a total rewrite of doggie caching has been nearly completed... and its awesome!

Never have I had so much fun browsing for dogs with various accessories and companions!

Dogs are fully rendering. however the tool is not ready for production quite yet.

I still havent remedied the speed issue. I know exactly how to fix it, but I have to map every location the database is used. I'm going to have to do that at a later time when I've mapped everything ouit.

needless to say, kennel, dog profiles , custom dogs, etc will all use the same toolset to render dogs, making the library very easy to use.

additionally, nearly all the hardcoding has been removed from the file in preparation for adding new breeds , artwork and such to the game!

for now... I leave you with this:

AWESOME!

I've been working on the custom dogs v2, but there is so much overlap with the dog rendering engine in general (IE, kennel, trials, etc) that I've decided to merge this into a unified package

This is a little complicated due to the poor database design.

None the less, fixing this here will allow me to dramatically improve the speed and general design of all the pages involving our pets.

it will take a few days more , but when I'm done, most pages involving pet rendering will be MUCH faster.


progress so far:
-the tool is more or less ready for use with custom pets.

TODO:
-it doesnt handle accessories, diseases, companions etc.
-id like to get all this working before setting anything live

custom dogs v2 is almost ready to go. I'll be placing it live after I pretty it up a little.

much of the work being done is trying to unwind the rather poor design.

Part of the problem is the dogs database itself,
it has 122 columns, which makes it incredibly slow ( as you know!)

the next problem lies in the way the data itself is stored.

it stores file names, instead of IDs.

this means files cannot be easily updated, moved around, means for poor readability, etc.

the custom tool itself was also unfinished (as far as I can tell), and parts of the old code contained both server security flaws and bugs in dog generation!

anyhow. most of that is fixed.

one thing that I have to do as an adjunct to custom dogs, is the kennel

preview pics have no way to be easily redrawn to handle errors. and additionally, I'd like to store things like the type of coat, markings ,etc, as opposed to the file itself.

so
1: there needs to be a dog renderer, which can take file names, OR ids.

2: the image preview should be regenerated from the database from time to time.

after all this is done, the tool itself will still need a remodel at a later date, but I'm unable to make significant database changes until all the remaining alacrity code base has been unwound and cleaned up, so I have a solid idea of what programs use what databases etc.