Matthew Anthony and Grim Hathor are the creators of the latest breedable pets to hit the grid: Turtles by Petable. I first met Matthew via Plurk and literally squealed with excitement when he offered me a preview pack of my very own. While I waited for two of my eggs, Ruby and Azure, to hatch, I invited Matt and Grim to the temporary turtle habitat I built on Rouge to learn more about these amazing creatures.
The first thing I had to ask: Why turtles?
Matt: You know, there’s actually a really funny story behind that.
Grim: Lol, yeah… our original plan got considerably less furry.
Matt: We originally began creating something very similar with cats in 2006. Unfortunately, it never got completed due to some unfortunate circumstances, so back in July, we decided to pick it back up. Cats ended up being WAY too high-prim for what we were wanting to do, so we decided to find another cute animal, and turtles it was!
Grim: Turtle also had the distinct advantage of being easier to animate… with their slow nature and all.
Matt: Like Grim said, the slow nature of turtles made them easier to animate, which also meant quite a bit less physics lag and collisions than many animals would require, as a great added bonus.
And, since Matt brought it up before I could, we talked for a little bit about what kind of lag, if any, is caused by the turtles. What effect do they have on the sim?
Grim: Well, I’ve worked on a number of different projects in SL and have learned some hard lessons on lag, so I designed these with minimizing lag in mind the whole time
Matt: Whenever I’m asked about the kind of lag that turtles cause, I always go back to my experience while we were testing them about two weeks ago. I had 47 adult turtles in a 10×10 box with no perceptible script or physics lag. That was on the mainland in a relatively busy sim on the northern continent, as well — so I see it as a great “real life” test of the sim performance impact of turtles
Grim: I could burden you with the technical details, but the most obvious is that since they are only physical while moving the impact is minimal… and yeah currently our biggest test population was 47 on the maingrid… perhaps if we get use of a private empty sim we will run some more accurate tests of turtle lag
Matt: The only reason we capped at 47 was because I was actually out of prims :-) I would love to test it higher, though
Grim: *imagines 100s of turtles roaming around*… yup, that would be ridiculous to see.
At this point, we turned our attention to the documentation, which is really well written and includes links to a couple of blogs that contain even more information.
Grim: We have plans to further improve that with an alternative of youtube tutorials too when we find the time.
Matt: It took me forever to try to get all of the documentation comprehensive yet easy to understand.
Grim: Yeah Matt spent a ton of time on it… and you should be glad that he did it and not me.
Gabby: I really liked the Customers Bill of Rights. What was the thought process behind that?
Grim: I have to give Matt full credit for that idea, but I was behind it 100%
Matt: I’m glad! we decided to do that instead of a EULA to make it clearer and more simple to understand, while still allowing us to protect our IP rights in case something ever happens in the future. I know that some of the other AI pet creators have decided to go with a lengthy EULA, and that’s totally within their rights — we just decided to go a different route because we felt it was best for our customers and our product.
Matt and Grim have also given access to an API so that others can create turtle-friendly products. I wanted to know more about the types of things we can expect.
Grim: Basically the API lets you get access to all the information in the HUD from a 3rd party script. An example of its current use is our Turtle Color Predictor that uses it to determine the range of possible colors for offspring. One thing that I hope comes from the open API soon is an improved version of that very tool… I left lots of room for improvement. I know that someone else has a tool in the works to help track a turtle’s time in the box.
Gabby: A turtle’s time in the box? As in, in inventory?
Grim: Correct… turtles still get hungry when they are in inventory. Eventually they can starve to death in inventory, so it would be good to have a tool in world that tells you when they are at risk. I also forsee someone eventually making a tool to help make it easier to figure out if mating two turtles will result in inbreeding or not.
Finally, we talked for a bit about what they each wanted people to know about the Petable Turtles and how they plan to support their customer base.
Grim: I want people to know that turtles will never stagnate. We will constantly be adding new things and revising things based on player suggestions(already done quite a bit of that). If you want a game that’s dynamic and that you have a chance to influence, then give turtles a try. We plan to avoid drama by responding to the players, and to the market… if something isn’t working out we aren’t afraid to change it. We have also tried to create the game to be player friendly right from the start.
Matt: I’ll completely echo what Grim said, and add that we are both here if they have any questions or need any help. we’re both completely available to help people get started or if they have a question — additionally, the community in our chat group is extremely helpful to help newcomers get started, whether or not this is their first AI pet. I personally believe that a lot of the drama around other AI/breedable pets was caused by miscommunication, and we hope to completely avoid that by clearly communicating not only what we’re doing, but the reasons for what we’re doing with our customers via our blog and groups, as well as chatting with them one-on-one. It’s our belief that chickens, turtles, bunnies, etc can all co-exist in harmony. I just want to add that our last point in the Customer Bill of Rights for both our customers and for us is that the most important thing is having fun — and we’re definitely doing that! we have so much planned out for future updates that it blows my mind, and with new ideas coming from the community on a daily basis, the only thing that turtles will get is better.
Petable Turtles are available now, be sure to join the group for more information and to be the first to know when limited-qantity preview packs are available. The official launch party takes place on Friday, September 4th from 6-9pm SLT with DJ Madame Maracas providing the music. There will be new turtle information and exclusive items available.
Turning our attention back to my little ones… After two hours, Ruby and Azure hatched from their shell and immediately took a nap. Turtles sleep for an hour during every four-hour SL “day.” But they have an attitude right out of the box. “Can’t a turtle get some sleep around here? I’m not following you!” This from Ruby when I tried to wake her up.
Some things to know:
- You have to feed your turtles. If not, they will die of starvation. According to Matt, this is the only way they will die. So, you don’t have to worry about griefers, dropping them off of a sky platform or having them auto-returned to your inventory. As long as they have not starved to death, they can be re-rezzed from inventory after a two-hour security period to make sure they can’t be duplicated.
- Traits are passed on genetically via “playing cards” that each turtle is born with. Each new hatchling receives one card from each parent and three cards randomly. The better the poker hand these cards add up to, the more glow, one of the rare traits, your turtle will have. Shine is also a rare trait, but it is determined in a way that is closely guarded by the creators.
- Turtle eggs take two hours to hatch and can begin breeding after a week. You can check your turtle’s geneology via the HUD to avoid inbreeding. You can also feed your turtles Hatchless Food, so that the eggs won’t hatch and you can pick them up to give as gifts, for trading or, if you are into rare-breeds, selling.
There’s a lot more to learn about these turtles…but I’ll leave that up to you. I think it’s time I made sure my little ones have enough food. Happy breeding!
