Frogboy Frogboy

The Desktop Pet arrives!

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The Desktop Pet arrives!

A fun diversion for your family and friends!

https://www.stardock.com/products/desktoppet/
from WinCustomize Forums

Just in time for Christmas, Stardock has released the Desktop Pet.  The Desktop Pet lives on your Windows XP desktop. He will interact with various included desktop objects. A sophisticated artificial intelligence engine helps bring him to life by giving him needs such as hunger, sleep, boredom, and even (ahem) the need to take a potty break. 

Users can set the various included desktop objects to be automated or take care of the feeding and cleaning up on their own.  It also includes options for muting sound, pausing, and unloading. The pet is saved to disk regularly so that if you close it or reboot he will be back to where he left off when you bring him back up again.

Stardock hopes to keep updating the pet after release to keep adding new behaviors, additional objects, and new habits to help keep the experience fresh and to respond to customer input.  The Desktop Pet is a fun $10 diversion and makes a great stocking stuffer for the computer user in your family. 

The home page for the Desktop Pet is https://www.stardock.com/products/desktoppet

39,458 views 65 replies
Reply #26 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Also, when you say "it", what do you mean? The cursor? The object?

If the cursor, do you have any cursor-modifying software installed? You could try renaming the hand.cur file in the DesktopPet\SDPlugins folder to Hand.cur.bak and see if that helps.
Reply #27 from WinCustomize Forums Top
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Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #28 from WinCustomize Forums Top
c242 (who initially posted more than ...): I personally passed your recent note on the newsgroups on to the project manager. They are read. The simple fact is that the best developers are doing the most programs, because they are the most productive. However, even they can only focus on one program for a specific period of development, or nothing gets done.

It is not (in general) practical to pass these projects on to other people, because it would take them time in learning the program that would be better spent on doing original work of their own (quite apart from legal restrictions due to our historical development model).

I believe ThinkSync and ThinkDesk products in general will get more attention after Christmas. I agree that Rightclick has been left too long. Again, this is because the main developer of it has been doing other things. But if there is no news, then what point is there in not posting about other things that are in development?

As for ToonXP . . . well, if people still buy it and enjoy it, is there a problem? It would be nice if they were updated, but the artist responsible has their hands full with GalCiv2, and that games has a fixed ship date. Alas, there are only so many hours in the day for people to do things.
Reply #29 from WinCustomize Forums Top
darksmiler: It is standalone. It uses DesktopX Professional - it's a great example of just how far you can take a gadget, if you want to. We want to do more characters and items as well, but as I mentioned above, we have limisted resources . . . we have to make sure there's a market for upgrades and addons first, so get your friends to grab a copy and we'll see what happens.
Reply #30 from WinCustomize Forums Top
This is a great app with unlimited potential, I do hope there's more to come this could turn out to be one of those never-ending app's. Add-on Toys, Characters.. There's lots that can be added...

One thing i've noticed though, when you close the app and then reopen it doesn't save the state in which you had it on the desktop. (The Lay-out) Which isn't to bad but it would be nice if it saved where the items were placed instead of everytime you open it you have to replace everything... Other then that i've found no other things wrong.. Love it!
Reply #31 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Digital: Yes, we noticed this too. It appears to be a bug in DesktopX.

We will be trying to get that fixed for a future update. Fortunately it doesn't take up a significant amount of memory or CPU if you just keep it paused rather than closing it. Glad you like it!
Reply #32 from WinCustomize Forums Top
One thing i've noticed though, when you close the app and then reopen it doesn't save the state in which you had it on the desktop.


