okay actually it wasn't just neopets it was more...
do any of y'all also remember Vickimouse Adoptables? possibly vikimouse, i can't remember how the name was spelled
little pixel mice anthros (or other animals), and part of "adopting" was that you went to browse through all of the pixel art that you could use to "build a house" for them
it used to be such a big thing but it's as if it's vanished, i can barely find traces of it existing but it was a huge part of my childhood
@wigglytuffitout I never saw that one, but I miss that kind of adoptables community
@InspectorCaracal me too honestly, they used to be such a huge thing... i remember i also got into the ones that were like, you adopt an egg and see what it grows into, or ones that simulated cat/dog breeding
sites like chickensmoothie are obvious inheritors to a bit of that, but i miss when it was just like small communities of single people on geocities or what have you, and weren't quite like modern adoptables on dA which are typically for cash and for a defined character
@InspectorCaracal yeah, it's hard 🤔 i mean i think it'd be great to do here, until i think about implementation LOL
especially because the conceit usually meant allowing the person to hotlink - like, they'd put the adopted egg on their website, then it 'growing up' would be creator changing the linked picture
making it a more streamlined system is possible, but it does lose some of the... rustic charm? like chickensmoothie is the modern solution, but also... a tad boring.
@wigglytuffitout no yeah it definitely needs the hotlinking for updates, but that's part of why you go with Very Small Images, as well
I think the best you can do with social media - since it generally goes by the "cache everything on the server" approach <mutter>which my implemention won't</mutter> - is to have a mini-page for each critter on your adoptables site and when someone adopts one, you put the owner name and link to their site/profile on it, and *that* link goes in their profile
@wigglytuffitout then people who have their own personal sites, or who still use old-school forums or whatever and can put the image in their signature, or however they want to do it, they can do the hotlinked image that you click to view the adoptable's page as per usual
@wigglytuffitout ..........
okay I really wanna do this now
*plots out what kind of critters to do and image sizes*
@wigglytuffitout the ultimate root here is that the "modern solution" is "automate everything so it can scale up and we can make a Business out of it"
there's nothing wrong or not-modern about it just being a hobby project y'know? <.<
@wigglytuffitout lol advertising it as "artisinal hand-crafted adoptables"
@InspectorCaracal you just hit exactly what finally drove me off chickensmoothie lmfao. trying to say "we're a small indie op! it's just like two people!" while also going "anyway buy our microtransaction funny money, and we're going to push events to be more and more ruthless so you'll want to buy $$ to trade for tokens..." ...yeah i pointed this out and got a bunch of torches and pitchforks lmfao.
and yes. ARTISINAL HAND-CRAFTED ADOPTABLES. FREE-RANGE!
@wigglytuffitout i'm 100% gonna put that on the page, it is my kinda humor xD
@wigglytuffitout .....maybe I should try to revive the Adoptables Community Dynamic with some pixel eggs 🤔 *thinks about how someone could work adopting a little pixel critter into their social media account, since no one has websites anymore...*