Posted 16 days 23 hours 18 mins ago by Tigress

The Omnis is pretty much done:

Also, we're working on the architecture for the battle system. There's nothing I can really say that isn't technical mumbo-jumbo, so all I'll say is that it's going well. We're also working on the table structures and actual gameplay plan for the system.

One of the ideas we're toying with is the concept of runes. Rather than using a generic "pet x has abilities a, b, and c" system, the idea of runes is that a pet can "string together" different types of runes to create their own abilities. Runes have a certain "cost" determined by how powerful they are, and this cost limits how many runes a pet can string into one spell (to avoid pets making uber-powerful-armageddon-spells.) There would be "core runes" which determine the effects of an ability, and "modifier runes" which alter the parameters of an ability such as critical hit chance, charge time, and so on. Say, for example, we have a "haste rune" called X, and a "fire rune" called Y. The haste rune X is a modifier rune, and the fire rune Y is a core rune that does fire-type damage. A pet could string together a spell XY which would create a spell that does fire damage with a 0.2 second reduction to the cast time of the spell. This is a really, really basic example to illustrate my point. Let's take another example; say a pet, instead of making the spell XY, makes a spell YX. X's effect would change based on its position; instead of reducing cast time before a spell, it would reduce lag time after a spell. (Not all core runes add charge time and lag time; it depends on the core rune.)

As another example, let's make up another rune, Z, a modifier rune which makes a spell multitarget. The pet makes a spell XZY ("haste", "multitarget", "fire core.") This would make the spell hit one additional target, reduce the cast time by 0.2 sec, and do fire damage.

Of course, the system has to be balanced in more than one way. All runes have the aforementioned cost score assigned to them, and pretty much all of their attributes are proportional to the cost. Runes add mana cost to a spell, so the more the total cost of your spell, the more mana it will take to cast that spell. Core runes also have cast times and lag times attached to them. The more powerful a core rune, generally the longer the cast time and/or lag time associated with it. Modifier runes can, of course, reduce this time, but perhaps by reducing the time you're sacrificing room you could use for a multitarget rune...?

That's the general idea of runes, anyways. Magic would form an essential part of battle. A pet's ability to create spells would be determined by their spellcrafting ability, but that is not the only aspect; pets must also learn the runes they use. Some runes are gained through the pet's own insight as they develop their spellcrafting ability; some are taught by teachers or NPCs; some are learned at specific locations or through other events. Spells are also limited by the pet's level (or some similar statistic which we have not determined yet); for example, a level 3 pet (or equivalent) can't max out their spellcrafting skill and then whip out an uber-fiery-death spell. Finally, pets can use their spellcrafting ability to "bind" spells to special container-type objects, which can later be used once in battle. These "spell containers" have cost limits associated with them; the rule of thumb is that the higher the cost is, the rarer the materials are and thus the harder it is to acquire that kind of a container. Also, the spellcrafting skill required to bind a spell as opposed to simply using it is much higher. As a result, spell containers aren't all that common. The level restrictions for using spell containers are not as strict as for directly using a spell, however, so a pet could keep a small supply of one-time-use spell containers on hand to turn the tide of a battle in an emergency situation (as an example.) Overall they're not meant to play a huge part in battle strategy, but they can make a difference when a pet is faced with a seemingly impossible situation.

Oh, and to clarify, when a pet creates a spell they can "save" it to a "macro" type thing. That is, you won't have to be stringing runes together in the middle of a battle.

Anyways, moving on... Uh... Well, this is enough to chew on for one update. I won't bombard you with more ideas. Oh, by the way, I'm done with the class-writing stage of groups, which means I just need to work on writing scripts. Yawn. At the rate things are going, I believe I'll get it done sometime this week, and after that I can do trades, shops/galleries, and forums.

Posted 31 days 15 hours 1 min ago by Tigress

It's been a while since I've posted an update. There's been a few things which have held me back:

- A lack of any interesting progress on the programming front. That's my fault, really - I just haven't had the motivation to do much coding. It's been a long while since I've properly coded anything for v3, and it's a bit overwhelming to dive back into such a complicated codebase. I'm managing it, though, and if I can't manage it, we're certainly able to hire programmers to do it for us. So you'll see progress eventually either way. I did fix some bugs, for what it's worth ;P

- The new layout fell through and didn't turn out as well as I'd have liked it to. This current layout is really a good deal better than the layout I commissioned. As a result, I'm working on a new layout myself, which will be done in... a while. It's a very detailed layout graphics-wise and requires a lot of artistic ability and patience to finish. It'll be done in due time, but it's going to take a lot longer.

