Ratties FTW! - A Rat Adoptable Site

[AlexC]

https://p.twimg.com/AkGKiT9CMAIRjdj.png:large

Hello and welcome to the release thread for Ratties For The Win! This is perhaps one of the first ever rat adoptable sites, catering completely to the rat lovers among us with a realistic feel and focus on actual ratty things!

Open your own "rattery"; selling one-of-a-kind critters to your community, or trade for that extra rat marking or color. Explore to find items or even lost rats, and help our community grow by spreading the joys of these fantastic creatures!

http://ratties.x10.mx/ratpedia/sites/default/files/sws1.png?1325087146http://ratties.x10.mx/ratpedia/sites/default/files/sbei4.png?1325087498http://ratties.x10.mx/ratpedia/sites/default/files/mc0.png?1326156418http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c225/XxLiLSQxX/Hooded/chocolate2.pnghttp://ratties.x10.mx/ratpedia/sites/default/files/scb1.png?1326156333
http://ratties.x10.mx/ratpedia/sites/default/files/eggs.png?1327365531http://ratties.x10.mx/ratpedia/sites/default/files/blueberry.png?1327460253http://ratties.x10.mx/ratpedia/sites/default/files/raspberry_0.png?1327460456http://ratties.x10.mx/ratpedia/sites/default/files/waterbottle_0.png?1327460624http://ratties.x10.mx/ratpedia/sites/default/files/watermelon.png?1327365598http://ratties.x10.mx/ratpedia/sites/default/files/apple.png?1327353681http://ratties.x10.mx/ratpedia/sites/default/files/cherry.png?1327365487

Once the third version of the Mysidia script is released, we'll be ready and waiting! Stay tuned for updates and previews!

And don't forget to sign up or sign back into your old account during the opening week, because there will be a Mink rat given away as a thank you to all our new and old members!

[Rozel]

Rats 8D!
Good luck, I love me some rats c:

[AlexC]

yay! :D I'm glad you like rats, they deserve love!

I'm working on a prerelease forum, and it'll come with a complete database of all the varieties/colors/markings possible, and it'll be used as a sort of checklist as well, for ideas. xD

[AlexC]

Hallo everyone, I just want to say if you want to see the site in it's bare bones, the link is in my siggy - looking for people to help with adding new rats (read first post) and so on.

[Abronsyth]

I love rats! My favorites are blue hooded rats, and red eyed white.

I'm not sure, but if you need any artists at the moment, I'd really love to be one! I have some experience with drawing rats...and I can do pixel art and shade just fine, or color bases :)

I can also help write guides and such for the site...haha, I guess I just want to help some way XD

[AlexC]

I wouldn't mind artists at all! I am doing basic templates, I need every template to have the markings drawn on them. I also need color swatches. If you look in the artist section, there is a thread with more details.

I'd love some guides too. <3

I actually just finished coloring the hooded template. So far I have bareback, masked, capped, hooded and self. If you click the link in my siggy, on he front page there is anprogress report.

Thanks for the offers, it's so wonderful to get help! I will tell ou more tomorrow - I'm on my iPod right now.

[Nemesis]

Very nice work, can't wait to see the site finished and running!
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090912045233/vgcats/images/archive/f/fd/20101204194902!RatFlail.jpg

[AlexC]

hehe, thanks. ^.^ And nice image~ I read that comic.

[SilverDragonTears]

My rats disappeared =/

[AlexC]

I am aware of that. There were several ghost glitches and half of the information was going one way and the other half another way and I had so much data that was useless, so I scraped the database and started over. Sorry. D: I can give you back some nibbles to pay again for new rats. It's just a result of production websites in beta, I'm afraid. Better now then five months down the road when we all had two dozen of them, right?

[SilverDragonTears]

Oh I know how that goes all to well =) I've angered my members before by having to fix my mistakes. You learn from your mistakes! It's fine, I already re adopted three so I'm good =)

[AlexC]

That's why I do open beta. xD That way, my members can help me find glitches.

