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2019 dev thread

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 11:26:24 -0500

New year. Woo. Bit grim, with shitty weather and an ill hen, but hopefully it'll all improve.

- added little notice to top of pages when new News article is written, before user has seen it.
- added redirect to Activate page, if non-active user tries viewing any other page.
- briefly thought about making a 'restocking' system for shops, but am now deciding not to bother. I don't want users to be refreshing pages like crazy, adding server strain.

- trying little bits of new layouts here and there. I'm starting to really hate this CSS/web design stuff. I want a really fancy intricate medieval/fantasy design, but that's barely compatible with responsiveness. A lot of things simply cannot be shrunk down (like the explore maps, for one) so...

2nd January

Fucking endo, giving me agony all day. Meanwhile, chicken had to be put to sleep by vets. Didn't have a chance to see her this morning, or say goodbye.
Crappest new year ever.

3rd January

Endooooo

4th January

Still bleh, but gotta get sth done...
- figured out how to make simple 'pathfinding' so enemies in battlefield will choose target griffs (or other tiles like healing tiles, allies) and move towards them. Got the code to choose the target co-ords but haven't got round to trying it yet.
- gene editing in nest is sorta finished. Woo. Gonna need more work to add the marking genes later, as they're more complex than body part layers. 16 alleles instead of 10.

5th January

Gene editing of all current parts is indeed finished. Later it should cost an item + reduce egg health, to stop you doing it too much.
Modified flock page a bit; thinking of new layout.
Now tinkering with battlefield...

6th January

Dear endo, can you fuck off please...

- Added 4 ranges for movement/attacking. At 1, griff can only select one of the 8 tiles around them. At 4, there's a big radius. Range for griffs will depend on breed/agility/being equipped with an item, and for monsters, based on their type.
Spells/attacks don't have their own ranges. Let's say they're all short-range and the griff needs to physically be close by. So having a wide range means you can either move far, or use spells further away - not on the same turn...

- Testing with a background. Walls work fine, but it's annoying if griff can move 'through' them, because their range extends over the other side of it. >.< Must figure out how to block all tiles 'in their direction', with x or y numbers that are greater than theirs...

- Gonna add enemies now. Eeeek.
... they're working, whew. One random enemy acts after each griff act. If griffs are outnumbered 2x, then two enemies move for each griff, and so on.
Next, um. Plug in my crappy 'pathfinding' so enemies actually choose griffs and follow them.

7th January

Figured out a formula to block more tiles behind impassable tiles, like in lines radiating outwards from current tile. It's very crude and blocks some innocent-looking gaps, so I'll have to design walls etc carefully to avoid that.

Need a version in JS for the page, and in PHP for the monsters. Array push and concat are easy enough, but JS doesn't have for-each-as loops...
Done. Why do all these programming languages have to have different syntax? I get so confused switching between . and +, different array handling, function names like split/explode...
... right, all working. Gaah. Tomorrow, hopefully get the monsters chasing. And start thinking about adding attacks/spells.

8th January

Or not. Made a random NPC generator tonight, text-only with JS. Will add it to a page on site tomorrow. Combined with the coat generator, maybe testers can help come up with interesting NPCs.

9th January

Added it, on the page /fun/npc.
Didn't have time to work on anything else tonight. Just thinking about lore...

10th January

Sketched some ponies. Re-writing a bunch of stuff about Minoan griffs, dragons, fairies, and the political setting. BIG EMPRESS IS WATCHING YOU. I'm not exactly familiar with many other fantasy games or novels, but I haven't heard about any quite like this. We'll see how it goes.

Stone stuff

Wed, 15 Aug 2018 13:24:10 -0400

List for arete/other testers to maybe help with.

Basically, users collect/mine raw minerals and refine them in workshop, into finished items.
Some minerals are raw in one size (like turquoise, desert rose, haematite, rutile, cerussite) while others come in large or small sizes (big rough chunk vs small rough piece).

Large chunks can be turned into 3 small pieces. Or bigger items like sculptures, wall/floor panels, bricks (later to use in building decor for your island).
A small piece can become a cabochon, round gem, pear/teardrop gem, hexagonal prism, or beads.
The options depend on the mineral; some are only suitable for beads, others can be all 5.

Nest charms are little bits of jewellery. They have a metal base-piece and then you must choose which gems to inset. The gems can be raw or already cut.
Different charms affect different genes.
For example:
- fullwing charm, affects all 4 wing parts (inner and outer, coverts and flights)
- more charms that change each of those parts individually

So if you really wanted a griff to have totally emerald wings, you'd look for (or create) an Emerald Fullwing Charm.
If you wanted the inner bits to be Gold and Chocolate, you'd make those two charms and hope that both took effect, on the same egg/chick.

edit: OK, here are the 'base' wing charm images. The empty metal pieces, and how they'll look after being filled with gems (the actual gems will be drawn instead of blue).

