects behaved was realistic.
Creatures was developed as a consumer product by Grand's own research company, Cyberlife Technology, and was released by Mindscape. The program was instantly successful, and an online community of players soon formed, swapping Norns, creating new objects for Albia, sharing tips on how to play the game and anecdotes about unexpected evolutionary changes that they had seen, and even creating new breeds of Norn. At one point, the Creatures online community was the largest of its type in existence.
In the late 1990s, the decision was taken to split Cyberlife Technology into two parts; Grand formed a new organisation, Cyberlife Research, to focus on the production of new ALife technologies, while the remainder of the company was renamed Creature Labs, and made a formal games development company.
Sequels to Creatures, including Creatures 2, Creatures 3, Creatures Adventures and Creatures Playground, were released by Creature Labs in subsequent years. One sequel, an internet based game called Docking Station, was released free of charge, and allowed the user to place their Norns in an online world inhabited by the Norns of other users.
Development was suspended on future Creatures games in early 2003 when Creature Labs ceased operations, but apparently development and trademark rights have since been purchased by a separate company named Gameware, Ltd.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Creatures."
"CREATURES" is a plural of: creature. |
Date "CREATURES" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1010. (references) |
Crosswords: CREATURES |
| English words defined with "CREATURES": aerial, animated ♦ elfin, Enthymeme ♦ gnomish ♦ Hexicology, hominian, hominid, Hyperdulia ♦ nanomia ♦ Providence ♦ tame. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "CREATURES": Ancient Mariner, Articles interchanged, Artificial Life ♦ biomechanic, biomechanics, bottom feeder, BOUNTY ♦ Dead ♦ Flee, FLY ♦ Gnomes ♦ INSECTIVORA, Israfil', Ithuriel ♦ Kaswa ♦ magnitude ♦ One-Eyed, Other ♦ Public-house Signs, put to sleep/to ♦ Sheb-seze, Stable Keys. (references) |
| Etymologies containing "CREATURES": Vivarium. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Kinda makes you nostalgic for the homicidal creatures, doesn't it? (Scooby-Doo; writing credit: William Hanna; Joseph Barbera) Between my wedding ring and this picture of my ex-wife, Sylvia, I will never ever forget that women are alien creatures, capable of great destruction. (The Pandora Directive; writing credit: Aaron Conners) The creatures of Earth have no stomach for judicial murder. (Doctor Who; writing credit: Basil Caplan; Martin Defalco) Well, they're probably just creatures, Moltar. (Space Ghost Coast to Coast; writing credit: Ben Karlin) None of this was here, it was a giant space and there were creatures, and they were growling, and I heard a voice say 'Zuul', it was right here! (Ghost Busters; writing credit: Dan Aykroyd; Harold Ramis) | |
Lyrics | Look at all the happy creatures dancing on the lawn. (LOOKIN' OUT MY BACK DOOR; performing artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival) Creatures crawl in search of blood (Thriller; performing artist: Michael Jackson) Night creatures call (Thriller; performing artist: Michael Jackson) | |
Clever | All of us are God's creatures...just some are more creature than others. (references; author: unknown) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Dead Creatures (2001) Sea Creatures (1974) All Creatures Great and Small (1974) Creatures the World Forgot (1971) The Eye Creatures (1965) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
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Periodicals |
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Theater & Movies | |||
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High Tech |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Beautiful marine diatoms as seen through a microscope. These tiny creatures have silica exoskeletons. Credit: Paths Less Taken - NOAA at the Ends of the Earth. |  | Narragansett Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve A deer tick - Ixodes dammini - is quite abundant on Prudence Island. These small creatures can be quite dangerous to humans as they are carriers of Lyme disease. Credit: National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERR). |
 | Jobos Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. The Clapper Rail, or salt-water marsh hen, spends most of its time between mangrove roots feeding on little creatures that live in estuarine waters. Credit: National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERR). |  | Figure 29. Dredging harrows used to stir up the bottom in order to capture the small crustaceans and other creatures that lived there. This instrument was fabricated at the Oceanographic Museum in 1939. Credit: Sailing for Science - the NOAA Fleet Then and Now. |
 | By what canon of art do we expose these charming creatures to the weather?. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Pogo]. I instructs my pupils to bring back some of Nature's creatures .. Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Author | Quotation |
Alexander Pope | Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate. |
Andrew Marvell | Self-preservation, nature's first great law, all the creatures, except man, doth awe. |
