BULLETIN BULLETIN BULLETIN !!! FOSTERS CAN BE M-M-GOOD! AS LONG AS THEY ARE TENDED IN M.FOOPETS MODE ONLY, FOSTERS NEVER GO INTO FOOPOO MODE!
It would appear that the main objective is to get us spending more time in "www" Active Pet/Play mode rather than "m" - we don't know how it works now, but as we recall, in the early days of the internet income was generated by hits and time-on-site...which m.foopets (assuming that they make anything at all from it, rather than paying for it as a service from another vendor) drastically reduces : in roughly half an hour on m.foopets, we were able to fully tend over 200 pets - in the same length of time on www.foopets, we managed to provide only cleanup service for about 20. if FooMojo makes its cakes from time-on-site, a 10-to-one or greater loss ratio must be pretty alarming... (this has a vague flavor of logic - "instacare", the other timesaver, is only available to those who have provided Foo with an alternate source of revenue, and in any event does not provide cleanup services.)
apparently the FooSpinner by itself wasn't enough, so now we have a carrot-and-stick system. if FooPoo is consistently scooped, the FooLette Wheel appears an indeterminate number of extra times - if it is not, it may not appear at all.
as an experiment, we attempted to leave the lawn biscuit behind in the play yard, in the vague hopes of getting an image of it well covered in doggie decorations...this does NOT work. the mess has disappeared when you go back, the dog's timer does not register its business, and the dog, who regards the foolishness as over with for the day, refuses to produce another.
we understand that some people are having better luck with Pokey function these days - one of the few blessings FooPoo conveys - though even now we find them as likely to "white-out" or freeze as perform normally. a higher incidence of freezing overall has been noticed on the pets' play pages, as well. speaking of the play page - once the doo is done in the actual scene, it can be highly entertaining getting at it - between clever hiding places (one appeared on the roof of a doghouse, we understand - we have threatened the member with dire consequences if they don't get us a picture if it happens again), turning up at the extreme edge of a normal-size scene (or even completely off camera), and directly behind the dog so you have to throw a toy to get at it (toys loading the slowest of all features - and the Scoop mode the fastest - hmm). best bet is to use the Play Yard first - the other items appear to keep loading as you deal with the walk and are ready for use when the deed is done.
the animation in the doggie play yard isn't half bad, actually, if they could avoid stop-action, slo-mo, and the odd swap-ends-without-moving gambit. closehaired breeds now have visible rectums...we don't recall noticing THAT before, lol - an interesting bit of cinema verite, wouldn't you say?
now we have a cute new graphic in the Play Yard, with "cues" to direct your dog and connections to flip to your other pets, and labelling of both the dog and its messes, just in case you forgot which one it was. more on that after we've had a chance to fool with it a bit, after they get it activated (at the moment it's decorative only).
okay, someone more digitally savvy than this dinosaur figured it out - and was kind enough to post directions here : http://www.foopets.com/topics/show/1241099?forum_id=29&post_count=11 : clickable to right...
as a secondary function, these new "improvements" may be intended to encourage all of us recalcitrants who will not trade in our elaborately decorated regular scenes for WS editions to convert - FooPoo is as likely to turn up off-screen as on, making cleanup a real challenge.
with regard to the Decorator mode in general - we are still having no success accessing it in New Scene Design. we are of the opinion that FooMojo would prefer to deal with simpler scenery - more and more "readymade" backdrop items are turning up in the Mart, as well as WS backgrounds that lend themselves to little or no augmentation. this, combined with the tendency of complex scenes to self-destruct at random, is suggestive...
for those who care (not too many in our acquaintance...), we can now play Musical Names once more - DrRon and the FooPowers have apparently taken pity on all the newbies who appointed themselves shelters and then discovered that they (a) carry responsibilities, (b) seldom if ever run at a profit, and (c) cannot breed. look for interesting changes in your Friends' List and Message Board - a virtual cookie to the one who runs across the most unusual and/or hilarious name. (misspellings count)