Fullwing Charm

Venwing Charm (both inner wing parts)

Dorwing Charm (both outer wing parts)

Venflight (inner wing, flight feathers)

Venvert (inner wing, covert feathers)

Dorflight (outer wing, flight feathers)

Dorvert (outer wing, covert feathers)

... good grief, what am I even doing... D:

Now I can't decide what to do for other body parts, and gene edits (base, additional, beak, horn materials, maybe randomise or remove paint marks, add mutations)...
Make more types of charm? Probably.
There are just soooo many things that could possible be done, to mess with genes lol. And personality traits... or physical traits...
So maybe non-charm items can also be placed in nests.
Just cabochons, beads, prisms cut gems. Or even raw chunks?
Ahhh, too many options! What material will do what? x)

Process in workshop: pick a mineral from visual list.
Then use AJAX to generate list of products that can be made from that. When one of those is clicked, bring up requirements.
(you need trained griffs with Lapidary skill to oversee the process, and give commands as people physically do it.
And maybe you need to install equipment, for cutting/polishing/carving/applying metal. More jobs!)

If you select a finished item, it might yet be possible to add it to jewellery (combine with metal, chains) or if it's a sculpture or brick etc, can cut it back down into small gem.

Anyway, the materials that will be available:

Jaspers: leopard, peacock, cheetah, alligator skin... lots of other kinds too. Can be turned into cabochons, beads, prisms.
Not sure if these will come raw in one size only, or 2.
--- I expect these will change marking genes.

Bruneau Jasper: a particularly interesting pattern. Not sure what could be done with it. Colour ranges from deep brown, to coffee, to pale cream/white.

Agates: blue lace, purple, red, orange, black, iris, crazy lace (forgot to draw that one!). Can be turned into cabochons or beads.
These come raw in only 1 size.
--- Not sure what any of them should do. If I add a few more types/colours, they could change the griff's magic element?
There are 8 of those: fire, water, ice, wind, earth, light, darkness, thunder.
Plus rare Universal element (rainbowy stuff, would fit the Iris agate).
Crazy Lace could pick a random element.

Turquoise: can become 'all 5' finished products.
This comes raw in only 1 size.
--- This will turn body parts Turquoise colour, of course.

Cerussite: can become prism, round or pear gem. Maybe beads or cabochon too? I just didn't notice/look for any real examples of that.
This comes raw in 1 size.
--- Not sure what this could do. There'll probably be a Snowflake kinda marking later, this would fit.

Rutile crystal: apparently it can't be turned into any jewellery, aww. But I already drew it, so. Maybe it could be turned into powder later, like in reality, and used for ceramic glazing or titanium metal.
Comes in 1 size.
--- I was thinking this could turn horn genes to gold. The needles look a lot like a male Rampant's spikes!

Rutilated quartz: a bit of transparent quartz with rutile needles trapped inside. This is the kind that CAN be turned into jewellery, all 5 kinds.
Comes in 2 sizes.
--- Not sure what it could do.

Haematite: can become cabochon, beads, prism.
Comes in 1 size.
--- Err, it's a deep red colour? Weird bubbly texture? Not yet sure what it could do.

Indicolite: (blue-green tourmaline)
Schorl: (black tourmaline)
Rubellite: (red-pink tourmaline)
Verdelite: (green tourmaline)
Achroite: (colourless tourmaline)
No idea what to do with these. The latter would be a perfect fit to produce the Achromatism mutation. But the other 4?
They all come in 1 size, a raw prism.

Desert Rose: a piece of selenite, sand etc. Comes in 1 size and can't be refined into anything. Just made into a pendant by adding a chain.
--- Effect?

Calcite: can become all 5 jewellery types (plus sculptures/bricks later)
Comes in 1 size.
--- Effect?

Aragonite: comes in 1 size, can only be turned into beads. Or made into pendants as-is, with a bit of chain/wire.
--- Could turn body parts to Copper or Tan colour? Not sure

Kyanite: comes in 1 size, I think? Can turn into all 5 things, plus pendants as-is.
--- Could cause Cyanism mutation

Pyrite: comes in 1 size. Can be shaped into beads, cabochon, prism. Or used as-is.
--- Could change horn colour genes to silvery gold.

Selenite: comes in 1 size. Can become cabochon or prism. Later, bricks, sculptures or crystal balls.
--- Effect?

Jet: comes in 2 sizes. Cabochon, beads or small sculptures later.
--- Probably turns colour genes to black... or the horns black... or sets all body parts to the darkest shade? Uh.

Magnetite: comes in 1 size. Can only become beads. Later could be used for iron ore.
--- Effect?

Red Gypsum: comes in 1 size. Can become cabochon, prism, beads.
--- Effect?

Celestite: comes in 2 sizes. Can become cabochon or prism. Or used as-is.
--- Nice pale blue colour, maybe it changes colour to Cloud?

Native Gold: comes in 2 forms: Vein or Nugget. Both are same 'size', can produce one bit of metal later.
But the veined chunk can be sliced into panels etc, or used for rough jewellery, while the pure nuggets can't. They can only be melted down into metal.
Native Silver, Native Copper, Native Platinum: these 3 all appear only in small nuggets. Can only be turned to bit of metal. Then mixed into white gold, rose gold, etc.. later.
--- effects of all these?? Horn materials maybe.

