Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Every announcement regarding Virtuadopt main site, or forums will come here.
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yankeesrule3526
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Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by yankeesrule3526 »

I am currently trying to do one of these once a quarter. It's been three months, so let's dive in.


What's changed
We saw our first big event in October, Halloween. In all honesty, I wasn't planning on an event at all. We just pulled KitsuLeif into the mix as a writer and I wanted to focus on the upcoming holiday. A lot of mistakes were made, and we all know it.

We also saw the first QOL update introducing various tweaks to help make the site more enjoyable, and the return of the Game Corner with some new twists. Overall, this was a very well received and successful update. However, the primary way of obtaining Virtucoins is currently by transferring adoptables away and that goes against the core concept of the site.

More recently, yesterday, actually, I sneakily migrated the site to a new server. I guess it wasn't super sneaky, cause the changes were immediately visible. That's what happens when you upgrade from ten year old hardware to three years old. It's nearly double the cost of the old server. I know everyone will agree, worth it. I also know a lot of people expressed interest in donating for a new server, so I created a Ko-fi page where you can donate. All funds go directly to Virtuadopt's expenses. It does not go to any staff members and does not give you any special perks on Virtuadopt. It's is purely a donation to keep the lights on. You can donate here: https://ko-fi.com/virtuadopt

I was not expecting this new server to hold up so well once it went live, but I think a serious change in the balance of the game is needed. As such, the amount of steps gained from hatching eggs via the Click Exchange has decreased by 25%. In other words, it should take 25% more credits to hatch an egg than before. Normal clicking remains unchanged.


The future
Mini games. Sound off in the comments below, letting us know what kinds of mini games you would like to see added. As I said before, we need new, exciting ways to earn Virtucoins.

The new user interface is still in the works, but not a whole lot has changed with it recently. I was a little Sceptical that we would be able to put together an Advent Calendar quickly, but I think Tango hit it out of the park. Hopefully we'll have some more visual teasers for you next diary, when the sun is Blazing high in the sky. I'm sure once the holidays end, work will resume. Everyone is Swamped this time of year.

Hmm, I feel like I am forgetting something. Oh well, it's probably not important. Excitement is high. New Years is coming fast. New features will make 2023 the best year yet!
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Re: Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by Syiren »

Ah, that explains the extra 20 creds I need to put on all my eggs. With the speed boost we now have, that seems fair.

Mini games... hmm... Well, I'd love to see a return of the Pokemon matching game that used to be in the game section.

Maybe one of those shuffle games too? The one where you have three cups and the shuffler puts a coin, rock, acorn, etc. under one cup, shuffles them around and you have to guess which cup is holding the item? Winning the game could award the player a set number of coins. There could even be a difficulty level. the harder the player sets it, the more coins they could win? To balance it, there could be an entry fee of a set amount of coins? or not....
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Re: Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by FairyPrincessCynthia »

I'd like to promote the returning of Crops for the purposes of gaining Virtuacoins, as well as randomly obtaining evolutionary items, Everstones, and later on, Arceus Plates (when Sinnoh is out), for wrong guesses. Rename the game to Treasure Hunt and have Gimmighoul be the mascot.

And I hope your Tree is up for the holidays, you've Torched some wood for a nice, warm fire, and you don't track Mud into the house.
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Re: Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by Dragonclaw »

Thank you so much for the new Server and all the effort everyone puts into VA! 💜
I'll try to donate monthly, but I can't promise that it'll work out every month. ;W;

For games! Hm.
- Hangman with pokemon themed words
- The Ruins where you can win one random Unown again with small shiny chance
- Mahjong
- Memory / matching game - maybe less buggy this time ;;
- Any time of farming game, idk, I love those games
- IF Crops come back: smaller field, smaller cooldown, better explanation how to play this. Last also applies for Grid, I never understood it :c

I'll edit it if more comes into my mind :D Thanks again!
Last edited by Dragonclaw on December 16th, 2022, 9:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by Phantom Thief »

The new server is very welcome, never felt so fast in the CE ! :D

For mini-games, I'm thinking bringing back puzzles would be nice. Those puzzles could re-used the adopts images, both regular and shinies, and could be every official pokemon but also VA monthlies and promos like this there's a lot of puzzle option ! They could give us a little something when finished, with the option of finishing them later (so, saving our progress), and a cool down of idk 3 hours (random example) ? We could also have different difficulty, with the bigger the difficulty, the more pieces to place, and of course the image chosen for a puzzle would be completely random.
And we could even have a special puzzle image made for every month for example, or event. One that would automatically be in the hardest difficulty, big and taking lot of time to do (with option to zoom maybe if it's very big), and offering a more interesting prize. Doesn't necessarily need to be every month or event, but just one time to time, and when the timer is finished, the puzzle disappear so you have to do it only when it's available ?
All of this could be done differently of course, I'm just trying to propose something that could be friendly to everyone (people with eyes issues included by adding a zoom if too big ^^ I don't want anyone to destroy their eyes because of this)
I'm not english nor bilingual, so expect mistakes/misunderstanding
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Re: Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by Tokoyami »

