Hooray it’s June!

This month we have the lovely Gilded Glow coat brought to you by King, and the Giant Hibiscus and Ankle Bells brought to you by feyers:

We got a lot of interesting stuff done in the past month, and are looking forward to a lot of exciting things in the coming one :)

We began our search for some new staff artists several weeks ago, and our search is reaching fruition. We expect to have the final results announced by the end of the week, so stay tuned!

We launched the test run of our Sprout queue: we opened the queue for 24 hours, then selected a few orders at random for our test run (to give people in any timezone a chance). Once we get through this queue and get a feel for how everything works, we’ll be excited to open it up permanently in the same first-come-first-served way as we currently run the Custom queue.

Well that was a lot of fun, and a big thank you to those who submitted recipes. I’m going to enjoy trying some of the ones that I didn’t get to prepare during the nomination period. For those of you who just plain enjoyed sharing / receiving recipes, check out the I like cooking, yes I do! thread to scratch that itch.

A few weeks ago we ran a site-wide vote on several issues. Most visibly, one-way trade fees are a thing of the past, allowing for free trade of all pets without incurring a “gem tax” (although by the same token, customs whose orders were placed after the vote announcement on May 3rd cannot be traded for 60 days after being delivered). There was also a vote regarding the site dictionary, but this has a thread of its own, so please discuss dictionary-related stuff there :)

We spent a good chunk of time this month upgrading our infrastructure, and adjusting the Mycena Cave code to work with the new system. It was… a bit of a wild ride, for a while. Hopefully by now we’ve caught everything, and life can continue as normal. Part of the upshot of this is that those glarfing “State Errors” should be a thing of the past. I say “should” because I said that before, and while they went down from a bazillionty to about one per day site-wide, now hopefully this update nips ‘em right out! (and hopefully this is the last time I announce this XD)

We also found that we were able to up the quality of the Geness images. You may have happened to notice that your geness images looks “cleaner” than they used to… or you might not have noticed, because it’s pretty subtle. Still, it happened, and we’re happy about it.

When we launched the ability to search echos a little while ago, we hinted that forum search was on the way. It was delayed somewhat because matching text through a few hundred echos is, complexity-wise, a much easier problem than searching through over the roughly 90,000 (!!) forum posts we’ve accrued so far. Well forum search is here, and in full force! Check it out here. Like with echo search, you can use keyword prefixes like “by:”, “subject:”, “before:”, and so on to filter your results.

We have finally decoupled a pet’s gender from its pose. In fact, we have decided to remove the “gender” status entirely for all pets. Your pets are welcome to have whatever gender you like, or to be absent of gender.  If you would like to specify this, it can go in the pet’s bio. The blushroom will be retired and replaced with an item which changes a pet’s pose (so basically it will continue to do the exact same thing, it’ll just have a new name, icon and description).

On June 21st, Mycena Cave turns two years old! In celebration of this, we’re getting a brand new set of “Forever” coats. The former set of mushrooms, Sunbeam, Cave Painting and Cave Shadows, will move over to the Fungimental Magic shop on the 21st, and will continue to be available there.

It’ll be similar to last year’s Summer event (i.e. letter-tiles to make words). We’re making a few changes based on the feedback we received last time, but more on this later. Much like the Spring event, it will also have a different setting… it seems the letter mines have been exhausted, and our intrepid Mycenians need to turn elsewhere for their tiles. We expect it to start early-to-mid July, so hold on to your hats!

 

These updates are so awesome. I’m super stoked about forum search and new forever coats!!! 8D

aaahhhh i am so excited about so many things here, omg!! aaah :D

I absolutely adore these new updates, especially the gender thing for the pets. And the new forever coats and search update is also wonderful! Just— eeee!

oh man i’m so excited about all of these updates, especially the trade fee and the gender changes.

Ohhh the non-gender pets are interesting. :O It’s going to cost me a fortune to change them all to my preferred pose *Sobs*

Im also really excited for the event! :D I have summers off so I should be able to rock it! Also for the new Forever pets!! AGGGH YAAAAAAAY! *bounces around*

So, I have a question - if the blushroom item is going to be retired, does this mean it’s going to be taken off the site completely? Or turned just more into a memorabilia kind of thing?

Excited about the new forever coats and gender changes :D

It’ll also be quite spendy for me to change all of my pets to my preferred pose, though.

I can’t wait to see the new forever coats! And will the blushroom be retired at the same time the new item is released, or will there be a gap in between?

I am sitting here making vague incoherent sounds of delight because there are so many good things about this post and I am basically excited for all of it! Can’t wait to see the new forever coats (and no more trade fees YESSSSSS)

I’m also thrilled about the gender thing, now I have to go poke a few things on profiles, this is fantastic!

Hey glitch, I was wondering, would it be possible to instead of getting rid of the gender tab all together on the profile, would it be possible to change it to a fill in the blank box like with the names. So people can state the gender they desire, but still pick the pose they want. Because I know I personally already kinda miss the gender tab. xD

edit: Also,

[22:48:01] Crow: ... <_< you should have asked glitch to center the pet name on profiles too while you were making requests cough

edits 2:
Oh no! Magic Puddle is broken!! :__;

edit 3:
[22:56:46] Kiwi: HEY FOXY WHILE YOU’RE AT IT
[22:57:00] Kiwi: <__< Reorganizing items in your inventory relayers them on pets
[22:57:09] Kiwi: Or relayering items changes where they are in your inventory

-COUGHS LOUDLY at foxcat’s post-

But yes, I’m very excited for all of this too! :‘D Especially new forever coats?? I’m not sure why that excites me so much but it really does!