Howlite: comes in 2 sizes. Can become beads, cabochon, prism, or later, small sculptures.
--- effect?

Dolomite: comes in 2 sizes. Can become beads, cabochon, or later, sculptures of any size.
--- effect? It's opaque white, very plain. Maybe sets all paint marking colours to white (if they were opal, black etc - those can look messy).

Pink Baryte: comes in 1 size. Cabochon only; apparently little else can be done with it.
--- presumably turns colours to Rose, or Coral?

Fluorite: comes in 2 sizes. Can be used for all 5 things, or sculptures.
--- effect? It's multicolour stuff, green-blue-pink-purple...

Azurite: comes in 2 sizes. Cabochon or beads only.
--- turns colour genes to Azure, of course! (although the stone is actually much darker... so Darkest Azure maybe?)

Dioptase: comes in 2 sizes. Cabochon, beads, or used as-is.
--- It's a very dark turquoise colour. Darkest Turquoise?

Sunstone: comes in 2 sizes. All 5 uses.
--- very glittery stuff. If there's a Glitter coat effect added later (like the Pearl one already), Sunstone should cause that.

Spessartine: comes in 2 forms: small piece, or cluster. The small piece can be turned into beads. The cluster can't be used for anything, only turned into powder later?? or maybe used for pendants as-is.
--- bright orange colour. So, Copper coat?

Bornite: (peacock ore) could come in 1 or 2 sizes. Either way, cannot be smoothed. Only used as-is for jewellery.
--- effect?

Amber: comes in 2 sizes. Can become beads, cabochon, or be used as-is.
--- changes eye colour to Amber, of course.

These gems are all come in 2 sizes, and can be used for all 5 things:
Olivine: sets colour to Olive, of course
Diamond: it's clear and colourless, could remove all paint markings?
Tanzanite:
Pyrope: bright fiery red, could cause Erythrism mutation
Zircon:
Sapphire:
Kunzite: sets colour to Rose
Rose Beryl: sets colour to Coral (or Rose... but I can't find many other gems that resemble Coral colour!)

Minerals I haven't properly researched yet, but they'll be available in some form:

Smoky Quartz: sets colour to Chocolate
Obsidian: sets colour to Obsidian
Chrysoprase: sets colour to Emerald, Lime or Turquoise?
Rose Quartz: sets colour to Rose
Peridot: sets colour to Olive
Lapis Lazuli: makes entire body dark blue/purple and all horn genes gold? LOL that might be cool actually.
Citrine: bright yellow, sets colour to Medium Gold? or causes Xanthism mutation
Rhodolite: sets colour to Magenta
Malachite:
Carnelian: deep red, so... Dark Scarlet colour?
Heliodor: slightly greenish yellow... sets colour to either Lime or Gold?
Chalcedony: sets colour to Cloud or Duck Egg?
Honey Topaz: sets colour to Sand
Emerald: sets colour to Emerald
Aquamarine: very light blue/teal, so... Lightest Azure or Turquoise?
Tiger Eye:
Red Tiger Eye:
Hawk's Eye: (it's blue-grey,similar to tigereye)
Labradorite:
Spectrolite: (a stronger form of labradorite, much more vivid)
Bismuth:

Opals... uuugh. Too many to think about right now.
But they'd match up nicely with horn or paint textures.

It could be possible to create charms/bits of metal, like Gold, Silver, White Gold, Rose Gold, Steel, Iron, etc. And put those in the nests, to set horn colours.

References:

See Colour Guide for all the coat and eye colours. Beaks and legs now have same big palette as other parts.

See the Horn Guide for full list of horn materials.

Paint marks can be white, black, or any of the 16 opals that horns have (totally separate genes,just using same textures).

There are 12 mutations. Mutation Guide
- The griff must have the exact alleles needed. So Ery/Xan or Ery/Normal will not do anything, etc. Must be homozygous.
- Alleles can be changed after conception, but Mutation is already fixed!
So we could give an ordinary egg an allele or two, but it won't turn into a mutation, and the owner won't know what they've got, unless they breed the griff later and pass down mutations.

You can test out mutations (and all other coat bits, woo!) in the Gene Lab.

Helpful little tasks for testers

Sun, 06 May 2018 21:12:29 -0400

Hello lurkers! There are already a few, apparently, and one or two have signed up and offered to help test.

If you have a few minutes, here are some features that could use some thorough Messing With. Do your worst!
Let me know if the actions work, or you get a warning message, or even a blank white error page (that's the worst, eek).

Exchanges

- try creating gibberish offers (or counter-offers) with usernames that don't exist, enter quantities that you don't have, or leave fields empty.
- open both of those pages, then open your flock or inventory in other tabs, get rid of some items/griffs, switch back to Exchanges pages and try to submit offers with those items/griffs you no longer have.
- when an original offer is deleted, any/all counter-offers to it should also be deleted. (added)
- same when a counter-offer is accepted by the original user. The original offer and any 'rival' counter-offers should all be deleted (add later)
- I'm temporarily letting all offers stay even after being accepted. If one was successfully done, the next times you try to accept it, it should be blocked, and show messages about griffs/items not belonging to the right owners any more.