Phantom Thief wrote: December 16th, 2022, 8:46 am For mini-games, I'm thinking bringing back puzzles would be nice. Those puzzles could re-used the adopts images, both regular and shinies, and could be every official pokemon but also VA monthlies and promos like this there's a lot of puzzle option ! They could give us a little something when finished, with the option of finishing them later (so, saving our progress), and a cool down of idk 3 hours (random example) ? We could also have different difficulty, with the bigger the difficulty, the more pieces to place, and of course the image chosen for a puzzle would be completely random.
And we could even have a special puzzle image made for every month for example, or event. One that would automatically be in the hardest difficulty, big and taking lot of time to do (with option to zoom maybe if it's very big), and offering a more interesting prize. Doesn't necessarily need to be every month or event, but just one time to time, and when the timer is finished, the puzzle disappear so you have to do it only when it's available ?
All of this could be done differently of course, I'm just trying to propose something that could be friendly to everyone (people with eyes issues included by adding a zoom if too big ^^ I don't want anyone to destroy their eyes because of this)
+ 1!! I'd love having puzzles back, this would definetly go in the right direction :)
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Re: Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by Voegelchen »

Thank you for the new server! <3

There have been good ideas for mini-games.
I like the memory and puzzle mini games suggestions^^
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Re: Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by Alive »

So nice we can support VA, it's been a long time :)
And the "new" CE, after all this... months, years? Now it works so fine, I couldn't believe when I heard about it yesterday at work. It's pleasure to play when you don't have to do the captcha every 30-40 single clicks :)
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Re: Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by SchokoKitsune »

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the upgraded server - and for allowing us to help with server cost via donations now! owo

Some minigame suggestions - i might be repeating stuff the others have mentioned:
Some type of memory/matching game
Puzzles
Pokémon Themed Hangman
Higher or Lower
Mining (like in the Diamond/Pearl Underground!)
A Fishing minigame - either something similar to Fishing in Stardew Valley, or maybe just a "passive" fishing game where you choose a spot, wait for a timer to finish, and check your results. We could fish up items, money, coin, and maybe even water pokemon
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Re: Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by Cyrrior »

Thanks for all the work keeping VA running :)
The changes and planned updates sound promising. I haven't had time to test the CE so far, but it sounds good.

I also really like that there will be other ways of getting coins than the transfer station, thanks for that aswell!
Maybe there could be different ways to get some coins just by using the site? I'm thinking of you having the chance of randomly getting some coins for every trade you make, similar to those trading promos (although that might encourage people to do fake trades) or maybe every post you make on the forum gives you a chance of winning coins?
They could also be like a "loyalty reward" in the mart. After you bought 10 items (or spent a total of for example 10.000?) you get some coins.

As for minigames, puzzles sound great!
Like FairyPrincessCynthia I was also immediatly thinking of crops. That was always pretty fun.
I don't know if there maybe could be some kind of improved version of it ... where there is one special thing you're trying to find, but on your way there you might also get other things (like coins)?
Something a little bit similar would be something like battleships. I'm sure that could be tuned in a way that you aren't shooting ships but instead searching for coins.

Also some kind of quiz would be cool. Either just a random question every day, maybe some kind of "who wants to be a millionaire"-style quiz, where questions get harder but you can win more...
Or, something that would take a lot of research to do but might be kind of fun, would be some kind of estimation game. You get a question with multiple possible answers and some coins to "bet" on them so you can split them between the answers.
(There was a show called "The Million Pound Drop" which was adapted into several countries with different names with a similar concept, if someone remembers that XD)

Aaand the last thing I just thought about: Wordle is pretty popular at the moment! Something like that would also make for a great minigame on VA :)
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Re: Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by Ryou_Kimura »

Cyrrior wrote: December 16th, 2022, 10:36 pm Aaand the last thing I just thought about: Wordle is pretty popular at the moment! Something like that would also make for a great minigame on VA :)
There is already a "Pokemon wordle" existing.
That thing would be perfect.
It's called "Squirdle" and uses types, gens, height, weight to guess the right Pokemon.
You have 8 rounds to solve it.
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Re: Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by FairyPrincessCynthia »

I propose an additional modification to the Prizes section. Bring back the randomly generating Pokemon that people have dumped into the Transfer Station previously. The previous incarnation of the site had a system where you could pay 2 points for a regular adopt and (I've only heard stories of this happening), 150 points for shinies.
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Re: Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by Alive »

FairyPrincessCynthia wrote: December 21st, 2022, 6:02 pm I propose an additional modification to the Prizes section. Bring back the randomly generating Pokemon that people have dumped into the Transfer Station previously. The previous incarnation of the site had a system where you could pay 2 points for a regular adopt and (I've only heard stories of this happening), 150 points for shinies.
It really was 150 points per shiny mon. I saw a shiny Magnemite, but since it was only 2 minutes to claim it, I missed the chance with 0 available points. 😭
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Re: Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by Ecco »

i hope crops comes back :bow:
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Re: Dev Diary 2022-12-15

Post by Yoshiki »

I liked crops too - a logical and not luck based game.
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