From PsyHelp
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Not a full transcription. All paragraphs are Ben, unless otherwise stated with a username or a "From Question"
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Starting to get over The Ruins Of frenzy and get back to Psypets. Soon. There will be a payment scheme for The Ruins Of through paypal. Then afterwards, Psypets. Starting...
Dominique: Varied pet reactions to petting. More html games would be cool (ie., Hangman, card games?). And a fake IM chat with pets (with automated responses) for more interaction, and more pet profile things.
It isn't that hard to make bots that respond but they get old and are not intelligent over multiple messages. But it is doable, even for low-level programmers. However, there would not be differentiation from pet to pet. Possible God-to-user conversations, too. More ideas about games would be nice (card games, war). What else would you be interested in? Something like Battleship would have to have its name changed. Varied pet reactions would have to be listed by name, but seem cool. Is Ben cat catching a cold?
Freeze Air Silver Eye... : Behavior quirks should be based on stats. Certain half-hourly actions should be more/less effective. ie., athletic pets get more out of flying kites.
Some make sense. Half-hourly actions might be more annoying with multiple pets. One wants to know the effects of each individual pet to see if it's helped.
Ined: Please don't make pets throw up. Instead, possibly more personality level-up questions that have negative effects.
Specifically, I want ideas other than throwing up. Just other weird actions pets can take that leave evidence (ie., bring back dead birds from hunting).
From question: "Please add alchemist potions for personality pets." Negative stats are not going to be implementation. Accorign to Big Five psychology theory, neuroticism was taken into effect that had negative effects on pets. Neuroticism taken out of pets because decreasing stats for a level 1 pet are difficult. Rather than decreasing penalties, increase bonuses. Instead of having a neurotic stat, have a stability stat that you can give to a pet. Anyway: No negative stats. It was replaced with something like agreeableness, openness, something like that.
Beilong-chan: What if there was a special item that could recycle edible items, with an obvious 2/3 recycling rate.
Interesting. It would be a weird magical item. Althogh getting dye back from items, though, is weird. It could be a shrine spell. Take into account items from which more items created than used. Rates for those items would have to be manipulated. The game knows from what ingredients items are created so it would not be too hard. Okay. A shrine spell it is.
Paw_paw: I do not like vomiting for pets. No one is going to want this to happen every half-hour. On pets visiting: maybe 2+ can play an available game the host pet has (eg., play diamond kite). Maximum number of pets would be determined by rules of game in real life. When that occurs, it would be nice if pets could acquire stats same as if user played with pets. If too much for the server, just give standard amounts of exp of love/safety/esteem.
Yes, it was just an example from Jordan the real life cat. Some things that seem hard in real life are simple for servers and the other way around, too. Don't worry about it and just throw out your ideas. It's not too hard to have a limit on number of players for game.
From question: "Visiting could be tied with the personality of the pet who is visiting. Not sure how to decide how to do this. Visitors could be on profile."
Anyone on friends list should be allowed to visit anytime, regardless of the user online. I don't want to make it so both players have to be online to agree because it would make it too prohibitive for the pets. Pets on friends list should be able to visit whenever they want and users will receive notification that someone has visited. Now that I am saying this, there is a way to hide one's friend list. For example, my list is hidden. How do you know if you are on my friends list? There should be a way to see if a person is your friend when you look at their profile so you can see if your pets can visit them. That was a request a long time ago and unable to be done because of psypets code. There is no way for the game to easily find out who has added a particular person as a friend. The way friends are stored on psypets is kinda stupid and that information can't be pulled up. But it can be changed. Friend information code can be changed, as social networking sites pull up friends lists all the time. I've done it for the first time recently; The Ruins Of can actually see if a person is friends with someone else. That can definitely be done. So that would be very useful if you could see who all has you on their friends list so then you can see who can you bring your pets to. Even if you have your friends list hidden, people should still be able to see if you have added them. The only way to do that currently would be where you have to go to that person's profile and it could tell you if you were on their friends list. I do like the idea andhopefully will approach it first when I get back to psypets (and that should be soon) because I am approaching a point in The Ruins Of when I can slow down.