Raising griffins

You get them as eggs, at '1 week incubation'. Every real day, they age by 1 week. After 5 weeks, they should grow to next stage. The image and stage-name should instantly update, the growth should reset to '1 week of growth' and the servant should give a message about them growing.
After they reach adulthood, the growth text should be replaced with '1 year old' and then they gain one year every day.
After 50 or 60 years (I forgot lol) they should grow to the final stage, Elder.
After 100 years, if mortal, servant should comment about them being elderly. After 110 years they'll die of old age and you'll be given option to 'attend the memorial' (which is when the griff is finally removed from your flock and listed in Memorial section instead).

There should not be any way to revive them or undo death - try using items etc on them. (I suspect something might work; need to code in some age/death checks for items)
Also - crap! - it should not be possible to explore, fight, trade or do anything else with them. If they were your active griff, it should change to None.
(pretty sure I haven't added any of those checks, whoops)
If you do manage to trade a dead griffin away, it should still be dead when new owner visits it.

If you used the item 'Ancient Breath' on them at any time, they should become permanently immortal and after 100/110 years never show any elderly signs.
If you used a 'Moon Tear', 'Onyx Scale' or 'Flawless Eye' item on them, their age should be frozen; number will stay the same for next 10, 30 or 50 days.
If you feed them 'Crisp Leaves', 'Honey Stems' or 'Spice Bubble' they should wake up each day with max energy, for 2, 4 or 6 days.
These statuses and durations (numbers of days left) are shown on manage page, under the status bars.
If the status is active, the icon should be coloured and number shown when you hover over them. If griff doesn't have items applied, icons should be faded.

Every new day (regardless of age) the time-of-day should start back at Dawn. You can choose commands (currently obviously unfinished lol) which should take you to the next time-of-day, until Evening when griff needs to sleep. The Hunting command should use up 1 energy. Resting restores 2 energy. Grooming and Leisure both make the griff a bit happier. Yeah, I promise there'll be some actual varied results from these commands someday. x)

Griffs normally regain 1 health, 6 energy and 4 (I think?) trust each day.
If they have less than 5 health, instead they won't gain any health or energy, and will lose 30 trust each day (as they must be very unwell and you're failing to heal them).
If they're elderly (100+, mortal), they should lose 3 (I think?) health each day.
If they're immortal, that should never happen, even aged 200+ (I've tested this).

The item 'Time Droplet' can be bought from the Mages' store, and having one in inventory will let you instantly age a griff to next day. For testing reasons, it won't be used up, so go wild with aging griffs. After you have at least one, the griff's page should show a bright purple icon with message that you can skip time.

Energy can currently be used up, and health lost, from battling. After a griff (on either side) has... 1 energy? or < 5 health, or very low trust, they should no longer be available to fight.

Breeding

In the dropdown lists you should see all your males and females who are: adult/elder, fertile, still have at least one breeding left.
Try loading that page in a tab, neutering a griff(s) or using up breedings in another tab, then switching back and trying to breed them. You should get warning messages about infertility or capacity.
Note: one breeding can result in 1-3 eggs. I can't remember if it takes one point per breeding, or per egg laid. Will have to check again.
There's also a small chance of no fertile eggs being laid. Think that does still take a breeding point... it's rare though.

Breeding from someone's male stud should be the same.
There's an oversight regarding money (if you enter the page with not enough money for the fee, the button to breed should not appear - but if you enter with the money, lose it all in another tab, then come back and use the stud... uhh, it should go ahead and then attempt to take money from you afterwards. Which would leave you with 0, but the breeding shouldn't go ahead in the first place! I need to add more checks here).
Also, try breeding from a male after he's been withdrawn from stud. Don't think I've added a check for that...?

I'm fairly certain the genetics are all working by now. Haven't tested every single mutation though, or many of them in different colours.
If you ever get a griff with a pure black body part, it must mean a hex code wasn't generated for that part, due to genes not lining up in any of the correct orders.
Look at the griff's public profile, the Genetics tab. If any boxes are blank, or the letters are in wrong order, that's a problem, please let me know asap.

In the Mages' store there are a bunch of different stones, gems etc which should alter genetics when applied to griffs. Pink and Blue can only be used on eggs, to make them hatch male or female (in that order). Colourstones are also egg-only, and they should set the whole base-colour genotype.
Colourcoils are the adult versions. Other gems... might be for eggs or adults, I forgot lol. Some change elements, or add mutation alleles. The descriptions of each item should be hinty enough...

Note: mutations and their colour-shifting effects are set when eggs are laid. If you give an older griff axan/axan alleles, they won't gain Axanthism; coat will stay same colour. But they should be able to pass on those alleles.
They should not count for the mutation checks, on your Flock Statistics page. Griffs must've been born with the two correct alleles for that. However you can change elements at any time, and that will be counted for the statistics.

Currently there are no ways to force metal/opal horn mutations, or change horn colours. When those items are added, the changes will become effective immediately, on the coat and in statistics.

