On the same day I heard rumours that the guys at 7Seas fishing are developing breedable fish, came the information that there are already breedable pigs out there. And here they are – PinkyPigs.
PinkyPigs are supported by vendor machines – currently you will find these in a barn at one marketplace. The PinkyPigs business model seems similar to that of sionChickens – Pigs must be supported by mandatory accessories – including a healing kit for sick male pigs, and a pink-coloured mudhole of earth – yes, as the sign suggests – you actually must pay for the earth your pig will live in (actually, the mud pile is more towards happiness in a pig, rather than a pen).
Similar to the Petable Turtles business, PinkyPigs also operate using a HUD. If you start with the proverbial ‘starter kit’ – the PinkyPigs Starter Pack – you will get 3 piglets, 1 HUD, 3 food bowls, 1 mudpit and a healing kit – all for L$675.
The pigs themselves come in a cute almost cartoonish form, but make grunting sounds, and move around the pen (there is one demo live pig out in the store to watch). And they come with breedable coloured spots. Unlike most of the other breedables out there, PinkyPigs have a much shorter lifespan – a piglet will grow to adult size quickly, and die at aged 3 months.
Pricing is actually quite fair – you can pick up a small pack of piglets (three of them) for L$195 whilst a seven pack is L$400. Food and mudpits come in singles and packs also. If you don’t get a HUD out of the starter pack, you can also pick one up for L$75 – this is useful if you are selling a pig to a newbie to the pigs who will need a HUD before they can have it.
From Piglet to Adult Pig
The mainstore pig looks out over the stands
The PinkyPig Hud as seen in a vendor
The store doesn’t have any starter information available on the PinkyPigs out the front, although there is a group to join. Purchasing the starter kit gives you a notecard of information on how the pigs operate, but this could be augmented with a quick starter notecard with steps about how to rez your first pig from your new HUD. From the group notifications, the notecard and information kindly offered to me by somebody who attended a public chat with the PinkyPig creator, Raymond Algoma, comes the following -
Creators of PinkyPigs : Raymond Algoma and Lexxure Lock
Customer Support : Camryn Simondsen and Paco Baudin
Release Date (of vendors) : officially 25th December for Christmas, however vendors were up and running by the 26th.
- Pigs can be made non-physical to reduce SIM lag from collisions.
- Pigs can have their animations turned off to reduce script lag.
- Each PinkyPig body is made up of 11 prims.
- Each Food bowl/trough lasts roughly 2 weeks for one pig.
- Each Mudpit lasts roughly 1 month for one pig.
- Healing Kits have 5 shots for healing sickness
- PinkyPigs HUD : One HUD can hold up to 80 Pigs
- Since the pigs use a HUD with a different style, your pigs should never be taken into inventory at any time. This means in either full mode or one prim boxed mode. This is because pigs are clicked and registered directly to the HUD by the owner of the pig. When bought from a vendor the extra pigs will be saved to your HUD automatically.
- Pigs can breed at age 14 (a male and female are required) and they will die at age 90.
- Ages correspond with real-time days, so that’s breeding after two weeks and death at three months.
- Pigs eat their food as normal, but if left to starve (at 100 on statistics) they will die.
- Pigs must be kept happy or stimulated with toys or the mud pit. If their sadness meter reaches 75, they will not breed.
- Pig toys can be made by anybody, and will slow the rate of sadness but not completely stop it. Toys are not yet developed for the first release.
- Male pigs can get sick – they eat more when sick. If sickness meters reach 50 they will not breed. Sick pigs can be healed with a healing kit.
- Female pigs have a pregnancy meter which rises after mating with a male pig. Once at 100% a live piglet will be born.
- Both parents after breeding have a cool down period. Statistically, it is likely most pig pairs could give birth to 20 piglets during their three month lifetimes.
- As live piglets are born, these can not be stockpiled like eggs, due to their registration within the HUD, and the inability to inventorise them.
- Pigs can be bred for their colours (their spots). The spots are a color vector mix of both parents, and shown in statistics also.
