WIN A FIREPIT!

Hey ANiMALS -

Ready to roast some marshmallows? Then click the pic to WIN THIS FIREPIT!

YUM!
Augie

Please congratulate Krystal, AU’s newest AU Student Admin!

See ya!
Augie

Good evening from the midwest, everyone.

I honestly just wanted to say hi to all of you and check in on those still active here. I’ve just been gaming a lot on my ps4 , as well as roleplaying on wattpad; so I’m usually online a bunch.

If anyone is interested (since I’ve been spending a lot of my time on the internet), I’d love to chat with some of you on either discord or instagram or whatever — but otherwise, I hope you all have a wonderful day and a great thanksgiving. x

- Raven.

WIN A FIREPIT!

Hey ANiMALS -

Ready to roast some marshmallows? Then click the pic to WIN THIS FIREPIT!

YUM!
Augie

AUTUMN 2020 FUN – LET’s ALL VISIT SPINOZA

Read his words of wisdom…. Trade him some stuff and see what he gives you back [if anything!].
[He prefers pizza.]

You can also visit Spinoza on the, CAMPUS MAP
Search the MAP then click on the DUMPSTER!

Want to know more about the mysterious Spinoza? Ask me on my whiteboard and I’ll send you the Story Of Spinoza.

Augie

JUMP INTO AUTUMN!

Hey ANiMALS -

I’ll be putting up fun Autumn Items you can win, throughout the Season. Be SURE to visit the HOME PAGE often to see if a new object is available.

Right now, you can win this PILE ’O LEAVES! so jump in!

See ya!
Augie

Hi friends! I know this site is pretty dead by now, but for those of you who are checking in again, I’d like to extend a special invitation to you!

I am currently working out plans to create a website loosely inspired by AU, as I have yet to find another site like it. It will also be a bit like Neopets. My goal is to create a fun, family-friendly environment that fosters creativity and kindness!

If you would like to be part of this, please join my discord server:

https://discord.gg/E7MNQBc

I am grateful for anyone who decides to join in on this project, even if you are only interested in playing once the site is fully ready. However, I am also seeking adults (18 and up!) who are interested in volunteering to help with coding, writing, moderation, and testing the site. I am currently NOT looking for artists, however, as I have folks IRL who are helping out <:

Thank you, and I hope to see you on the Discord server!

Hey guys,

So as some of you may know, I’m creating a large masterpost-like thing dedicated to helping everyone out with writing a unique character. I have some information I’m editing as of right now, so hopefully the whole post will be updated and ready to go within the next few weeks (if I’m not too busy).

I’m super excited to be back, so if anyone has any questions, please do not hesitate to leave me a message on my whiteboard.

– Rose, aka Savannah.

Sorry for the delay! Make sure to check out the results from the last poll in the forum.

Click here to vote in the new poll!

Hi there students!

So I just recently edited the “Masterpost For Newbies!” and I wanted to let everyone know that some new information has been added, as well as the fact that it now has a sleeker and cleaner look to it! A lot of the information is way easier to understand, though if anyone has any questions, please do not hesitate to leave me a message.

Click here for the masterpost!

- Rose

Hi all! Some of you may remember when I ran the weekly poll. Due to the recent spike in activity, I thought it may be helpful to bring it back (but every other week now).

Click here to vote in this week’s poll!

Thanks, Audrey!

Some of us have been sending them out at random! I enjoy it.

None of us would complain. <3

It’s all good! Any rumble is fun. c:

changing my formatting to make this (hopefully) a little more readable

Hi Audrey :D Sorry for sending you another massive post, but since we’re cleaning up AU I thought it would be a good time to share some suggestions I’ve collected over the years of talking to other users. I know it’s a lot and you’re probably very busy, so please don’t worry if you need to take your time getting back to me on this.

