I wanted to post little bit about my breedables, and why I do what I do.
Yesterday
In the past (2009-2010) I got into breedables in Second Life, like many of the time, was keen on Sion Chickens. I branched out to Petable Turtles and discovered Seid Mushrooms.
Seid Mushrooms inspired my to create my own growing plants, (PlantPets were around at the time, but I had not heard of them), and I made XS Cactus. XS Cactus was not based on seid mushrooms code which some people believe, but I did get a lot of inspiration from them, the biggest thing I got from seid mushrooms was the feeling I could do it too, that me creating a breedable was possible.
After a while of XS Cactus, I made XS Quails. Quails were originally going to be opensource, but I primarily wanted something to eat cactus seeds, and they were intended as a kind of “add-on” to the Cactus. They would be mostly free to keep (you could create food bowls from cactus seeds), or if you just wanted to keep quails without cactus you could buy food bowls.
I got caught up in the creating and didn’t get around to making them opensource from the start as I had initially planned. The code became a bit of a mess as I stopped writing it with the notion of other people reading it.
It was a few months in where I made a mistake with permissions, and a special Quail was cloneable, and was cloned and sold by (I believed at the time) someone I trusted. The backlash became a bit too much and I quit, but before I quit, I made the food bowls copyable, and released the code as opensource.
So while I left, I felt as though I was leaving and letting my customers keep my ball. (Instead of taking it with me as the saying goes). However, due to the code being a bit of a mess, it wasn’t really as easy for those taking it to make a new breedable - but they did, and they improved, and time went on - without me.
In 2014 I came back, and met some of the people who had “carried on” my scripts, and they showed me some other things they had enjoyed (I forget what they were called) but the creators had left and the servers had gone down. I attempted to “recreate” this as penguins they moved around between habitats and could “meet” other pengis and avatars etc.. It was a lot of fun, and because I really only made it for fun, I didn’t encrypt communications, and some particular person decided they’d break them for others, I logged on less and my friends disappeared, so I quit again.
In the time i was making the Pengis, I was also working on new “Trait” based breedables, “Xundra’s Little Unicorns” they were mesh (which was something new) and used tricks I didn’t know about when I created Quails. They were never released.
In late 2022 I thought I’d log in to Second Life again, just to see what was happening, and I had a notecard from an old friend from 2014 hoping I was well, as they were worried what might have happened to me with the corona virus etc. I got into contact with them and we set up some regions on OSGrid.
OSGrid frustrated me fairly quickly, mainly because of differences to Second Life (quirks that didn’t exist in OpenSim), that made my unicorn scripts not work properly. So I ended up buying some land in second life, and started over.
Today
I started out making butterflies, and messing around with making cars & trucks. I made some dragonflies and rewrote my old fishing system. I made some flowers (v1). Then I met (or I should say “re-met”) Onyx Core. Onyx Core was one who was also used my quail scripts for a breedable in days gone past, and we had a mutual friend. I remembered later having interacted with him in the past. We talked about opensim and he told me about his Dragoos, about animesh, and missing the old days.
He in turn inspired me to have another go, I reworked my unicorn scripts, improved them and made Shroomies.
Since coming back in 2022, it has been my goal to make affordable breedables. Breedables are fun, but can be quiet expensive to keep, given the costs of land, in addition to food for breedables (or baskets or vitamins or milk or whatever other ongoing cost they have). I’d like everyone to be able to keep them not just those who are wealthy in real life.
That is why shroomies do not require food, or some other item to breed. Once you have bought them they can reproduce, and you don’t have to buy anything from me again.
It’s the same with my flowers, no empty watering cans this time. No bait cost on my fishing system no food for dragonflies etc.
I don’t expect to make a lot of money with this approach. Though, my customers have been very supportive in buying optional extras. I absorb the costs with the server fees, the land fees for my shop etc, and mesh uploads, which can be difficult these days.
For me, it’s the fun in creating, feeling like I’m improving someones day a little by making them something to enjoy, that’s why I’m here, and that’s why I plan on sticking around this time.
Tomorrow
The success of my breedables in 2023, is relative. I’ve met some great friends / customers. They seem to enjoy my creations, however, there’s only a handful of them at this stage. Whilst that should be enough, sometimes I get jealous of other new breedable creators with all their popularity. Sometimes I am sad I never hear about events until they are happening. Sometimes I feel like a “has-been” that my time was over when I left in 2010, and things have moved on without me and that’s my own fault.
I have to stop, and think about what I have achieved since I came back. I have met some really lovely people. I am contributing to other peoples enjoyment here, and I am enjoying what I create also.
Will shroomies become super popular like foxtrot or teulu or even Amaretto? Probably not, and that’s probably a good thing. I don’t want my customers to get lost in a crowd, I want to remember them 13 years from now this time.