Hiatus Over?

I'm back!! The last three months were really stressful - I've never worked retail before at a shopping mall during the holiday rush. I often didn't get breaks when I should have, and it was, all in all, hellish. I came home too exhausted to really think about my own pet site, let alone be around to help out the community here. I'm really sorry if I was particularly harsh to anyone who attempted to contact me during my absence - for the sake of my mental health I needed to spend my free time very much elsewhere other than here.

Things I DID Do

I bought myself some nice hosting for three years during a Black Friday deal so now I have a stable test environment to build my site. I can even implement cron jobs - this allows me to schedule code to run a specific time. (I hope to write up some features that will make use of this that I can share/tutorialize for the rest of you.)

I also bought myself an awesome piece of animation software that will allow me to have animated pets, rigged on 2D skeletons, rendered on canvas elements. I'll still be able to have all the dynamic customization I wanted, too. This does mean making new pet art, but it'll be well worth it. In the end, the site will be even more alive and interactive.
http://orig07.deviantart.net/d59b/f/...as-dawoage.gif

New Visions

There may be some major changes to the world map and minor changes to the context of the world as overarching 'plot' sorts itself out. I had an older site idea that I wanted to implement that was highly story driven, and the only real element this adds to the game right now is a human avatar. The focus is still very much on caring for your pets with emphasis on playing with anyone and everyone's pets as you come across.

Map and Combat

The world map will be something you can physically explore with human avatar. I've been working on coding this in my free time and it's finally getting close. You can choose to engage in battle using any one of your pets. Individual pet level does not matter for combat -- meaning you can use any old brand new pet without having to train them at all. The total level of all your pets combined determines your level, and as such, your combat stats. But it's largely activities outside of combat that actually level your pets, so you don't have to engage in combat to get better at combat? So, while the story plot may ask you to fight a few things, if you put it off for a while and just love your pets instead, it should be a breeze when you come back to it.

So why engage in combat? Since Novu are dream guardians, you'll be fighting nightmare-infected Novu. It's obvious, plot-wise, while you'll be asked to do this. That said, if you collect enough dream essence from these fallen Novu, you should be able to create your own purified version - so get out there to collect more species! Further, site events will push you to cleanse as many and as much as you can of specific or all species. Meet certain criteria, and instantly unlock limited time rewards. Be in the top percent of players at the end of an event? Get even more awesome limited rewards!

Pet Moods

The site will keep track of a pet's level of care for the current day and the prior two days. This level of care will determine the pet's mood. A happy pet is more likely to give you presents while you're playing with them, an increased chance of items being found after combat, and may land critical hits in combat. A depressed pet will be less likely to give you presents, will look physically sad, possibly dirty, and you may get occasional notifications about it looking distressed.

You may be unable to abandon pets at zero mood points and there is some discussion about pets running away after six entire weeks of being at zero mood points. However, there are certain items that will guarantee at least one mood point a day in any specific category. So, in theory, for a little bit of effort to obtain these items, you will never ever have to worry about pets leaving if they are uncared for. Even other users can grant pets one mood point a day by playing with them. Users with a lot of pets will always get at least one mood point filled because pets can play with one another. There are also other ways to make sure your pets are looked after if you'll be AFK for a week, such as putting your pet on a meal plan or buying a vacation pass for them to stay at the spa, but these are not free.

There are four things that determine a pet's mood: whether they have been played with, have gotten exercise, have been fed, and are clean. More on these with the next update!