Annoyances

[Equinox Pinion]

(10-12-2012 06:01 PM)Tad Carlucci Wrote:  I just spotted that option, too. Don't know if it solved the issue for Gender or not. I can't test it any more because we decided to open the boxes. What I did notice was that if I changed the box, in-world, to 2D mode, it showed the Gender on the texture/image. Changing the name for force an update cycle to the Mothership's database updated the name, but did not expose the Gender on the Pedigree or Cattery pages. As I said, I can't re-test since I've opened the boxes. Perhaps that option corrects the issue by showing the Gender on Cattery and Pedigree pages. Or, perhaps, those boxes would continue to fail to show Gender in either place.

There are other examples of information which is available in-world but not available on one or another of the web pages. Collars, for instance, are in-world but only on the Pedigree Roster. I've never tested to see if custom collars appear properly there. The question is why just collars? And, if collars are that important, why only on the Roster page and not elsewhere?

One good example of information only available on the Cattery, but not on the Pedigree Roster or Pedigree View (tree) pages, nor (reliably) in-world, is the date the box was created. If this information is important enough to be presented on the Cattery, why is it not important enough to see for our non-Cattery boxes? As was pointed out, though, the obvious work-around is to put all boxes in the Cattery. I highly recommend that for a number of reasons. But some players would prefer not to use the Cattery: why disadvantage them?

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Take Coat as an example. There are THREE coat attributes for each cat. There is the 'paint job' coat, the 'dominant', and the 'recessive'. For most cats, the paint-job is exactly the same as the dominant. But, for special collection cats, it's common for the paint-job to differ from the dominant.

In-world, the paint-job is the texture you see, the coat in hover text, and the coat listed in Local Chat. If you breed the cat, and check it's offspring, you'll see the dominant listed there. So the dominant is discoverable, provided you can find an offspring of the parent.

On the Pedigree Roster listing and in the Cattery, what you see is the paint-job coat.

On the Pedigree View (tree) page, what you see is the dominant coat.

When working in the Cattery, you're probably most concerned with the genetic information (that is: the dominant coat) and don't really care that the cat happens to have a paint-job which obscures that, under most conditions, when you examine the cat in-world. Similarly, it's probably common to actually be more concerned with the genetic (dominant) coat when sorting or selecting in the Pedigree Roster view. The only work-arounds are to remember to flip into the Pedigree View (tree) page and hand-check each paint-job to see if it has the genetics you're looking for; or to keep careful notes offline.

Yes, the Cattery shows the same "paint-job" information as the Pedigree Roster. But, especially if and when they add sorting and selection capabilities, the information shown is almost certainly NOT the information the users are most often concerned with.

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The issue with which offspring are reachable from parent is easily solved, conceptually, and should be fairly easy to fix in SQL. First off, recognize that all cats always show their parents (if any) and grand-parents (also, if any). The issue arises when YOU (one Avatar) did not breed the offspring from the parents, but now own both a parent and it's offspring. In this case, as always, from the offspring, you can see it's parents. But, since you did not breed the offspring from the parent (someone else, perhaps your ALT, did), you cannot see the offspring from the parent's Pedigree View (tree) page. If, however, you DID breed the offspring from the parent, you CAN see it. This is a one-sided restriction and has nothing whatsoever to do with any complaints about privacy. And it's simple to fix. Rather than saying "If you bred the offspring from this cat you can see it listed below the parents" simply add "or if you own the offspring at this time." This does not change any information exposed by the system. It simply makes the already-presented information work both ways .. if you can see the parent from this offspring, and you now own the parent as well, you can also see the offspring from the parent.

I could make a case that instead of "at this time" it should instead be "ever"; but I expect that would require additional storage overhead not currently in the database. So, while it would be nice to have "ever", "at this time" will probably solve most of issues this one-way trap door creates.

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The last issue, missing or incorrect images, was noted several hours after the current Halloween collections came out. Some of Charm's cats from those collections showed eyes and whiskers (two of the image layers) but did not show coats/ears or shadows (the other two image layers). On examination of the files on the web site, I could see that the images had been uploaded and installed but the Pedigree and Cattery pages were using the incorrect name and/or folder path. This caused me to examine those few cats I own .. very old Specials .. and I noted that one of them shows the stock Coco (I think it was) Coat rather than its Special paint-job Coat. Some of these errors are probably gone by now. Some may still exist. It's not a question of "program code" .. simply ensuring management procedures are in place to avoid these issues in the future.

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The issue with count-downs when opening boxes can be confusing. I considered ALL three of my boxes "special collections". But two took 15 minutes and one took only 5. Earlier we'd opened some of Charm's current Halloween collections and I noted that some (only one or two) CLAIMED they would need 15 minutes, but, one minute later, ticked down to 4 and, indeed, only took 5 minutes. This last is especially troubling because one could easily believe the 15 minute claim, and head out shopping, only to return 14 minutes later expecting to see a cat about to appear and, instead, find your kitten has had 10 minutes to tear around and hide inside a wall prim somewhere!

If you get only confused by different birthing times and some images which are not correct from beginning than I think we are doing pretty well It would be nice to see some positive post from you from time to time