kagurasbeasts

[kagurasbeasts]

Development Update - September 2022

Hi all! Miyazaki here, wishing you a happy first day of October and bringing you a recap of what the team accomplished during the month of September 2022. 

Key points covered:

Beast Design Contest Winners

Quarter 2 (2022) Concepts & Voting

Q1 Companion & Glamours in Ko-fi Shop

Early Access Companion: 10/31 Deadline

Reward Lookup System

New NPC

Solid Gold Glamours: Griffin, Unicorn, Dragon

Patreon Supporter Discord Flair

Staff Beast Design Contest

More info available under the cut!

Beast Creator Contest Winners

What an incredible turnout we had for our second Beast Creator Contest, thank you for all your submissions! These entries were so much fun to look through and it was really difficult to only pick three designs, but we’re happy to announce the winners of our September 2022 Beast Creator Contest: DeepSea Dragon, Swiddy_Swooty, and Pandalion!

Our three winners will each have the rewards automatically applied to their accounts, and these three beasts will be featured on the homepage for Quarter 2 (October through December). 

Keep an eye out for our next Beast Creator Contest–we’ll be gathering entries in December to display on our site for Quarter 3 (January through March).

Quarter 2 (2022) Concepts & Voting

It’s the first day of a new Quarter, folks, which means we’ve got new Quarterly Rewards for Sponsors to vote on our Ko-fi page!

Quarter 2 is shaping up to be spooky and ethereal–which concepts would you like to see made into official site items? Sponsors of Bronze level or higher have a vote in deciding. Please check out the Companion post and the Glamour post on Ko-fi to cast your vote for the winning concepts! 

Votes must be posted by October 31, 2022 at 11:59pm PDT in order to be considered.

Ko-fi Shop: Q1 Companion and Glamours Available

All Quarter 1 (2022) Rewards are now listed in our Ko-fi Shop for individual purchase for all Sponsor levels at $5 USD flat rate per unit. As a reminder, please remember that no more than 3 units of any given item can be purchased. If you purchase more than 3 units of any given item, your entire purchase will be refunded and you will need to place your order again, this time with no more than 3 units of any given item. 

Hopefully in the future Ko-fi will offer the functionality to limit purchases per user, but for the time being we will be reviewing orders manually and reaching out to those who disregard these instructions.

★ Gold Imp ★ Glamour: Solid Gold Quetzal ★ Glamour: Motherboard

Early Access Companion: 10/31 Deadline

Mythaura’s Early Access Ko-fi Companion, the Pearlescent Shellsnake, will only be available to Gold, Silver, or Bronze Sponsors who have or had a Sponsorship active on or before 11:59pm PDT on Monday, October 31, 2022! 

As a reminder, the Pearlescent Shellsnake will NOT be available for individual purchase in the Ko-fi Shop later on, so if you are interested in receiving 3 copies of this endangered critter please check out our Ko-fi Sponsor Levels to see what other rewards you can receive for your patronage.

Reward Lookup System

Now that we have both Patreon and Ko-fi rewards for our supporters, we wanted to put together a system for you all to look up all that you’ve accumulated so far. You can find the reward lookup tool at the bottom of our homepage. All Ko-fi Sponsors, Patreon Sponsors, and giveaway/contest winners should have their rewards reflected.

We did our best to populate Patreon data thoroughly, but there were incomplete sections in what we have, especially in regard to sponsored items. Please reach out if you rewards look incorrect or the items you sponsored do not look correct.

Introducing: Jaq!

This enterprising Basilisk runs Mythaura’s largest consignment shop, where he will assist with item sales between players. Jaq has learned quite a bit about the wares and goods in Mythaura while overseeing infinitely large volumes of items move through his shop. This means that he will readily and enthusiastically explain the history and significance of anything you may find on one of his shelves. 

Though he is a widely beloved figure in the community, there are those who would question the legitimacy of a business where people can drop off items without needing to prove their authenticity. To that Jaq says: The burden of success is a heavy one to bear, and not one all are fit to carry! After all, it’s not just anyone who can run a business that props up the businesses of hardworking Mythaurans everywhere. Stop by the shop and see for yourself!

Solid Gold Glamours: Unicorn, Griffin, Dragon

We shared in a previous update that Gold Sponsors would receive not just the Solid Gold Dragon Glamour, but also a Solid Gold Unicorn and a Solid Gold Griffin. Here’s the full lineup for these Gold Sponsor-exclusive Glamours! These are rewarded to Gold Sponsors each month that they have an active Gold Sponsorship. Thank you for supporting Mythaura!

