Spookytooth's Decrepit Barn of Horrors – Part 2

 Hey Jammers! Because I never like leaving anything incomplete, here is the second and final installation of the short weird AJ-related story I began writing in November.

I know it's been a few months, so if you're interested, I recommend you re-read Part 1 just to refresh your memory! Or read it for the first time, if you have no idea what I'm talking about. 

> Click here to read Part 1 of Spookytooth's Decrepit Barn of Horrors! <

I hope you find this at least mildly entertaining :S

Once you're up-to-speed on Part 1 of the story...

Without further ado, let's start Part 2!

~ ❦ ❦ ❦ ~

The ladder stretched up, up into darkness. 

"ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE READY? I KEEP SOME VEEEEERY SPECIAL CURSED ITEMS UP HERE..." said Spookytooth in his deep, creaky voice. 

You see no choice. You steel yourself, climbing up, up–

Oh.

Oh no.

This was his collection... and it was worse than you could have imagined. You keel over from the wave of nausea that overtakes you in this uncanny valley of an attic.

Spookytooth is talking now, that much you can hear. There is roaring in your ears.

"PERHAPS WHAT MAKES THESE ITEMS SO..." the monkey claws strangely at his mask before continuing– "BEAUTIFUL, IS THAT THEY HAVE NO PLACE, NO USE."

It's too much. You faint, falling down, down through a hole in the attic's floor.

"THEY WERE MADE IN THE VOID, AND IN THE VOID THEY SHALL STAY..."

You fall down... into darkness. 

But to your despair, the darkness is only a momentary sanctuary. 

The lights turn on, and fear jolts you awake as cackling laughter bounces off the basement walls.

"BEHOLD– MY HALL OF BLASPHEMY!!!"

You have no idea why, you have no idea how. All you can see is Spookytooth dancing gleefully, surrounded by an array of unspeakable things.

All you wanted was this to be over. All you wanted was for this monkey to just turn off the searingly bright searchlight over his barn so you could go home and sleep. 

But even that felt like a whole other world now.

"Spookytooth... why???" you manage to say through your overwhelming dread, "Why are you doing this?? What do you POSSIBLY have to gain??"

The monkey paused strangely for a moment. 

"WHY, YOUR WONDERFUL SCREAMS OF FEAR, OF COURSE!"

Despair.

You run, not knowing where to go.

You run, unknowingly, into the fourth and final room of decrepit horrors...

And there, you see it. 

You scream.

For the first time in this terrifying night, you scream. 

And suddenly, Spookytooth's cacophony of laughter becomes silent.

You quickly turn around.

Somehow, in the time it took for you to run away, Spookytooth had moved his entire collection of cursed items into the basement. They surrounded you now, and it made you scream even louder.

Then, you turned to Spookytooth, and–

his mask was off? Where did it...

OH.

"Quickly!" he called to you, out of breath, "Your screaming drew the mask off of me, now you need to run so it doesn't attach to you next!"

The orange mask was on the ground, kinda inching towards you. Not fast enough to scare you more than his cursed collection did, but you didn't have time to think. You followed his instructions and ran, up the stairs of the stone basement.

"Don't worry– I'll meet you back up there!" Spookytooth called.

 

He was sounding almost normal. You were nervous, but you trusted him.

Yes, even as he set everything on fire with a screeching war cry, you trusted him.

Somehow.

–––

When you made it out of the barn, two things surprised you. First of all, the barn was intact, and there was no smoke coming out of the basement. Secondly, it was already the early morning... you had spent an entire night running through a maze of terror.

Surprisingly quickly, Spookytooth came up the stairs and joined you in the grass outside. In the light, he looked pretty normal without his mask! 

"Ah, thank you, kind traveller," he began, "I'm sure I have some explaining to do."

Your voice was hoarse from screaming. "Yes... you definitely do."

Spookytooth went on to tell his tale. For a long time, he had been an avid collector of cursed and abominable items, traveling far and wide through Jamaa to find and hoard the objects that absolutely no one wanted. 

Why? He did not know. But after some time he grew tired of his hobby, so he sought to sacrifice his collection and move onto something new.

However, the last item that came into his possession was an orange mask... this time, it was a truly cursed item, and he was none the wiser when he tried it on out of curiosity. 

Once he placed the mask over his face... it took control, making him continue his cursed collection– this time not for fun, but out of spite. From that point on, all he could think about was all the weird looking and uncanny items filling Jamaa's shops, and being drawn to fear, the mask forced him to collect them.