Equine breeds

Sun, 11 Feb 2018 22:14:40 -0500

I re-scribbled the little table and have settled on 15 breeds. Can't find the image now, but breeds include: heavy pegasus, light pegasus-unicorn, traditional unicorn, hippocampus, hippalectryon, qilin, dragonhorse, fantasy deer of several types...

Will post linearts here, as each one is done.

Note: because of how the breeding and growth system is set up (perfect for griffs and dragons), I think these unicorns etc will have to lay 'eggs' too?! We could say it's a trait they evolved, or were bred for by the ancient civilisations. Instead of giving birth to single full-term foals, mares instead produce up to 3 small ones at a time, which can keep developing in some sort of fortified sac. This would mean a much lower maternal mortality rate, faster and higher numbers of offspring, and that other members of the herd can defend nests and raise foals while mares work on the next litter/clutch. Way more efficient than real horses, eh?
Gonna sketch the 'egg' (stage 0) last, then tweak it for some breeds.

Qilin stages 1-5 (not yet sure which sex this one is - can think of other ways qilins can be shaped...)
They emit streams of warm plasma (or sth?) which some believe is from their heart. A stuttering or absent stream indicates the qilin is close to death.

Feathered unicorns, stage 3. Awkward teenagers.
Females are winged, males have large fancy peacock-like plume feathers sprouting from their crests and tails.

...

Breeding change?

Sat, 16 Dec 2017 11:22:15 -0500

This has been bugging me recently, while drawing slightly-better bases for all the griffs. There are some major problems with the current system:

- Hybrid outcomes refuse to work properly. All these combinations are laid out in the DB, and I edited the breeding script to remove the extra if's (parent-combination checks that aren't used). So it SHOULD be looking in that table, and finding the fixed outcome - or several possible ones, with chances - available. But it still only works half the time. Crossing two pure breeds still gives some pures. Argh.

- It's gonna get very, very messy having to manually input every possible breeding outcome. With only 3 pures and 3 hybrids right now, it was a chore to calculate and write out that long list. What about when there are, I dunno, 8 pures and goodness knows how many hybrids..? Really should have thought about this earlier.

So I wonder about redoing this with two DB columns, called breed1 and breed2, for each griff. One of the two is chosen and passed down from each parent, like genes. A pure Rampant would have Rampant in both slots. If it was crossed with a pure Runic, the offspring would be Rampant/Runic. If that was crossed with a Basic/Persian, there'd be 4 possible new hybrids. And so on. Simple and logical.

- This would be a million times easier than the current system, and never need updating again.
- Imagick would still work as usual, pathing to the correct folders.
- All breeds/combinations would still have proper names (like Rampant + Runic -> Mystic). And now we could mention on the profile what they're hybrids of.

In theory it could mean 2x as many hybrids, if we wanted to, but noooo, I'd rather avoid all that work.
Just trying to arrange a spreadsheet with 8 or so pures... it's suuuper challenging trying to figure out where to slot different kinds of birds and shapes haha.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...sp=sharing

Maybe that link works? Nobody else can edit it (for safety) but please do share any views!

22 Dec, update: might as well post breed art here.
Still nowhere near final (eventually I'd like the whole site to have painted style, except the pixel sprites) but these bases should be sufficient for quite a while.

More on the way ASAP!

To-do List

Tue, 07 Nov 2017 15:25:33 -0500

Things to do, in no particular order. If it vanishes from this list, it's done.
Easy tasks are in green. 'Easy' meaning I know roughly/exactly how to do them, but they'll take a lot of effort and time...

Genetics, Breeding, Coats

- element layer should not be one fixed colour, instead have 9 pre-drawn shapes. The orbs on a Minoan griffin could be balls of fire, ice, glowy smoke, thunder...
- and maaaybe not a fixed shape but many possible shapes; fire stripes, ice spots, glowing orbs, stuff coming from under paws/hooves, etc. For simplicity, these won't be genetic. You'll have to apply an item or sth, to make your Fire pegasus start trailing embers from his eyes.

- add at least 2 marking layers on top of all others (but below paint). Got the genes and range of markings planned out.

- add 'shapes' for the Additional, Beak, Eye and 4 wing body parts, so they're all effectively markings on top of Base (that solid layer never changes). They may be in the normal places, simply colouring those body parts... or they could be gradients, with Outer and Inner wings fading into each other... or they could appear elsewhere on body, like Outer Flights becoming stripes on the legs... or they could be invisible.

- decide on the 6 base stats every breed will have. Strength, Agility, Damage Reduction, Damage Nullification, Magic Power, Magic Resistance. Then each creature's individual Size/Build/Aura will shift their breed's base stats, during battles, trials and other tasks (got this bit already).

- decide if each breed will have its own lifespan, typical number(s) of eggs laid per breeding, growth rate, etc. Breeding and aging scripts are all set up to use these things, if we do add them.

Gene Lab

Working, for now. Like everything else, needs nicer layout/design.
I like to save space and promote recycling, so you can't create a new custom griff, only edit an existing one. For now, at least.