Patreon Supporter Discord Flair

Mythaura’s Patreon Supporters have been around since the very beginning, and we wanted you to be able to show off your early contributions to the site with some special Patreon-exclusive Discord flair. Mythic, Artisan, Scholar, and Archivist roles now all have their own unique flair. We recognize your contributions and thank you for believing in Mythaura from the very beginning!

If you were a Patreon supporter and do not have your correct role assigned on the Discord, please reach out to Koa and she will look into it for you.

Miscellaneous bug fixes/updates

Renamed “Skins” to “Glamours”

Fixed tooltip hover overflow

Fixed button text getting cut off in some spots

Improved the responsiveness of import code fields to make them easier to use on mobile

Added the ability to lock color independent of special

Corrected spelling of color “Cedar”

Staff Beast Creator Contest

You know what, we were so inspired by how much fun your Beast Creator Contest entries were that we decided to have a little inter-staff competition–but this time you vote for which of our designs you like best. It only seemed fair, after getting to be the ones voting on the designs you submitted to us.

What rewards might the winning staff member win, you might ask? Only bragging rights and the knowledge that we created the design that was best loved by our fine userbase here. Maybe getting to pick the movie we watch during our next dev team watch party. A little healthy competition between colleagues keeps things lively.

We’ll keep the votes open until October 31, 2022.

Thank you!

Thanks for sticking through to the end of the recap for our very busy month of September! We wish you a wonderful start to Spooky Season and hope that you are blessed with all your favorite Halloween candies and plenty of time for scary movies.

We’ll see you November 1st with the recap of what we accomplish in September. Hopefully we'll see you around the Mythaura Discord in the meantime!

[kagurasbeasts]

Development Update - August 2022

Hi all! Miyazaki here, bringing you a recap of what the team accomplished during the month of August 2022.

Key points covered:

Ko-fi Early Access & Gold Sponsor Companions

Ko-fi Quarter 1 (2022) Rewards

New Ko-fi Sponsored Gear

Beast Design Contest

New Special: Tint

Development Roadmap & About Us More info available under the cut!

★ Ko-fi Early Access & Gold Sponsor Companions

The results from the votes on the Ko-fi Early Access and Gold Sponsor Companions are in! You all decided on the Golden Ossiflage for the Gold Sponsor-exclusive Companion and the Pearlescent Shellsnake for the Early Access-Exclusive Companion. We’ve been hard at work on them the past month and are ready to share more about these wonderful creatures with you!

Gold Sponsor Companion: Golden Ossiflage

Griffins refer to the Golden Ossiflage as the “Torch of the Sun Path,” so named for the way its brightly burning plumage lights the evening sky. Once it has picked clean the charred skeletons it feeds on, its feathers immolate and the Golden Ossiflage burns to ash, and from warm ashes is reborn. Ko-fi Gold Sponsor-Exclusive Companion

Gold Sponsors will receive 1x Golden Ossiflage for every month they have an active Gold Sponsor subscription. The Golden Ossiflage will NOT be available for sale in the Ko-fi Shop.

Early Access Companion: Pearlescent Shellsnake

Once a common sight in their natural habitat along the Selvin River, the Pearlescent Shellsnake has been poached almost to the point of extinction. Their iridescent shells are highly sought after for use in jewelry, pigments, and other high-end goods. Ko-fi Early Access-Exclusive Companion

Gold, Silver, and Bronze Sponsors who sign up by 11:59pm PST on October 31, 2022 will receive 3x Pearlescent Shellsnakes. The Pearlescent Shellsnake will NOT be available for sale in the Ko-fi Shop.

★ Ko-fi Quarter 1 (2022) Rewards

We’re very excited to roll out our Quarterly Rewards system for you all! Thank you again for your feedback on this program’s structure.

Quarter 1 (2022) is from July 2022 through September 2022.

Quarter 1 (2022) Companion: Gold Imp

The hoard of a Gold Imp consists exclusively of valuables pilfered from others. They are especially prevalent in wealthy areas and are considered pests by the nobility, from whom they routinely steal. Quarter 1 (2022) Ko-fi Sponsor-Exclusive Companion Reward

Quarter 1 (2022) Skin: Motherboard

Quarter 1 (2022) Ko-fi Sponsor-Exclusive Skin Reward

Quarter 1 Solid Gold Skin: Solid Gold Quetzal

Quarter 1 (2022) Ko-fi Gold Sponsor-Exclusive Skin Reward

The breakdown of the Quarter 1 (2022) Rewards is as follows:

Gold Sponsors: • 3x Gold Imp • 3x Skin: Motherboard • 1x Skin: Solid Gold Quetzal Silver Sponsors: • 2x Gold Imp • 2x Skin: Motherboard Bronze Sponsors: • 1x Gold Imp • 1x Skin: Motherboard

Gold Imp and Skin: Motherboard will be available for sale to any Sponsor level in Ko-fi Shop (MAX 3 UNITS PER ITEM PER PERSON) starting 10/1/22.

