Keypers Foundry

Hello again, everyone!

A new month has begun, which means new monthly prompts! The themed prompt for April is "Flower Crown Gifts", and you can read more about it over here: [MT-02] Flower Crown Gifts. This is a gift-art friendly prompt, which means you don't need to draw a Keyper that you own to participate! If you'd like to open your Keyper up to receiving gift art, all you need to do is edit their profile, and at the bottom will be options to allow gift art or gift writing! So if you're a new user who missed out on the free MYO event last month, you're still welcome to participate in this monthly prompt.

And speaking of the species launch event, thank you so much to everyone who showed interest in the species and joined in!! We're so happy to have you guys, and I'm super looking forward to growing and connecting with you all as a community. And with that being said, I'm always open to hearing what you guys want out of the species as well! If you ever have any feature ideas or event suggestions, you're more than welcome to reach out in the Discord server, or message me through Toyhouse! I'd love to hear your ideas!!

SPECIAL TRAIT RAFFLE RESULTS

As part of the species event launch, we held a free raffle for some special trait inscription items. The winners were rolled in the #raffle-rolls channel in the Discord server on March 31st for full transparency, but congrats again to our winners cyxxie, creilights, and ChokoGrimm! As a reminder, these items are account-bound and may not be traded, gifted, or sold on their own, but they can be used on any MYO kit, including the ones received for free from the launch event!

New site feature - character frames

Now that the launch event has all wrapped up, I'll be going back to work on adding some new features to the site! The first feature to be added in the next day or so will be a character frames extension! This feature will allow for you to unlock and use different card frames for your character images on the masterlist. We're already kind of using this to some extent since Silk and I have been adding the default card frames manually for each design approval, but using this extension will automate that process for us.

This feature will come with a few tweaks to how MYO and design update approvals will need to be submitted to the site. Previously, you were able to upload any image size for the masterlist, but with character frames, you'll need to submit your masterlist image one of two ways:

1. Save the frame topper image to your device and adjust your masterlist image to fit inside it yourself. Once the design fits how you'd like it shown, you can then save the masterlist image without the frame topper and submit that to your design approval/update.
2. Save your masterlist image with an extra 2,000 - 3,000 pixels of transparent space on all sides. This will allow you to resize the image smaller in the image cropper tool on-site, but you won't be able to see the edges of the frame topper, so getting the position right will be a bit of a guessing game.

I know this will be a bit of a hassle on the user end, but I'm looking into code changes on this extension to make it a little more intuitive! That might take some time though as I'm still learning a lot of back-end coding myself, but it is something I want changed.

If you've already submitted your MYO design to the site and it's been accepted, you won't need to do anything to update the masterlist image! This is just for design updates from this point on.

changes to redesign rules

After doing a bit of thinking, I've decided to change the rules on full redesign updates. Previously, it was allowed that you could completely change up the look of a Keyper design by purchasing a Full Redesign Potion item from the Gem Shard Exchange shop. This would allow you to completely scrap the current design of that Keyper in favor of making an entirely new design. Starting in April, this will no longer be allowed. Instead, we'll be holding design turn-in events throughout the year when interest arises, where you'll be able to transfer a design you own to the Keypers admin account, and receive a MYO Kit for the same subtype and traits as the design you turned in. The designs that were turned in will then have their designs revamped by Keypers staff, and will then be re-released to the community either through sales or raffles, depending on the event. There will also be limitations to how many designs one person can turn in per event and how many events a year a person can participate in to prevent the system from becoming a free MYO farm. The Design Edits Guide will also be updated within the next day or so to reflect these changes, and the Full Redesign Potion item will be removed from the shop.

Changing the system from a full redesign item to a turn-in event also works out better lore-wise for Keypers! It really would take an immense amount of magical skill + energy in order to completely overwrite the original spell circle that created the Keyper to begin with, but minor tweaks to the appearance are perfectly safe to do!

Future site plans

Further down the line, I'd also love to change up how the home page/account dashboard looks! Right now it's just a collection of links to your characters and inventory, and while that's handy, it does leave the website to feel kind of closed-off. I really want to work on bringing a community activities aspect to the page, so showcasing the latest gallery/prompt submissions, a larger featured character section, possibly even showcasing the latest MYO design, as well as handy links for news posts and submitting to the gallery. There won't be any ETA for when this will be added since it requires me learning a lot of new things, but I hope you'll all cheer me on as I work towards it!

Also eventually (hopefully by the end of the year!) I'd love to bring in an interactive story element to the species. I have plans for quests and interactive community events to add more things to do within the species, but I can't reveal too much for that just yet. Just know that there is a species story being worked on behind the scenes!

Until next time!

- Kye