Resume of Interview with Levio & Allison at Sacred Tome

Sacred Tome arranged a Q&A with Levio, Malevays programmer and Alison, the community manager.

I've made a resumé for myself my partner and I think it may be useful for others too. It will not cover all that was said during the interview though. It was an hour and fortyfive minutes long. Time crammed with things you may want to know. So if you have time, listen to it. Remember this is my interpretation of what was said and what is important, always better to hear it first hand.

Link to the recording made by Donna Heartsdale: http://www.sacredtome.info/?p=10

The interviewer is Antonia Cascarino, who does an excellent job asking and forwarding questions from the audience.

A short summary about Malevay in the beginning: Catherine, Levio and Chimeric created Malevay together. Catherine in charge of marketing, Chimeric of animations and graphics and Levio for programming and scripts.

**About the upcoming expansion:

The Nocturnals, the first expansion, has been planned from the beginning. It will introduce some new species, coats, traits etc. We will be able to  keep breeding the Diurnals as well as breed the Nocturnals and crossbreed between the two. They will all be compatible.

There will only be basic coats coming from the chest we buy for the expansion. The chests will cost the same as the starter packs do now, they will eat the same food and be able to use the same stumps.

About the two Oracles: Just like Vashara has been protecting the meeroos, so has Orlex. While she sent them to different parts of the world, he led them underground to protect them. He is now coming up and we will be able to choose to join him or stay with Vashara.  It's not a good and evil side, they just have different ideas on what's the best protection for the future of the meeroos. But Levio adds that there may be a darker side to the nocturnal meeoos who has been dwelling under ground all this time.

We will choose what faction to belong to but it will be roleplay more than having any impact on breeding - at least for now.

We will still all use the same hud but there will be an updated version.

According to Levio the expansion will be introduced piece by piece as they are ready. We will not have to wait forever and then get it all at once. He uses the word soon for when the first parts will come, but soon is of course a very relative word. To us impatiently waiting - tomorrow?

**The update:

There will also be an update to the meeroos we have now. New things like coats and traits will be added to and come from existing meeroos. We will not have to buy any new boxes to get them.

Allision pointed out that the new coats may not be coming from the higher species or coats but as well from the lower ones.

They have not yet decided all about how to retire coats. But when they are retired we will no longer be able to breed them from our existing roos. If we have nests with that coat we can coax it and it will have it's coat but not pass it on to the children. Much like the Dryads works now.

If you're only gonna listen to bits of this interview I suggest the bit between 00:12:30 and 00:12:33. I hate spreading rumours that turn out to be wrong. You better listen for yourself and see what you make of it.

Antonia asked if they had considered offering a special coat if you have discovered them all, as a reward. Levio answered that they plan to keep adding new coats so there will always be more to discover.


**Other things:

There will be no petter that you pay once and then have it pet as much as you like.  They are still trying to work out a way to restore the value of regard in a way that doesn't upset everybody. No matter what they do all players will not be happy.

Levio repeats that regard matters, but the genetics is still "the king". If you try to make a Kimodo, no matter how much regard you have if the parents don't have the genetics you won't get a Kimodo.

No magic potion to make the meeroos give better nests or surgical tools so we can change the gender will be introduced.

The Bengal will come from our existing roos one day, and they are at least thinking about Captain Blackcoat since he has such a fan club.

There will not be a feature on the hud showing the rarity of a roo. We need to discover the rarity levels on our own.

There will be no stumps for more than eight meeroos. The text has to go within the 256 characters limit of the prims textfield.

If there is more than 12 homes within 20 meters it can cause problems with getting them to attach to the right stump. Levio knows what the problem is and how to fix it so when we get updated scripts that should be fixed.

Levio is not negative to the idea of emergency food that could be fed to any meeroo if it turns out to be possible to implement in the scripts.

There are no plans for changes to the sizes of meeroos.

There will be water meeroos at some point. They won't need any special habitat with water.

Mee-pets resets to zero regard when they are rebuilt because they aren't supposed to have any regard at all.

Just a final thanks to Sacred Tome for arranging and sharing this with us, to Donna Heartsdale for publishing the recording and to all participants and Antonia Cascarino for the interviewing . And to Malevay for those amazing meeroos :o)

We will get mesh in Phoenix - soon

We will get mesh in Phoenix. We won't be able to import mesh with Phoenix but to use it and see it. All this thanks to Henri Beauchamps and his work with the Cool VL viewer. And Ansariel Hiller who's got the code into the Phoenix build.

All of us that likes the v1 interface have a lot to thank them for, but so do those that want to use mesh on the grid. It can't be much fun to build or try to sell objects most users can't see.

Read more about it here on the Phoenix site. Of if you can't wait for mesh in Pheonix, try the experimental version of the  Cool VL Viewer.

My first Loch

Look at my beautiful little loch girl Nessa. Pink eyes to go with her pink paws and if she was just a tad greener she'd be a watermelon meeroo. If she has a baby boy meeroo that looks like her I'll name him Torley even if the green  is a little too pale.

Did I mention she's lazy?

