*tiptoes back into suggestions forum*

Okay so I'm not sure if this should be two threads because it's technically two ideas but since they both came out of the Registry idea, I'm putting them both here for now.

Both of these ideas I'm thinking would belong under the Edit Profile page, probably right beneath the Breed Specialty choice as they're both linked to the animals. I think this way, it might make it easier to have a registry of both brands/tags and prefixes? Maybe? Instead of having admins manually add brands/tags/prefixes to a list, HP just takes the information from the player settings and updates the list automatically (or during every time reset)?

I would like to say it would be cool if a brand/tag/prefix can't be used by another player once added to the list, but there are some obvious issues with brands/tags used across multiple accounts (possible fix would be limiting use to accounts with the same email?). But the main point of the registry would be having a page/list that everyone can reference to look up who uses what brand/tag/prefixes. 

That covers the brand registry thing. If we can't do the Auto Update thing, then maybe just a section on the Edit Profile page where we submit our brand/tag and it sends that info to an admin to be updated on the list (this would weed out duplicates).

Prefixes

First off, HP needs a general definition of what the prefix is/does because there seems to be some confusion (from what I've seen) about the "rules" of prefixes/suffixes. So my proposed definition is simply that prefixes are word(s)/letters/acronyms that go before the name of all your animals of a certain breed (for example, all of my Westphalians currently have the prefix "Nine Worlds" [which I put in manually], so my Westphalian mare is Nine Worlds Naturally Astrid).

The difference between prefixes and brands is that they would differentiate between breeds. Brands belong to the player, prefixes belong to the player's breed. They're a quick way to look at the list of active Paint Horses (for example) and see who bred which horse (because brands don't show up on the search pages). (I also think they look cool for sporthorses/English discipline breeds :P).

So there are a couple ways to implement prefixes.

1. The simplest and easiest way (without any/much programming) would be just having the players submit a preferred prefix and the breed the prefix applies to. An admin would then add that info to a list of "registered" prefixes, preferably with a link that searches all horses of that breed with %prefix% in the Name field. This way, the prefix is just simply a registered part of your horse's name. The downside of this is that duplicates can't be enforced. Any other player can name their horses with your registered prefix and HP can't catch/enforce it.


2. The more in-depth way (that would definitely include programming) would be making prefixes a separate, searchable field from the name of the animal (like the brand/tag is). Two ways to do this:

• Players input their prefix on their Edit Profile page and HP automatically applies it to all animals of that chosen breed on that account (more complicated)


• Or they would register it on their Edit Profile page (so other players can't use it) and input it manually on each animal's page (less complicated?)

Either way, the prefix then appears anywhere the animal's name appears, right in front of the name (and should therefore automatically show up in the search results).

Since this would be like a whole new thing, and I know there are players who have multiple breeds on one account, I'm thinking players can buy multiple prefixes from the Store like dividers? Not sure how doable that would be, but it's just a thought.

Of course, if nobody likes the prefixes idea, we can just ignore it and pay attention to the Brand/Tag Registry idea :P

*bumps and runs*

I like this idea but I did want to point out that brands/tags do actually show up on the search pages. :)

https://horsephenomena.com/horses.php?name=&animal_id=&breed=&age=&gender=&awardid=&points=&brand=6784&sale_toggle2=1&sale_price=&stud_toggle=1&stud_price=&order_by=1&search=Search! - A quick search using my brand, 6784

(That comment came out of this - They're a quick way to look at the list of active Paint Horses (for example) and see who bred which horse (because brands don't show up on the search pages). - To clarify that, although I could have misunderstood).) 

I do like the prefix idea, although I have to question how we're gong to work that out through players selling lines and how the prefixes are carried down.

Say "Nine Worlds Naturally Astrid" is bred to another horse named "HG Totally Rad" would the game coding follow the traditional rules of the person who bred the foal (say in this case it's the stud's owner) so that the foal became HG or would it be something more like HG Nine Worlds to somehow combine the two? For arabians they're traced through their dam line right? So that brings in a different view for one breed (which can easily just bw like "for the purposes of this game all horses are prefixed like this for x, y, z and obviously that makes that point sort of silly).

I like this idea though, at least for the prefixes. I use them on several breeds (although not all) so it would be fun to have them integrated some if that's a possibility.