Ditto

Also, it appears to be limited to the primary monitor in a dual monitor setup. If you keep him on the secondary, he kicks his ball onto the primary and then can't kick it back. He can go get it but it keeps bouncing back into the primary.No biggie, it is just that the little guy has to walk an additional 1280 pixels to go play.
Reply #33 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well, he's got to burn off all those cheese calories somehow . . .
Reply #34 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The green cheese sends him to the outhouse more often than the yellow cheese.
Reply #35 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well then, don't let him eat the green cheese!
Reply #36 from WinCustomize Forums Top
He Greenreaper first I like the pet very much but i have still the same problem i don't use winkey + d or show desktop...any other idea thanks
Reply #37 from WinCustomize Forums Top
GreenReaper, when I unload IconX everything works fine...
Reply #39 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Ohh, that's a nice one. Thanks for tracking that down, Edivion. I think most people here run IconX with DesktopX, so that's probably why it slipped through the cracks.
Reply #40 from WinCustomize Forums Top
As a workaround, please launch the Desktop Pet *before* IconX, as this appears to let the two co-exist. I have forwarded the issue to the IconX developer for further consideration. Thanks again!
Reply #41 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Looks interesting, but should come out in DEMO form before paying $9.95


Agree, their should be a demo that is fully interactive for 10 minutes or something like that
Reply #42 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The trouble with that is of course that people will play it for 10 minutes and then close it and re-open it again. It would be possible to save it, of course, but such things tend to be easy to work around.

Ultimately, you have to look at what it is costing you - about as much as a good pizza for one (or a crappy one for two ). Assumably you've tried Stardock's products before as well, so you know it'll probably be good, and if you don't like the taste, you didn't exactly break the bank over it. Everyone here who bought it seems to be happy with buying it, too.
Reply #43 from WinCustomize Forums Top
FYI, I had the dissapearing problem also, and I fixed it by unloading iconX. Hope this works for you also.
Reply #44 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Start Desktop Pet before IconX.

Thanks for the solution, my little guy is now happily playing with his ball....

This is a really great toy!
Reply #45 from WinCustomize Forums Top
#21 by Tandis
Wed, December 14, 2005 0:00 PM

Stardock got permission to use a Gremlin...

LOL. I wonder if Furby got permission. I wonder if Creatures got permission. I wonder if the trillion other similar things got permission. Little harry critter with big ears is pretty generic these days.

-------------------------------

It's not a Furby. It's unmistakably a Gremlin. And Stardock's all about not infringing on copyrights. That's why I asked.
Reply #46 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I recently got Desktop Aquarium as a new toy, but judging by the positive responses fron users here, and the fact that my wife fell in love with him from the SS, it's looking very much like I'll have to invest in this little fella as well.

Roll on next payday
Reply #47 from WinCustomize Forums Top

imtoomuch: We'll have to agree to disagree.  It does look a lot like Gizmo from Gremlins to me but it also looks like a Furby to me as well. And the game Creatures has similar critters.  They're not identical and it's definitely not a gremlin (there's a lot more to a gremlin than a quasi-mini bunny look).  Maybe it's because I've used it and not judging purely from a single frame of animation.   But overall it looks like a fairly generic fluffy little critter.  If there's complaints, we can always tweak the texture or model or whatever since we don't want people to think it is a gremlin or whatever. The value is in what the pet does not what he looks like.

Reply #48 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The value is in what the pet does not what he looks like.


Well, I'll have to agree to disagree on this one, Frogboy. I love the "idea" of the pet (and have in fact purchased the program), but I don't really like the look of him (first off, he's brown..my LEAST favorite color)-- needs to have the ability to change his appearance some (color, weight, height, fur or no fur, etc.). Secondly, I'd much rather see some other type of "critter" choice...maybe something as generic as a dog, cat, sheep, bovine, whatever and then some types of "imagined" critters that don't exist in reality. I love that he plays and interacts with the objects, but I don't care for the look of it at all (if I wanted a dose of Gizmo, I could have spent half the money and rented Gremlins from the video store). I much prefer running my Aquarium Desktop vs. the Pet for the time being, though. The look of the critter has a lot to do with why people will purchase and continue to use it...after all, people spend way more on a car and they won't blow money on something they don't like the asthetic appeal of.
DD

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central
Reply #49 from WinCustomize Forums Top

DigitalDanes: What I meant is that I don't think the current look of the desktop pet is why people are buying him. Instead, I think it's because they want to see what he does and how he interacts with the user's desktop and lives out his virtual life.

Like you said, it could be a lizard or a dog or a cat or whatever.

Reply #50 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Like you said, it could be a lizard or a dog or a cat or whatever.


Or a chameleon/lizard/monkey?


That would rock! Who wants to skin (reskin?) the Desktop pet first?


Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central