29 October, 2012

Version 1.420 L-2 Update Now in Store

The bug fix version 1.420 L-2 is now available in the in-world store.  Marketplace and affiliate vendors will be updated soon.  This is version is fully compatible with older seeds.  Version 1.420 L-2 has two bug fix upgrades:
  1. Renaming plants is now fixed.  If you rename a plant, it will not cause the "gray plant" bug to appear.
  2. All genetic data is now drawn from our web server.  This means that 1.420 L-2 plants (and all that come afterwards) will be forward and well as backward compatible.  New strains and limited editions will not "confuse" your plants. As an added bonus, the new version actually uses about 10% less memory on your sim than version K-9. 
If you renamed some K-9 plants and got gray offspring, please pause them before they mature. We now have a test crop growing that should mature within the next 24 hours, and we hope to be able to give you an "emergency" method to fix the foliage color in the next generation. No promises, but stay tuned for further developments.

The ḈḁṇṇḁḇḭṦḼ Team will provide replacements for any unused seeds from earlier versions. To receive upgrade seed replacements, contact Djeaux Farrasco by IM in-world.

Finally, for those of you who are being affected by Hurricane Sandy, please know that the ḈḁṇṇḁḇḭṦḼ Crew is keeping you in our thoughts and prayers.  Stay safe.


25 October, 2012

BUG FIX FUN

GOLD X LIGHTS X DIESEL TEST PLANT

GOLDEN GIRL X LIGHTS BOY X DIESEL BOY
(
version 1.420 L-1 test plant)

The ḈḁṇṇḁḇḭṦḼ Team sent out a bulletin in-world last night regarding a gray foliage bug in Version 1.420 K-9 plants.  This bug is fairly uncommon, but and "ounce" of prevention is worth a "pound" of cure. The workaround? Don't rename your 1.420 K-9 plants.

We want all features to work, so we burned the midnight oil in the Skunk Works lab. The bug fix is now being tested using the ḈḁṇṇḁḇḭṦḼ Double Secret Growth Accelerator.  The fix will be rolling out soon!

During testing, we try out all basic functions, and sometimes we see cool stuff. So we wanted to share one of the third generation offspring we got from the most recent tests...

First, you can see that all this plant's parents and grandparents were renamed and that the foliage looks normal. The bug is fixed! That's the most important thing. But this girl is a massive mutant!

This plant's maternal grandmother was an Acapulco Gold, 3 meters tall, and the maternal grandpa was a Northern Lights, 1.5 meters tall.  The mom, a 2nd generation Acapulco Gold X Northern Lights hybrid, was 2.25 meters and displayed normal Gold foliage from the grandma.  For the 3rd generation, we crossed the Golden Girl X Lights Boy "cougar" with a 1st generation NY Diesel male, 1.75 meters tall, expecting Gold foliage and a 2 meter offspring.

But this baby threw the bright mutation, the dwarf mutation (1.2 meters tall), and the father's NY Diesel foliage!  Here are the stats taken at 81% maturity:
GOLDEN GIRL X LIGHTS BOY X DIESEL BOY
Gender: Female
Maturity: 81%
Foliage: NY Diesel Bright (1.0)
Potency: High (3.250)
Growth Rate: Fast (4.250% per cycle)
Lighting: Indoor/Outdoor
Size: Dwarf
Height: 1.200 meters
Width: 1.027 meters
Plant Not Fed (Minimum Growth)
Status: Vegetative
CannabiSL version 1.420-L1
So this plant was taken from a 3 meter tall Acapulco Gold to a 1.2 meter tall hybrid showing bright NY Diesel foliage in two generations! Yes, the basic "plan" (crossing the different strains) was under our control, but the mutations gave us some fun surprises!

Again, our bug-fix update will be rolling out very soon. Keep an eye on your ḈḁṇṇḁḇḭṦḼ Growers and Breeders Group notices and chat!  We hope to have an additional workaround as well for growers who already have gray hybrids. If you have questions, please IM me, Djeaux Farrasco, or Gloria Delicioso, or email djeaux@gmail.com.

Happy Growing! 



14 October, 2012

You don't have to feed 'em, but...