Benjamin Disraeli | Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. |
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe | Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent. |
| From the forces that all creatures bind, who overcomes himself his freedom finds. | |
John Milton | Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we sleep and when we awake. |
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne | The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest. |
W. S. Gilbert | I love my fellow creatures -- I do all the good I can -- yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man! |
William Shakespeare | O curse of marriage that we can call these delicate creatures ours and not their appetites! |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Author | Date | Quotation |
John Locke | 1690 | This rule, which the infinite wise maker hath set to the works of his hands, we find the inferior creatures steadily obey. (Second Treatise of Government) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Title | Author | Quote |
A Christmas Carol | Dickens, Charles | Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | This rule of silence had had this effect that, in the whole convent, speech was withdrawn from human creatures and given to inanimate objects. |
Gulliver's Travels | Swift, Jonathan | And these were all the notions he had concerning that faculty of lying, so perfectly well understood among human creatures. |
Walden | Thoreau, Henry David | Though it is now dark, the mind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their notes. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | They are microscopic living creatures that pass from person to person. (references) | |
Lexicography | Devil's Dictionary | MAGNITUDE, n. Size. Magnitude being purely relative, nothing is large and nothing small. If everything in the universe were increased in bulk one thousand diameters nothing would be any larger than it was before, but if one thing remain unchanged all the others would be larger than they had been. To an understanding familiar with the relativity of magnitude and distance the spaces and masses of the astronomer would be no more impressive than those of the microscopist. For anything we know to the contrary, the visible universe may be a small part of an atom, with its component ions, floating in the life- fluid (luminiferous ether) of some animal. Possibly the wee creatures peopling the corpuscles of our own blood are overcome with the proper emotion when contemplating the unthinkable distance from one of these to another. |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| Speaker | Term | Phrase(s) |
James Madison | 1809-1817 | The latter are but the creatures and vicegerents of the former. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| "CREATURES" is generally used as a noun (plural) -- approximately 98.15% of the time. "CREATURES" is used about 1,831 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (plural) | 98.15% | 1,797 | 4,708 |
| Lexical Verb (-s form) | 1.36% | 25 | 69,787 |
| Noun (proper) | 0.49% | 9 | 117,287 |
| Total | 100.00% | 1,831 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "CREATURES": doleful creatures ♦ fellow creatures ♦ living creatures. Additional references. | |
| Hypenated Usage | |
Ending with "CREATURES": sea-creatures. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
creatures.ca heavenly | 17 |
brilliant creatures.co.uk | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "CREATURES"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | farefis (blood, cognation, family, fellow creatures, folk, kin, kindred, kinsfolk, relative). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Arabic | كائنات (world). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | Lebenwesens, Geschöpfe. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | embertársak (fellow creatures). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Kanji | 風の子 (outdoor creatures), 水""物 (aquatic life, water creatures), 一切衆" (all creatures). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Katakana | すいせいせいぶつ (aquatic life, water creatures), かぜの" (outdoor creatures), いっさいしゅじょう (all creatures). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | eaturescray ближние (fellow creatures). (various references) srodne duše (fellow creatures, kindred spirits). (various references) varelser. (various references) canlılar (lives, living beings, living creatures, the living, the quick). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | viri, virique, viris, virisque, viritas, viro, virorum, virum. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Language | Date | Source | Romans Chapter 8, Verse 19 |
| Greek (transliterated) | 250 BC | Septuagint | H gar apokaradokia thV ktisewV thn apokaluyin twn uiwn tou qeou apekdecetai |
| Latin | 405 | Vulgate | Nam expectatio creaturae revelationem filiorum Dei expectat |
| Old English | 990 | West Saxon | Meþincð þæt uru andweard ðrowunge nis weorð þære wiðmetennes mit þæm wuldor þe sceal beon gecyðd on us. Gesceaft onbideð on geornful wenan þe þa suna Godes weorðað gecyðd. |
| Middle English | 1395 | Wyclif | For the abidyng of creature abidith the schewyng of the sones of God. |
| Renaissance English | 1526 | Tyndale | Also the fervent desyre of the creatures abideth lokynge when the sonnes of God shall appere |
| Jacobean English | 1611 | King James | For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. |
| Victorian English | 1833 | Webster | For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. |
| Basic English | 1964 | Ogden | For the strong desire of every living thing is waiting for the revelation of the sons of God. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Language | Romans Chapter 8, Verse 19 |
| Cebuano | Kay ang tibuok kabuhatan nagapaabut nga mahinamon sa pagkapinadayag sa mga anak sa Dios; |
| Croatian | Doista, stvorenje sa svom žudnjom išèekuje ovo objavljenje sinova Božjih: |
| Danish | Thi Skabningens Forlængsel venter på Guds Børns Åbenbarelse. |
| Dutch | Want het schepsel, als met opgestoken hoofde, verwacht de openbaring der kinderen Gods. |
| Finnish | Sillä luomakunnan harras ikävöitseminen odottaa Jumalan lasten ilmestymistä. |
| French | Aussi la création attend-elle avec un ardent désir la révélation des fils de Dieu. |
| German | Denn das ängstliche Harren der Kreatur wartet auf die Offenbarung der Kinder Gottes. |
| Haitian Creole | Tout kreyasyon Bondye a ap tann konsa kilè pitit Bondye yo va parèt. |
| Indonesian-Bahasa Sehari-hari | Seluruh alam menunggu dengan sangat rindu akan saatnya Allah menyatakan anak-anak-Nya. |
| Indonesian-Terjemahan Lama | Karena dengan pengharapan yang sangat rindu ternanti-nantilah segala makhluk akan kenyataan anak-anak Allah. |
| Italian | La creazione stessa attende con impazienza la rivelazione dei figli di Dio; |
| Latvian | Jo arî radîba ilgodamâs gaida Dieva bçrnu parâdîðanos. |
| Maori | Ko te tumanako hoki o te mea i hanga e tatari ana ki te whakakitenga mai o nga tama a te Atua. |
| Norwegian | For skapningen lenges og stunder efter Guds barns åpenbarelse; |
| Portuguese | Porque a criação aguarda com ardente expectativa a revelação dos filhos de Deus. |
| Rumanian | De asemenea, wi firea awteaptq cu o dorinyq knfocatq descoperirea fiilor lui Dumnezeu. |
| Shuar | Tsawant jeamtai Yus Ashí ni shuarin Niijiai métek ti shiir awajsartatui. Nuin nekas Yusa Uchirí ainia nu ti paant nekanattawai. Nu tsawantan Wáinkiatniun Ashí Yus najanamu írunna nu ti Nákainiawai. |
| Swahili | Viumbe vyote vinatazamia kwa hamu Mungu awadhihirishe watoto wake. |
| Swedish | Ty skapelsens trängtan sträcker sig efter Guds barns uppenbarelse. |
| Uma | Tempo toi, hawe'ea to napajadi' Alata'ala mepopea-pea hante nono lentora, mpopea tempo-na Alata'ala mpopehuwu kabohe tuwu' ana' -ana' -na. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
Misspellings | |
"CREATURES" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: craeture, craetures. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "CREATURES" (pronounced krē"kherz) |
| 5 | -r ē" kh er z | preachers. |
| 4 | -ē" kh er z | bleachers, features, teachers. |
| 3 | -kh er z | adventures, architectures, benchers, butchers, captures, caricatures, catchers, conjectures, crunchers, cultures, debentures, dentures, departures, dispatchers, divestitures, expenditures, fixtures, forfeitures, fractures, futures, gestures, indentures, infrastructures, junctures, launchers, lectures, legislatures, manufactures, marchers, miniatures, misadventures, mixtures, natures, nurtures, pastures, pictures, pinchers, pitchers, poachers, postures, punctures, quenchers, ranchers, researchers, restructures, ruptures, schoolteachers, scriptures, sculptures, searchers, signatures, snatchers, stretchers, strictures, structures, subcultures, superstructures, sutures, switchers, temperatures, textures, tinctures, tortures, ventures, vouchers, vultures, watchers. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-c-e-e-r-r-s-t-u" | |
-1 letter: austerer, caterers, creature, ecraseur, recrates, retraces, secateur, terraces, treasure. | |
-2 letters: austere, careers, carters, caterer, cerates, cesurae, craters, creaser, creates, curares, curates, ecartes, erasure, recrate, rescuer, retears, retrace, securer, serrate, tearers, terrace, tracers, ureters. | |
-3 letters: acuter, acutes, aretes, arrest, career, carers, carets, carter, cartes, caster, caters, causer, cerate, cereus, certes, ceruse, cesura, crater, crates. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-c-e-e-r-r-s-t-u" | |
+1 letter: chartreuse, mercurates, recaptures. | |
+2 letters: chartreuses, recuperates, treacherous, ultrasecret, underreacts, watercourse. | |
+3 letters: carburetters, charcuteries, furtherances, quarterdecks, recirculates, relubricates, subsecretary, ultraprecise, watercourses. | |
+4 letters: architectures, bureaucratese, bureaucratise, counterargues, counterstream, countertrades, creaturehoods, protuberances, rearticulates, recuperations, stercoraceous, treacherously. | |
+5 letters: bureaucrateses, bureaucratised, bureaucratises, bureaucratizes, countercharges, countermarches, countermeasure, counterplayers, counterrallies, counterstreams, counterthreats, creatureliness, remanufactures, resurrectional, subsecretaries, undersecretary. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Quotations: Familiar 8. Quotations: Historic | 9. Quotations: Fiction 10. Quotations: Non-fiction 11. Quotations: Speeches 12. Usage Frequency | 13. Expressions 14. Expressions: Internet 15. Translations: Modern 16. Translations: Ancient | 17. Bible Trace 18. Derivations 19. Rhymes 20. Anagrams | 21. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