She is all from our own breeding so needless to say I'm dead proud of her. She's got a handsome young loch boyfriend with dark mysterious eyes and we will hopefully have a bunch of little greenies chirping on Fort Serenity soon. 

Pet-O-Matic Magic!

Well, more mechanic than magic really.

But the Pet-O-Matic is here now - the official Malevay auto-petter. Debated of course. Some are disappointed that it's created at all, petting should be a thing you do yourself.  Some are disappointed Malevay said they wouldn't make one and then did anyway. Some had the old (with dubious scripts) auto-petter and think this is way too expensive since you have to pay for the petting it does.  Many are happy to get a legal auto-petter.

While I myself would have preferred no auto-petter at all, I think this is not such a bad compromise. You will now have to pet, or pay to get the petting done. I do wish Malevay felt more confident in enforcing the game as they intend it, but I suppose it's the price for having a company that listen to their customers. We're not spoiled with that and it sure has it's advantages too.

That meeroo on the Pet-O-Matic looks
kinda mischievous?

AND - it's really hard not to like the Pet-O-Matic when you see it. It's adorable.

It's made out of an old box and a wonderful - if somewhat greasy - oven mitten. The power comes from old batteries the clever Anthropologist that first found  the meeroos managed to somehow power with help from nature. Very mysterious, but to me how an ordinary battery works is a mystery too, so I don't mind.



How it works
You get the Pet-O-Matic for free from the main store in Roo. To make it work you need to load it with batteries (available from Roo and on the marketplace). The batteries come in four sizes:

• Mega:     24 pets a day for 7 days   (L$575)
• Large:     12 Pets a day for 7 days   (L$290)
• Medium:   8 pets a day for 7 days    (L$195)
• Small:       4 pets a day for 7 days    (L$100)

You can set the frequency in the menu, so it pets more often and then doesn't last as long. Or less often and make it last longer. And you can pause it and resume again. It will pet all meeroos within a 10 meter radius and it doesn't make any difference how many they are. (To measure, make a cylinder 20x20 meters and hollow it or make it semi transparent. It can be set to pet your meeroos only or your own plus any fellowshipped meeroo.

Yay! I got a Sula

Had to try my luck again, so I went to Roo and bougth three more nests. And there he was, the watcher of the North..

He is awfully pretty, isn't he? But they all are of course. With meeroos I tend to fall in love with them just by looking at them.

Now I have all four of them and no clue how to get them to give me their warning message.

Went to Roo last night and looked for clues there but I couldn't find anything. The crack in the ground from all those quakes is getting larger, the buildings are falling down and there was this meeroo statue home nose down.

If you want to give these dryads a visit they are on mainland in the region Ess. Just by the road, you can actually drive there. We have a limit to how many meeroos we are supposed to have on our sim, so these are housed with a friend.

No worries, even if they are just by the road they are very well protected.

Messenger meeroos are here

The Oracle created them from leaves she found in the ashes after the second great war. The Ancients were losts, man had used them in their warfare and now they were all dead. She blow life into four leaves and sent four Dryads to watch over the North, the South, the East and the West.

The Troo - probably the most common of them.
I like it's subtle colors and the warm green.

The Myrr with striking autumn colors.

That is - in a very abbreviated version - the background of the limited edition of messenger meeroos that is being sold from now to september 20, at the store in Roo and on the Second Life Marketplace. You buy a random nest for L$300.

They can be bred like any meeroo, but won't pass traits special to them like eyes and coats. It will be interesting to see what is in them.

They are pretty of course. And like all meeroos very well made. I am a little partial to the more down to earth looking meeroos tho. But they are very photogenic so I couldn't resist showing some pics of the three I have (at least so far).

You'd think being so special they might be a bit stuck up, but nope - they are just as sweet as any meeroo. Skips around and sleep in a bunch around the food bowl. And stretch up to you to be cuddled in that way you just can't resist.

The Azra the second rarest.

I don't have the very rarest of them all - Sula the watcher of the North. I'll see if I will take the chance at the nest lottery again or not. To buy one right now from someone else cost so much it seems cheaper to play the lottery. But then again I may just settle for the ones I have. They are pretty enough for me :o)

Fort Serenity Meeroo Ranch has opened

We - Major McCaw and Molly Wellesley and me - have opened a store where we breed our Meeroos. We sell the pretty and natural habitats with waterfalls, and nice little huts to use as covers for the nests. Meeroos love to hide themselves and any treasures they find under the huts so we made them go up and down on a single left click.

The water and rock in the habitats texturechange so they fit in any landscape. They come in different versions and sizes too. Major has added demos with rings to show optimal placings if you want more than one stump, which of course I have ignored in favor of a  pleasant chaos. I do have to admit tho, his meeroos seems to hang out quite happily anyway and it is a lot easier to pet his meeroos than mine :o)

We sell nests too of course.

Everyone is of course welcome to visit us and the meeroos just to say hi or look around. We have lots of different coats and traits now. Reds, Autumn, Sierra and Molly even has an Amber now.

This is the link to visit us.