- The newborn piglets are half the size of the next pig up, until adult size is reached.
- The HUD has the following functions to allow you to manage your pig stock – Vend Check, Stats, Trade or Sell (unregisters that pig from the owner HUD until it is registered with another HUD), Teleport to Pig, Rerez Pig (for a griefed registered pig, or one accidentally taken into inventory), Delete Pig and a Hoof Button to collapse the HUD onscreen.
- The Trade/Sell unregistering of a pig whilst it is being sold or traded is one area which currently opens up the pigs towards griefing – if they are selected at that exact time and sent off-world and therefore into inventory. This problem is currently being worked on by Raymond Algoma and his team. This is because in essence the Pig details are kept in the HUD normally, and the body of the pig is simply a shell. At the time when they are unregistered from one hud, those details will need to go into the pig body until such time as the details are moved into the new owner’s HUD.
- All the PinkyPigs are currently the one colour (pink) with the spots. However there is talk of ‘special’ colouring – the first of which may be released at the end of this month.
- Pigs can be named just like other breedables. Make sure that the pig informs you it is alive (when first rezzed) before doing so. Naming is actually registering that pig with your HUD also.
Some Issues
Obviously there are a couple of issues with the pigs and inventory which require sorting out from the first release of PinkyPigs. It appears that PinkyPigs can be boxed into 1 prim boxes, but that unregisters them from the HUDs. As such, both an unregistered physical pig and boxed pig can’t be taken into inventory without dying. This means that current PinkyPigs can not be moved easily whilst being traded. If they are registered with the HUD it is possible to take the physical shell of the pig into inventory (thus deleting them from your land) and rerez a copy out of the HUD onto another property because you are still the owner, and the details sit within the HUD.
This currently means that the easiest way to trade or sell a pig is from your own land where you can unregister the pig from your HUD and control the registration of the pig onto the new owner’s HUD.
The HUD itself is also non-copy, which is understandable from the perspective that the HUD contains your actual pig information, and you shouldn’t be able to clone a pig. However there is no mention of what might happen should the second life asset servers inevitably lose this HUD for you, and you have no backup. I would make the presumption that the details can somehow be retrieved from the database for you via the customer support team of PinkyPigs.
My Opinion
Here she is - my own little piggy. Isn't she cute?
I love them. They might, like many animals, have a few flaws in them at the moment, but I’ve got a pair out in the barn as piglets, and their grunting and shuffling is very cute. They don’t appear to have personalities like both brands of bunnies do. Clicking a PinkyPig does not bring up a cute message nor does there appear to be either an evil or good personality to them like you find with certain breeds of chickens. There currently are not special pigs (although there are plans for these) nor do the first pigs do anything incredibly exciting like rezzing holiday icons (as with the Holiday Petable Turtle). However, PinkyPig male pigs can get sick from unhappiness, and there are consequences to not looking after PinkyPigs which make the game of breeding these virtual creatures as interesting as the others.
They are reasonably affordable as pets or for breeding, and I will look on with interest in 14 days time when my breeding pair mature to have a new little piglet.
The secondary market for cute pig sties may well be nigh also. And did I mention that pigs are cute?
Current PiggyPigs Pricing
If you are reading this some time after publication, please note that you should check the official sources for current pricing for PinkyPig products. You will find the slurl to the PinkyPig HQ below.
| Large pack food 10 food bowls |
L$1150 |
| Single Food Bowl | L$125 |
| Pack of 5 MudPits | L$525 |
| Single MudPit | L$125 |
| 3 Pigs Pack | L$195 |
| 7 Pig Pack | L$400 |
| Healing Kit | L$25 |
| Starter pack - PinkyPigs HUD 3 pigs 1 mudpit 1 healing kit 3 food bowls |
L$675 |
PinkyPig Groups : PinkyPigs Update Group (official group) and PinkyPigs Advertising Group (owned by Shannon Whitfield)
Related posts:
