**NOTE: This was not made by me, it was previously made available to the Petz Community by Nova@Supernova who hasn't been active in Petz for a very long time. Nova was an advocate for helping people learn how to hex, so it's only fitting that we preserve her knowledge here. Times may have moved on since this guide was written, but it may be a useful starting block or simply an interesting slice of Petz history.

When I get some time I'll edit this and show some video/gifs of what she's talking about to break up the text but for now here it is, in all it's wordy glory**

Nova's Guide To Addballz

Here I am going to try to explain how addballz work.

Addballs are extra balls that add to the shape of the pet beyond the default balls, such as nails, cheeks, fur tufts etc. Today many hexers use them to create ears and tails as well.

This is what each number means, as listed in most breed files:

;first ball is 67 ;GROUP ONE, containing ballz 67-76, ARE UTILITY ADDBALLZ FOR ANDREW ;base x y z color otlnCol spckCol fuzz group outline ballsize bodyarea addGroup texture

But I can give you a more detailed explanation!

Ball count

So, as it says, when you count your addballs, you start at 67. This is because the Ballz Info (the default balls of any breedfile) go up to 66. Also, balls 67-76 are omitted addballs that the programmers use to help program movements and such (I think). If you un-omit them, you can see them floating around the petz. So when you count your addballs, you will actually start from 77.

It is important to know how to get the ball number because you need it to connect linez, make colour variations and the likes.

What each number means Going from the left, this is what each number means:

1. Base ball. The ball on which the addball is based.
2. X-position: How far to the left/right the ball is. 0 is the middle. Positive numbers move the ball to the left and negative to the right.
3. Y-position: How high/low the ball is. 0 is the middle. Positive numbers move the ball down and negative move it up.
4. Z-position: How far forward the ball is. 0 is the middle. Positive numbers move the ball back and negative move it forward.
5. Colour: The colour the ball will be.
6. Outline Colour: The colour of the outline of the ball (can usually be ignored)
7. Speckle colour: Ignore, not used
8. Fuzz: How fuzzy the ball will be. As a rule of thumb, 0 is no fuzz, 1 is slight fuzz, about 3 is noticably fuzzy and above that the ball starts to look very fuzzy.
9. Group: What group the ball belongs to. Can sometimes be ignored, see further below.
10. Outline: What type of outline the ball will have. This is almost always set at -1 (no outline).
11. How large the ball is.
12. BodyArea: What area the ball belongs to. Can often be left at 0 but not always. I will make a separate lesson on BodyAreas.
13. What texture the ball will have.

When you know these things, it's time to start to experiment with them and see what you come up with!

It is a good tip to use Pet Workshop to move addballz and connect linez between them, it's much easier than in LNZ Pro. When I am making an addball creation I will often first make "blank" balls in LNZ Pro, go to PW and position and connect them there, then go back to LNZ Pro and do any final touches.

Breeding issues

Addballs can be somewhat temperamental when it comes to breeding true. Here are the most common addball problems I've seen in 2nd gens:

The ball becomes unfuzzy!

In 2nd gens, addballs have a 50 % chance of picking up the base ball's fuzz. So the easiest way to avoid this issue is to give the base ball the same amount of fuzz. This can make the pet look a bit scruffier than you had in mind, but such is life!

Another solution can be to make the base ball a bit less fuzzy, maybe fuzz 1 while the addball has fuzz 3. Then the 2nd gens will always have at least a bit of fuzz, even if not as much as the 1st gens.

The ball takes on a different texture!

Same thing as with fuzz - it has a 50 % of reverting to the same as the base ball. Same solution - use the same texture on both.

The 1st gens use 29 on the balls but the 2nd gens have 25!

2nd gens do lose ball-specific shade settings and the shade of the pet is "evened out" in 2nd gens. It's just part of how breeding is designed in the game. My personal guess is that it's to avoid oddly looking mixies in particular. There's not much you can do about it.

The colour is really mismatched!

Might be a group issue.

Groups tell the game how different colours should be matched. If you take a PF Magic original breed and paint it with the paint can, you'll notice that the when you paint the pet in a certain area, certain parts of the pet are recoloured. Those are groups. If your addball tends to inherit colours in a really crazy fashion, you may need to fix its group settings.

These settings are done under a section called Fur Color Areas, usually near the bottom of the file, below the Ballz Info, and may look something like this:

[Fur Color Areas] ;(1-4, 5 - jowls) ;FurColorTrait ballWithBaseColor colorAreas 1 48 0, 1, 2 ;main body 2 15 3 ;mask

That's snagged from my dogo canario file.

OK, as it says in the file, first is the "trait" (ie group), next is which ball this group picks its colour from, and last is what colour areas (numbers) should use this group. If we look at the dogo you can see I made two groups - main body (which is red or brindle) and mask (which is black).

All ballz in the file that are listed with ColorArea 3 belong to the mask and will inherit its colour based on the colour of ball 15 (the jowl). All balls that have group 0, 1 or 2 should inherit the same colour as ball 48 (belly).

So if your file has wonky colours, look into the Group settings. You can be really creative with groups, or you can do something really basic (maybe just have a single Group). Experiment!

When crossed with our files you get animals with four ears/tails or that are earless/tailless!

When we make addball ears and tails, the game doesn't understand that we replace the original parts with addballs. But, you can tell the game exactly that using Body Areas, the number after Ball Size in the addballs listing. For tails and ears, replace the number (usually 0) with these:

Left ear: 12 Right ear: 11 Tail: 13

Linez are missing in 2nd gens!

This also is usually caused by petz having different Body Areas. The game doesn't like to connect linez between balls that belong to different Body Areas. For instance, the neck and the chest belong to different areas, so it can be hard to get a ruff to inherit linez properly.

You can mess around with Body Areas and see if that helps (note sometimes if you change body area it can effect how the ball moves when the pet does, so experiment and see how it works).

Alternatively, all you can do really is try to get around this by not using linez between different body areas, instead using clever placements of addballz (for instance part of the neck ruff may actually be based on chest addballs moved high, so you can connect linez between those and the rest, without needing any neck-based addballz

Fur Pattern Balls

Fur pattern balls are a powerful tool if used right, they can solve some of the issues above sometimes but they are often more trouble than they are worth so I didn't bother to offer them as a solution.

Things Fur Pattern Balls do that are great in 2nd gens:

-Balls keep their specific shade -Balls don't lose their fuzz regardless of how fuzzy the base ball is -Balls don't lose their texture regardless of which texture the base ball has Howeverrrr they also do this: -Linez between Fur Patterned Balls and "normal" balls is often lost -The FP-balls inherit as their own colour group

As I said, this can be a powerful tool, imagine a breed that only comes in one colour anyway, you want to include two different coat types and by using FPB (and avoiding stupid linez) you can easily get a pet that looks great.

But if you have a breed file that needs those lines and comes in many colours, FPB is probably a bad idea. So it depends on the situation whether it's worth using them or not. Anyway, they are easily set up.

Find (or add if it's not there, it's usually not) a section something like this:

[Fur Pattern Balls] addballs: 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99,

Replace 94, 95 etc with whatever addballs you want. You can do several sets too, if you want different "groups", just add them on new lines, be sure to include addballs:

There you have it! That's the basics of addballs and then some lol