[ChibiMaestro]

Oh noes D:

You did something...

Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Access denied for user 'gloometh_rats'@'localhost' (using password: YES) in /home/gloometh/public_html/inc/functions.php on line 151
Error connecting to MySQL

[AlexC]

Crap, I saw that earlier, but it went away after awhile. I don't know what's causing it. I haven't edited either of those too much. Some database editing, but only to delete adoptables or stuff like that.

[Poppy]

I love fancy rats, I am getting two for Christmas:3. I was going to create a fancy rat pet site also after my current project. Good job so far, I really love the site!

[AlexC]

(sorry for the late reply, was ill and haven't checked my email in ages)

Awesome, it's so rare to find people who love rats. :D This project keeps kinda dying and getting back on it's feet - I can't find people too interested in helping with it. Good luck with your site! ^.^ Thank you. :3

[AlexC]

Okay everyone, here is just a sneak preview of what we hope to do with the site in the future (sometime after 1.3.0 has been released and all of the bug fixes have come through and so on~).

After the bug fixes come out, I'll start building my own site, using Mys as a baseframe and building up from there.

All of these will begin to appear in at LEAST a years' time - at the moment I'm focused on building a solid database of members, items and content using the current graphics I have!

[+] ALL of the rat images (or at least 90%) of them will be redone to be more shaded, better shaped and generally look more like rats. I will actually use reference pictures this time as appose to using my memory!

[+] I will do some custom coding to make the following changes to growth; it will all be time-based, the stages lasting as long as they will in real life, but your rats will depend on surviving these stages by being fed food or "clicks". If your rat doesn't get the required number of clicks by the time the next growth spurt comes around, it will die and you will have a tombstone for a pet. :C

[+] If you buy a rat from a pet store you will get it already with a number of clicks and at a certain stage (stage 2 which is 4 to 8 weeks) because obviously pet stores will not sell you pinkies! You can trade or abandon your babies at any stage. If you breed your rats you will get the whole nine yards so to speak, which will include stage one.

[+] There will be six stages; stage one is 0-4 weeks, stage two is 4-8 weeks, stage three is 8 weeks to 6 monthes, stage four is 6-20 months and stage five is 20-24 monthes. After stage five, you have a "sickness" stage (stage 6) where your rat begins to die. You will have the option to put your rat down at the vet, give treatment to improve its health, make sure it doesn't suffer and there is the small chance your rat will keep going!

[+] Moods, personalities and sickness. I want to add all of these.

[+] Medicine and vets instead of normal "kill" options. Overfeeding can cause problems as well.

[+] As much realism as possible.

So the site might become a bit sad over time, but I'd really like to make all of these possible.

I am still going ahead with the current release strategy, this will just keep going on in the background. I'll show previews of the new rats from time to time, but coding won't start for ages.

So, what does everyone think?

[SilverDragonTears]

I think if you do real times like that you aren't going to have many people interested in your site :/ Most people don't have the time to invest in keeping something alive for that long. Just saying from experience. I've never done anything that lasted that long, but my members would never wait around that long for a pet to grow.

[AlexC]

hmm... I guess that is a good point... I always liked long-term pets with growth, but perhaps others won't.

Do you know if most people enjoy the clicking as appose to the time?

[SilverDragonTears]

My members seem to enjoy the clicking as that way they can basically control the time it takes to grow a pet. It's a cute idea to make it seem natural, but people are more into growing them quickly so they can continue to collect them.

[AlexC]

oh... okay then. :c I guess I'll have to take that into consideration about whether I continue forward with this plan.

[ChibiMaestro]

If it's just time- then it'd be very boring... >.< Because you'll have to wait until they grow up, and you have nothing to try and speed it up.

[AlexC]

Alright... I guess I'll stop considering it then. It was really just an idea... :c

I'll just focus on improving artwork then.

[AlexC]

The original post has been updated with a preview of the site, rats to come and some items. Stay tuned for our release in February!

[Bibarel]

Will there be alibino rats (white pinked rats, not just white XD)

[AlexC]

That is a yes and no question.

