Novul

[Kyttias]

I'm trying to squeeze in a few more features before launch. I'm a bit behind on pet art because I wanted it all to be done at relatively the same time for consistency. I've spent the last few months improving my art! (Here's a link to my deviantART.)

I'm working on more pet art now (finally).

As I think I may have said, my Novu don't evolve so much as... just... get bigger? Some of them may grow features that weren't there before but they're relatively the same throughout their entire lives. Anyway, this is, in case you didn't know, a Dezh. My inspiration here is hyena/dragon.

Those in the image above all sport the Stardust pattern. The top set are Spice/Imperial, the bottom set are Amethyst/Mint. These guys will get one more final form after this at a higher level.

Novu can be bred to have three different types of tails, wings, and a species-specific attribute. I'm thinking of adding in a 'fourth' tail type that rarely occurs when two different species are bred together - a tail that could only be obtained from having mixed parents. All this is subject to change (the species-specific attribute could become a male-female dimorphism marker, rather than a random occurrence, for example). Not all Novu will necessarily have tails (so they'll get other things) or may already come with wings (so they'll probably get upgraded, cooler wings).

 

[Bexasaurus]

So exciting!
I'm curious, when breeding your pets will the outcome of the offsprings most likely derive primarily from the father's or mother's traits?

Are some traits more dominant than others or all possibilities/chances of a certain trait being acquired are equal to each other (excluding for rare physical features/upgrades)? For example, you have it set up so the color orange appearing in the offsprings is a 50% chance yet for purple it's at a 12.5% chance of occurring.

 

[Kyttias]

Both parents are taken into consideration equally. Novu don't technically have sexual genders, even though some may grow different features as adults based on their pre-determined gender. (Apparent gender can be changed with a potion that won't be any more expensive than changing a name.)

Baby Novu come from dust that falls off their parent's fur when they do a courtship dance. Both gender and species are irrelevant when it comes to breeding - so any two Novu can be compatible! (This was both easier to program and... well, I'm part of the LGBT community and don't at all mind catering to it.)

Colors are relatively equal. Like on Flight Rising, babies are given a random color chosen from the range between that of the two adults. Colors exist not just on the body but also on patterns. Patterns have varying degrees of rarity and, yes, some of them are more dominant than others. There are tiers in place meant to keep rare patterns rare. But, further, patterns also come at varying opacity levels.

There are also other interesting things such tail styles, wings, and gender variance.

  Spoiler: Breeding 

Semi-Realistic Alleles

My gf did most of the breed coding, and rarity tiers pitted against the Novu's genetic code - constructed like real alleles! A lot is determined by what the Novu's alleles are, but this is actually a hidden attribute. Super dedicated breeders will be given the means to pay to scan a pet's alleles so they can make more informed breeding choices.

Alleles have capital letters and lowercase letters. Capital letters represent dominant traits, so, the more capital letters your Novu's genetic code has, the more dominant it's genes will be in determining the outcome of the offspring.​

Pattern Opacity

A weaker opacity rare gene will still count as fully having that gene in terms of next generation breeding, but it may not have been the outcome the breeder was hoping for. Opacities come at full, high, half, low and none. None still counts as a dormant version of the gene and is 10%. The others are 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25%, respectively.

The final opacity of a pattern is determined by the baby's inherited alleles (which can be different than it's siblings - two from each parent) and by the tier rarity of the pattern. There are four tiers of rarity, and four possible letters that are examined in these cases. The number of capital letters in the baby's alleles are counted up and pitted against the tier level.

If a baby inherited all capital letters, it'll come out with a full opacity coat regardless of what rarity tier the pattern has, because the maximum of both is four. (Which pattern a baby is getting is determined before it's opacity is determined.)

If a baby inherits no capital letters in it's alleles, no matter what pattern it's getting, it's only going to come out as a dormant pattern at 10% opacity.

From there, it gets complicated.

If the pattern is at maximum rarity, tier 4:
Capital Letters? Opacity. -- Three? 75%. Two? 50%. One? 25%.

If the pattern is at rarity tier 3.
Capital Letters? Opacity. -- Three? 100%. Two? 50%. One? 25%.

If the pattern is at rarity tier 2.
Capital Letters? Opacity. -- At Least Two? 100%. One? 50%.

If the pattern is at rarity tier 1.
Capital Letters? Opacity. -- At Least One? 100%.

And, again, no capital letters, in all cases? 10%.​

Species Rarity

That said, certain species will be rarer than others.

Above, you saw that opacity was determined by the Novu inheriting two alleles from each parent, for a total of four alleles being looked through for capital letters.

Actually, Novu have a set number of total alleles based on their species. The rarer the species, the more pairs of alleles the parents have to give. Which two letters chosen to be given to the baby are still random, there is just more to be given.