Achievements

Similar to the trophies we already have, achievements encourage users to participate in all aspects of the site and spend more time on it to get ALL of the achievements. Achievements are very popular on other websites, and users love being able to show off the progress they have made. Some sites will even offer rewards for earning achievements, but not all.
Some achievements that could work for AU could be:
• Make 100 posts, make 500 posts, make 1,000 posts, etc
• Have 100k AU Bux, have 500k AU Bux, have 1 million AU Bux, etc
• Win 5 rumbles, win 20 rumbles, win 50 rumbles, etc
• Buy 1 item from Swag Ave, buy 5 item from Swag Ave, etc
• Get your Pet Degree
• Become BAOC

Better search system

AU’s search system is very, very limited. There have been times where I wanted to find a user, but just couldn’t remember the name of their pet. Having an advanced search system would make it easier to find other users.
I think these would be the most helpful search tools, but more could even be added if the Big Dogs like the idea of a more indepth search system:
• First and/or last name of a pet
• Gender of a pet
• Species/breed of a pet
• usernames
• student/user IDs

Edit parents page info

We used to be able to put our irl names, genders, and on our parents page. It would be cool to have that option again, especially because a lot of users enjoy OOC chatter now. Of course it should be optional, as not everyone is comfortable sharing that info online. For birthdays, maybe users could also have an option to show only the month and the day so people can know their birthday, but not their age.

Change username

Since AU is a small site, there are a LOT of cool usernames still available. Many of the veteran users (such as myself) chose our usernames when we were young, and want a different one now. I am aware that the Big Dogs can do this, and rather quickly it seems, but if it’s not too hard to code, it might be easier to let people change their own usernames. If people changing usernames too frequently seems like it would be a problem, maybe it could be made so that usernames can only be changed every few months, or have it cost a Petro fee.

Add polls to forums

Pretty self explanatory. The ability to add a poll when creating a thread, or to an existing thread, would be nice (especially for roleplayers). Way back when I did the weekly poll it seemed that the majority of active users would vote in a poll, even if they typically would not join in on a conversation about the topic. Augie could probably use this if he wanted to get feedback from players.

Allowing BBCode in forums

I see a lot of people suggesting this. Post formatting on AU is very confusing if you haven’t been here for a while or don’t have a guide handy. BBCode is used on many other forum sites, so a lot of people know how to use it. Additionally, it could allow players to make their posts and WBs look more unique and fun.

Referral program

Everyone loves new members! Offering rewards for getting a friend to join could be a great way to bring in new users. There could even be continuing rewards if someone’s friend is active. Maybe the referer gets something when their friend hits a level milestone or on the anniversary of their sign up?
Having referral contests where the person who recruits the most users gets an extra reward would create more incentive for people to refer their friends.

More leaderboards

Competition is fun. I love trying to beat high scores in the arcade and watching my pets get ahead on the BAOC leaderboard. Why not make some more? Rose especially would like to see a leaderboard of who has the most AU Bux.
Here are some other leaderboard ideas:
• Which Greek house has the most members
• Who has the most rumble wins (individually, not by house)
• Who has the most awards

Trade system/transfer currency

Trade helps a community grow. The idea behind the master’s class supplies was a great step towards this and I’m happy that people actually share them. I see a lot of people sending items that they do not want and cannot sell to their storage accounts, though. Being able to sell these items to other players for AU Bux or petros, or trade them for other items they actually want would encourage communication between players, and potentially even help new users who don’t have a lot of AU Bux.
The ability to transfer or trade currency would also help with the “AU economy.” Being able to buy Petros from other users with AU Bux and vice versa would add more value to both currencies. Being able to gift currency would also be great for contests and giveaways, that way people would not have to rely on Augie to send things.

Limited edition items

On the topic of the “AU economy” and the value of currency, creating items that only a small numbers of users have would make those items status symbols. For example, let’s say on Thanksgiving a “2018 Plush Turkey” is put into the raffle for one day only and is never released again. This item would be considered rare and special because not everyone can get it. If there was a trade system, this item could sell for a lot of Petros (especially a year or so down the road), and therefore would encourage Petro sales (which, I would imagine, supports AU).
I’ve seen this a lot on other sites. Despite many limited items being totally useless and only existing to look cool, they are still in very high demand.