- when pixel sprites are redone, use one for the dynamic preview. You could click a button 'Update Preview' and AJAX sends back the new sprite, of the correct breed/sex/age. Then you can generate the final coat preview. I'll try to make the pixel sprites as similar as possible to the main coats - same poses etc.

- you have a row in DB that stores the details of your current 'gene experiment', but whenever visiting the genelab page fresh, none of these genes are loaded on page; all the palettes are empty etc. This is nice if you like designing from scratch, but I expect some players will want to see the last-saved stuff, to keep tweaking.
...
Alternatively, players might want to 'load' the genes of a chosen griff they want to edit. So I'll need to figure out how to do this. Use AJAX to load all the palettes/options HTML, with certain colours pre-selected for every section.

Incubation

- nest enchantments were removed completely, and stones will be simplified so they only add growth points to eggs. A small rough emerald may add 3 points to one egg. A small piece of jet adds 1 point to 4 random eggs... etc. Some stones may add a lot of points but also damage the health, while others restore health.

- the stone-effects-looping-through-eggs is done, update it when new stones are decided.
- finish editing and deletion of nests.
- allow users to instantly send eggs/chicks to other users, if don't want to abandon them.
- decide which item is used for gene editing, and edit the gene-examine script to 'pay' with that item and unlock genes.
- finish gene editing panel, and take payment for every edit.

Raising creatures

- need to get rid of manage/roost pages and use single profile for every griff, with all their info and the daily update stuff. Visitors just don't see the 'manage' tab.

Got the 'Daily Commands' system working, aimed at adults. Tell them to seek fights, food, resources or just wander. All the possible scenarios, chances and outcomes are stored in DB. Currently there's only one location and about 40 events (2 variations of 20 events).
- later, events will happen depending on the location each creature is in. Should be easy, just loooads of stuff to think up.

- need to add the hunger system. Every day it'll increase a bit. Depends on the breed's diet and what location they're in. Fish-eaters will be fine in watery places, and herbivores will be fine in lush forests. But in deserts, snowfields or mountains...? Then they'll find little to eat, and you'll need to start teleporting food out to them, for 5 MP per item.
Feeding is free if they're at a home or city location; they can just come to the pantry.

- linked to the above, you'll be able to teleport healing and energy boost items out to distant creatures. And other peoples' creatures, from their profiles?

- finish the Pack system. Add a workshop/page where you choose the griff, type of Pack, and AJAX checks if you have the materials. That adds a Pack to them, with a time limit.
Then update Pack every day to reduce the time left.
Then update maps so griffs can actually pick up/mine items and if have space, it's added to their Pack, else lost.
Then... maybe allow Masters to send items out to griffs, again if they have space.
Then add some test NPCs on maps, who want griff to have certain items in their Packs.

Already got simple Pack management with AJAX; you click button under each item, to discard it, or teleport it home and add it to your inventory, if you have MP.

(note, wearables aren't counted as items the griff is carrying. You'll be able to update their wearables at any time.)

- not sure what to do about juveniles and adolescents. Tweak it into a Training system, to shape personality and build?
Juveniles cannot leave Home location, so your commands will have to be play/challenge/take for walk/whatever.
Adolescents can explore only around the capital city (underneath your island) so that's a bit more range, stuff to do.
So maps 2 to 49 are free, for city. 50+ are outside the city, only adult creatures can venture out there.

- need to implement the (yet another new) skills system. Griffs start at 0 for all, and learn skills by doing tasks, or training sessions. Flight, Swimming, Navigation, Culture, Hunting/Ambush, Magic, Healing, Geology/Mining... etc.
Then, having high enough skills will allow NPCs to teach battle moves, or griffs to cross certain map obstacles, or do quick tasks...

- need to add flock size limit. More perches can be built, purchased, won, gained by seniority, etc.

- (maybe?) get rid of the single Nest page, which generates random eggs for anyone to take, free.
Instead, make more random nests around the continents, where users can find pegasus and dragon eggs, and rarer breeds.
So you'd have to explore certain forests or reach mountain peaks, to find certain breeds' eggs.

- definitely get rid (or hide) the feral griff page. Like with the eggs, you should have to explore the wilderness to find ownerless griffs and have chance to claim them.
Each breed has its own favourite place; for example wingless Minoans inhabit ruined palaces, and winged ones are in the forests around them.
Aquilas and Pandions can be found in many lake or coast areas, sometimes together (like eagles and ospreys in real life).

Crafting

Lapidary workshop is working from start to finish. Turn raw bits of stone into various quantities beads/slices/cut gems, or smaller bits of stone. Small chances of getting extra items at end, and some recipes have failure chances and will give you a consolation item instead. (haven't added those yet tho)
Recipes are laid out in DB, very easy to add more and tweak. You have to choose a creature who'll oversee or help the human crafter with each job, and certain minimum skills can be required. They'll gain EXP after successes, and (later) will have chances to gain more skill points.
- need to carry on adding the full range of mineral items... and plan what kinds of jewellery, wearables, other items can be made. Zzzz. There are so many!
- for making enamelled items, will need to add metal wire, gum tragacanth, silica? and such materials. Prob need to expand the DB table for more ingredient slots.