If you breed two species together and one is rarer, any babies that come out will have a longer genetic code even if they are the less rare species. However, the extension given to the more common species' genetic code will hold recessive alleles. This will make these children not great for breeding bold 100% opacity patterns. But that's the risk you took to try and get a rarer species of pet. And hey, maybe you want more recessive alleles because you like the look of lower opacity genes.

I haven't fully programmed in the species rarity tiers, but I plan to make safe guards against limited edition pets become eventually common. You know how in Pokemon, the god-tier stuff just doesn't breed, and if it does, it's baby doesn't quite look like it at all? Probably going to have to happen for a few extremely rare species.

I have notes on this somewhere, but apparently not where I can find them... It'll be similar to Flight Rising with a few exceptions. It's a less a concern about breedability but how easy they are to obtain by other means.

That said, I may tweak a few rarities once the site picks up. If a Novu is purchasable with real money (but is available all year long) you can breed it with relative ease for the first year. After a year of being released, it will not longer be purchasable for real money, AND, it's breeding rarity will be increased -- so as to sustain its rarity even after it's no longer able to be purchased. (I might also do this on a monthly scale.)​

Wings

If both parents have wings, the offspring will also always have wings.
If only one parent has wings, there is only a 10% chance of wings passing on.​

Tails

There are three kinds of tails. Ordinary, Alternate, and Luxury.

If the tails of the parents are both the same, that's what the kid gets.
Ordinary vs Alternate? 70% Ordinary vs 30% Alternate.
Ordinary vs Luxury? 90% Ordinary vs 10% Luxury.
Alternate vs Luxury? 85% Alternate vs 15% Luxury.​

Gender

Remember how I said gender didn't matter? I lied a little. If the parents are of the same gender, you are actually 25% more likely to also have a child of that gender.​

 

[Bexasaurus]

That's well thought out and interesting, especially the opacity idea. I recently was looking at cat genetics hence the main reason my interest in breeding outcomes for Novul was piqued.

Another question I'm going to throw at you! Will interbreeding cause infertility for Novu or lower the rate of success in offspring, or are Novu cool with interbreeding?

 

[Kyttias]

I plan on preventing breeding with siblings, parents (and parent's siblings), and grandparents. I haven't put it in yet, but I'm already keeping track of both parents so I can map in a page where you can view a family tree that goes back and down two generations. It'll be fun to look at and it'll give you a reference all on one page who your Novu can't breed with.

So, to clarify, aunts and uncles are also off the table but greataunts and greatuncles will be fine. Much less of a hassle than some breeding sites.

Of course, breeding isn't the only point to Novul! I want it to be enjoyable and I want people to want to collect things... which is why I'll be promoting user interactions.

I'm keeping track of all interactions made with Novu in my own way. At the end of each month all players will be entered into a raffle - each interaction they made counts as one entry to the raffle. The more interactions you make the more likely you are to win something - a rare item or an extremely rare baby Novu that can never be obtained for free again (it can be bred for or perhaps bought for real money after that). Depending on how many active users there are, there will be a set number of winners drawn from the pool of 'entries'.

In addition, there's a "currency" that you'll only get from visiting a Novu's page called Dreamdust. When you join the site, you'll be entered into one of four factions based on a simple personality test. Members of the faction collects the most Dreamdust at the end of every week will all get prizes. Other things will revolve around the collection of this dust as well - whenever certain thresholds are passed by the community as a whole, multipliers will go into effect that will allow everyone who logs in to collect even more dust than normal (at least for the rest of the day). At the end of each month, the top 10% of players who collected the most dust will be awarded the rarest of prizes. (The amount of dust collected is reset to zero at the end of each week, but the total will be remembered for players until the end of the month so winners can be calculated.)

If someone doesn't have the time to invest in the site for a chance at winning a prize, many of the prizes will be able to be purchased with a real money currency for at least a few months. Most of the rare Novu that can be obtained as prizes (or bought) will be able to breed at some tier or another, so everyone should be able to obtain everything eventually, as the community itself slowly breeds thing into commonplace - even if they can't spend time playing and don't have real money to spend, they can still reasonably collect everything. (However, one or two Novu species may exist in a permanent state of un-attainability for ultimate bragging rights as status markers of either really old or really excellent players -- these will probably either NOT ever be sold for real money OR will represent owners of large donations during, I dunno, a Kickstarter fund.)

 

[Kyttias]

I will be working on my Gachapon system at long last. <3

​

The front-end animation will be done with jQuery and CSS. For a live example, click here.

My plan is for it to cost 50 tokens to operate. You can earn 10 tokens every week if you're in the top ~20% of active, participating players. Otherwise, the tokens are planned to be a real money currency. On the other hand, you might win tokens via other means or right back from the gacha machine itself (not much more than it cost to play, though).

With this in mind, it's time start thinking about chests, since the premise is very similar. (The difference is that gachapon is a page that will grant a random item, while a chest is an item that will grant a random item. The code is similar, the location is all that varies.) I hope I can get back to everyone about this sort of thing soon. :3

 

[Kyttias]

More Phase 2 art done for Dezh (and these guys link to my beta site - the first you'll probably have seen of it - though because of the way these forums work you'll have to right click them to open them in new tabs.).

※ Lotus is Berry, with Lagoon Spots. She has the species trait (horns and solitary sickle claws) with a Luxury tail.
※ Ulii has Melanism over what would otherwise have been Amethyst, and is sporting Mint Stardust. She's got a short Alternative tail.

Spots is my newest pattern. It's got quite a sheen to it, which differs from palette to palette.

I need to get Stripes and Filigree completed for Phase 2, as well as add Spots to the Phase 1 Dezh. If you go looking you'll find glitchy things (like these) because my art isn't finished yet:

 

[Kyttias]

-o-... Leaving myself a to-do list since I need to quit early tonight:

1. I moved where the user id # appears on the profile, so I need to remove the user id # from stats section of the profile, and also move 'member since' up to below username. I've decided showing gender isn't important, so, really I just need to remove the stats section from the user profiles. edit: DONE!!
2. Since gender is no longer important, remove it from the registration form as it's no longer necessary. (Set everyone's default gender to unknown/hidden.) edit: DONE!!
3. I need to show the option to delete friends only on ../../account/friends but not user profiles by setting a parameter in friends() for $friendlist->display(); in view/accountview.php and then use that parameter to rearrange display() in classes/class_friendlist.php. edit: DONE!!
4. Look into adding bootbox confirmation warning for friend deletion. edit: DONE!!
5. Find out why profiles break for users with no pets. (This has been a problem from extremely early on.) edit: DONE!!

**edit**
Another to-do list because I need to help on these threads:

- Giftboxes: http://www.mysidiaadoptables.com/forum/showthread.php?p=33471#post33471
- HiLo Game fix!! http://www.mysidiaadoptables.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4964
- Non tradeable unique species: http://www.mysidiaadoptables.com/forum/showthread.php?p=33441#post33441​

 

[Abronsyth]

Your site's theme is absolutely stunning! The entire site is just beautiful! I'm very glad that the transfer went alright for you!

 

[Kyttias]

Here today with some spur of the moment creature concept art!

 

[KittHaven]

The site looks even more amazing than it did when I last came on here! XD I'm excited for it :3

 

[pachoofoosh]

This looks fantastic. q_q The layout looks gorgeous and all the features you're adding sound really fun!

 

[Kyttias]

Alright, so I always wanted to have a Family Tree feature, since it's something many other prominent pet sites are lacking (and its always so tedious to have to do all that research yourself). Abronsyth actually asked on the forums for some help on how to achieve this - and it's a two part adventure that I'd already half started so I'm glad I was given the opportunity to finish.

When pets are bred, you have to keep track of the parents and the parents must be given a record of their babies. After a few generations, this'll flesh out nicely. You need to be able to pull that information and design a pleasing way of displaying that information. I don't want to go into too much detail and I'm not here to provide an official mod for this feature, but if you want to give it a shot, you might learn a thing or two from the thread where I helped Abron.

Since the thread I took and moved my tree from the management side to the profile side and gave it it's own page so even if the pet's not yours and even if you're logged out, you'll still be able to track a pet's lineage. I wanted to be able to both link family trees together and still link to a pet's profile. To achieve both, I made it so that when a pet is hovered over, it's name and basic information are replaced with links - one to go to a profile, and one to go their family tree.

I'm very happy with the end result! I hope this feature will give my site the edge it needs to compete with other sites.

(As a reminder, gender on my site is irrelevant to pet breeding and this is intentional because it's not "sexual" in the first place and gender and sex aren't really the same thing, anyway?)

These are the next three features on my mind:

Like System - Pressing a heart on a pet's profile will increase the number beside it, visually showing how many people have enjoyed this pet. The pet's id will be added to an array containing a list of all the pets you've ever liked. You'll be able to view a directory of all the pets you've ever liked in case you want to give them love later! (This does not correlate with Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr likes - just the same concept. Of course I'll want to help people share their pets on social media, later, but this is not related to social networking.)

Random Name Generator - Isn't it tough to think of pet names? Even though pet names can be shared and you'll never be barred from using a name that's already been used by someone else, sometimes you just aren't feeling creative. Names will be generated by slapping syllables together from arrays, and each species will have it's own set of arrays, producing pets that culturally authentic sounding names that varies by species.

