User Guide PlantPet 2.0s
PlantPet 2.0s User Guide
Table of Contents
Introduction
PlantPets is a team project for creating intelligent growing flowers and plants in SL. We offer more than 300 plantpets including roses, orchids, hibisci, and many others. All plants are low-prim as the prim-flowers are temporary rezzed above their pots. Plantpets are breedable and breeding them can be free of charge. Each plantpet can give one baby seeds every 52 days if kept at least 50% happy and 50% healthy. However, if either their happiness or their health is below 50% then they stop counting down the days to baby until both their happiness and their health become again at least 50%.
Taking care for plantpets is also free. They need only water to be happy and healthy and they are watered simply by pressing a menu button. If left dry for long period of time they can die but then they can be reset free of charge and grow again. When taken to inventory a plantpet gets paused, i.e. its parameters do not change.
Plantpets grow according to the specified in the menu speed of growth. In any case, the growth of a plant is slow and normally you should allow at least a couple of minutes before you see visible change. The speed of growth does not affect the time a plantpet needs to produce a baby seed.
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.
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) get the control menu with 12 buttons. The three most important buttons are:
[Watering...] - opens a submenu for watering.
[Speed...] - opens a submenu for changing the speed of growth.
[Pause]/[Resume] - pauses/resumes your PlantPet.
(Read next section for full details about all menu buttons.)
Menu Buttons
[Full Stats]
Prints the full state of the plantpet in the chat. The state of you plantpet is described by six parameters: age, growth, happiness, health, speed of growth and moisture level. To keep your plantpet happy and healthy you need to water it regularly. If left dry your plantpet will gradually become unhappy, then its health will start dropping. If its health becomes 0% then the growth of your plantpet will be reversed and it may die. If your plantpet dies it will give you an option to reset it.
[Watering...]
Opens the watering submenu with a few options for increasing the moisture level. You can water as much as you want your plantpet. High moisture levels will not damage it. But if your plantpet is unhealthy then moisture level above 90% will not allow it to recover fast.
Important Note: Even if it is fully grown your plantpet keeps consuming water and it needs to be watered.
[Speed...]
Opens the speed submenu. Note that whatever speed of growth you choose the growth of a plant is slow and normally you should allow at least a couple of minutes before you see any visible change. With the XXtra Fast speed you should allow at least 1 min before you notice any changes. With the RL Speed your PlantPet will grow with approximately 1% in 24h. That is, it may take 3 months or longer before it is fully grown depending on the care it receives.
Experiment with different speeds and see which one suits you best.
Important Note: When your PlantPet is growing fast it is also consuming water fast and it needs to be watered more often.
[Friends...]
Opens a submenu for viewing and modifying the list of friends. The friends of your plantpet are able always to water and pause it. Friends need to be added with their legacy names. Learn more about legacy names in the SL Wiki.
[Unlock]/[Lock] – If unlocked the [Watering...] and [Pause]/[Resume] buttons will be available to every AV. If locked, only the friends of your plantpet will be able to water and pause it. All other AVs will only get the [About] button in the menu.
[IM On]/[IM Off]
Switches on/off the IM reports your plantpet would send you every 12 hours if it is left dry and its health is below 40%.
[Pause]/[Resume]
Pauses/resumes your plantpet. If paused your plantpet does not grow, does not count days to baby seed, does not consume any water, and its happiness and health parameters do not change. Use this option if you are leaving your plantpet rezzed for long periods without care.
[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.
[Get Update]
Checks for available updates for your plantpet.
[Plant Name]
You will be prompted in the chat to type in a new name of your plantpet. Type * if you have pressed this button by mistake.
[RESET]
Resets your plantpet, i.e. all parameters will be initialised to their starting values and the list of friends will be emptied. Starting from build 6 of version 2.0s the rest of a plantpet does not reset the days to baby seed.
[About]
Gives information about the PlantPets project.
Boosters
Plantpets are breedable and breeding them can be free of charge. Each plantpet can give one baby seeds every 52 days if kept at least 50% happy and 50% healthy. However, if either their happiness or their health is below 50% then they stop counting down the days to baby until both their happiness and their health become again at least 50%.
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 in the PlantPets Main Store and also on SL Marketplace. We also offer an affiliate vendor for reselling PlantPets boosters.
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 plantpets, touch the pot of the plantpet you want it applied to and then also touch the spawn booster to activate it. The booster will be applied automatically and your plantpet will report this in the chat. If you have touched a few of your plantpets please wait at least 30 seconds and then touch the one that you want the booster applied to before touching the booster.
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 needs to touch it and then type give baby in the main chat within 30 seconds.
Plantpets can be:
- common - available for purchase at the PlantPets Main Store.
- seasonal - available for purchase at the PlantPets Main Store in particular time of the year; may come as baby of another plantpet.
- rare - not available for purchase at the PlantPets Main Store; may come as a baby of another plantpet.
- limited - sold at the PlantPets Main Store either for limited time or in limited numbers; does not come as a baby of another plantpet.
- elite - gives a random-volume booster after it gives a baby seed; the booster may come one or two minutes after the baby (only about 10% of all plantpets are elite).
Note that the status of a plantpet may be upgraded from common to either seasonal or rare and from seasonal to rare but it will NEVER be downgraded. Elite plantpets will always remain elite but the volume of the boosters given by elite plantpets may change. Limited plantpets will always remain limited.
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 visualising 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. Please IM Bruce Liebknecht with your question and you will get a reply ASAP.