So when Spookytooth had the idea to display that spotlight in the night sky... it wasn't just to be annoying. It was an S.O.S., and trying to scare whoever agreed to go through his cursed collection was a roundabout way of getting help. Because you got scared enough to scream, the mask was drawn to your fear so it finally detached from the monkey, long enough for him to finally get rid of it once and for all.

"So, once again, thank you! I'm very sorry I had to scare you," Spookytooth said.

As his real self, he was actually very kind. 

"Finally," he sighed with relief, "I can just pretend those cursed items don't exist..." 

Sounds like a good plan...

~ ❦ ❦ ❦ ~

So... there you have it! The story is done X)

I kinda don't like this one... but as I said before, I don't like leaving things unfinished, and I did promise I would finish this sometime in early January. So I'm glad it's done xD 

And now I need to sleep again.

Bye for now!

~DoomyPanda

P.S. This goes without saying, but please don't set things on fire in real life. I trust that none of you will do that lol

Berry The Koala is UPDATED!

 Hey Jammers! So, it's 3:50AM where I am right now and I am exhausted, but I'm here with a post to let you know that the new Berry The Koala entry I promised at the beginning of January is finally finally finished!!!! 

> Click here to go read it! <

If you liked any of Berry's older journal entries, I think you might like this one! I did my absolute best to make it fun to read. Also, it might very possibly be the last entry I write over there, so I put in my best effort to send off the story on a fun note :)

My next steps for Berry The Koala are gonna be to fix up the layout, and try to format the blog so the posts go in order from oldest to newest, so it's easier to follow the storyline. 

Aside from that, I'll probably end up adding a page over there explaining the concept of a plushie blog and the AJ blogger who started that trend (I think it was Meloetta385/LoveLost with Breadstick The Croc)

Alright... I really gotta sleep now.

See you in Jamaa!

~DoomyPanda

Tutorial: Changing the AJ App Icon + Name (on Mac)

Hey Jammers! 

Do you ever get tired of this snow leopard's cold, unsympathetic smile staring back at you as you cry behind your computer late at night?  

I know I have.

...

Ok, so maybe the AJ Classic icon isn't that bad. Snow leopards are very nice. But would you ever wanna change it to something different?

Well, now you can! 

And what's more-- you can change the name of your app, as well! If you're annoyed at the name change from Animal Jam to AJ Classic, OR if you wanna hide the fact that you play AJ for whatever reason, you can easily change the display name to whatever you wish.

This isn't a hack or anything shady-- it's an easy built-in function you can do for any app you want. While this tutorial contains instructions for Mac computers, you can definitely get the same result on Windows. Just with different instructions that I don't know off the top of my head... 

(Here's an article from HowToGeek.com about how to customize application icons in Windows. It's pretty long and I didn't read it all, but it seems to have all the info you might need.)

Now, onto the Mac tutorial!

The actual process of changing the app icon is easy, but some basic editing in Preview may be required. Steps 2 and 3 are an easy editing tutorial.

Step 1: Find your new icon image.

You can turn any image you want into your new app logo– it just has to be square (the width and height of it should be the same length) and it has to be high resolution.

However, you can make any image you want meet those requirements by editing it! I'll tell you how in Steps 2 and 3. The first step is simply to find an image you like staring at more than the snow leopard.

The icons + emotes section of the Animal Jam Archives is a great place to start, because most of those icons already have equal height and width. You could use an emote, you could use the AJ game icon, you could use a transparent PNG of your favorite den item... you could use any image you want! As long as you're okay with editing it so it fits the requirements.

(I'd recommend an image with a transparent background, just because it looks a little neater. But if you want to use a square screenshot of your animal or something, go ahead! This tutorial works for that as well.)

Of course, if you don't wanna go through the trouble of editing your new app icon, here is the image I used in the example above:

I edited it myself so you can just download it and drop this into the icon box at Step 5 and voila! Customized app icon, no editing needed :)

Additionally, here's the gecko plushie I edited for the purpose of this tutorial, so you can use it too, if you wish:

(I'm probably going to come back to this post and add more edited icons as I make them, for your convenience.) 

Step 2: Edit your image in Preview to make it square.

For this example, I'll use an image of the gecko plushie! It definitely isn't square, so we'll make it square. If your image already is square, you can skip this step.

Once your image is downloaded, open it in Preview by clicking on it. Next, click the Markup Toolbar button as circled below:

Once you have the Markup Toolbar open, press Command + A on your keyboard to select your image, then Command + C to copy it. This is important for later.

Next, click the Adjust Size button, as circled below:

As you can see, the width is not the same amount as the height, so it's not square. If you open the Adjust Size panel and the height is the same as the width, you can move on to Step 3. 