Pin message to top of wb

This one comes from Daisy via Discord
“Being able to pin a post to the top of our characters whiteboards. Ex: most people have an “about me” on their whiteboard. Instead of it getting pushed down the whiteboard and towards the last page, we should be able to pin it to the first page of our whiteboard. That way we don’t always have to delete our whiteboard just to see the “about me” section”

More gender options

This applies to both pets’ and parents’ pages (if they become editable again). Plenty of people on AU identify as, or wish to create characters that identify as, a nonbinary gender. A simple “other” or “unspecified” could work, or if the Big Dogs are feeling a little extra they could create an extensive list (a site called Furvilla did this).

New arcade games

Self explanatory. More AU-themed games would be fun, if possible.

Events

I loved the themed events back when AU was really active! It really brought everyone together. Things like AU Prom are some of the best memories of my online life. If more students join, I’d love to see student admins being encouraged to host events again.

Lore

There’s so much we don’t know about AU. What’s Spinoza’s story? Is the cemetery behind GRR real? How has Dean not been fired? Lore adds an extra layer of depth for those who are interested in it. People who like to roleplay could better immerse their characters in the AU-universe.
A fun way to get the community active could be to host regular lore-writing contests where the host (probably Augie) picks an unexplained aspect of AU, and students submit their best explanation for it. Then, at the end of the contest, students can vote for who’s explanation was best and it will become canon.

Shopkeepers

(Suggested by Rose) Just a cute little NPC to greet players when they visit shops, nothing too complex. Could have a little welcome message or quote like the professors do.

Forum pings

Another thing that would benefit roleplayers- being notified if someone @’s you in a forum. Unfortunately, I can see many complications with this one. Since AU doesn’t have private inboxes, the notification would have to go to the pinged users whiteboard. Could a bot send the message? Additionally, since pets can have the same name, people would probably have to @ someone’s student ID or something instead of their name.
Overall, I don’t really know how this would work. It would just be nice for anyone who likes to be active in the forums.

Bank

A place to store AU Bux and Petros. Would be good for anyone trying to`prevent spending while saving up. Being able to collect interest on AU Bux would also be a cool feature.

Special boost items

What if there were special items that could boost your energy to 100%, raise all your meters to 100%, or give you a pretty decent amount of points towards levelling up? Items like this would be great to have in a game, but they’d definitely have to be harder to obtain than animalaides. Maybe they could be exclusively for Petros and never go into the raffle? Or they could be special raffle items that are only available during special events or holidays.

Favorite assignments

This was suggested by Hornet via Discord:
“It would be great if we could “bookmark” or “favourite” some of our most frequented assignments, say to our planner, so we can get to them easily”
This could be another tab in the planner. We already have a few of those.

Stargazers Club

Stumbled across this and just had to show the Discord. Everyone seemed super interested in it, so it might be neat to add it as a new club :o

Whew! That was a lot. Thanks for taking the time to look through these!

PS- I am not a coder, so I don’t know how easy or difficult some of these would be to add to AU. I totally understand if some of these ideas would not work because they are too complicated, or for any other reason c:

Thanks for the message back, Audrey!

Offal and I have been communicating offline for a while and we’ve been spitballing ideas back and forth, so we’re always happy to give you new ideas and tell you whenever something is broken!

Hi Audrey,

Sorry for such a late message! I’ve been busy with school work in real life, yet I just got done with some of it – so I decided to log back in today to check on things.

As for the broken pages, I’ll have to find them again since I haven’t saved those ones. I’ll try and get back to you soon on those.

For right now, I have something to suggest…

For each forum, at the top we could have a locked topic stating the rules of that particular forum. Like Rathskeller and Petropolis for example!

Oh, and I have a few more ideas for organizing Animal University’s forum’s (as I have taken a look at a few more websites and how they set up theirs), but it’s quite a long suggestion and it’d take me a while to write; so I’ll try and get back to you when I can! :D

- Savannah

Ok, here’s everything I’m aware of. I know some of these have already been reported, but I thought I’d include them anyway…

• Rooms

I tested this on a side account. After getting to level 3, my new room appeared in my first room, rather than beside it. It appeared as a second room after putting it in my closet, and the wall, ceiling, and floor paint, as well as my door, disappeared from my first room. I could not put those items back because it said they were already in my room. I couldn’t keep my second room because it would not let me save my house after this.