- planning a kitchen to deal with food items (turn ingredients into meals, which give more energy/happiness/extra effects compared to feeding creatures raw food).
- a forge to handle smelting and metalwork. Different to gemstone stuff.
- some other workshops, forgot now

Garden is working from start to finish, needs more work though. Like the lapidary workshop, projects are nicely arranged in DB table; very easy to add new ones or tweak current ones.
- need to add some placeholder graphics! Just shitty scribbles to show each plant/project's growth stages.
- need to update the AJAX so it sends back not just 'you did X, plant grew Y points' messages, but also the new plant name/points/correct growth stage image etc - basically so it refreshes the visual contents of the plot.
- planning to have 10? different garden layouts to choose from, and a range of backgrounds. Should be easy to load the different CSS sheets.
- planned how decorations could work (like arches, extra flowerbeds, rocks, paths, patios). Should work with the different layouts too; have set positions for every possible item in div.
- set up public garden pages, so you can view other users' gardens and harvest the daily stuff from their plots. Yes, this may cause wars. I think it'll be entertaining.

Inventory

- bloody item usage... get it finished!

- finish showcase too. It's basically a gallery, a parallel inventory where others can see the items. You can move things into Showcase from inventory, or move them back.

- get rid of single Treasure items for griffs, and let them hold 10 or so items. Yet another parallel inventory, like Packs... these items also go with them if they're sold or die.

Battle

- basic AJAX arena system is finished. Need to take away energy from griffs afterwards, so they can't keep fighting endlessly.
- should also change their happiness depending on win/loss/draw, but first need to update the 8 personality traits, to figure out what will influence their mood here.
- must automatically close any open battles after X minutes - preferably without crons. Prob include that script snippet on a busy page somewhere.

- 60 or so moves are there. Need proper formulae, and different messages for Arena vs Wild battles.
- need to plan the full list (what each breed knows by default, and can learn by levelling up or by teaching; only horned breeds can use horn attacks, etc)

Also working on SRPG-style battlefield, with 4 griffs at a time. Movement, 'collision' and character-switching is done, in JS. All griffs' XY co-ords and current HP are tracked, on PHP side.
- haven't started choosing attacks yet. Ideally all the same single-battle moves and spells will be usable here, but some will have different area affects, maybe.
- need to add some enemies, with their own arrays of moves to choose from, and make them do sth whenever a griff comes within their range.
- must think about simple AI. Can't do pathfinding, so... enemies just move vaguely in the direction of the nearest/weakest griff? Using XY numbers etc.
If there are impassable things in the way, umm. Either loop through all the surrounding tiles and see if any others are passable, else the enemy will be forced to do sth else. They'll have buff spells etc to do.
- should design a few different battlefield layouts (fortress, ruins, river, forest, rocky desert...) with backgrounds, impassable/harmful tile arrays, lists of monsters that can be generated there, and lists of co-ords where monsters and griffs can randomly start from. And then when attacking is working, test them with different parties of griffs, to see how different the battles all are.

- after the SRPG-style battlefields are all working, then start thinking about how you can challenge other users' teams. Far away idea though...

Menagerie

- err pretty much done, just need to draw more breeds of them, and finish the sales AJAX. And nicer layout etc, as with everything else...

Other stuff

- paypaaaaal. Can't be arsed to try yet

- when have own domain, add Google Ads, it sounds pretty easy.

- 3D models for every breed (for iso sprites) and learn to render basic skies, landscapes and buildings/streets. That should help with maps and backgrounds immensely.

- random events system needs editing so it's part of template, not included on pages. And make the events appear automatically, on div in middle of page, so user can't miss them.
- achievements/avatar system is done, just need art and more variety. Should make an AJAX function to check/unlock an av, when user does various things.

- redo quick tasks system, it's broken due to using old genes etc right now. And add lots more tasks!

- shops are done, need graphics and NPC designs. Day/Night times, or seasons, may have different stock and art.
- started adding NPC locations in city, like academy/barracks/seers' laboratory. Add NPCs in them, and other things to do.

- start tracking everyone's favour with key NPCs. When you talk to one, and be rude/do a task for them/buy from them, their number changes. You may have to choose between pissing off/confronting various NPCs, in some quests...

- add shops for cashing in your Arena Points and Seniority Points (from logging in every day).

(... mmmaybe? not sure about the following idea)
- work on full employment system. You find a job a griff qualifies for, enter them. The contract will range from 1 to 30 days. Every day they'll get a salary (if you visit them that day) which could be money or an item chosen from the job's themed list. They'll gain some EXP and skills each day, and probably happiness if this job matches their personality.

- other side of employment system: NPCs creating offers (or in some cases, having a fixed number of roles, such as military commanders' steeds, which many griffs will have to jostle for).
Users will also need to employ griffs in order to build more perches, expand their garden, build furnishings for home, etc. That will mean creating offers, and after the contract is filled and done, you'll receive the built thing.
Sometimes the salaries will be subsidised (for newbies mainly), other times you'll have to pay upfront. Like 5000 tokens to hire 2 griffs for a 2-day job, building a new perch.