ALBINO rats are purely albino, with pale eyes and not a drop of anything but pure white on them. But they are quite rare and expensive because bad breeding has added a cream tint to most of their coats.

WHITE rats have a creamy undertone to their white, but have the same eyes and are incredibly common and cheap.

I don't entirely know what you mean by "pink". White rats are commonly called PEWs or Pink-Eyed Whites, but otherwise there are no "pink" rats. All rats do have pink tails/paws/ears/noses though.

We will one day have hairless rats, when I get around to redrawing the pixels completely... xD

There are also no "pinkies" (referring to the bald babies that are only a few days old), because it is unethical to have babies that young away from their parents. You get babies that are about the same as a few weeks old rat.

Did I over-answer that? xD

[ChibiMaestro]

Albino = white with pink/red eyes :3
And it's not just bad breeding, it can just be a genetic problem that randomly occurs.

So maybe in your breeding system, you have 1/40 chance of albinism?

[ChibiMaestro]

Albino = white with pink/red eyes :3
And it's not just bad breeding, it can just be a genetic problem that randomly occurs.

So maybe in your breeding system, you have 1/40 chance of albinism?

[AlexC]

Albino = white with pink/red eyes :3
And it's not just bad breeding, it can just be a genetic problem that randomly occurs.

So maybe in your breeding system, you have 1/40 chance of albinism?

SHORT ANSWER: White rats and Albino rats are different colors/markings and it is impossible to get a different color/marking from a coupling unless one of the parents is albino. In the game, that is a 50% chance (unless you have a purebred couple) but in real life it is a lot bigger and harder then that.

LONG ANSWER:

Actually it is bad breeding. There is no way to just "randomly" get a albino genre. Getting an albino from a white rat would be like breeding two black huskies and getting a red one because ten, fifteen generations, even twenty or fifty ago, someone bred a black husky to a red one. Or having a blond haired couple who gave birth to an albino kid. Just because they had pale skin/eyes/hair didn't mean they were going to have albino children.

PEW or just whites are albinos bred with other rats, and so they are carrying other genres of other colors. To get a pure albino, you'd need to find the two whitest rats you possibly can, and keep breeding, father to daughter and so on, until you get the purest whitest rat you can. Or find someone who has an albino, breed your whitest PEW to that rat, and then pick the whitest rat from that litter and breed it to the albino again and /hope/ you get a true albino. But it would take generations. You could spend ten years breeding and still find traces. It would just be easier to buy from a lab supplier or a breeder who has spent ten years cleaning genetic lines.

Albinos are lab rats; they are generations upon generations of genetically identical rats used for scientific purposes. White rats are lab rats that get rescued or given to people who breed them to other types of rats which find their way to pet stores who get bred with whoever they are sharing a cage with and then it goes full circle to having creamy white rats, which is people trying to breed albinos and getting frustrated because they all have those cream shades and spots and undertones.

Rat breeding is generally just bad breeding. Only a small percentage of people who breed rats for scientific, hobby, snake food or purchase actually know what they are doing. That isn't a stereotype, it is a fact. 80% of the rats currently in private hands are from petstores, where "breeding" is either putting some girls in with some boys or putting girls in with boys and not realizing you're doing it. Fancy rats are picked for their pretty colors, only a small group (as in, there is maybe five organizations for it in all of north america kinda small) breed for good genetics.

And snake food breeding is just whatever. The rest of the breeding community is companies that breed for labs, who have sometimes been keeping at one line for decades, or breeding offsprings of lines that have been going for decades.

Sorry for long, picky answer that may have sounded mean - this is a real passion for me and one of my pet peeves is calling white rats albinos - they may look like them, but they aren't, it is a different thing.

[Bibarel]

I meant white pink eyes XD

Also yeah, that can get annoying, I usually see albinos as white skin/fur and pink eyes.

[AlexC]

In that case, yes Bibarel.

