Browser pet sim: Looking to gauge interest

[CrystalKitten]

So, a while back I started my own browser pet sim. It was coded entirely from scratch, including a breeding script and a phpBB clone. It actually did fairly well, and I made a few hundred dollars off it, but people just didn't get the concept of "in development" and lost interest when the site didn't grow to massive proportions rather quickly. I'm kind of interested in possibly looking to get back into development after exams, (and during next semester, I'm thinking of trying to "schedule" time for NON-wow hobbies at least 2-3 times a week). Now, I'm not sure if it would be accessible anywhere online... As the scripts are pretty... indepth, and I don't know of any free servers that could handle what I need to do (even some of the paid-for-but-cheap ones couldn't handle it) and I really can't afford a server.. Plus, I feel more work should be done before it's made completely public.. I'd do a local server... like I did before so I could have maybe a few dozen people with alpha access to try it out as I go, but I'm on a shared internet, so I don't really wanna open all them up to incoming traffic... I'm asking after interest, as it helps keep me motivated if people are say... following a dev journal, and being all "Oh wow, that sounds awesome."

So anyways, the site is called Mykiana. It's based off a world that I created for the purpose of writing. The base story is that a magical war was waged between the people, and the dragons, which climaxed in some magic being torn free and quite literally devouring most of the life. Cities had been protected, but much of the wildlife was devastated.

The game itself is a breeding sim, much like others that are out there, only... different. At the time that I'd made it, NO other game had the features I had managed to develop. In Mykiana not only could you breed, for example, a red cat to a blue cat, and get a purple cat, you could experiment with different stats, markings, and features (thinking of renaming them structures) and get something ENTIRELY new. Something not AVAILABLE on first gens. Also, like most other sites, inbreeding isn't just something that is taboo because it's something we're naturally biased against, it has DIRECT effects on the pairing, depending on the extent of the inbreeding. When the site was up before, I actually had a few people that did it intentionally, just because of the effect.

Unlike others, I also had a constant way to have an "animal drain" for animals that were no longer wanted. Every... 3 days I believe I had it set to... the wildlife organization would deem a new creature be needed to be released. It could be something as simple as asking for a certain breed.. OR.. it could get quite specific, asking for certain markings or structures and colours. With a greater prize being given if the animal matched the criteria better (example, if it asked for a blue cat, some shades of purple would overlap into the acceptable criteria, however, a PURE blue animal would give a higher price).

I was eventually planning to have some silverlight games for making currency (gotta learn silverlight first though...). As well as having a definite roleplay aspect. Example: I wanted factions. So say.. instead of giving your animal to the wildlife foundations, you could give it to poachers for furs.. or nobles for pets.. and the value on each would be different, but it would raise and lower reputation with others, which would have other effects as well. I was even thinking of there being game/world wide effects as well... For example.. iff too many people gave their animals to poachers... then the wildlife organizations would do something about it.

The game would have first gens (after it was available on a stable server, etc) for purchase with real cash (like most other similar sites) however, UNLIKE most of those sites.. it would be perfectly feasible to get the "real money" currency IN GAME by playing hard. So those who worked for it, could reasonably get everything they want without having to rely on ridiculous pricing of others.

Umm.. I feel like I'm leaving something out.. but.. if anyone has any questions or anything.. feel free to ask..

[Nimae]

Wow, this sounds like a crazy cool game, CrystalKitten. I'd totally love to play something like this, especially with the whole wildlife and phenotype-dependent breedings you could work with. It sounds really in-depth, that's awesome! At the time (starving student status), I don't have any spare cash to help with a start-up... but I'd be really interested in following Mykiana's development!

[Congafury]

I would totally love to join such sim!:D