- Ideally, jobs will be in groups rather than individual; a user wanting to extend garden will require 5 griffs, for digging/fencing/guarding/watering/something. Only when all 5 jobs are filled can the project begin. And after X days, it'll be done and all 5 griffs will be jobless, with some EXP and skill gains.
- Not sure how to plan that DB table yet, though.
Have a table for 'job projects' with 5 slots for griff id/skill/requirement/salary/etc... or treat them all as single offers, linked by one job ID number?
Yeah, that's probably better. Generate the 5 (or however many) individual offers at once. Then when looking at that job's page, fetch them all, and see if they've been filled with a griff ID or are 0 still.

Your Island

- actually, islands! You can collect up to 20. They come in 5 sizes and some different terrains. You can change the terrain, upgrade the size, and add various buildings or features like forests, mines, citizen housing, roosts...
Not sure about buying/selling islands with other users... but you can find Contract items which generate a new island for you.
Need to finish all this.

- interior of your fortress will be explorable. Decorate each room with furniture, rugs, banners, whatever. Purely aesthetic...

- allow you to position your griffs around fortress, either as eye-candy (a line of grey Achaemenids looking like statues, eek) or actual guards (starting fights with any visitor who runs past them). They'll have to be at location 1, your home island.

Lore, World contents

- keep designing more NPCs, come up with their backstories and which locations they can be found in, on certain days... and what kinds of items/quests they offer...

- wooorrrlldddd maaapppssss. These PSD files of floating island layers are massive and still just basic terrain... no details, rivers, landmarks, province borders generated yet. D:
But when they are finally ready, I've already got some jQuery and image map code waiting, for a nice highlight effect when you hover over a province.
Then it will be easy to use AJAX to look up some info on the selected province, count the numbers of griffs there, etc.

- I have the idea of the maps starting off blank/dark, so you have to send explorers out there to 'fill in' each tiny province. Ofc this'll be tracked in DB and you can get achievements for getting to landmarks.

- have done some idea-writing about 12 Seasons (each one month long, with unique environment effects and events, and a special deity-ish creature that only appears that month). Haven't got round to drawing any yet. The whole site's CSS should change per season too; from icy, to stormy, to lush flowers, to bright pearly metallic...

- Day/Night cycle uses user's timezone, not server time. It should affect explore maps, and CSS/NPCs/illustrations everywhere. Locations change at night, with different NPCs unavailable.

- note to self, DON'T try a weather system. It's nice but just too much. Day/Night + 12 Seasons is already a lot of versions for each map... seasons come with weather anyway.

Player avatars

Users will be able to shapeshift between a human, griff, pegasus, dragon, centaur, etc. But it'd also be quite nice to use the creature bases, so you can shift into any breed, and customise your coat by changing genes. 1 MP per gene change, so anyone can customise whenever.
Then the same wearables, palettes etc would be useable for players and creatures. Plenty of natural colours for those who'd like to stay humanoid.

- (maybe?) allow mage to reproduce with own flock creatures. Yeah, magic, it's weird stuff lol.
This would help you with getting desired markings etc on normal creatures (if you set up your own coat to be 'perfect', and hopefully you'll pass down some good stuff).
But it's a very distant idea. Zero priority right now.

Wearables (Adornments)

- redo this so there are 10 slots, where any wearables can be placed freely, and the layers jiggled around, using jQuery drag and drop, or something.

- note, wearables will probably NOT be included in the imagick-generated pics. Only the actual creature bodies will be handled there, and wearables can be overlaid using CSS, on profile pages. That will allow you to play around with live preview, using JS to switch around layers.
I have some old JS script from my griff generators, that allows you to merge many transparent PNG images into one. So there can be a page somewhere for players to click a button and output an image of creature coat + all wearables. If they want to use that fancy image for graphics or whatever.

Other Customisation

- must redo custom coat system. Should put them in a temp folder, and then upload to Amazon S3 bucket once approved.
- need to redo the gallery browsing options, and applying coats, using AJAX.
- need to set up a moderation page where entries can be accepted, declined (including a function with auto-punishment in case of serious broken rules) or edited by mods/admin.

- think about how to handle backgrounds. Currently they're all individual items. Should there be a central gallery where you can browse the whole range, and preview any griff in them, before buying/using? ... yeah, that sounds good. If you don't have that BG item in inventory, you can also purchase it right there, for a gem or sth.

- should also have a few background (and foreground) layers, to be overlaid with CSS, on profiles. So you can put extra plants, animals, buildings, weather, spell effects etc around your creature's scene.

- (maybe?) allow 'Pattern' items that partially cover griff with a colour/texture/other design an artist painted. Like the standard paint markings, but with custom contents. Flowers or rainbows or tartan...
This layer would need to be added to the imagick script, so it's cut out in the right body shape.

First thread

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 19:34:54 -0400

Testing... testing. Riverspell, you there?