The original Creatures game required a CD in the drive in order to start. This article lists ways of circumventing this requirement, for convenience.
Windows[]
Change shortcut[]
The shortcut for Creatures usually points to somewhere like C:\Program Files\Creatures\Launcher.exe. You should change it to read "C:\Program Files\Creatures\Creatures.exe" -embedding. Alter the last part of the target only, retaining the path.
This method is often required for Windows XP and later.
Registry edit[]
In the registry directory HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Millennium Interactive\Creatures\1.0, set the IntroPath key to C:\\.
This can be done by manually editing the registry entry, or by typing the following four lines into Windows Notepad, saving the file on the Desktop as c1nocd.reg and then double left clicking on it:
REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Millennium Interactive\Creatures\1.0] "IntroPath"="C:\\"
Macintosh[]
Fake CD[]
If running in Classic on Mac OS X, run the following in Terminal. You need the program mkisofs, which is available from fink. You may replace x with anything convenient which doesn't already exist.
$ mkdir x $ mkdir x/Intro $ touch x/Intro/ct2.smk $ mkisofs -hfs -V Creatures -o cfake.iso x $ open cfake.iso $ rm -r x # clean up
This will create and mount a disk image containing the file Creatures checks for. You need to mount (by double-clicking or as above) this image, cfake.iso, before running.
Hex edit[]
A possible hex edit of the Creatures executable was suggested by Troignipen on alt.games.creatures.