Hiya, folks! We’re getting back into the dev log habit by bringing you all some more info about a much-requested feature for TTR: the Foster Network. The presence of foster homes as an important tool for managing the shelter is something that we’ve been promising for a while, so we’re excited to say that our first prototype of the feature is coming along nicely. The Foster Network is one of several new features we’ve been working on, but it’s one that personally really excites me to see in the game.

So, what are fosters and why are we including them in the game? Well…

Fostering in the Real World

Fosters function as temporary homes for animals up for adoption. Many real-world shelters rely on fosters to help care for dogs. There are a ton of reasons that shelters might utilize foster homes. They provide many invaluable benefits, including safe, comfortable alternatives when the shelter is running low on space, training for young puppies, comfortable spaces for special needs dogs, and more. Some fosters are also interested in simply “trying out” dog ownership before dedicating fully, but even short-term care can really help lighten the burden of caring for all of the dogs in the shelter.

Perhaps most importantly, no matter how limited the space in the shelter is, the number of animals that can inhabit foster care is only limited by the number of available foster homes. So, recruitment of reliable and safe fosters is vital! Some rescues don’t even have full-fledged shelter facilities, and rely completely on a network of fosters to help find homes for animals (shout out to our local foster network, Out of the Woods Animal Rescue!)

Fostering in To The Rescue!

In the real world, good fosters are valuable, temporary, and scarce, and so they are designed in TTR to reflect this. Once the player unlocks the Foster Network through their LeashedIn skilltree, foster applications will start to trickle in to the shelter. The list of fosters currently in the network can be viewed in the computer, and as soon as they join the network, they can be assigned dogs to take care of!

However, not every foster home is the same. Some homes will have restrictions that will prevent them from taking certain types of dogs. A foster family with cats, for example, probably wouldn’t vibe super well with dogs that have the Bad With Cats trait! In addition to restrictions, though, fosters also a number of slots that represent the total number of dogs they can have at once, as well as a reliability rating, which represents how many total dogs they will be able to house before they leave the network.

Even this early draft of the mechanic does a lot of interesting things for the game. The network isn’t super intrusive on day-to-day gameplay. New fosters are pretty rare (however, they will be ways the player can increase their frequency as well as quality!) and once dogs are assigned to fosters, they can be adopted without having to bother with the regular adoption process, even though their chances are still influenced by their adoptability score. However, if the shelter is full and euthanasia is looking inevitable, a foster home showing up in the nick of time provides a massive sigh of relief that really drives home how important they can be.

Takeaways

Some Features are More Important Than Scope. Simulation games can be really difficult to scope. There are so many interconnected elements that can be made into game features that it’s a massive challenge to pick and choose between them. TTR has been no exception here: we’ve had to spend a lot of work deciding where to draw the line. Each time we come up with something that would fit great in the game, we have to balance two main concerns. First, will the new feature add something important to the simulation? This question can also be extended to consider whether or not the game can be considered an honest simulation of the theme if the feature is missing. The other, perhaps more important and universal question is whether or not the feature is feasible with existing timelines and limitations.

Our initial vision of the game didn’t include fostering as a mechanic. We discussed it very early on, and decided that even though it would be nice, it would be over complicating other player interactions and we would have to add it onto a pile of constantly growing features.

However, our perspective on including fostering in the game eventually changed. While working on the game, it became increasingly clear that we absolutely had to include foster homes in some form. That’s because we learned that fosters are incredibly important for many real-world shelters! Lots of people with much more real-world experience with shelters than we have were puzzled by the absence of fostering, and after revisiting it and doing more research, we realized that they were completely correct. If we want our simulation game to capture some part of the realities of running shelters, then it stands to reason that it would be negligent to ignore some of the most import aspects of how they work!

Fosters Rule. This is a huge takeaway from this whole process. People having the capability and the kindness to open their homes to animals with nowhere else to go absolutely can’t be thanked enough!

If you’re interested in learning more about becoming a foster, please contact your local shelter and ask how you can help! And, for some more information about fostering in general and how it works, check out this handy-dandy article from Rover.com.

Thanks so much for reading! Hopefully this provided new insights about some of the new things being added to the game, and also maybe helped to shed some light on the importance of fosters to real shelters. Let us know what you think in the comments! Have you ever fostered a pet? What do you think about the Foster Network in TTR? What sort of things would you expect the fosters to provide to your in-game shelter? How important is closely representing the real world to you in simulation games you play?

– Olivia