Skin: Solid Gold Quetzal will only available for purchase by Gold Sponsors in the Ko-fi Shop (MAX 3 UNITS PER ITEM PER PERSON) starting 10/1/22.

If a Sponsor purchases more than 3 units of any given Quarterly item, that entire Ko-fi purchase will be refunded and they will need to place their order again, this time with no more than 3 units of any given item.

★ New Ko-fi Sponsored Gear

We’ve already worked with some generous Ko-fi Supporters on designing some custom Gear that will be available for purchase with in-game currency from an NPC when the site launches! The names and descriptions of these pieces will be shared in a future update.

Thank you kindly to GreenHeron and tenz, respectively, for helping create some truly spectacular pieces of Gear!

★ Beast Design Contest

We were so impressed by the results of the Beast Design Contest from a few months ago that we’ve decided to make it a quarterly event while we’re still in active development!

Here are the parameters this time around:

• Each individual can submit one (1) Beast option for consideration • Any species fine (babies included) • Fill out this Google Form for your entry; provide both a picture and the preview code

We’ll pick three winners to have their Beasts featured on the front page for Quarter 2 (October 1 - December 31). Winners will also receive:

• 1x Beta Key • 1x Quarter 1 (2022) Skin: Motherboard • 1x Quarter 1 (2022) Companion: Gold Imp

These rewards will retroactively apply to the previous design contest winners; we will be reaching out to you directly to confirm your information to make sure that we capture your rewards for you.

Submissions for the Beast Design Contest are due by September 15, 2022. The form will close at 11:59pm PST. Winners will be announced in the October 1, 2022 Development Update.

★ New Special: Tint

Earlier this month we added our newest Special marking to the Beast Creator demo: Tint.

Tint applies an all-over hue to your Beast. This Special really has the potential to make dramatic changes to your Beast’s look–be sure to play around with it to see for yourself all the potential it can bring!

★ Development Roadmap & About Us

We’ve put together a development roadmap, which we’ve posted on our main site. It will be updated to give you an idea of where we’re currently at in the development process.

Presently we do not have a specific timeline sharing when we will reach specific stages of development; we just want to provide a broad roadmap for the time being. Target dates will be shared once we have a better grasp of the timeline.

We also wanted to say hello from behind the scenes! Here’s an overview of the team hard at work on Mythaura’s development. We’ll be sharing more info with you about ourselves in next month’s Development Update, but we wanted to give a quick introduction before then!

And while we’re here, we want to give a HUGE thank you to the Patreon supporters who were there for Mythaura at the very beginning and laying the foundation from which the site is being built, and a huge thank you as well to the Ko-fi Sponsors who are helping support the site in its present stages of development. We’re extremely grateful for your support, and we enjoy watching you leave your legacy on this project for future users to enjoy.

★ Thank you!

Thanks for sticking through to the end of the recap for our very busy month of August! We’ve been excited to share this content with you all and are glad to have our Quarter system underway, so that we can continue to work together with all our gracious Sponsors to shape Mythaura’s future.

And ah, there is one more thing I wanted to share…we’ve been tracking the movements of the stars and planets here in Mythaura, both throughout the day and throughout the year, and some symbols and stories from Mythaura’s rich history are starting to reveal themselves to us.

We’re working with a particularly revered Griffin astronomer to piece together what all of this means, and while it’s still too early to say anything conclusively, it does seem like there are several overlapping systems of Signs that help to inform who you are…

We’ll see you October 1st with the recap of what we accomplish in September. Hopefully we'll see you around the Mythaura Discord in the meantime!

[kagurasbeasts]

Peryton

[kagurasbeasts]

June 2022 Development Update

Hello, everyone! Koa here.

This is our first development update since the change of ownership and we are very excited to share what we’ve been working on. Here’s a quick overview of what we’ve accomplished this month.

Contest Winners

Our beast creation contest was a huge success. Thank you to everyone who entered! It was definitely hard to pick the final winners, so we have some honorable mentions as well.