In order to make this image square without making it look weird, we need to first make the canvas a large square. Do this by first making sure this little lock is unlocked:

Next, make both the width and height significantly bigger, and both the same. An increase by a couple hundred pixels is fine. For the gecko, I'll change both to 400px. Then, click OK.

Now, your image is bigger and slightly warped looking. No matter-- all we needed from this was a bigger canvas size. On your keyboard, press Command + A, then delete. 

The bigger, warped gecko is now gone, and the canvas is bigger, so press Command + V to bring back our original-sized image!

Now we can crop the image into a closer square. 

To the far left of the window, click the Rectangle Lasso tool (as circled below):

Then, drag your cursor to put a square dotted frame around your image. As you're adjusting its size, on your keyboard hold down both the Option and Shift keys to make sure it ends up a perfect square:

Make sure the square is tight as possible, so your icon doesn't end up too small, and that all parts of your image are as centered as possible within the square frame. When you're happy with it, click the Crop button (as circled above).

If you want, you can also check the Adjust Size window again to make sure the height and the width are the same.

Remember to click Save. Now, your previously un-square image is square enough to become a custom app icon!

Step 3: Edit your image in Preview to make it high-resolution.

This step is a lot faster. 

Like the beginning of Step 2, open your square image in Preview, click the Markup Toolbar button, and click the Adjust Size button to view the details of your image.

Keep the little lock between Width and Height locked, along with 'Scale proportionately' and 'Resample image'.

The only things you need to change are the width/height and the resolution.

I've found that 1300px by 1300px works fine, so I recommend you change the width and height to that. And in all cases, change the resolution to 300:

When your width and height are 1300 and your resolution is 300, click OK.

Now your image is super big! This is a good thing.

Just remember to click File, and then Save. Congratulations– you now have a square, high-resolution image perfect for a custom app icon!

Step 4: Changing the app name (if you want to).

For this little example, I'll change the app name of AJPW on my computer. Just because I don't wanna go back and change my AJ Classic icon again :P

First, open Finder:

In Finder, click 'Applications', which is located on the left sidebar:

In Applications, find your Animal Jam app of choice (or any app, really– this tutorial works for any app you want)

Once you found it, right-click it to bring up a little menu. From that menu, click 'Get Info':

When you click it, something like this should come up:

Under 'Name & Extension', you can easily change the name to whatever you want by changing the text before '.app'. 

Maybe if you're editing the AJ Classic app, you can change the name back to 'Animal Jam' if you're annoyed with the name change instigated by WildWorks. Maybe you wanna confuse yourself and call it 'Photoshop' or 'Calculator' or 'lampshade' or whatever floats your boat. 

For this tutorial, I'll rename AJPW to...

Yep.

All you need to do to apply this change is to close the Get Info section. However, you might need to input an administrator's password, so if it's your parent or guardian's computer and you don't know the password, you might need to ask their permission. 

Step 5: Changing the app icon.

Almost done! Open up your square, high-res image in Preview again:

Then on your keyboard, press the Command + A keys to select your image. After that, press the Command + C keys to copy it.

Now, like in Step 4– open Finder, go to Applications, find your Animal Jam app of choice (or any app you wanna customize), right-click it, and select 'Get Info' from the little menu that pops up.

Once this little window thing appears, click the little icon image, which is circled in the image above. Then on your keyboard, press Command + V to paste in your custom icon. 

This might be instantaneous, or you might need to input an administrator password to make the change. Like in Step 4, if the computer you're using belongs to a parent or guardian and you don't know the administrator password, you might need to ask their permission.

Now, all you gotta do to apply this change is to re-open your AJ app to see...

...it worked! Congratulations, your app icon is now 10x more beautiful :D

To my knowledge, this is just a fun cosmetic change and doesn't impact how the game works, so you don't have to worry C:

I hope you found this tutorial fun! This was probably one of my longer posts. I have no idea how many hours I spent on it... I'm a slow writer.

And if, somehow, you found this post while looking up how to customize your app icons... I hope it works for you, and welcome to my Animal Jam blog X)

See you all in Jamaa, and if you have any questions, feel free to comment below!

~DoomyPanda

From Browser to Download

 Hey Jammers! Well, it's 2021 now... and I'm assuming that everyone stopped being able to log on directly from the website. 

EDIT 1/3/21: For now, you can actually still play AJ Classic through your Chrome browser if you log on with this link: http://animaljam.com/en/welcome Thanks for sharing, Vaiana70!

