Settingz:
There are a lot of settings that you should check before you make Pets active on your forum. This is where you do that. There are alot of options so we won't go through them all now. Most of them are pretty self explanitory... Just look at Figure 1... They all have a short description of what they are used for. However, there are a few important ones.
Best Before Date: This is how long it takes eggs to hatch, and unstarted battles to be removed. Make sure you remember that it is in SECONDS (and must be at least 1 day). Here are a few amounts in seconds: 1 Day=86400 2 Days=172800 3 Days=259200 4 Days=345600 5 Days=432000
Points Table/Field: These two fields are very very important. If they are incorrect...your P3tz installation WILL NOT WORK! The values of these fields depend on what points system you are using. Check with your points system developer to make sure you have the correct table and field. There are also some suggested settings in the readme.html that is provided with the download.
Stock System: Using the stock system you can set limits to how many of each item is available for sale. The amount available is set per item. If you would like to have an unlimited amount of items for your members, turn this option off.
Hunger: This is the maximum amount of hunger pets gain per day. This number is a percent of 100%. at 100% a pet will begin to lose a set amount of health per day. Suggested settings are between 10 and 20.
Malnutrition: This is the maximum amount of health a pet loses per day when their hunger is at 100%.
Max Conteders: The amount of pets that can participate in a battle. The higher this number, the more strain it puts on your server. 8 is the highest tested limit. Though you can try it higher!
Mating System: If you want users to be able breed their own pets you should enable this system. Over many generations pets level 1 stats will begin to increase if they are bred from two strong parents.
Logging: This will keep logs of almost every aspect of your P3tz installation. More detail is given to this topic later in the tutorial. It is important to note that this feature increases server strain and is not recommended for constant use on large forums.
Keep Battle Log: Simply stores a copy of each battle log in the forum database. Can quickly enlarge your database if you have a large, active forum.
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P3tz:
Ok from this screen you can edit user pets and also add new pet types! To edit a pet you can either search by ID or search by name. Since IDs are unique indexes this is the preferred way of selecting a pet to edit. If you are adding a new type of pet you can just ignore this and click the 'Add New Petz' button. As shown in figure 2.
Figure 2a shows the edit a user pet screen which can be used to edit a users pet. This is useful if you want to fix some stats, remove it from a battle or suddenly kill it. You can also use this screen to swap owners and change the pet type. All the options have a description so it's quite simple to use.
When adding a new pet type it is best to use a standard system to distribute stats. There is alot of discussion about what Strength, Defence, and Agility to use for a pet on the forums. After you upload the pet pack via FTP enter this screen, shown in figure 2b, the new pet should be in the drop down. Select it and fill in the form. The fields have a description to make it easier. When you submit the form the new pet is created.
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Market Itemz:
The market is primarily used to sell food and moral changing items. Items may also have special effects including rename, change color, and kill. To add an item choose an icon, name and description. Then enter the change (if any) to hunger and moral. The change to hunger should usually be a negative number in order to feed. The change to moral can be between -100 and 100. Then select any other options. You may choose to leave the price blank and P3tz will auto price the item. The price can be edited at anytime so sometimes it is good to do this and then just edit the item and adjust the price a little.
To add an item click the Add button shown in figure 3 this will take you to the form in figure 3a. figure 3 will also display all items available and you can edit them by clicking edit.
Note: In order for items to appear in the market they must have a stock and a restock value above 0 regardless of whether the stock system is active. This allows you to have hidden items by setting the restock and stock to 0.
Vet Itemz:
These work alot like market items except there are no special items and they effect health not hunger. Vet items should have a positive effect to health. Like market items you can leave cost field to price items automatically. The edit and add item screen is shown in figure 4a.
Figure 4 shows the main vet item screen. This displays current vet items and allows you to edit or delete the existing items or to add a new item.
Orphanz:
The initial Orphanage Screen (shown in Figure 5) displays some useful information about the pets that users have put up for sale in the Pet Shop.
-Number of pets currently in the Pet Shop
-Ability to edit the ad of each pet in the Pet Shop
-Enter the Pet ID
-or choose the Pet from the drop down menu
If you choose to edit one of the Pet Ads, you can do this simply by either choosing the pet from the drop down, or entering it's pet ID into the blank search field and hitting the 'View' button. Once you do this it will bring up the 'Edit Orphan' Screen shown in Figure 5a.
There are 4 things you can change through this menu (there are actually 6...but the first two should never be altered as they set what pet is being sold)
-Cost - Use this to change the price the pet is being sold for.
-Description - Edit the description that was listed with the sale.
-Start Date - You can change to day that the sale was started with this feature.
-Remove - By typing in 'DELETECONFIRM' in this box you can completely remove this listing from the system.
Kennelz:
When a user in your forum is going to be away for a few days or more they may want to put their pets in the kennels. This ACP screen shows you how many pets are currently in the kennels.