Dragon - Stormy

There were a lot of amazing galaxy-esque entries, and we loved the beautiful astral look of this dragon. I really liked the day-turned-night feel that this design captures.

Griffin - Mewstor

The natural wild look and beautiful warm contrast of this griffin are what drew us towards it. It looks like something you’d see in the natural world (other than the wings and huge talons of course!).

Unicorn - Celi

The warm gold and rich blue really just work so well together. This design works both to represent a warm midsummer’s day or maybe a bright nautical seashell. Either way, it’s a stunning beast.

Quetzal - SilverSauce

The simple and striking color choice is just so handsome on this quetzal. I really like the use of galaxy to create those subtle freckles and shading alongside the ocelot.

Congrats winners! Your designs have been featured on our new homepage.

Honorable Mentions

DeepSea Dragon’s Griffin - We loved the subtle use of python here alongside the strong color contrast. This isn’t a color combo I would have thought of myself, but it looks so clean and strong on this griffin.

Zenith’s Unicorn - This Lisa Frank style unicorn pays homage to a part of my childhood I had nearly forgotten. I loved seeing the wide range of colors you can get on a single beast, especially that prismatic tail!

Qhersek’s Dragon - Very dark designs can often be tricky to do, but this one is so well done. I love the layering of python to create that subtle outline effect, it really just looks so nice.

New Homepage

Sark has done an incredible job updating & modernizing Mythaura’s homepage. This update brings us up to modern-day best practices and features a dark theme on the whole website. In the future, we will have both dark and light modes based on your system’s preferences. The newsletter sign-up has been fixed. We will be publishing future updates using the newsletter (as well as posting here of course), so make sure to sign up if you are interested in receiving those updates.

If you still see the old homepage when you arrive, please try clearing both your browser cache and your DNS cache.

Demo Overhaul

Not only did we overhaul the homepage, but the beast creator as well. The demo has a sleek new design that offers better responsiveness (you don’t even need to click a generate button anymore, the beast will change as quickly as you can change the inputs), fixes a slew of bugs, and repairs our code import system. Mobile users especially will have a much better experience with this creator than the last.

In addition, the beast creator now features details about the species such as a brief description and stat modifiers. Try it out for yourself.

If you still see the old creator when you arrive, please try clearing both your browser cache and your DNS cache.

New Colors

You may notice that the new creator has more colors available to it. We have rolled out a whopping 50 new colors for everyone to play with, expanding our color wheel from 125 to 185 total colors. Here are just a few of the new colors.

Behind the scenes

Our main focus for the month has been on upgrades. It has been a few years since the codebase has been worked on and since then, web standards have progressed. As such, we have brought Mythaura’s code into a much more industry-standard place. Here are just a few of the upgrades we have done:

Upgraded from Laravel 5 to Laravel 9

Upgraded from PHP 5 to PHP 8

Built a new backend API so that Mythaura can become a single-page application

Replaced jQuery with new React UI

Upgraded from MySQL 5.7 to MySQL 8

Overhauled authentication to comply with new security standards

Implemented a media server to serve images quickly

Reworked bulky sections of code

Implemented a queue system to run bulky jobs asynchronously

We have also successfully set up Mythaura’s WebSocket server. A WebSocket is a persistent connection between a client (your computer) and the server. This is a big step forward for us, as it allows us to start building real-time features such as instant messaging to other players, real-time notifications, and other game elements that require instant feedback such as our planned multi-player features.

This month, we also built out an achievement system. In the future, we will connect this to item rewards and a UI tracker so that players can be rewarded for their achievements once unlocking them.

What’s to come

Our artists have been hard at work drawing NPCs, new specials, monsters, gear, a world map, and more. We also are focusing quite a bit on the breeding and inventory systems next month. We look forward to updating you on these features in future updates. On the note of artists, we are happy to welcome Munkeking and Kymara to the art team, joining our senior artist Luciellia.

About Patreon/Kickstarter

We’ve got a lot of questions about when we will have a Patreon or Kickstarter up to fund the project. We’re so thankful and humbled that so much of this community wants to support Mythaura’s development! We have set up a temporary Kofi donation site where you can donate to Mythaura’s development if you’d like. These donations will be used for paying server fees and for funding art assets. Supporters will be eligible for a special role & channel on our discord channel if they so choose (this will not replace any of the existing Patreon roles present on the server). Both existing Patreon sponsors and new Kofi supporters will be eligible for potential art streams and early WIPs.

Thanks, everyone! See you next month for another update.