I actually stopped being able to a lot earlier this month, maybe even at the start of January, but I know at least one Chromebook user who could still log on with the browser method during that time...? It's probably just a browser thing, which is ok.

But what's not ok is that if you try to log into Animal Jam Classic through the browser, you get this pop-up...

...and that pop-up directs you to what appears to be a download button for Animal Jam Classic–

But it sends you to a page where the only option is to download AJ Play Wild. Very misleading.

I told AJHQ about this earlier this month in a Daily Explorer comment, and...

...k then.

I'm not gonna make fun of AJHQ's spelling, because it's clear they were just trying to respond to as many comments as possible, but it's also clear from this comment that they don't see the misleading popup as a mistake. It's just another little way to intentionally steer people away from AJC.

Of course, there is an actual download button in the top right corner of the AJ Classic home page, as well as an actual download button right at the center of the page. It's just that if you miss those and log in as normal, the button the pop-up shows you to download AJC sends you to download AJ Play Wild instead. 

All of AJHQ's weirdly shady attempts to direct people away from Animal Jam Classic and to Animal Jam (Play Wild) have honestly made me really sad this past year. And from your comments, it seems many of you feel the same.

First was the name switch, which probably hurt everyone the most. It felt like WildWorks was literally trying to replace Animal Jam with AJPW, as if AJPW was somehow the superior version, and all the history of Animal Jam's 10 years just didn't matter to them anymore. 

Then it was making AJPW the main focal point of the Animal Jam homepage, and only giving Animal Jam a little button to its separate homepage.

And then, it was all the shady subtle stuff. Taking away the items from the animals on the Animal Jam Classic homepage to make the game look less cool than AJ Play Wild. Making it clear through the updates that AJHQ was putting more effort into AJ Play Wild than Animal Jam. And then, a misleading download button. It's small, but consistent enough with what's come before for me to say that it was intentional.

AJ Play Wild and Animal Jam are both great games in their own way, but they are incredibly different and one cannot replace the other. For me personally, the use of full 3D CGI in AJ Play Wild gives me a headache, and I find it too visually overwhelming. I'd say Animal Jam (Classic) uses 3D graphics tastefully, and they look cute and unique instead of overpowering. 

Whatever your opinion, and whichever game is your favorite, I still think we can agree that the experience of playing both is very different between them. It's not as if AJ Play Wild is the "improved" AJ– it's more like they're just two alternate dimensions. 

So why has WildWorks been doing all this? Why did the name change happen? Why have they been allocating less resources to AJC than their other games?

Well, they haven't honestly come forward, so we don't know why. Maybe WildWorks realized they stretched their team too thin between all their games, so they had to re-prioritize where to focus their attention, putting Animal Jam (Classic) at the bottom. 

That topic probably deserves a post of its own at some point, so I'll leave it there for now.

To continue on about the switch to the download version of AJC...

It's still fairly populated and active in Jamaa, as would be expected. It's not like a ghost town or anything. But still, there are so many Chromebook users who have been forced out because WildWorks has yet to make a Chromebook-compatible download link for Animal Jam Classic.

This is not a problem with AJ Play Wild, which has over 4 ways to download it. You could download the Mac and PC version, you could get it on Amazon, you can get it on Google Play, you can get it on the App Store, and I think you can get it on Steam as well.

But there's just a single download option for Animal Jam Classic. And it excludes Chromebook users. 

I really don't see why it would be impossible for WildWorks to put AJ Classic on Google Play or something, if AJ Play Wild can be downloaded pretty much anywhere. 

That's why I'm gonna keep talking about it until WildWorks actually makes it happen. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I invite you to do the same as well– leave comments on the Daily Explorer, or AJ's official social media pages, and let them know that they need to make AJC Chromebook-compatible as soon as they can.

And if that's not possible, WildWorks should at least be clear with us about why.

So many people have left comments here who are upset that they can't play AJC anymore, and I feel your pain. For me, Animal Jam Classic has always been a safe and peaceful world I can escape to when everything else feels sad and scary, and I want all the people who feel the same to be able to access that world, too. 

Whatever you may be feeling or thinking, always feel free to share in the comments below, even if it's not on topic of the post. I don't think of it as ranting-- just say what's on your mind, and I'm always there to respond if you want someone to talk to. I always try to respond to every single comment c:

It's been a difficult year, and I thank you all so much for making this blog a friendly, positive, and honest corner of the wider Animal Jam community, and internet itself. And whether or not you comment, I'm so grateful for all of you who read what I write! I'm so lucky that you grace this site with your presence :D

That's all for now, and I'll see you in Jamaa <3