Unlike the Orphanz section above, the edit button in this screen takes you directly to the pet edit screen shown in Figure 2a. Since we have already covered the Edit Pet screen we won't go over it again, but if you wish to manually remove a pet from the kennels you can easily just clear the date in the 'Kennels' section of the Edit Pet screen.
Gravez
Using the Graveyard section of the ACP you can view all the pets currently in the graveyard. Please note, this does not show all the dead pets in your forums, but only the ones that users have decided to purchase a 'grave plot' for.
If you wish to edit a grave, you need to select a pet either by choosing one from the drop down or by typing it's pet ID into the blank field. There are 6 options shown in the Grave Edit screen (shown in Figure 7a). The first two should not be changed, but the bottom 4 can be used to alter the following information.
-Gravestone - Use this to change the picture displayed as the gravestone.
-Memorial - This is listed as a message when a user hovers over the grave in the user graveyard.
-Burried - You can change to day that the pet was buried with this feature.
-Remove - By typing in 'DELETECONFIRM' in this box you can completely remove this grave.
Guildz:
If you would like to see a listing of all the guildz currently on your website this is where you will do it. You can also use this section to edit each individual guild as well.
In order to edit a guilds information you need to first select the edit option which is shown in Figure 8, and then click the edit button located at the very bottom of the Guildz Screen.
Once you are in the Guild Edit screen you can change the Name of the Guild, the Guild Owner (must have user ID), guild image, description, Battle wins and losses, as well as remove the guild completely. This screen is shown in Figure 8a.
Spellz:
This is where you will add, edit, or delete spells. Once a spell is created it will be listed in the P3tz Spellz menu with the Spell name, description, damage percentage, moral requirement, change of cast, and cost...as you can see in Figure 9.
When you click on either Add, or Edit spell you will be taken to either the Add a Spell or Edit a Spell screen. Only the Edit a Spell screen is shown in this documentation. The Add a spell screen is exactly the same except for the lack of the delete spell option, so there is no need to explain both screens.
Upon opening the Edit a Spell page you will see the following information, and likewise...what it is used for:
-Spell Element-
-Name -
-Description -
-Damage -
-Chance -
-Cost -
-Spell Moral-
-Remove - By typing in 'DELETECONFIRM' in this box you can completely remove this spell.
Battlez
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This is the section where you can view all the started or unstarted battles. All battles will be displayed in the Battles screen along with the type of battle (), time the battle was created, and what round the battle is currently in. If you select a battle and click 'View' you can edit the details of the battle.
You can edit the Battle Name, amount of pets allowed in the battle, the arena the battle ground is being held in (background picture), date the battle started, and also delete the battle if you choose to do so.
Auctionz:
The first screen you will see in the Auctionz area of the ACP is the Auctions Listing. This shows exactly what you would expect...a list of the active Auctions as well as a little bit of info about each one. The info that is shown is the User that created the Auction, what type of Auction is is (pet or item), when it was started and how long it is scheduled to last for. View Figure 11 to see this screen.
If you would like to alter the information for one of these auctions you will need to select the edit option for the appropriate item, then click the 'View' button. This will open up the screen shown in Figure 11a in which you can edit all the options for the auction.
You can change:
-Message - This is the info that is listed with the Auction. The 'description'.
-Reserve - This is the minimum price that the Auction will sell for.
-Instant - If a user wants this item now, and doesn't mind the price...this is the price they can pay to immediatly end the auction.
-Highest Bid - Shows the amount of the current highest bid that has been placed on this auction.
-Highest Bidder - The user ID of the member that placed the Highest Bid.
-Started Date - This is the date the auction started...if you want to extend the time for this auction you can change this to a later date.
-Duration - How many days this auction will last for, you can change this number rather than change the Start Date to extend the time for this auction.
-Remove - By typing in 'DELETECONFIRM' in this box you can completely remove this grave.
You can also change the first three options...but it is not suggested as you will change the user/pet/item type of the auction...which if not done carefully could mess up the way the Auction works.
Statz / Logz / Restock NOW!!!:
The Stats Section of P3tz is just a quick way for you to see exactly how much your users are using/liking P3tz. It includes info on the current P3tz Version, total pets, active battles, inventory items, spells, current auctions, number of unread user messages, how many btos are running (training) and gambling tickets open. The stats page is shown in Figure 12.
P3tz comes with a wide variety of logs for your use to check out how things are working and to make sure everything is running properly for your installation. To name a few...the battle log shows what battle have taken place, and what the results were, the auction log show some basic info about current and past auctions. There are many other logs for the P3tz system, they are shown in Figure 13 below. Note: you must enable the log system in the Setting Menu if you want to use this feature.
The Restock NOW!!! option does exactly what it says. It restocks all purchasable items that have a stock limit. Things that will be restocked are Market Items and Vet Items. This is useful if you don't have your stock levels set proportionally to your user level...which will make you run out of available stock very quickly. In order to quickly refill everything without having to manual change the number on each individual item...you can simply press one button!