Woah so much going on 8O

So many great updates! I can look forward to saving up for more pets, knowing I don’t have to sink 3 gems away or shell out for some fodder.

Also, so glad the poses are now Upright and Active, instead of gendered. I’ve liked the “Male” pose on so many coats but didn’t want to only have boys hanging around.

Question: Since I received my Catpucchino Custom from the Raffle, is she an exception to the 60-day rule?

I have to say I’m really happy with no trade fees!

I also have to say I’m kicking myself for not waiting a few hours to trade for the ineki I got 2 hours ago XD

I have been looking forward to the gender thing; I didn’t realize it would be implemented so soon, though! ouo

... However, it’ll take me a while not to associate leaping with males and levitating with females. XD I wonder what the common way to refer to the different lines will be now that they won’t be simply “M or F”... L or F (leaping or floating)? Hmm. Nevermind, didn’t think to go look at the OotS shop to see for myself. Derp.

It’s also a nice surprise to be getting some new forever coats… I wonder if they’ll be different varieties this time? I always used to think there was a rarity system and cats would always be the most common by quite a margin, but Mycena seems to be releasing a much more even mix of the three types as time has passed. /pointless rambling /and I actually hope they’re cats anyway ‘cause they’re my favorite, ffff

ITS FINALLY HAPPENED
GENDER HAS BEEN ERADICATED
I AM SO HAPPY

dude but really im so glad i am in full support of this

it also now justifies all the male poses i keep wanting because tge male pose is so much nicer….. i never need the other pose so long as i live

I’m not sure how I feel about the gender box being removed altogether - I understand the reasoning behind it, but I also feel like this could be kind of troublesome when it comes to trying to determine like…peoples characters and stuff? For rp purposes, not to mention art purposes! It would be an extra step having to go ask someone, having to get clarification from the requester if they didn’t specify gender or have it on the profile. I’d rather have had something like foxcat suggested, just a box to fill out with whatever. And then people could leave it blank if they wanted to, I suppose. I’m not sure if that would be a plausible thing to code, but I just wanted to throw it out there!

Yay, forum search!

And I totally get the eradication of set genders. It would have been neat to still have the box, though—just have it like the name box and allow people to type it in. Like what Foxcat said /just noticed the post

I just have one question about the gender thing. Gender was one of the only things that gave us an idea what a finished sprouts might look like, even if it was just what lines they would end up as. I know you guys were going to let people choose the “gender/lines” of the offspring but without the box how will we know?

Just a curiosity. Otherwise mostly excited about these updates

Shizuo & Raivica:  The blushroom will turn into the new item so that you don’t have to repurchase the changing item if you’ve stocked up on them!

Gender box:  This is something glitch and I discussed, but ultimately felt like it would be a bad idea since people could just put nonsense into it, and a drop-down list of choices probably wouldn’t end up inclusive enough.  We really wanted to go with the option that was most inclusive and least likely to be abused, and getting rid of the gender line seemed to be the most elegant solution.  I think the best way to make this information to be readily available is to put it in your pet’s profile.

Magic puddle:  glitch has fixed it :)

Pooka:  glitch thought of a way to make the switch from gender to pose not as crazy time-consuming as our original plan, but then it ended up taking a long time anyway, hahaha.  There are always things we don’t think about even when making what we thought was a smaller change! x3

Hina:  For raffle and queue Sprouts, you will have the option to pick “upright” or “active” pose, and will get whatever pose you select!  Currently, users who are in the test queue have the male/female option selected, but if they wish, they can edit their order and select upright or active instead.  With customs, the updated forms auto selects the pose that corresponded with the gender the person submitting the form selected.

If you go for the “surprise me” option for the Sprouts, then you won’t know what pose you get until it turns into an adult. OuO

I’m so looking forward to the anniversary and the new pet coats. that come with it.

I’m also excited to hear about the summer event happening, the bug poop event was really fun.

Also, I love love love how detailed the eyes and fur are on the June monthly, it’s got such lovely blending.

The gender thing for pet sites has always bothered me but I figured no pet site would actually change they way they do this. It’s a VERY pleasant surprise to see that MycenaCave has adopted a gender-neutral stance to the pet designs and I won’t lie,  I’m pretty ecstatic about it.

Thank you Mycena Team for being inclusive, forward-thinkers and awesome! You guys just seem to be paving all sorts of things for what pet sites should be about and I appreciate your hard work. :‘D

Nyhkan: yes, she is exempt, because this applies only to pets coming out of the queue (and it’s not so much a rule as a mechanism). The reasoning behind it is to stop people from selling their queue slots to allow a buyer to be in the queue multiple times at the same time, so it wouldn’t make sense to apply it to pets that aren’t coming out of the queue :)

If we are in the test spout queue and would like to change our lines selection to “surprise me” would we just do that once we’re contacted by the artist? When I tried to edit it on my form it said the shop wasn’t accepting orders.

So many exciting things! I’m looking forward to the event, the last one was a lot of fun. The gender/pose update is awesome too. :D

I’m basically cooing and stroking my computer screen in joy over these changes. A+ all around. I’m so excited about the gender changes in particular. Well done.

I am ridiculously excited about some of the changes implemented, especially the trade and new forever pets. The removal of gender is also an exciting prospect, as is the forum search. Thank you!

Lena: That’s an oversight by me, you can expect it to be fixed later today :)

Oh wow I’m really excited about the new forever coats 0:

And a bunch of other neat changes! Although… I am with the others who still wish there was an option to put something in the info card about gender. I’m really finicky about what I put in my pets bios and that’s exactly the sort of thing that just muddied things up to me. Hum. Guess I’ll have to actually keep up with my character cavern now. x3;;