please fix circadian or give us an option

[LibGwen Resident]

KittyCatS have a circadian rhythm of sixteen hours (eight awake, eight asleep). This means that if you want to cuddle your adult cat at the same time every day you will have to wake it up every day. It means if you use milk/cuddling to speed up Love gain your cats will always be asleep when they reach 100% Love. As far as I can tell the same problem exists for those who use Love vitamins to make their cats breed in five days. And with the persistent server quirks of Second Life, your cats are less and less rested with every waking, so sometimes can't be awakened at all.

Instead, KittyCatS ought to have a circadian rhythm of twenty-four hours or twelve hours so we poor humans can synchronize with them.

I've seen complaints about this for a year. Several people have told me exhaustion is why they got out of KittyCatS. A few others mentioned the eight- awake eight- asleep schedule as a reason why they never got into KittyCatS.

I inquired about it myself through a Support ticket a long time ago and was told changing it to 24 or 12 hours would upset too many owners. There was no reason given, but even assuming it's a good one, why not have a button for changing it to a sensible 24 or 12 hours for those of us who want the cats to fit our lives rather than the other way round? It is only to affect the cats' wake/sleep schedule. It doesn't affect age or Hunger or Love.

If for some reason the company is worried about some kind of overuse of the option, it could be a once or twice in a lifetime thing for each cat.

[Bea Shamrock]

Hi

I can't speak for anyone other than myself , but a change for kitties to a 12- or 24-hour rhythm would most likely affect me. If it were offered as an optional feature, I would be ok with it; I just wouldn't make use of it.

[Saga Felix]

I'd love a shorter sleeping cycle, too. I find it annoying that just when everything's fine and they finally reached 100%, then... Ohhhh FFS, they're below 25% energy, so another 2 hours waiting around and then wake them - or they will be yet again be delayed at least 1/3 of a day (8 hours) before getting this week's kitten. -Which becomes even more annoying if you're trying to synchronize some couples with each other.

The other requirements for making a box makes sense - hunger, love, happiness - but the energy is just plain annoying, and is the main reason for my cats ALWAYS being out of sync and always ending up giving boxes in the middle of the damn night, even if I carefully made sure they should originally breed at a decent hour.

Once, when I was more in SL and had the time to check in on them all the time, I managed to get a lot of my cats to breed on Wednesday evening. -A while later, that weekly breeding had moved to Friday morning - all due to energy-management. Eventually they bred on Saturday, and then I gave up even trying to synchronize them It simply takes too much effort, and delays them a little every week anyway.

Sometimes I just wish they could make boxes in their sleep

[Nocshadue Balbozar]

The sleep cycle the way it is delays almost everyone's breeding I think. The thing that makes me sad is I have heard from some of my busier friends that it is a real frustration for them. They don't have time to hover like a buzzard at their computer, and they often find days go by before they have time to check and wake..or wait and wake a breeding pair. With the way SL has been lately, I wouldn't even count on sleep vitamins to help you sync the cats. I think a 6 hour sleep cycle may be better as it gives two sleep and two waking cycles per day.

[Tad Carlucci]

Any change would probably cause far more disruption than it would solve any problems. If a change were to be made, though, and looking at the comments and rationales, I would suggest that none of the cycle lengths suggested would have the desired effect. To achieve that, I would suggest the cycles lengths should meet the following criteria:

Hours awake longer than Hours asleep
Hours awake and Hours asleep both prime numbers greater than two
Sum of Hours awake and Hours asleep should be relatively prime to 6, 8, 12, and 24
The smallest values which satisfy these are 7 hours awake and 3 hours asleep. The next pair would be 11 hours and 5 hours.

But, the decision is best made prior to launching a breedable product. Once launched, any change should be strongly avoided due to the disturbance it would cause.

[Saga Felix]

Why would it have to be prime numbers, Tad?

I like the idea of them being awake longer than they're asleep. I often hear new people complaining that their cat is always asleep and can't be awaken when they're logged on.

[Kayleigh McMillan]

I like it as is but that might be just me

[Tad Carlucci]

The primes and relative-primeness is to have the sleep/wake cycle walk around the sidereal day.

Players are typically online under a a pattern.

The primeness ensures the sleep/wake cycle cannot match typical sidereal-based patterns. Thus a player will find their cats are different points, day-to-day.

If the player wants to use the Wake/Wake-All feature to synchronize their cats' sleep/wake periods it will work best that way.

As it is now, a player can find herself checking each day and finding the cats at the same point, each day.

The idea is to ensure that won't happen.

[Bea Shamrock]

One of the reasons I prefer the cycle as it is now is that I can have half of my inworld kitties awake while the other half sleeps and I still get to interact with most in a day (pet, play, cuddle). The fact that half of them are asleep also helps any potential lag that about 30 kitties on full range with everything enabled (along with some 4 other pets) could cause, even if they are all designed as low lag.

[LibGwen Resident]

(01-13-2013 07:08 PM)Bea Shamrock Wrote:  One of the reasons I prefer the cycle as it is now is that I can have half of my inworld kitties awake while the other half sleeps and I still get to interact with most in a day (pet, play, cuddle). The fact that half of them are asleep also helps any potential lag that about 30 kitties on full range with everything enabled (along with some 4 other pets) could cause, even if they are all designed as low lag.

Changing the length of time cats are awake and asleep wouldn't change that at all if the lengths they are awake and asleep are equal. If all one's cats have the same day length (currently sixteen hours, but twenty-four, twelve, 3.14159 ... would all work if all your cats were on it), the differences in their schedules remain consistent. If George is asleep and at 40% Energy while Edward is awake and at 53% Energy now, under any equal awake/asleep rhythm when Edward is awake and at 53% Energy, George will be asleep and at about 40% Energy.

=

I'm afraid Tad's rationale is a bit beyond me. I don't see how that system would allow people who work to cuddle their cats at the same time of day or ensure a cat is at about the same Energy level and awake/asleep state when it reaches 100% Love.

To reiterate, under the current sixteen hour circadian:

- If a cat is awake at 0530 one day, it is asleep at 0530 the next, and if it also happens to be under 25%Energy it can't be wakened. No cuddles for kitty that day.

- If cats that were given the milk/cuddle enhancement have a box at 0923, they will be asleep and therefore unable to mate when they reach 100%Love at roughly 0923 seven days later.