Registration Closure

After considering our options, it has become evident that we currently lack both the necessary funding and the ability to make regular updates which are required to sustain a viable open beta. Thus, we regret to announce that all new registrations will be disabled indefinitely, as of midnight tonight (EST). When further work is conducted on the site, it will be organized privately.

I have been considering such a move for some time now and I regret any inconvenience this may cause visitors.

- tezeti

Midactic Island Now Explorable

The residents of Yertin have graciously voted to allow all interplanetary explorers access to a small, sandy beach on the east coast of Midactic Island! If this trial run is a success, the continental governments have unanimously agreed to eventually allow tourists to travel across the entire planet!

Alongside the host of activities this island offers, early reports indicate that there's a long-forgotten fruit tree somewhere on the island. Why don't you and your pet take a look?

Miscellaneous Improvements

A host of miscellaneous improvements have been made to various areas of the website. While many of these are relatively minor or involve optimizations, a few of the most visible changes include:

• The mailbox now uses a more modern form and excessive "RE:" headers are automatically eliminated.
• Users can now mail others by clicking on a user profile link.
• The friend request page has been made easier to read, as it now displays usernames before comments.
• The users online list is slightly more efficient and now displays the time in a 12-hour AM/PM format. In addition, the confusing "cpST" timezone acronym has been eliminated.

Exploration - Art Refresh

The exploration system has been updated with new icons for all of our virtual worlds. In addition, the map for Yertin has been slightly altered and I've begun the process of adding proper line art to this image. Likewise, I've made a minor modification to a drawing portraying one of Yertin's beaches and have created a 'night' version of this area map.

Layout Refresh

A few weeks ago, we introduced a major update to the Cenopets layout! The navigation has been completely redesigned to use more vivid colors, higher contrast, better gradients, a more readable font, and shadows. Altogether, I hope that you'll find the new layout to exude a fresher and friendlier appearance than the former one did :).

If you're a designer yourself and interested in the technical details behind the change, the new layout is our first to be completely designed through a vector graphics program. As a result, modifications should be quicker, easier, and far more capable of integrating seamlessly with the design.

In addition to the 'shiny' new visual aspects, the layout has also seen a number of functional improvements. The forums and mailbox sections have been grouped together, since both are communicative activities, the "Shops" button has been rechristened as "Market", and the redundant "News Updates" caption has been fittingly truncated to "News".

Redesign of Business Modification page

The utility for editing a shop or business has largely remained untouched since late 2007. As such, I thought that giving this area an upgrade was long overdue...

Firstly, the 'tabbed' navigation has been discarded in favor of a more familiar category-based system. Likewise, forms in all areas of the business modification utility have been visually-centered upon their respective pages.

The 'General' section has been updated with the correct planet names, a more streamlined form, and. This area now displays the name of the shop you are editing as well, rather than just the pet who owns it.

The 'Inventory' page, most significantly, now displays the name of the items in your shop (as it should have all along) and displays miniature depictions of each item. A separate "Quantity" column has been added for informative purposes, numbers are now properly formatted, and the correct terminology for currency is being used. A host of visual improvements have been made as well, with the basic, dark grey inventory list having been replaced with a stylized, tabular catalogue of items. Finally, the somewhat out-of-place "Next" arrow for inventory items was replaced with a small checkmark icon.

Since work is still being performed on this area, we must unfortunately warn you that using this system may prove unreliable until additional progress has been made.

Backpack Tweak

A minor visual adjustment was made in the backpack area of Cenopets so that the quantity of an object is more visually distinct from that object's name.

Guest Key Optional

Since it seems as though there's been a bit of confusion over the "Guest Key" (also known as the "Guest Password") feature, we've decided to make this feature optional. We hope this allows users more choice in controlling their accounts and will help eliminate a source of confusion.

New Items

I would like to thank LazyKat for her excellent work in completing a large item commission. These items will be incorporated into the site shortly and will undoubtedly help the game greatly as it progresses.

New Forum Category

Cenopets now has an area where you can play forum games!