I wasn't talking about the stores, I was talking about the pets themselves. I get the desire, as I found it mildly interesting when one of the games I had used it, however I'm simply defending Krin's decision on it with my explanations.

The sheer amount of images and coding required for this to happen is astronomical. For an avatar there is a total of two bases, so only two alternate images and that's only for the outfits. For pets it would be way worse. For example, you wanted a top hat for the pets. Well, there are 21 pets and two genders each pet. That's 42 images PER ITEM that has to be stored on the server. That's going to play hell on the code and on the server as for each pet it will have to run a check for each item on each pet being displayed on the page (up to 26 pets) and then load each item that passes the check.

Plus the pet image could would be MASSIVE. Instead of just the pet code, you'd have to add the code like the avatar builder onto it. So instead of being this:

http://www.sylestia.com/imagebuilder.php?species=qitari&breed=sylesti&gender=male&gd1=AA&gd2=AA&gd3=NN&md1=NN&md2=NN&md3=NN&ec=64abcc&c1=5e461d&c2=87361e&c3=b8a064&gd1c=000000&gd2c=e87427&gd3c=FFFFFF&md1c=FFFFFF&md2c=FFFFFF&md3c=FFFFFF&maturity=216

The code would then be something like this instead:

http://www.sylestia.com/imagebuilder.php?species=qitari&breed=sylesti&gender=male&gd1=AA&gd2=AA&gd3=NN&md1=NN&md2=NN&md3=NN&ec=64abcc&c1=5e461d&c2=87361e&c3=b8a064&gd1c=000000&gd2c=e87427&gd3c=FFFFFF&md1c=FFFFFF&md2c=FFFFFF&md3c=FFFFFF&maturity=216&http://www.sylestia.com/avatarbuilder.php?base=2&eyes=1&ears=1&mouth=1&nose=4&eyebrows=1&hair=25&beard=0&ff1=0&ff2=0&ff3=0&ff4=0&ff5=0&ff6=0&mkup1=0&mkup2=0&top=1&bottoms=1&feet=1&arms=0&eyelashes=0&lipstick=0&sc=EFD0CF&ec=5DC6F2&hc=6D4B26&mc1=FFFFFF&mc2=FFFFFF&mc3=FFACFC&tc1=040073&tc2=BD1717&bc1=040073&bc2=BD1717&fc1=242424&fc2=7A0000&ac1=000000&ac2=B80600&hc1=6D4B26&hc2=750404&wc1=5999E6&wc2=8C654D&bkc1=850E03&bkc2=08038A&held=c_2014_03_blue_tigers_eye_sprite&outfit=valkyrie_armor&head=zolnixiearstribalstripes&fullhelm=0&wings=majesticheart&back=zolnixitailtribalstripes&size=200

Giant-wall-of-text-oh-my-god-my-eyes. XD

^^^Talyn is right.^^^

*toolazy to type that much*

O_O Whoa....That does seem like an excessive amount of code....sorry, I'm no computer whiz, but on other games I've played, even with all the items, the image code that I saw on my pets was never that massive, even with all the items equipped onto them and visible. Or is that code something that we don't see but is just stored on the servers? I feel dumb asking these questions, but I'll admit to not understanding a thing about coding or computers in general much, but why aren't the image codes on other games so huge? Is it just the way this game happens to be coded? I'm just curious.

Well, whatever the case may be, I accept that this can't/won't be done and the reasons why. It's no big deal, really. It's something I like to do on other games, but I'm plenty happy with the way things are now. I'm pretty used to my pets looking a little naked and it's no big deal. The admins always come up with plenty of cool stuff for this site, so I have no reason to complain. :)

ping!

Hmm... I believe it's background code on the bigger sites that can do that. It could be expensive or code intensive or just too difficult to manage, having things like that run in the background... Or it could be that's the way it has to work for things like the generator and dyes and stuff to work. Or maybe how it works is the scripts that check the codes and the really large image codes are run on a background server then it compiles it into a smaller image code that it sends to the server that we're viewing? I'm not THAT far into my Web Design degree... Yet. XD

To really know, we may have to ask Krin himself. XD

Just to comment since a lot of assumptions (not necessary wrong or anything) have been made and I want to make sure something official can be taken from this.

In the beginning, we made a decision to go without the addition of items for pets and the main reason is way too much artwork. Let's say we wanted to add a Top Hat. It would require (just for right now) a minimum of 42 items created (84 if you want it on hatchlings). That's... a lot of work. Our 'motto' is always that if we're going to do something, we'll do it right. So we would want each item to be designed well and very detailed. Each drawing would probably take about 15-30 minutes so all tallied up it'd be hours and hours and hours of work just for one Top Hat. Anyway, not trying to beat the dead horse here - I just wanted to officially say the reasoning and hopefully provide more insight as to why. =P

But the idea is something we put thought into a long time ago and decided to go a different route instead with the use of genes and mutations.