Potato_San: Why can we not donate monies to the pet shelter? With more funds, the Shelter would be able to better take care of pets.
That is an interesting point, to donate different causes to psypets. I don't know what the effect would be. Possibly keep pets longer? If people want to, there would have to be a benefit and I don't know what that would be. There could of course be a badge, but I feel as if it would have to have some effect. But I don't know what that would be. Keep pets longer depending on how much they receive that day, something before they're put down (deleted from the database). That is interesting. "Donate to the Pet Shelter, total daily donations allow shelter to store more pets that day." How many people would actually do that? If you want, you could just adopt it. Why pay monies to store more if you could just adopt? Unless you feel sympathetic for them. Maybe it works for some people. I know some people will say, "Hey, they're just pets so I don't have to spend monies on them." But there are people like that in real life, too. But I feel as if that will be more the point here because they aren't actually living creatures. Even if you think this is real, a part of your brain knows they are just numbers, so less people might donate. But if the option is there, that's cool. A badge will definitely be incentive. "Or some other benefits."
spammyann: You could reclaim your blueprints for customs as long as the add-on is demolished. And reclaim space from basement.
Destroy custom add-ons for blueprints to continue transfers. For people that don't want old things, to sell to someone else. Is this still because of the Sidewalk? I was hoping that it was working out and that it would be worth it for the chalk and clay. Get the 1000-unit deed for the 100 units of a basement, but possibly at a reduced rate. I could create a 750-unit deed acquired only by reclaiming from the basement. For a 3/4 exchange rate. Or a 500 and a lot of 50s. The same recycling rate (2/3). Interesting.
Dominique: There still aren't room tabs on the Hungry Sidewalk.
It's a room-related bug thing, I have to fix the Apiary, too.
Sue: Consider making a coffee-maker that allows to brew massive amounts of coffee, like the Bread Maker. That would make things easier.
At the first implemenation of Favourite Recipes, people said that tools were less useful. So surprised to see demand for one. Maybe Sue is new. But once a recipe is rprepared, the Favourite Recipes will store that recipe. There is a way to make anything en masse. But I have no problem with that. If it's useful, that's cool, too. And if we take apart the coffee machine, we can make the time machine car, the Delorian.
Carm3n: Hello all. We should have festivals. Like a back-to-school festival and stuff like that. Reading upon old threads, somebody mentioned a troll day. But I thought it was a good idea. We should have a rubber ducky. I want to know ben's side about flash game.s
Ben does not know about flash games. I would have to learn (taking a long time) or pay someone else (no). Festivals. What would be available? Pencils and rulers? Having made up holidays and things happening on those days are fine with me. I don't know about troll day. This psypets list is getting long.
The Shadow Knight: Do I need to donate a favor to resurrect you? Come back to psypets.
I'm sorry! As I explained, it should only be a week or two (I don't like promising times), I will be back on psypets much more regularly (almost from not at all).
Cherry Pop: Greetings from the UK. On the promotion of the loom being introduced, it says that the pet it's equipped with will only tailor. My pet does all other things, too. this right?
It decreases the other stats to pets less inclined to do other things. But if your pet is starving, your pet is definitely going to eat. Or if your house is full, your pet will deifinitely try to build an add-on. And it is possible that random numbers will do something so crazy or that your pet is so good at some other stat that it will choose to do that even with the huge tailoring boost and penalty to other things. I hope that I didn't say "only," but it does decrease other stats. A really good defeater with a loom will have so much defeating stat even with the penalty given by the loom that it will not be enough.
utkari02: Take a look at the Game Idea forum. Some ideas: a totem-pole collapsing item that has gotten either by favor, quest, or god option.