- For those of you who frequent the v2 forums, you saw the Arlit redraw, so obviously we've been getting somewhere with redraws. I was working on a Deatile redraw next, but due to idiotic people messing with/shutting down my computer without asking me the file was lost. I have the lineart still, as a non-transparent PNG file, so I can recover the lineart from that, but my motivation to do redraws is shot for the time being. Eventually I'll recover the Deatile lineart or else Kazejin will submit some more concepts that I can work off of for new pet redraws.

So where are we now? I'm currently focusing on getting any major PHP features out of the way, and eventually I plan to go through all of the PHP code in v3 and do a quick tidy-up. Features I'm planning on working on include groups (clubs, clans, whatever you want to call them); shops/galleries; trades; and a forums recode (since the current forums, the default that come with Kitto, are lacking, and somewhat broken.)

I'm also working on outsourcing some improvements to the ImageMagick library, which is the C++ library that our pet image generator is ultimately powered by. I'm hoping to 1. track down and fix the opacity issue, and 2. add custom methods that hopefully will greatly improve the shading/highlighting rendering on pets. The current rendering is fairly lacking since I have to use multiply and addition methods, both of which seem to desaturate the image.

We're also outsourcing the development of the daemon which is meant to power the battle system and the explore system, since progress wasn't really being made. It'll cost us more, but ultimately all the basic components of these systems will be done much sooner and we can work on them ourselves to develop the battle and explore systems.

Edit (9/10/08) - For those of you who are wondering, I did upload the lineart of the Deatile as it exists so far, and you can see it below:

Some of the outlines overlap because they sit on different layers (they're phenotypes.) This was just a demo outline I was showing to a few people to show how it was coming along. (Thanks to Kazejin for recovering the transparent PNG from this file, thus salvaging it at least somewhat!)

Posted 65 days 12 hours 19 mins ago by Tigress

We're working on finding talented item artists to redraw items and draw new ones for the site. We've found two already - Tama and FilthHigh - and we're planning on hiring another soon. Their stuff is absolutely stunning and you will be seeing it in updates soon!

We've also hired Kazejin and Benjamin Green as pet concept artists. Benjamin Green is new, but Kazejin has done concepts in the past, including the Maraak's concept and unreleased concepts for other pets, including the Balt and Deatile (which will be finished eventually.) I'll be posting finished work from both of them in the near future.

We have a very nice new layout on the way as well, and you will be seeing the change to that layout made in the near future. I've been doing some blind coding on the artist panel as well on my vacation (coding without making templates for the scripts), and once I get home you will see many more updates regarding features. We've hired an additional developer, Trevor (the very same Trevor who has been posting on our blog), who is currently familiarizing himself with Kitto and ActiveTable.

Okay, so nothing too exciting in this update... sorry about that. I promise the next update will be far more interesting! I'm heading home in two days and I'll post a much more interesting update then. This update, at the very least, will let you know that we're getting ready for a lot of activity over the next few months.

We want to release v3 soon - within the next few months, hopefully. No promises, but we're as sick of waiting as you are, and we can't dawdle anymore. Wish us luck - we need your support!

Posted 77 days 31 mins ago by Tigress

At the insistence of some of our commenters, I'm making another blog post (although there's nothing really exciting to post about). There are a few things going on behind the scenes that you folks would likely be interested to hear about though, and a few things of note besides:

• Firstly, we're changing the pet image sizes from 200x200 to 400x400. Since pets are fully-fledged characters in a game, complete with personalities and "intelligence" and so on, 200x200 canvasses don't seem to do justice. 400x400 allows a lot more detail, and it also leaves room for large phenotypes such as wings and for accessories and armour. The actual canvas size will come out to 450x450, (there are 50 pixels of dead space on each side reserved for phenotypes and armour), and you will see a thumbnail of your pet on the side.
• We're getting rid of the male/female dimorphic images for all but a small number of pet species. For example, if you look at the male Clawfur and compare it to the female Clawfur, the difference is really small, and there's no actual dimorphism present in the species as it exists in the "world" of Zetapets (can you tell the difference between a male and female cat by just glancing at it?). Such a small difference is not enough, in our opinion, to justify literally doubling the amount of work that goes into the pet (and considering the amount of work that goes into just one pet - phenotypes, armour, and so on all considered - that's a LOT of work). This does have an upside; since pet images are the number one super important thing that needs to be done on the artwork side of things prior to the release of v3, it means that the art is less likely to drag back the release date of v3. It's still probably going to be the last thing to be done, but it'll almost halve the amount of work required, and that's a Good Thing. If you think it's a bad idea, however, I'd like to hear why.
• We may or may not be adding a new default layout to the site. This does not mean we're going to get rid of this one; it's very image heavy, though, and I'm in a "layout-designing" mood anyways. I think the main thing that bothers me about this one is that it lacks a header, so I will have to fix that too.
• The post date of blog posts cycling every month is a bug. We're not reposting anything. I'll fix the bug as soon as I have access to a computer that I can edit code with.
• Oh, and with the new layout, I'll probably also work on AJAXing a lot of "actions" on the site. Reloading the whole page just to do a minor thing like posting a forum post is a little silly, in my opinion, and wastes users' time and server resources unnecessarily. Everything will also have a non-AJAX option as well for those few people still living in the stone ages who can't do Javascript.