Flip Pet Direction - This'll only be done with CSS on the front end of the site. Basically, if a user wants a particular pet image the other way, they can - and it'll be wrapped in a CSS class that'll flip the images inside.

and also

Quality of Life Implementations - Live registration regex checking, check if username is taken, username suggestions from friend list (while sending a new PM, a donation, or opening a trade), also check if user exists (before sending a new PM, a donation, or opening a trade).

 

[Kyttias]

Helping people is taking a lot out of me... I'm probably going to take April and May off to work on my site exclusively because I still want to my summer beta release.

Meanwhile, the artist I thought I had has given me zero of the items I asked for three months ago. It's just not going to work out. I need a certain quality level, and I'm willing to pay $2 to $4 per item. At this point I'm willing to find a sketch or lineart only artist and I'll take it from there, but I'd only pay between $1 and $3 per item in that case.

It's not like I can't make my own items, I just don't have time. I did work on items tonight, and ended the day with these (sorry for the atrocious watermarking, I just want them well protected):

 

[tahbikat]

Those look amazing Kyttias! *o* Ugh... especially the paper type items, and that backpack! ;o;

Might I suggest looking for artists on VPL (http://www.virtualpetlist.com/forums/art-marketplace.53/) Unless you already tried here, that is lol.

 

[Bexasaurus]

I'm so excited. *^*
I really like the texture and colors.

 

[Abronsyth]

As tahbikat mentioned you definitely should be able to find an artist on VPL who would be able and willing to do the work you need! Good luck finding someone!

I really admire how much you've built upon the script- your site looks incredible!

 

[Kyttias]

I'm glad I've got you guys supporting me. Helping you guys can take a lot of effort sometimes but it all pays off when it's a feature I was wanting anyway, or something similar. I've learned a lot and I'm so grateful for the community here. Aaaack that got sentimental, sorry~~

Anyway, I'm here to ramble a tiny bit about a new feature I'd like. I still haven't implemented my item drop system (I decided the existing mod just isn't going to fulfill my needs) but I did find an artist to help me keep up with making items. So my plan is this:

While visiting pets, there's a chance for you to find items. Most of it will be junk, but if you collect enough of it you might use these things for alchemy/similar recipes. But I had an even greater thought - rare materials! These will be so rare they're account-bound and will be given over to a special NPC. There will be several item 'sets' that need completed but the items can all be turned in separately whenever they're obtained. (Duplicates can safely be sold, but not to other players.) Once an item 'set' is completed you will obtain a rare pet!

I'd like to keep my rare pets rare, so some of them won't produce babies of themselves through breeding -- but they may produce some other unique kind of offspring (like in Pokémon, Manaphy > Phione).

When a rare item set is completed I'd like to display it on user profiles. They're proof of a user who has put forth a lot of effort participating in the site by visiting lots of user's pets.

Certain site-wide events and items may temporarily boost the chance to find rare items like these.

 

[Bexasaurus]

That's great you found an artist to help you!
Oh, the idea sounds really cool! So it's going to be based on luck?
Is it also possible to get the same rare pet if you got the same materials for it?
Is the rare pet tradeable or will it be bound to the account as well?

 

[Kyttias]

Yes, entirely based on luck. But, as I said, certain items and events will increase luck chance overall and should stack in some way. The idea of the needed being account-bound is so more active players don't flood the market with them.

The luck events are 'organic' in that they will occur automatically - triggered with a mathematical algorithm based on how active the community is. I haven't been able to flesh out the 'community bonus' events very well without a player base yet. ^^;; I'm really inspired by Pokéfarm's bonus counters (info on their wiki)!

Anyway, no, the legendary-status pet I was dreaming of in my last post won't be tradeable, neither will it's materials. However, I can imagine the NPC that exchanges these materials into pets for you has several pets at a variety of rarity tiers! Some of these materials (and pets) will be tradeable, and some won't.

I'm thinking that you should be able to upgrade or fuse together some of the materials so if you don't happen to get the super rare one you need you might be able to eventually collect (or purchase) enough of the smaller (tradeable) versions. This would allow you to "pay to win" rather than rely on pure luck, but not in a game breaking fashion.

If you collect another set of the needed materials you should be able to make another copy of the pet, yes. And, if I ever put a limit (soft or hard) on how many pets a user can have, non-tradeable pets will never count towards the limit.

I think that answers everything.

This is my rough draft of the new species (some things are subject to change):

...

In other news: My gf's got some amazing talent and recorded a bunch of purrs, trills, chirps and squeaks for the creatures of my site. It'll really help flesh out the bestiary and games in the future~! As an example, I really like this sound clip in particular.

...

edit: Also, woot, post #100 on this thread!