There is the http://www.ratties.x10.mx//picuploads/png/d23e9c97263ca51781d4c8aafa611f8a.png White rat

And the albino: http://www.ratties.x10.mx//picuploads/png/307f592f5f02b643076dd4c79a3f4472.png

Both are from the adoption center, the only difference being price... by a lot.

[Bibarel]

Can you sign up? Or will account be deleted?

[AlexC]

The site currently only has a "coming soon" theme, and nobody can sign up or log in, except for admins. :c

However, I am looking for beta testers as soon as I get the site upgraded! Then I need people sitting there yelling what I'm doing wrong. xD I can put you on a beta list if you'd like.

[Bibarel]

That's be awesome :D

[AlexC]

Sure, you're added~ I'll message you after the script is upgraded. :3

[Bibarel]

Okay aesome :D

[ChibiMaestro]

Nono, I wasn't saying white rats are always albino.

I'm saying to identify an albino rat, they have to be really white and have pink eyes. Rats that are white, but don't have pink eyes aren't albino :3

[AlexC]

Nono, I wasn't saying white rats are always albino.

I'm saying to identify an albino rat, they have to be really white and have pink eyes. Rats that are white, but don't have pink eyes aren't albino :3

97% of white rats, or pale rats have pink eyes. Slightly darker ones have red eyes and everything above a shade of a biege or himmie/siamese has black. You can breed mutations though with black eyes.

[Bibarel]

Will there be rat who are sort of beat up? Like ones that you could find in a street area (examle of beat up: scars, one eye/one closed eye, bandages etc...)

[AlexC]

These are Fancy Rats, the domesticated species, so I don't know about that... if there is, it will be custom made rats. We have "oddities", which is the option to add extra things to your rat, like scars or something. I am not purposely making any off the bat, but there could be missions or explore options to find abandoned rats.

[Bibarel]

Okay :smile:

[ChibiMaestro]

Really? Oh, I thought rats that aren't albino didn't have red/pink eyes... >.< Eh, never mind XD
Then doesn't that mean it'll be hard to tell whether it's an albino or not?

[AlexC]

The rat market is a bit more complicated then it first looks... xD

If you see them next to each other, it is a lot more obvious. I've owned rats that were white and near-albino and even between them it was obvious, and one of them only had a slight difference.

[AlexC]

Hey, I was wondering what people's thoughts are on these... I've seen a lot of really fantastic art around lately and feel bad that mine isn't up to par... so here are some very basic sketches I had for a possible redesign:

http://i1198.photobucket.com/albums/aa455/Gloometh/babypreview.png

They aren't finished, and will be refined. I was planning to research some possible better shading styles...

What do people think? These are all youngling stages, and I may possibly come up with more. Here is a comparison to the current younglings:

http://ratties.x10.mx/ratpedia/sites/default/files/self1.png?1325088481http://ratties.x10.mx/ratpedia/sites/default/files/self1a.png?1325088481http://ratties.x10.mx/ratpedia/sites/default/files/self1b.png?1325088481

[Tequila]

The new sketches are much better. You're getting better at this. ;3

[herbaceous]

Ah, they're so cute. ; u;
I was never good with pixeling. OTL

[AlexC]

@Nyxi thank you very much! I may have to redo the one on the bottom though - it looks so much younger then the rest. (I can tell based on body shape... they lose that after 4-weeks)

@Herbaceous thank you. :3 I actually kinda have to pixel them. I set up the site so they could be recolored - you'll have all of these blank, non-colored templates with the markings and the swatches for the colors. You pick a random pose from each stage, color with the marking you'll like and vola~ Allows for literally hundreds of combinations. :3

[Tequila]

Perhaps use the one that's younger as the base for a younger stage? Make it realistic the way the grow on site. ;3

[AlexC]

I was wondering about that.

I was thinking of doing a basic carrier as the first adoptable image, just so you aren't always sure what you get sometimes, but then I wasn't sure how far I should go back in images.

The ones I pirmarly had up there were 5+ weeks, about weaning time, but the one below is -4 weeks, when the babies are still with the mother. I don't really want to promote taking babies away that young.

