Upgrades to the pound & lost and found

[Nick]

I've now updated the pound so that it automatically counts down to the opening time and opens up for you without you even having to click, so you no longer need to mash the refresh button and hope that you hit at the right moment. You'll see the seconds til opening counting down in realtime.

It's also way faster to open, it should open for everybody basically simultaneously, avoiding a lag spike at release time.

Clicking the "adopt" button for a pet now keeps you on the same page, so it's easy to try again and adopt a different pet if somebody beats you to it.

Previously we had to turn off the giveaway of "Very Rare" pets (only that specific rarity category, not any others like Extremely Rare) because we accidentally gave away our entire stock. The pound's stocks have finally recovered, so I've now turned that back on, VR pets are being given away again!

Edit: The Lost and Found has now had the same upgrade! It also now displays "already taken" messages updating live for the first time. If you participated in the first release of this feature just a few minutes ago, the countdown would have broken at the 2-3 minutes remaining mark, that bug has now been fixed!

[Pallastronomy]

This is huge, thank you Nick! The little heart animation is so cute too <3

[Candycrystal]

I also got pleasantly surprised with the heart animation just now! Very cute, A++ changes <3

[Tailish]

The optimizations sound amazing, and the little heart that pops up is adorable. Thanks, Nick!

[Fleckihund]

Thank you again! It's useful and that one with VR is a great news to hear :]

And I agree, the small heart animation is very cute and feels better!

[WhiskersTheFox7]

just got jumpscared by different features, lol

These are nice! I miss pressing back and continuing seeing what other pets are in there for funsies, but thank you for the updates! (Especially the automatic countdown as someone who never times it right LOL)

[nickjr]

Nice, another update to the good ol' Pound! The new heart when you successfully adopt is cute! Something about it (not the pic LOL pic's fine, I mean the mechanic) feels like it could be improved, but I'm having trouble pinpointing what it is... I'll post again if I ever figure it out lol

[Marvelo]

Sounds like a brilliant update!!

Now that you mention it I was curious and wanted to ask if pound pets are created by the site and given away, or seized from banned players inventories?

If they are seized from banned players inventories, would the pound opening timing be limited by the number of players being banned/size of a banned players inventories?

Cheers for the update again!

[Nick]

The pets are all seized or donated pets that were previously adopted by players, we don't create them to give away.

We adjust the pound giveaway rate to track the donation rate, so the rate does get tweaked from time to time.

[All Hallows Eve]

This is a genius update CS, very impressive. Looking forward to what you do next with the site.