User Guide PlantPet 3.0

User Guide for PlantPet 2.0s

PlantPet 3.0 User Guide

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Getting Started
  3. Menu Buttons
  4. Boosters
  5. Breeding
  6. Re-potting
  7. Moisture Meter
  8. Customer Support


Introduction

PlantPets is a team project for creating growing and breedable plants in SL. We offer more than 500 plantpets including roses, orchids, hibisci, and many others. All plants are temp-rezzed above their pots, which make sculpt and regular prims not to be subtracted from prims allowed on your land. Temp-rez can be turned off and you can still use your plantpet for breeding.

Breeding plantpets can be free of charge. Each plantpet can give a certain amount of seeds depending on its rarity status after which it turns vintage. Some plantpets are vintage by default. These are very old plantpets labelled as vintage in the PlantPets Catalog. Any vintage plantpet can be reactivated to give more seeds with a magic booster. Magic boosters are available at the PlantPets Main Store.

The limits on the number of seeds are as follows:
* common plantpets can produce 7 seeds
* seasonal plantpets produce 11 seeds
* rare plantpets produce 14 seeds
* limited plantpets produce 77 seeds

Plantpets (of any of the above statuses), which are labelled as elite, give twice more baby seeds. For example a rare elite plantpet can produce 28 seeds and a limited elite plantpet can produce 154 seeds.

A plantpet produces a baby seed in 52 days. When temp-rez is switched off, the remaining days to a baby seed is increased by 25%. However, if either the happiness or the health of a plantpet is below 50% the plantpet stops counting down the days to a baby seed. The happiness of a plantpet starts decreasing when its moisture is below 40%, and the health of a plantpet starts decreasing when its happiness is below 40%. Both the happiness and the health of a plantpet will recover when its moisture is continuously kept above 40%.

Maintaining the moisture of a plantpet above 40% is free and easy. Using the [Water] button in the menu once a week is sufficient for keeping the moisture above 40%. By default the growth of a plantpet happens at Regular speed and it takes at least 23 days to have it grown to 100%. The speed can also be changed to Fast. When at Fast speed, it takes from 50 min to a few hours for a plantpet to grow to 100%. At Fast speed though, a plantpet consumes water much faster and needs to be watered frequently. If left at Fast speed for 15 min, a plantpet switches back to Regular speed automatically. The speed of growth of a plantpet is not related to its seed production cycle but it can affect it indirectly as the plantpet consumes water fast at Fast speed and may become dry and unhappy.

When taken to inventory a plantpet gets paused, i.e. its parameters do not change. When rezzed again it resumes its functions from where they have been paused.

All plantpet seeds are transferable and we encourage breeders to sell plantpet seeds at any price they desire. When an avatar plants a seed they receive the actual plantpet which is not transferable.


Getting Started

So, you have a plantpet seed and you want to plant it and start taking care for your plantpet. Here is what you need to do in three simple steps:

Step 1. Rez the plantpet seed. Then touch it to get its menu and press the menu button "Grow". Then you will receive the PlantPets Terms and you will be presented with a second menu that lets you agree with the terms. After you press the menu button "I Agree" you will receive the actual potted plantpet.

Step 2. Rez the potted plantpet and touch it to start it.

Step 3. Touch the pot (some plantpets may come in a vase, bowl, stand, etc. instead) to get the control menu with 12 buttons. The most important button is the button [Water] that increases the moisture of the plantpet to 100%. Water your plantpet once a week and it will give you a seed in 52 days!


Menu Buttons

[Water] - Raises up the moisture level to 100%. 100% is never harmful for the plantpet. In older versions a plantpet could not restore its happiness if the moisture is above 90%. This is not the case with PlantPet 3.0.

[Speed...] - Allows to choose Regular (default) or Fast speed. Regular is the same as RL Speed in PlantPet 2.0s. Fast is similar to XXtra Fast in PlantPet 2.0s. When switched to Fast, it will automatically go back to Regular after 15 min.

[Name..] - Brings up a dialog box to change the name of the plantpet.

[Particles...] - Opens a particles submenu for selecting a particle effect as an indication of happiness. The included particle effect(s) turns on if the happiness of your plantpet is above 70%. You can get more particle effects for plantpets in the PlantPets Main Store.

[☐ Boost] - Check to make this plantpet accept a booster rezzed nearby. Uncheck to make sure this plantpet won't receive booster rezzed nearby.