Additionally, some items are not fully moveable. I’ve noticed this especially with with wall items such as crowns and wainscotings, and paints that you move to their position rather than them just appearing where they belong. These items get stuck on the right side of the room and cannot be centered, however they can move up and down.

• Profile Pictures

Some pictures just don’t upload as profile pictures. They will upload to an album uncropped, but it will not let me set it as a profile picture from there either.

When profile pictures do upload, they usually have a gray bar somewhere along the bottom. The BAOC frame usually covers it, but some people who are not BAOC yet have been very annoyed by this.

• Get AU Bux

Unlike the “Get Petros” page, there is no way to purchase AU Bux, or earn them through things like surveys. I don’t know if this is intentional, though.

• Clubs

I saw that Rose recently reported this, but I thought I’d provide additional information. I am having the same problem of the sports page showing up instead of clubs. I have tested this on 3 different accounts and had this problem on all of them.

• Dorm Depot

• The “Books” category. I’m guessing this category is used for storage after things are removed from the raffle? It seems that this category is messy in every shop, and almost never contains actual books
• There are 2 “Miscellaneous” categories- one containing a clock that belongs in “Dorm Room Accessories”
• “Howl-o-ween Stuff” is fine for now, but the Big Dogs may want to remove it after this month, as it is seasonal (and there is a Halloween-themed shop)
• “Pet Clothes.” All other pet clothes are in Lil Pals Petshop
• “Garden and Nature” contains a giant Santa’s Workshop and still has one of Tom’s Feathers

I also noticed that a second Dorm Depot recently appeared, but it only has sports cars.

• Bookstore

• “Books” contains The Raven, which I believe should go under “Master’s Class Supplies”
• “Study Supplies” contains a Hands Across the Species Flag, but it might make more sense to move it somewhere else. Maybe “Miscellaneous?”
• There is a Blue Waterbottle under “Exercise Equipment” and a Yellow Waterbottle under “Miscellaneous”
• “Pet Clothes” could be merged with “Clothing”
• “Pet Clothes” still has one of Tom’s Feathers

• Lil Pals Petshop

• ”Books” needs organized
• There are 3 “Miscellaneous” categories. The Hamster Habitat could be put into the “Miscellanous” already containing pet supplies. I’m honestly not sure where the Iron Horse belongs. It looks like it would be a master’s class item, but it’s not marked as 0 petros so I’m not sure.
• The image for Ferret in Black is the wrong size.

• Swag Ave

• FIXED “Books” needs organized FIXED 10/24/18
• FIXED “Dorm Room Theatre Stuff” only contains a Citizen Canine Poster, but this item is already in Dorm Depot for the same price FIXED 10/24
• FIXED “Dorm Electronics” only contains a Lizard of Oz Poster for the same price as the other movie posters, so it might make more sense for this item to go under “Dorm Room Theatre Stuff” in Dorm Depot FIXED 10/24
• FIXED – Moved ALL Guitars to Electronics – There are 3 “Miscellaneous” categories. One is empty, and one only has a Rockin’ Blue Guitar. This guitar should be moved to the “Miscellaneous” category with the other guitars. FIXED Guitars. Still need to consolidate Miscellaneous to 1.

• Vending Machine

• There is nothing in this shop

All the other shops are mostly fine, aside from the “Books” category needing organized and some of Tom’s Feathers floating around. Totally optional, but it might be helpful to make a category in one of the shops, or a completely different shop, exclusively for master’s class supplies so they can all be in one spot c:

BTW, If you need to know what browsers I use I alternate between Chrome and Opera on my laptop, and I use Safari or Puffin on mobile.

Hi Audrey, such a throwback to see you online :o

I can start compiling a list of broken pages in a bit. I have a class in a few minutes, but I will be free for the rest of the day after that. I’ve noticed a lot of shops are disorganized as well, would you like me to include those?

Thanks for listening to our concerns!

