Next Major Content Update?

[Aionlasting]

Curious what the next big update will hold.

Also any update on the animation system? What about place holder models being replaced?

For fun, any suggestions that have been made that you are entertaining on implementing or considering implementing in some fashion or another?

Anything fun or interesting you can share with us? What about current difficult areas in game design? What's giving you the biggest headache right now?

Will we see any big UI fixes, quality of life fixes, in the next big content update?

Are you excited about unity 2020 changes? I heard they were implementing more engine changes to support online multiplayer game development.

Would love to hear from you Citan and what's going on behind the scene! Thanks.

Kindly offered.

[Citan]

The next dev blog is still a week away, so I'll share a little info, sure.

We're never exactly sure when all of the assets we need for something will become available, and the pandemic has made some things take longer than expected. So this next update is different than I'd expected the April update to be. But it's something I've been excited to work on for a while: Animal Husbandry!

Animal Husbandry will let players breed Animal-Handling animals (and eventually rideable horses). We're modeling the genetics after a simplified version of real-world genes, with dominant and recessive genes, mutation rates, that sort of thing.

This means that Animal Husbandry is a long-term skill. Even with the special gene-viewing powers we'll give you, it can still take many hundreds of generations to get the "perfect pet", and each generation takes a few days. But when you have offspring you're proud of, you'll be able to sell pet-only offspring (without breeding rights) to other players, so you can make a name for yourself as e.g. the vendor with glowing-eyed cats, or the breeder who makes the super-tiny grimalkin, or the blue-bear breeder with the extra painful bite.

It's definitely not something every player will be excited about. But for a certain small percentage of players, I think this will be an AMAZING system, perhaps the best genetics simulation in the MMO space, which entertains for years to come. For everyone not excited by that... well, everyone will eventually reap the rewards of fancy pets and mounts when they're on the market.

We're busy building the artificial genomes of rats, cats, and bears, and it'll be another couple weeks before it goes live. We've replaced some animal models to give us more possibilities for appearance mutations.

Aside from Animal Husbandry, there's also various UI improvements, including a couple from the recent forum thread, some more fae stuff, and probably some more content in Sun Vale/Fae Realm if the timing works out.

One thing that probably won't get much attention in a dev-blog, but which I'm happy about: I finally managed to repro the "cursor is stuck in the middle of the screen" bug. It is indeed a Unity bug as suspected, but once I was able to reproduce it semi-regularly, I was able to find a workaround. So the next update should see the end of that one. (This also fixes some of the "cursor got stuck as a certain shape" bugs, but not all of them, I suspect. But we'll get there.)

[Vish]

for me it will be fun part (try to get Smurf (blue Cat that some admin use long time ago somewhere))

so we can do some gane change on cats rats and bear but not Wasp andd Bee? (or not this time?)

[Citan]

Depending on the schedule, it's possible that bees (and possibly rats) will get their genetics later on. But if timing works out right, it'll work with bees too.

[Roccandil]

Wow, very cool! :) Looking forward to seeing how genetics works!

[Aionlasting]

Sounds exciting for animal handlers and those who like to breed. I may dabble a bit but I don't think i fall in the camp of those who will find it AMAZING though im willing ot keep an open mind!

Curious about the UI updates. That sounds wonderful. Thanks for sharing a bit of insight as to whats being worked on! Feel free to share more if you wish! :)

[Tsin]

You've potentially fixed the "cursor is stuck in the middle of the screen" issue!? That's amazing! Thank you. This issue has made P:G almost unplayable on my laptop. Fortunately my linux desktop hasn't had the issue.

Also, animal husbandry sounds like a lot of fun. I wonder how high I can get a rats evasion rating...

[Velaethia]

The next dev blog is still a week away, so I'll share a little info, sure.

We're never exactly sure when all of the assets we need for something will become available, and the pandemic has made some things take longer than expected. So this next update is different than I'd expected the April update to be. But it's something I've been excited to work on for a while: Animal Husbandry!

Animal Husbandry will let players breed Animal-Handling animals (and eventually rideable horses). We're modeling the genetics after a simplified version of real-world genes, with dominant and recessive genes, mutation rates, that sort of thing.

This means that Animal Husbandry is a long-term skill. Even with the special gene-viewing powers we'll give you, it can still take many hundreds of generations to get the "perfect pet", and each generation takes a few days. But when you have offspring you're proud of, you'll be able to sell pet-only offspring (without breeding rights) to other players, so you can make a name for yourself as e.g. the vendor with glowing-eyed cats, or the breeder who makes the super-tiny grimalkin, or the blue-bear breeder with the extra painful bite.

It's definitely not something every player will be excited about. But for a certain small percentage of players, I think this will be an AMAZING system, perhaps the best genetics simulation in the MMO space, which entertains for years to come. For everyone not excited by that... well, everyone will eventually reap the rewards of fancy pets and mounts when they're on the market.

We're busy building the artificial genomes of rats, cats, and bears, and it'll be another couple weeks before it goes live. We've replaced some animal models to give us more possibilities for appearance mutations.

Aside from Animal Husbandry, there's also various UI improvements, including a couple from the recent forum thread, some more fae stuff, and probably some more content in Sun Vale/Fae Realm if the timing works out.

One thing that probably won't get much attention in a dev-blog, but which I'm happy about: I finally managed to repro the "cursor is stuck in the middle of the screen" bug. It is indeed a Unity bug as suspected, but once I was able to reproduce it semi-regularly, I was able to find a workaround. So the next update should see the end of that one. (This also fixes some of the "cursor got stuck as a certain shape" bugs, but not all of them, I suspect. But we'll get there.)

As an animal handler main it might be super fun to try animal husbandry. But I don't have to like give up my basic bear right? I like them a lot and don't wanna lose them... Might just have to hang out in my stables so if selective breeding can make super over powered pets. We'll see. Still seems fun. I love the idea of a mutation system. I love genes and breeding in games. I doubt it'd be a thing but I'd kill for a rainbow bear or cat. Hmm... Will animals have a sex in this update to add complexity? or keep it simple and allow animals to breed together as long as there are 2 of them? Also not sure if you are willing to comment but will bees be included and do you have any plans for future pets? If it works out best feel free to wait any/all of these questions until the dev blog.

Hopefully getting into/levellign animal husbandry isn't too difficult. If it isn't then I can see myself doing that and potentially obsessing. Might need to heavily invest gold in more stable slots though.

I'm assumign also that cat and bears can't reproduce? Or will we be allowed to have bearcat monstrosities? I'm guessing also that the PC cannot reproduce with their pets >_>... I'd hope not. (Hey I RP that my main bear is sentient and still a no from me)

oof thought this was a reply to my post. RIP>