[☐ Locked] - Any avatar can water a plantpet even if locked. Watering to 100% does not harm a plantpet in any way. When unlocked, avatars can also hide/show the plantpet. This might be useful if you for example place your plantpets in the house of another avatar and let them hide them if they need more prims.

[☐ Hide] - ON/OFF of the tem-prez, i.e. hides/shows the growing plant parts. When the growing parts are hidden, the plantpet continues to function as usual, only the growing parts are not rezzed to save land impact. The "days to next seed" grow by 25% when [Hide] is activated.

[Regrow] - This button resets the growth of a plantpet, so you can watch it grow from the beginning. All other parameters remain the same.

[Collect Seed] - Delivers one baby seed if one or more seeds are ready for collection.

[Get Update] - Checks for script updates.

[Help] - Prints useful links in the chat.

[About] - This button appears in the menu when the plantpet is touched by an avatar who is not the owner. It prints the same links as the [Help] button.


Boosters

Whatever the happiness or the health of a plantpet is, the days it needs to produce the next baby seed can be reduced by applying a booster. Boosters are available at the PlantPets Main Store.

One unit of booster is equal to one day reduction. A booster may have capacity one or more units. When applied to a plantpet all units of a booster are applied together and the days to the next baby seed get reduced by the number of applied units. However, only one booster (regardless from its capacity) can be applied within 24h.

To apply a booster, simply rez it near your plantpet, check [Boost] in the menu of the plantpet and also touch the booster to activate it. The booster will be applied automatically and your plantpet will report this in the chat. Warning: If other plantpets have [Boost], one of them may receive the booster instead!


Breeding

Generally, each plantpet will produce baby seeds from their or related species with some small exceptions. More precisely, the baby seed depends on the genes of the parent (see the genes in the catalog). The strength of each gene of the parent shows how likely is that gene to be definitely passed to a baby. When a baby is delivered the AI behind the breeding scheme looks at the genes of the parent and decides which genes will be definitely passed. Then it considers the pool of all plantpets which do have those genes (no matter the strength) and randomly picks one of them to be delivered as a baby seed.

In order to receive the baby seed produced by a plantpet, the owner of the plantpet must press the [Collect Seed] button in the menu of the parent plantpet.

A plantpet can be:

  • common - Comes as a baby seed more often. Can be sold at the PlantPets Main Store for unlimited time. Can have 7 baby seeds before becoming vintage.
  • seasonal - Comes as a baby seed less often. More likely to have a seasonal or rare baby seed than a common or limited plantpet. Can be sold at the PlantPets Main Store for a limited time. Can have 11 baby seeds before becoming vintage.
  • rare - Comes as a baby seed less often. More likely to have a seasonal or rare baby seed than a common or limited plantpet. Typically not sold at the PlantPets Main Store. Can have 14 baby seeds before becoming vintage.
  • limited - Available at the PlantPets Main Store either for a limited time or in limited numbers. Can have 77 baby seeds before becoming vintage. Does not come as a baby seed of a non-limited plantpet. If a limited plantpet belongs to a set of limited plantpets, then it may come as a baby seed to each of the plantpets in the limited set. If a limited plantpet does not belong to a limited set then it can come as a baby seed of itself only. The probability of a limited plantpet giving a seed of a limited plantpet is 10%. More likely to have a common baby seed than rare and limited plantpets.

Plantpets labelled as elite give a random-volume booster whith each baby seed. Only about 10% of all plantpets are elite.


Re-potting

If the pot of your plantpet is not its root prim then you can always unlink it and either replace it by another pot or delete it.

If the pot of your plantpet is its root prim then in order to re-pot that plantpet you can edit its original pot in order to make it a transparent prim and resize it, for example.

In any case, if you link a new pot to a plantpet, make sure the original root prim remains the root after linking a new pot to it!


Moisture Meter

Each plantpet includes either a moisture meter stuck into the soil or some other means of visualizing the moisture level. In most cases a moisture meter shows the level of moisture by changing its color with blue color indicating high level of moisture, green - medium, and yellow - low.

The functioning of your plantpet does not depend on the moisture meter and if it a separate prim then you can unlink and delete it if you need to save prims on your land.


Customer Support

The PlantPets team will be happy to answer any questions and help you with any problems you may experience with you plantpets. Yo get in touch with us get a customer support ticked from the PlantPets Main Store, rez it and follow the instructions to submit it.