[kagurasbeasts]

I have been playing around in the Mythaura Beast Creator a little since Mythaura got revived, so here are a few random creatures!

[kagurasbeasts]

People don’t seem to be talking about it much but these were my entries into the Mythaura design contest!

Can’t wait to see what the devs pick for the winners from everyone who entered!

[kagurasbeasts]

Under New Management

Hey all, Grif here!

Mythaura started out of a love for virtual pet games and the incredible sense of community that blossoms from them. It was always my goal to create something not only fun and visually wonderful, but someplace where people from all over the world can come together.

The last few years, I began to understand that my plans for Mythaura were starting to get further and further out of reach as my free time was something of a rarity. I realized that, to see the game released sooner, I would have to let it go. I’ve made the enormously difficult decision to hand Mythaura over to Koa. She has been coding on the project for a long time and is someone who knows Mythaura inside and out, since close to its inception. I whole-heartedly believe under Koa’s incredible leadership, the vision for Mythaura will be made into reality. I am very excited for the future of this project, and I really hope the community still is too! I want to thank everybody who has supported me and my vision for the game. Without the amazing encouragement of the community on tumblr and discord, Mythaura would not have ever lifted off the ground. Thank you to past Patreon supporters who kickstarted development for the game, your faith in the project means the absolute world to me. I hope Mythaura will be everything you wanted and more. I will still aim to be active in the community however if you need to get into contact with me,  please feel free to message me on Discord (Grif#1760) or please send an email to projectoctavo@gmail.com

---

Hello Mythaura, Koa here now to bring you the rest of the update!

First off, I want to extend my gratitude to Grif for everything she has given to the game. These last few years have been some of the most difficult in memory for so many people, and she has been committed to the success of Mythaura through all of it. Mythaura could not have gotten this far or have captivated so many people without her dedication and talent and I am honored to have the opportunity to carry the torch past the finish line.

As part of the immediate move, there will be some downtime as the domain and server are transferred and re-delegated. Rest assured we will have it back up as soon as possible. This downtime may last several days but when it is up again, there will no longer be a security certificate error when you access the site.

Introducing the New Owners

Koa and Sark are a married couple who love to code together. We’ve worked on numerous projects together and have a passion for gaming and all things nerdy.

Koa (she/her) - Full Stack developer with an emphasis in PHP & Laravel. She has developed with other pet sim games in all stages of release, including building one from the ground up. Koa is also a seasoned artist, and has the flexibility to work both on art assets and code development.

Sark (he/him) - Front End developer with an emphasis in User Experience and UI. Sark is a professional UI developer and plans to bring nearly ten years of his expertise to Mythaura to ensure we deliver an amazing user experience on both mobile and desktop.

State of the Game Right Now

The art assets are mostly complete. We also have already talked with previous artists and intend to retain them in order to finish out the remaining art assets.

The amount of code work still needed is substantial. It will be some time before we have an idea of when we can transition into a beta release but we do hope to provide a development roadmap in the coming months so you guys can follow along as we develop the game. While we will be dedicating as much spare time as we can to Mythaura, both the new owners are employed full time and working on this during evenings and weekends as a passion project. This will be a marathon, not a race, but we are in it for the long haul and hope you will stick around for the ride too!

Rain or shine, development updates will be posted to social media once a month.

Patreon & Closing Notes

Patreon will not be reopening at this time. We are funding the completion of Mythaura out of pocket and want to focus all of our attention on building the much needed code infrastructure. There will be opportunities in the future for you to contribute and help, so keep an eye on our monthly updates for ways to get involved. 

A big thank you to all of you who have been sticking with us this whole time. We will be keeping an active presence on discord and invite anyone interested in following the project to join the official channel using this invite link: https://discord.gg/hdcp3V9Ts6.

[kagurasbeasts]

Ryu pt 2!

[kagurasbeasts]

Ryu pt 1!

[kagurasbeasts]

A blushy griffin :D

[kagurasbeasts]

Here are the scries from Mythaura’s beast demo that I used for my graphics. Some were hue-adjusted to get the purples to match.

Generate your own beasts here! https://www.mythaura.com/demo

[kagurasbeasts]

peryton pt 3!

[kagurasbeasts]

peryton pt 2!

[kagurasbeasts]

Peryton pt 1!

Next to Quetzals, this is my fav beast design by far! I love Peryton ; u ;

[kagurasbeasts]

Kirin pt 4/4!!

[kagurasbeasts]

Kirin pt 3/?

[kagurasbeasts]

Kirin pt 2/?

This just make sme realize how many quetzals im going to be showing off :’D