[Tequila]

I see (learn something new everyday), and I'll agree to that. Perhaps use it as an image for a breeder shop? Something where the babies can be seen with their mum before purchase by the customer?

[AlexC]

That's actually a pretty good idea! I could do that with a lot of things actually... Thanks for the idea. <3

[Tequila]

No problem. ;3 It's things like that the community is good for.

[SilverDragonTears]

I totally stole your font :) It rocks!! Are there more fonts like that? And are you still looking for Beta testers?

[AlexC]

Wait, which font? *has been fooling around with fonts the past few days*

I will be in a bit. Once I get the adoptables up and running - I'm in the progress of drawing the outlines at the moment.

[AlexC]

Okay guys, I'm looking for beta testers now! I need people who are willing to crawl through the site and tell me what I need to do, as well as people willing to make ratteries and help increase the site a little once it gets going.

All beta testers will receive 1000 nibbles and an exclusive rat for their help - as well as any extra things, such as payment for descriptions or coding help or anything like that.

If you're interested, please message me. :3

The site is lacking a lot of the pages it needs, but the basic adoptables are available, the items are out, and promos codes will be released over the next week. Anyone interested in being fulltime staff, or affiliates, also message me.

[Abronsyth]

I'd love to beta test! I am online quite often, and I've been stalking the site for the past few months XD And, I can help with descriptions, well, with more descriptions :)

[AlexC]

More descriptions would be awesome - if you'd like, the site is open right now, and if you don't have an account, you can make one now. I can give you the nibbles and you can start having a look around. it's still really bare though. xD

[Abronsyth]

I love the CSS, absolutely gorgeous! Also, it keeps logging me out :T

Any who, I shall work on more descriptions :)

[AlexC]

What pages are you on when it logged you out? Any certain links or anything? You have a rat, so you must have been able to be on the site for a few pages... I'll go check the database, see if it was a problem I had before...

thanks. ^.^

[Abronsyth]

Huh, it all seems to be working fine now :) If it happens again, I'll record the url ;)

Oh, and just as a note, on a lot of the pages, the url has '//' before the page, for example:
http://www.ratties.x10.mx//stats.php

Just letting you know ;D Not sure if that's intentional or not :)

[AlexC]

all websites I work on seem to be a bit temperamental at times. xD I guess it's gone now.

oops - I guess when I was copying an extra dash by accident when I was doing the nav bars. o.O thanks for catching that, I'll go fix that.

EDIT: I checked the site and I can't seem to see any of them, and the ACP and DB don't show any extra dashes... what pages are you seeing them on?

[Hall of Famer]

Check your config.php and see if there is a redundant slash on the script path?

[AlexC]

There wasn't anything in the script path, there was a trailing dash behind the domain though, I removed that.

EDIT: I checked my signature on here, and I found the extra dash there, which then logged me out and affected my website - but when I went to my normal site, I saw no trailing dashes. I'm guessing Iris was getting the glitch via my signatures - I've fixed it now.

[SilverDragonTears]

I can't see my rats in the thread I posted for your site on my forum :/

[AlexC]

Which code did you use? I noticed that the alternate one doesn't seem to be working all the time - I was just testing on this site so I thought perhaps it was being odd, but the normal one should work fine.

I guess I should probably have someone take a look at that, it's on my to-do list.

[SilverDragonTears]

The normal one won't work on the mybb forum.

[AlexC]

I don't know what's wrong - I haven't really been testing the codes. D: Which ones did you try?

[SilverDragonTears]

I guessed the riddle. Probably wrong but...

[AlexC]

Anyone who finds this through here; We've lost our old site, but thankfully, we were transferring anyway and all of the old info made it over to our new host.

There are some glitches, report them to our twitter account (RattiesFTW), my email at rattiesftw (at) gmail.com, here, or in the chatbox on the site.

Here is our temporary link until I get my domain bought in a few weeks.

http://rattiesftw.99webs.info/