To anyone who visits my page:

I’ve been following the site, through Augie, but haven’t been on myself lately.

Hope to be more active soon. : )

Audrey

Hey everyone! As many of you know, I haven’t been very active lately. The only times I come on are once in a while to to check for new classes (still in it to get my master’s degree!) so it’s a rare occasion if I get to talk to any of you. Sorry to spill everything out in a mass message, but I figured this was the easiest way to get to everybody.
I’ve been here a long time. I’ve seen people come and go, including those who I considered to be my closest friends on here; I’ve seen AU in its prime time -
long before I created this pet. I’ve hit the highs and lows myself as well, as I’m sure some of you are aware of, but since I started AU I’ve always loved the little community we’ve had here. You’ve done me a lot; I’ve learned a lot and made many memories along the way, too. I’ll miss that.
I’m a freshman in high school now, which saying it doesn’t sound so bad now except for the fact that I’ve been playing this game for nearly a decade. Middle school especially was rocky for me, so I relied on this game often as sort of a pressure release. I know I’ve gotten on many of your nerves a couple times or so, but thank you everyone for putting up with me when I’ve spilled. However, I’ve been on AU long before middle school. (By the way, you guys don’t know how happy I was when I finally turned thirteen and was technically allowed to play… :D) I’m sure many kids my age made accounts here underaged, but I’m not sure who stuck with it.
I created this account in 2010, and I’ve had previous accounts before this one that I haven’t used in a long time. I was eight years old in second grade, which sounds ridiculous, but to be completely honest, that was my favorite time here. I loved everybody I associated with. But then again, I was eight. :0 I actually made an account beforehand, but quit for a couple years because I knew I was too young and should’ve just stuck with playing Webkinz. My parents didn’t feel comfortable with me chatting with people online; they had a fair point. However, that didn’t last very long on my behalf, because I rejoined at the age of eight. Even then I couldn’t stay away! :) I even tried to get my twin brother to join, but with no avail. He simply wasn’t interested xD
I became an admin in fourth grade (I think) and I reached level 161 when I was in fifth grade. So I sort of wrapped stuff up quickly. It felt like it took forever then, but it probably didn’t really. The reason why I never told anyone was mostly because I didn’t want to be undermined due to being younger. I was also afraid of my account being penalized or something. Looking back, I don’t think anyone would really have cared, but I was very immature. A lot of the stuff I’ve said when I was younger I find strikingly stupid. I’m sure there will be a time when I will find this entire message very pathetic (let’s try tomorrow). Or I’ll ask myself why I thought anybody cared xD
Regardless, I’ve had a lot of fun leveling up, taking classes, creating forums, playing arcade games, roleplaying with you all, and much more. Those of you who are older players have taught me a lot, and I’ll never forget that. Tribute to you!
But more recently I’ve realized that AU is different than it was. Not necessarily in a bad way, but I no longer have a motivation to come online. It’s not you guys, but all aside, I’ve simply cast my interests in different directions and I’ve been busy. You can still find me on other online games occasionally, however ;)
I’m not leaving AU. I’m aware that I’m younger than many of you who started when I did and still play. I don’t intend on leaving. I still love this game and I owe a lot to you guys. But since I’ve done much of what the game has to offer, there’s not much for me to do on here anymore.
So I just wanted to thank you all, and share my appreciation for those of you who have continued to stick around. There are quite a few of you for sure. And I especially wanted to thank Augie, for without him none of this would’ve been possible. Good luck to the new players; I’ve had my fun here and my hay day. It’s time for many of you to have yours!

Happy birthday, Audrey!

Hope you have a pawsome day. Here’s a piece of cake to help you celebrate! : )

Augie

Audrey thanks you for the carrot,
She says, “Carrots are something that I like. Now keep looking for good eggs… Click this Robin’s Egg Blue Bike….”

The Shillelagh isn’t on Audrey’s white board, so you look under a boulder. Hurry! Try to find it! This Leprechaun is getting older!

Hey guys, can anyone spare any animalaid for me? Im trying to get back into leveling up and I’m out of energy ughh XP thanks babes <3