I've decided that this is the maximum amount of time I'm giving myself for these particular items (I procrastinate and goof off a lot while "working"):
Maybe I can get this done before the end of May:- General Fixes ★★ (4 hours)
- ★☆☆☆ Bug: Prevent 'favpet' from being traded or abandoned, and put in place an error message to display if this is attempted.
- ★☆☆☆ Allow user profiles to make use of limited HTML in the 'bio' field.
- Pet Profiles ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ (32 hours)
- ★☆☆☆ Limit today's visitors to really just being today's visitors, while also clearing the database of any entries older than one month. (I'm keeping this data for up to a month so I can run contests based on site participation.)
- ★☆☆☆ Check if the visitor is the owner and don't reward any Aurum (site currency) if they are the owner. (Experience will still be gained.)
- ★☆☆☆ Beside the pet's birthday, include age in years, months, and days.
- ★☆☆☆ Change the layout during initially playing with a Novu. (I'd like the image to be to the right of the text, rather than below it.)
- ★★☆☆ Allow items to sometimes drop from pets. (There is a mod for this, so all I really need to do is look into installing it. However, it may not entirely suit my needs. For example, only Nightmare pets will drop a certain item, and any pet can become a Nightmare pet... and some items will only be obtainable from visiting your own pets, or only by visiting other's pets... so some customizing of the mod is to be done.)
- ★★☆☆ Currently the profile pages I've created for Novu after they've been played with for the day cannot be seen if they are 'frozen'. I'd like to fix this - of course they'll still be prevented from gaining experience. I'm not, however, certain what all I'll have to do to achieve this yet.
- ★★★☆ I want to create a text field so users are able to create a roleplay profile for their pets and include some custom information about them. I want to allow some basic HTML. (Later, I'll use what I learned here to spruce up the user's profile page text field as well!)
- ★★★☆ I want to allow users to 'like' pets, just like people can 'like' posts on social media. But then, I also need to create a page for users to view all the pets they've ever liked. And, also, give them the ability to recant a 'like' in case they change their mind or clicked by accident.
- ★★★★ Create a separate page that will hold a pet's heritage, that is, a family tree map. It will include their parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and of course their own children. Later this information will be cross-referenced to prevent some immediate inbreeding.
- ★★★★ If a user owns items of a type (item types will be a new column in the database) that a pet likes (such as, maybe this pet likes candy), then when the user visits that pet's profile, offer to let the user choose an item of that type that they own, warning them that it will be removed from their inventory, and let them give the item to the pet they are visiting. It will grant additional experience to the pet, Aurum to the user, and possibly additional effects. I also need to consider making it so a user can only do this once per pet per day. The pet won't necessarily need to be their own - letting you directly help other user's pets. If another user's pet is 'frozen' then they don't want it gaining experience -- so I'll also prevent frozen pets from receiving items in this way, that way visitors aren't raising your pets for you if you want them to stay young forever.
- Forum ★★★★★★★ (10 hours)
- ★☆☆☆ Install MyBB forum and get dual-log in working.
- ★★☆☆ Disable access to and/or integrate new forum components.
- ★★★★ Design matching theme for forum.
- COPPA ★★★★★★★★★★ (15 hours)
- ★☆☆☆ Database: Create an 'adopts_coppa' table and have it contain the 'uid', 'username', 'birthday', 'parentemail, 'securityQ', and 'securityA' for all users under the age of 13.
- ★☆☆☆ Write up COPPA Procedure and Privacy Policy.
- ★★☆☆ Create nice date picker for Registration form with jQuery.
- ★★☆☆ If users are under the age of 13, append the Registration form so that the parent can be notified of their rights, what I'm storing, what I'm doing to protect their children, and asking for their consent to create security information.
- ★★★★ Allow parents to send inquiries on a Contact Us page by entering their e-mail address and child's username and enter an answer to the security question they created while leaving a message that will be PM'd to me.
- Additional Registration ★★★★★★★★★★★★ (7 hours)
- ★☆☆☆ Database: Create 'adopts_achievements' and use it to keep track of whether or not a user has obtained a starter pet and joined a faction.
- ★★★☆ Create starter pet generator form in jQuery. There will be several species to choose from. All colors will be available (except for melanism, albinism, and monoism). I should be informing the users that eye color will impact the pattern color - but there are also items that can alter a pet's eye color by allowing them to wear contacts.
- ★☆☆☆ After creation, the user's starter pet will be set as the active pet.
- ★☆☆☆ Prevent starter pets from being traded or abandoned.
- ★★☆☆ If a starter pet has not been obtained, do not let a user adopt pets, purchase pets, enter any promo codes, or accept any trades.
- ★★★☆ Create a personality test based on the MBTI test to sort the user into a faction. Inform the users that being on a different faction from their friends will not in any way hinder communication. Users may be able to change at a later time.
- ★☆☆☆ On the index page, alert the user to finish creating a starter pet and/or to choose a faction if they have not done so already.
I would be comfortable to open beta for my friends at that point.
This list isn't, however, complete and does not include the following major features. For the sake of not knowing how long they will take, these are very vague estimations (and probably overshooting, because, again, procrastination):
- Ban Warning System ★★★(5 hours)
- Item Chests System ★★★(5 hours)
- Achievement System ★★★(5 hours)
- Trade System Revamp ★★★★★★★★★★ (20 hours)
- PM System Redesign ★★★★★★★★★★ (20 hours)
- News Article System ★★★★★★★★ (15 hours)
- Event Calendar ★★★★★★★★★★ (20 hours)
- Bestiary ★★★★★★★★★★★★ (25 hours)
- Quest System ★★★★ (8 hours)
- Mission System ★★★★★★★★★★ (20 hours)
- Player Auction House ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ (30 hours)
- Explore System ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ (40 hours)
- Finish Pound Revamp ★★★★★(10 hours)
- Gachapon ★★★★★★★★★★ (20 hours)
- Community Bonuses ★★★★ (8 hours)
About
320 hours estimated coding work left to do. And that list doesn't take into account bug fixes, minor adjustments, more goofing off and procrastinating, and most importantly, the art.
I'm looking at about
600 hours of art, too (25 species with three stages each -- and even if I don't make that many pets right off the bat, that time will be spent towards making equip items and designs). If I do 5 hours a night, I can get the
art done in about
4 months.
Oh hey, did I mention that explore system? I need background art. I can't even begin to estimate a timeframe for
that. I'd say about
200 hours, at least, for the first area only. I'd like to have three to five areas that large open within the first year and a half after launch.
NPCs won't be so bad. Maybe
120 hours, tops.
So, 1240 hours of work to go. At five hours a night, that's 248 days. Or... just over eight months. But l want weekends off, so... I'll be done by
April 3rd of
next year, if I actually do five hours every night for the next year. Am I going to do that? Ah... no, actually. Haha. I'm not
crazy. Luckily I'm overshooting a lot of numbers and it's likely I'll pull 12 hour nights now and than and do nothing at all some days. That's life.
Imagine if I were paid minimum wage of $7.50 for that 1240 hours. That's just over nine thousand dollars of work.