That's pretty much everything of note at the moment. I'm also working on redrawing the Aquas and the Actaeon, and we have another artist working on the Akoleid. I think I uploaded the Actaeon to Photobucket, so if you want to see it so far, here it is:

Its face needs a bit of work to make it a bit more deer-like, and its hooves look a little odd, but otherwise any other criticism is welcome. Suggestions to make it more unique, and not just another deer pet, are also welcome, since I have no idea what to do with it.

Posted 229 days 13 hours 11 mins ago by Tigress

You can now equip items to pets using a nifty Javascript-based interface. There's nothing particularly impressive to show off as there are very few (okay, only one) items drawn for pets and I sort of did them as an afterthought. And don't mind the ugly colour choices for the highlights/tooltips. Anyways the point is to demonstrate that you can equip and unequip items and the pet's image will update accordingly. =P

Here are links to the previews:

[Preview 1] [Preview 2] [Preview 3]

More to come in the somewhat near future. I'm about to get walloped with schoolwork since vacation is over but I'll try to put out a few more measly updates until I can get to working on something significant again.

Posted 236 days 23 hours 46 mins ago by Tigress

The new layout I've been working on is pretty much done now. It still has a few bugs (in particular, the menu fading in IE is somewhat ugly, and it doesn't work at all in Opera) but overall it just needs that minor tweaking and it'll be done.

Edit: The preview page no longer works, and obviously as you can see the layout has been integrated into the main site. There's still glitches here and there with the spacing and so on, and some work still needs to be done (especially with forms) but for the most part things should be working.

Posted 238 days 17 hours 16 mins ago by Tigress

Just to let you all know... WE'RE NOT DEAD. I've had a ton of stuff to slog through over the last week or so but we're working on some nifty stuff to show you. In particular I'm working on a new layout which I should hopefully get up by tomorrow (and it's MUCH better than the current layout!), and after that... well... you'll see. Sorry for the lack of interesting updates but we've all been buried in work lately and what work we have been doing has been mostly backend stuff in preparation for working on the battle system. So anyways, more updates on that kind of stuff throughout the week...

Posted 255 days 18 hours 53 mins ago by Tigress

Not a particularly huge feature update, but I've finished off studding, pet lineages, and notices. Studding allows you to offer a male pet up for breeding with other users' females. Lineages show you a pet plus the previous two generations leading up to it (its parents and grandparents). Finally, notices alert you to various events relevant to your interest - breeding requests, births, etc. are all alerted.

Here are some screenshots:

[Prev 1] [Prev 2] [Prev 3] [Prev 4]

I'm not sure what I'm going to tackle next - there's still a lot to do yet. I think I may finish up the inventory, then tackle pet equipment and armour and et cetera, and after that, I don't know. We'll see!

Posted 274 days 1 hour 58 mins ago by Tigress

Hey all, sorry it's been so long since the last update - between midterms, a ton of school projects, and et cetera I haven't had a chance to get anything interesting done. I've been spending most of my time fixing bugs and design issues with the image generator, and I'm proud to say that it's pretty much done, and I've been able to get some nice previews out as a result. Here you go (click on the thumbnails to see a full-size view):

To give a brief overview, the features of the image generator include:

• The ability to fully customise your pet's colour using the colour selector, as shown.
• Being able to choose from a variety of phenotypes to make your pet's appearance and genetic makeup unique.
• The ability to add markings to your pet to further customise their appearance, and to arrange them and set their opacity.

And, although this feature isn't present yet, you will also be able to add wearable items and armour onto your pet. Cool stuff, huh? This is the culmination of four months of work... I hope you enjoy these previews!

You'll be seeing more pet-redraw-related updates in the near future.

Since this keeps getting asked over and over again... READ THIS! Your accounts, pets, items, etc will all be transferred from v2 to v3 when you yourself transfer your account to v3. Accounts will not be deleted off of v2; they will remain there until their owner transfers the account. You will not have to reregister an account to play on v3--all you need to do is transfer your current account! However, the v2 site itself WILL be gone--you will no longer be able to login, register, or play on v2. And finally, v3 is not open to the public at the moment. It is still officially in developer beta. v2 will not be closed until v3 has moved out of beta. See the front page of v3 for more information on the beta stages.