Right. To totally reset a totem pole. Some people have told me that they would be willing to reset their totem pole and get absolutely nothing. Why would you be willing to do that? With a few totems of any kind, you can get something back.
From question: "A way to recover something from the museum." Pretty sure that's not going to happen. We would need some thing you'd have to go. The museum is a permanent thing; you get badges from it given the number of items.
From question: "Option to revert favor-based add-ons back to their blueprints." Someone's mentioned that.
To reclaim items, there could be a godly item to do that. How much would you pay for that? I worry that people would keep it as a profile item or put it in the museum. It seems too expensive, or is just expensive enough.
The only thing I am concerned with are items that give you special items on holidays. I don't want people taking advantage of it and passing it around. At the very least, your pets would have to rebuild it. Or a cooldown period (a few days or so). Refreshing Spring worries me, too. Everybody could theoretically get their own special title. But it just can't be that easy.
I can't think of a good payment for this item that they wouldn't just put it in the museum. It could also be non-donatable, done as a service as opposed to an item.
hecklee: How hard is it to separate pets into separate rooms?
It depends on how you want the separation to appear or work. One thing is if pets move around the house, from location to location. It seems cool at first but then you feed the pet. Where will be be? Or a button to recall all pets to the current room. But I feel as if it will be more difficult. Like feeding, moving food to rooms specific pets are in? It seems more annoying than cute. But if it's like pets using resources in specific rooms only, I'd have to think about that more. I want to see what exactly is meant by that.
The Shadow Knight: Can you please consolidate the Pawn Shop into a compressed view? It is annoying to scroll through 100+ trades of the same thing; there should be an input box to enter a quantity.
Consolidate. That is true. The game treats items in storage as without comments, so compressing the pawn shop is something that should have been done a long time ago.
hecklee: Food is recycled via garden or something.
How weird. What would you get back? I don't really know. Possibly using pets to turn the food into manure or something.
From question: "Call visits as currently discussed playdates so you can still use visits to do other stuff."
Okay.
Cherry Pop: In response to sidewalk, I think it might be better if something more desirable was available, something other than materials.
The idea was to get rid of chalk because it is undesirable, by getting rid of it for tin or clay. There have been a couple of threads about the sidewalk now. I'm not opposed to adding more things if it's something that makes sense with something you'd find along a sidewalk. The only other thing is that I have a list of 20 things on there because it'd take so long to build up one of them. An item that no one wants can definitely be removed so other items can be more efficient and that's fine.
hecklee: Reclaiming rooms get you something other than materials, something like 2x4 or ceiling trusses or something.
Interesting. Most paid add-ons don't require materials, so there are no materials to get back. You use just the blueprint and your pet takes some time and then it is done. So there wouldn't be any materials you'd get back. What would you do with those? A new item?
From question: Getting stuff from the museum requires a favor ticket.
That seems like a bit much. Rather than paying an item to get it back from the museum, I think you'd rather just go buy the item from the market from other people. Part of the reason people want to do this is to make a museum of pillows (my assumption) or other certain things. Sub-displays for the museum have been discussed before. If I do that, will people still want to take items back from the museum? What is it that people want to take items back from the museum for. Perhaps there is an alternative solution like that. But if it is that people want the item back for what the item is, then making it a favor ticket is certainly too much, but making it semi-difficult through some other means... we can probably figure something out.
utkari02: How about a non-graphical option for our house? When I have accidentally sent a non-materials item into my materials room, I simply dread having to go back into that room to go and fetch the item.
The only problem is how do we know... the setting per room? That is possible. Otherwise, there is no way... that's the way it has to be done. It would also be possible to say, "have this room display items stacked." There are more options with rooms. I worry with wallpaper. Wallpapers get screwy you rearrange rooms. That's something that I have to deal with. So I would have to make other settings would work. The rearranging code for rooms is very strange. So having a non-graphical view could be a stacked view for some of the rooms would be interesting.
A lot of emails! But that's cool. To reiterate: I'll be working on psypets again before long.