A lot of growers ask about feeding their ḈḁṇṇḁḇḭṦḼ plants.  As most of y'all already know, ḈḁṇṇḁḇḭṦḼ does not require Plant Food to grow and breed.  But Plant Food is an important part of a grower's toolkit for an enjoyable, easier-to-manage pharming operation.

It helps to understand a little about plants' growth rates.  Each variety has its unique growth rate, and that shows in both the hovertext over plants and in the stats output in local chat.  Plants go through a growth cycle every 90 minutes until they reach 100 percent size.

"Very fast" growing plants increase five percent every growth cycle, "fast" plants grow four percent, "medium" plants grow three percent, and "slow" plants grow two percent.  The slowest growth rate is "very slow" or one percent of the plant's height per growth cycle.  The important point is that plants only grow at their "advertised" rate if they are fedUnfed plants grow at one percent per cycle.

(Yes, that means there would be no advantage in feeding a "very slow" plant variety, except that there aren't any "very slow" varieties!)

Now, what this means is that an unfed plant, regardless of what variety it is, will take 100 growth cycles to mature.  At 90 minutes per cycle, that means that without Plant Food, ḈḁṇṇḁḇḭṦḼ plants take a little more than 6 days to reach the flowering phase.  (Plants start at one percent rather than zero when they are germinated, and SL clocks are notoriously wonky, so let's say "about six days!")

By comparison, a "very fast" plant variety such as Big Bud or NY Diesel will grow five times faster if you feed it.  They would reach maturity in only 30 hours.  Normally, growers may think this is way to fast to be enjoyable or manageable, but let's consider how you might use food to keep a grow going...
(If you think five percent is fast, remember that indoor/outdoor varieties grow an additional two percent faster if they are within 3 meters of a Grow-Lite.  If you place a NY Diesel under lights and feed it, that plant will grow at seven percent per cycle and be flowering in only  21 hours! So unless you are into "speed breeding," you'll probably want to keep those indoor/outdoor plants away from lights if you feed them!)
Once they are flowering, ḈḁṇṇḁḇḭṦḼ plants live for six days or until they are harvested, whichever comes first.  Mature flowering plants don't need food, and there's no option in the menu to feed them!

Most breeders are eager to harvest their females to see how the hybrids turn out, but males are viable for breeding during this entire period.  So you can use Plant Food to get another generation to maturity to breed with that prize male you have before he goes to the great ashtray in the sky.  By the same token, if you have a batch of females nearing maturity but don't have a mature male, you might pause the females (make them dormant) and then feed a male to get him to mature faster.  Then resume growth for your females and harvest your hybrids!

A single click on the "feed" button on the plant menu or your HUD will feed the plants for 8 cycles.  You do not have to feed plants for the full vegetative phase.  In the Skunk Works lab, we like to feed all plants for the first 8 cycles just to get them big enough to look nice.  Then we keep feeding some of them and don't feed others, depending on how we want to "pace" the maturity of the crop.

So yes, Plant Food isn't required for your ḈḁṇṇḁḇḭṦḼ babies.  You may be very happy with the one percent growth rate, and that's all good.  But remember, Plant Food is your tool to ensure that you have the males and females you want ready to breed at the same time!  And of course, like I mentioned before, if you're into "speed breeding" to get into multiple generations faster, food's the route to go!

Until next time - Happy Growing!




12 October, 2012

ORANGE KUSH NOW AVAILABLE

ORANGE KUSH MUTANT
The CannabiSL Team is proud to announce our new ORANGE KUSH MUTANT seeds, now availble at our in-world store and at the Breedables Fright Night Expo!  The deep orange foliage is perfect for your autumn and Halloween grows, too!

While we were working on the foliage textures, we agreed that the plants that had the "bright" mutation looked so much prettier - perfect autumn color.  So we decided to sell only mutant ORANGE KUSH seeds.

All offspring of 1st generation bright mutants will also display the bright mutation, too.  So an ORANGE KUSH male would be a good way to "inject" the bright phenotype into other foliages. 

"O.K." is an indoor/outdoor variety, so no lighting is required, but if grown under lights, they mature much faster! 

Four seeds  for L$300 at the in-world store, HUD included!

Happy Growing!

(To keep this post from being too tedious, we won't get into the math behind the bright mutation, but feel free to contact Djeaux in-world if you'd like the gory details!)