Lemme start this off by saying that an upcoming feature to pet cats and dogs and adopt them is amazing. Seriously, one of the BEST things in a game like this is being able to pet your beloved little fluffy companions. But… not everyone has a dog or cat for a pet.
Some people have parakeets. Or parrots. Cockatiels. Rabbits. Hamsters. Or, if you’re like me, ducks.
My suggestion? More pet varieties. Perhaps a farm where you can adopt ducks and chickens(or ducklings and chicks!), or a rescue habitat where you can take in an axolotl. It would add a lot more variety and interest into the game, as well as giving people further ways to show off their personality and likes/dislikes.
But that’s not all. Let me go to my second idea. Lets say you have a choice of a pet duck. Wonderful! But if all of them look the same… it doesn’t matter which you get, or if it even looks like your own(real or imaginary) pet duck. Or you can go to a cat cafe all you want, but if all the cats are the same, it’s… not very interesting. So I propose: different breeds and varieties to choose from!
This isn’t necessarily an idea for just changed skins, though. I’m imagining somewhat different models for different creatures. A sphinx cat being a reskinned brown tabby wouldn’t make much sense. Same goes for having a munchkin cat being the base model for, say, a maine coon. You’ll want at least a bit of model or size variation in your animals, likely.
Let’s go back to the ducks, for example. You know Mallards, the brown and green ones. You know Pekins, the white ones that are usually the fuzzy yellow babies. But you’d probably be better off tweaking the model a bit to make a new one, if you’re gonna try and implement a Swedish Blue duck. Or a Call duck. Or a Muscovy duck. Same with dogs; a pitbull and a golden retriever sharing the same model wouldn’t make much sense. With some models, and the right textures, it could work to just change a skin, though! Mallards and Khaki Campbells are very similar in size and shape, so a simple reskin would work pretty well for them! Same with a rhode island red hen, and a rhode island white.
And while these would already make the worlds of possibilities HUGE for the pets in this game, I still have more ideas! Each animal type(it can be as simple as Dogs being a type, and Cats being a different type, or as specific as their breeds) could have a different set of sounds they make, or a different pool of “voices” to have! Let’s be honest, if you’ve had one or more talkative cats, you probably know that one cat can have a completely different meow than another. It’d be so cool to have something like this in the game! Especially for things like roosters that crow, hens that sing their morning egg song, drakes that squack and ducks that quack, or even as simple as a cat that screams instead of simply meowing.
“But wait!” I hear you asking. “What if I don’t want a real pet? What if I want a skeleton dog, or a magic flying hippo, or even a sentient book?!” Well, I have an idea for that too!
Modded Custom Pets!!
My thinking with this is, it’d be similar to your custom character model interface. You can choose from a variety of different ai behaviors(cats grooming themselves, ducks loving to splash, birds that fly and perch on your shoulder, ect.), sounds, and animation sets to go with your custom pet! It can be as simple as replacing a texture to make it look like your own cat at home more accurately, or as complex as building your own scripted model with specific bones, physics, animations, sounds, and such, to create anything. A small dragon that makes beeping noises and has an occasional idle animation of flying circles around you? A little pocket sized skeleton that likes to sometimes climb up to your shoulder to say hello? Or even that hippopotamus you wanted for Christmas!
This would probably be a decently complex feature to add, but done right? You could do amazing things with it! Ever wanted Tara from Baldur’s Gate 3 to join you in the lazy river to chill out? It can happen! Want a pair of twin snakes that follow you and sometimes stop to read books instead of going on a roller coaster? You bet! Your very own little roomba to hold and pat and comfort when a storm rolls in? Absolutely!
These suggestions range from what I’d guess is pretty doable, to absolutely off the walls pipe-dream level stuff. But, they’re just that. Suggestions. If you like this idea or have any expansions/criticisms/ideas/ect, please let me know!! I’ve never done this before, but this is such a cool concept, I had to throw my hat in the ring for it ^^
