A Different Way to Grow - Aging

[NobodysHero]

Anyway someone could walk me through or point me in the direction of what I would need to do to make my pets age in time, instead of via clicks? For instance, Egg Stage at day 0, Baby stage at 15 days, adolescents at 30, and adult at 45. Anyone willing to help me with this, would be greatly appreciate it. ^.^ Thanks!

[MikiHeart]

It would take a lot to do this sort of thing. You would need a cron job to check the adoptables once a day. If you site ends up with a lot of adopts, this could become quite extensive, and cause a lot of server load.

I honestly would recommend this kind of feature. Because of the server load issues you may face, as well as the fact that it makes it so users don't have to login everyday to level up their pets. They may loose interests quickly. So really think about this.

[NobodysHero]

Myself and my co-owner don't want the click system at all. We'll have other things for our players to do. Other ways they'll be able to interact with their pets and the world around them. Quests, games, etc.

[Pear]

I just started using the by time, but I require users to click their pets at least once to get them into the growing stage. Then I just have the first level and I edit it whenever I want them to grow. Although I do retire the adopts after the month is over. c: I am at school at the moment so if you need a better explaination, I'll tell you more when I get home. c:

[Hall of Famer]

Actually in Mys v1.4.0 it will be possible to simulate cronjobs, the pseudo cronjob system executes scheduled tasks by searching pending events for every user visiting the page. It is not as effective as real cronjob and will need an active site to work properly(so if your site has like 1 visitor every 2-3 hours, it probably wont do anything), but for live sites the pseudo cronjob should be sufficient.

[IntoRain]

Multiple database queries, updates and deletes for all creatures at the same time will be hard on any server. I understand you don't want the click system, but keep in mind web performance costs money.

Maybe make the time update when the owner logs in or owner checks their myadopts page (and have a variable to control if it has been checked/updated on that day already, to avoid a bigger server load). It wouldn't be automatic and if the owner didn't visit they'd stay the same. Or create an admin-only page that updates the database when you command, but you or your other admins would have to do it

[Hall of Famer]

Actually clickpets games normally work fine if you have a shared hosting account. For freehosts they dont like it, but that perhaps cannot be helped.

[squiggler]

*only offering manual (non-coding) solutions, sorry*
The old way could always work. Just have the Blue Fish (example) be an egg and change the image/add a level when you want all the site's Blue Fish grow up. This is how people have been doing adoptables since ever.
Um, you could have an item that they could purchase which will grow their Blue Fish. (Either it gives needed clicks or just changes the image outright.)

[MikiHeart]

The only way to get what you want, is pay a pretty penny. Try and get some money together, and post an ad on freelancer. It's the cheapest way I can think of getting custom code. Hell, the IPN I got for the script (Before HoF brought it) only cost me 15 dollars. Included paypal and onebip.

[NobodysHero]

Yeah, I figured it'd be a lil above my head. And I've actually got a coder I'm talking over things with right now. I appreciate all of your answers! You are all a great support system. Thanks!

[Hall of Famer]

You are very welcome, we are glad to help. It's always nice to receive feedback from users, positive or negative, this helps me figuring out the direction the project should be going. ^^

[Zyraph]

Actually, HallofFamer, since most people working with Mysidia will probably be able to assign actual cron jobs, is there a way to set it in the script to give info for creating one? Like, if someone's trying to set up this kind of system instead of just clicks, can the script simply give an informational box on how to enable a cron job and what file needs to be called for it for it to run?

Or, maybe just have two modes: One with a pseudo cron job and one with a real one that users can set up if they know how. I think that would probably work very well, though I'm not sure how much additional code that would require.