Scrapbook & Curio Shop

Releasing pets into the wild is, for many Dopcom users, a bittersweet occasion. On the one hand, your pet gets a new life and you get some resources, but on the other hand you don't get to see them again. But it doesn't have to be bittersweet, because now there's a way to visit the pets you've released! The scrapbook lists every pet that you've released and has links to pages where you can visit them and see them in their natural habitats. And this includes pets dating back to the initial alpha release, not just going forward! And, for the completionists, the scrapbook lets you sort your released pets by species and see how many forms you've discovered of each one.

Along with the scrapbook system, there is a new system of embed codes. Every pet room page now has two sets of embed codes: one that corresponds to the room more generally, and one that corresponds to the current pet. The room codes can be used to embed whatever pet is currently in the room on another site, whereas the pet codes will embed the specific pet and will keep working even after the pet is released (at which point the link will redirect to the pet's scrapbook page).

There's a second big feature in this update: the Curio Shop, where you can exchange your excess furniture. Got a massive pile of shelf items but can't seem to find that specific one you're looking for? The Curio Shop has you covered. You can trade in most furniture items to the shop in exchange for tickets, and then use those tickets to buy the furniture you want. The shop has a rotating stock, with five random items available every day, but every item in the shop's catalog is guaranteed to appear at least once every 30 days. Any of the tier-5 furniture items that can be obtained from the summoning circle can be found at the Curio Shop for four tickets, and there are many new furniture items that are exclusive to the shop that can be purchased for three.

As always, there are plenty of minor tweaks, bugfixes, and quality-of-life improvements:

• The Town Kitchen now features a "cook this again" button so that you can make multiple of the same meal without reloading the page
• Item descriptions appear when selecting from dropdowns
• The General Store now buys Decorative Gourds for 12 dopcoins
• The inventory page can be filtered by item type
• The Clarity Charm has been reworked: the affinity meter that previously appeared on pets wearing a Clarity Charm is now visible on all pets; equipping a Clarity Charm instead increases the level of detail on this meter and adds a second meter for estimating a pet's progress towards the next growth stage
• Pets now get one fewer socialization if they did not eat during the previous day, in order to ensure that users' socialization clicks are going to pets owned by active players; this change is experimental and may be reverted in the future if it proves unpopular

The next priorities on the development agenda after this are:

• Direct trade requests between players
• Customizable user bios
• In-game calendar and weather system

The three new species promised in past newsposts are still coming; they've just been sidelined a little bit until more of the core systems are built out. And speaking of core systems, with summer starting there's going to be far more available development time, meaning that the Realms and Exploration system can get underway...

End of April Fools

This is the last day of the April Fools event! The mysterious capsule machine will remain available for you to trade in any remaining tokens you may have, but tokens will stop appearing in social interactions, and all of the event-exclusive random events (including any that produce tokens or Normal Eggs) will stop occurring as well. All event-exclusive items will return next year, though, so don't worry too much if you missed anything.

With the event completed, it's time to resume normal development on the site! Direct trades and the Curio Shop are still planned to release pretty soon, as well as editable user bios and a Scrapbook page where you can see all of the pets that you've released. My day job has been pretty busy lately, so these things might take longer than I'd hoped, but rest assured that they're all coming within the next few months. And once all of those are done, development will start on the Realms and Exploration update, a massive expansion that will more than double the amount of content in the game.

Also, just one last reminder that the Q&A stream is still planned for 8 pm Eastern time on thursday the 17th. All of the site staff will be available to answer any questions you have about the game and also talk about any playtesting feedback you may have. Come stop by if you're interested!

April Fools event

Happy April Fools Day, everyone! There's an interesting new contraption over in the town square that you might want to investigate...

The April Fools event will run for two weeks. All of the event-exclusive items from the event will be returning every year.

This also means that the March 2025 beta registration window is officially over, but I'm not going to disable signups until end of day on the 2nd, just in case anyone else wants to join at the last minute. The next registration window will probably be in June.

Also, one last announcement: to welcome in all of the new users and get some playtest feedback, there will be a Q&A stream on EpiglottalAxolotl's Twitch channel from 8:00 PM to 12:00 AM Eastern time on thursday, April 17th. Stop by if you have any questions or comments about the site!

Signup bug

It has come to our attention that newly-created accounts were unable to load any pages, which is not quite the experience I was hoping for! The error was caused by a problem with site theme settings: the site has to determine whether users have light mode or dark mode enabled, but newly-created accounts did not have either theme preference recorded, so the scripts crashed when they tried to access that nonexistent setting.

My apologies to all affected users! The bug has now been fixed.

Furniture update & public beta

Today is a momentous occasion for two reasons. First of all: furniture! It's now possible to decorate your pet's room with a wide variety of cute little decorations. Most of these are summoned or can be bought at the general store, but there's a few hidden ones here and there that come from other sources. Every pet room has a ceiling slot, a floor slot, two wall slots, and five shelf slots, and there are over 30 different furniture items available.

And the second reason: public beta! Dopcom Creechers had a private soft-launch in october of 2024, but the site is in a state now where I want to get playtest feedback from a wider audience. So, for all of you coming from Pixel Cat's End or any of the other sites I posted the signup link, welcome in! Dopcom is pretty slow-paced so far, but I have huge plans for it going forward. Be sure to check the getting started guide if you haven't alredy.

Besides furniture, this update comes with a lot of small improvements and quality-of-life fixes. Some of these include:

• Many items didn't have sprites yet. Those have now been drawn!
• There's a dark mode now! It can be toggled using a button in the header on any page.
• The random pet button is now guaranteed to give you a pet you can socialize with if possible.
• The general store now shows item descriptions and has a better UI overall, and the summoning circle now shows how much of each essence is in your inventory.
• Some foods that boost affinities can now grow rarely from normal fruit and vegetable seeds, in order to make it easier to get affinity to certain aspects that had historically been more difficult. These items have also been made tier-4 cooking ingredients, although no recipes use them yet.
• You can now continue feeding pets that are fully-grown to give them affinities, although they won't gain any additional power
• Fluff balls were too weak before, so now they give power on social rather than growth. The previous Lightning Ball item that used to give power on social has been replaced with a new Tuning Fork item that increases the chances of obtaining gleaming essence.
• Passwords can now be changed by clicking "Account Settings" in the header.
• There have also been minor tweaks and rebalances to the growth of certain pets, and various other small quality-of-life changes.

With all of this completed, the next thing to think about is a certain holiday coming up in a couple of weeks...

The other big changes coming up will be:

• Adding direct trades (a feature I've wanted to add but haven't had time for since the site's inception)
• Three new species of pet that can come from summoning
• A Curio Shop in the town square, where you can exchange furniture items
• More cooking recipes

So, thank you to all my alpha testers, and welcome in to all my new beta players!