Orbis Games

Private Messages
It is possible to send private messages to other players in VHR. This is normally done by viewing their public ranch page, then selecting the "Send Message" button. You may then write the subject and message and send it to the player. If you ignore a player, then they will not be able to send messages to you anymore.
When you look at a message you've received, you may respond to it, and if you keep your old messages, then you can look at an entire conversation by keeping the old messages and clicking on the "Parent" button which will show you the message this message replied to.
At the bottom of the page, there are three buttons. The first sends the reply you've written, the second lets you delete this message and takes you back to your message list, and the third lets you ignore the person who wrote this message, and then takes you back to the messages list.

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Ignoring Players
Other players can be annoying at times. That's why VHR lets you ignore players so that they will be prevented from trying to interact with you individually in the game. There are several ways in which players interact privately. There are private message, friend requests, and private bids on horses. Because these represent instances where players can privately send messages to you that you have to deal with, ignoring a player will make it so she can't do any of those things to you.

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News
News is a list of events that your ranch has engaged in since you were last online. The reason for this is that there are several things that happen whether or not a player is online, such as having items or horses bought or sold, and having an event execute.
So that these events don't go unnoticed by the player, a small message is sent to the player when one of these things triggers.

Some of the news items are as follows:

In the marketplace, being overbid, winning a bid, or having one of your horses sold creates a news item.
In the items marketplace, being overbid, winning a bid, or having one of your items sold creates a news item.
When an event you've entered or bet on executes, you receive amessage saying how your horses or bets turned out.

News is a temporary thing and each time you log in, the news from before your previous login time is deleted. Should you want to record the information in the news item, it is recommended that you view the object(s) associated with the news item: horses, players or events; and record a bookmark there.

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Bookmarks
Bookmarks are used to keep short notes on things in the game. You can make bookmarks for horses, ranches (players) and events. In each case, You must view the thing in question and make a bookmark, either by using the editor provided, or in the case of your horses, by viewing the "Notes" page for the horse, then entering the bookmark there.
When you're viewing your bookmark list, you can view the object you've bookmarked by clicking on the "View" button, and delete the bookmark if you wish.

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Trophies
When your horse places first, second or third in a race, you receive a trophy stating what event it was, the horse's name, and where the horse placed. It is possible to view the trophies of other ranches by looking at their ranch public view page, so this is a way to show what you've accomplished as ranch owner. It is possible to delete trophies, but since this is permanent you must click the "Yes, delete it." box so that you don't accidentally delete the trophy. It is possible to view the trophy itself, and the horse that won the trophy, but the event cannot be viewed since they are deleted after a few days.

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Skills
There are several skills you can learn and use within the game. Some of them help you to manage your ranch or horses better, and some of them help you to train and compete better.
A rundown of the skills are as follows.

Breeding: This skill increases the stats foals are born with (by a fraction of a point), and also increases the chances of having astallion. Without the skill, there is a 1/10 chance of having a stallion, but with the skill, there is a 3/10 chance of having a stallion.

Veterinary: This skill increases how much you heal horses every time you try to heal one. It also allows you to vaccinate horses against disease, and it lets you heal horses to a higher level than people without the vet skill can. Anyone can heal minor bumps and such, but more serious things like pulled tendons and broken legs take many healing sessions to work, and non-vets cannot heal to a high enough level to fix major problems such as that.

Ranch Management: This skill lets you host more events and lets you make the purses much larger. Creating events is a great way to make money in VHR since everyone enters an event must pay a percentage of the purse.
Driving, Racing, Horsemanship, English, Western: These skills make you better at training horses in certain areas, and also help when a horse is judged in certain types of events. The bonus from skills is small, but may make the difference.
Cloth, Leather and Metal Crafting: These skills allow you to craft tack, which plays a small role in event judging.

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The Bulletin Board
The bulletin board is a global message board where players can post things of interest to them. The main interface gives a list of current board items starting with the most recent. Although it is not possible to delete board items, they do disappear after a day or so.
When viewing the list of board items, you can view the actual board item itself by clicking on "View", you can send a private message to the poster by clicking on "Send Msg", and you can view the poster's ranch by clicking on "Poster" You can even post a new item to the board.
When viewing the full board item, you will be given an interface similar to the private messages interface so that you can reply to bulletin board items in the same way. It is even possible to follow bulletin board replies back up until you reach the first message (assuming that it hasn't been deleted yet).
Clubs also receive their own bulletin boards so that their members can send out messages to the members without everyone having to add everyone to their friends list.

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Ranch Privacy
Sometimes you don't want other players, or at least certain other players to see your ranch. On the main ranch overview page, there are 4 checkboxes at the very bottom telling who can and cannot view your ranch.
They don't all work quite the same, so here's a description of what they each mean.

Ignored: If this is checked, then ignored people MAY be able to see your ranch, but there must be something else checked for them to be able to see it.
Friends: People on your friends list can see your ranch. However, if you have someone on your friends list who is ignored, they cannot see your ranch unless you allow ignored people to see your ranch.
Clubs: This works the same as friends, except the people who can see you are the people in the same clubs that you are.
All others: This lets everyone see your ranch, (except maybe ignored people if you don't have that box checked).

Note: If you don't select either Friends, Clubs, or All others, then nobody will be able to see your ranch.

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Your Ranch Description
Your ranch description is a piece of text that you can set that tells others what your ranch is about. It is shown in the ranch public view page, so if you want to see what it will look like to others, go to that page.

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Accounting Ledger
Use the VHR accounting ledger to keep track of where you spend and receive money and tokens. Each time money moves either to or from your account, the ledger gets updated.

The ledger categories telling the total amount you've spent or received. Things with a (+) after them mean you received something, and things with a (-) after them mean you paid something.

Money Entries:

(Over all bets won or lost)

Tokens:

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Terrain
Terrain This allows you to choose the type of terrain you want your ranch to be situated upon. This choice has no effect on gameplay. It's just there to let you make your ranch look the way you want it to. When you change terrain, all of your current buildings go with you (yes it's a bit unrealistic!), so you won't have to buy them all over again. Since the terrains are a bit different, we suggest picking a terrain first, then starting to build your ranch.

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Building Your Ranch
VHR II gives you the ability to build up your ranch with stables and other objects. This aspect of the game is totally optional and has no effect on gameplay. It just looks neat. There is a cost in cash and tokens to place each object, and these costs are shown in the building list.
To start placing objects in your ranch, click on the "Construction" button in your ranch overview. This will bring up a list of buildings and other objects you can put into your ranch. Note that the list of objects should change over time as things are added and removed from the list. However, objects that are in your ranch will always stay there. You just might not be able to add new objects of that type.
To place a building in your ranch, click the icon next to the building name and move your mouse into the graphical portion of the game. A shadowy form of the object should appear and follow your mouse around. You can rotate the building by holding down 'z' or 'c' to rotate counter-clockwise and clockwise, respectively. When you're satisifed with where you want the building to go, left-click and the shadowy form will disappear, and a request will be sent to the VHR server to see if you have the money and tokens necessary to place the building. If so, it will be placed, and if not, you will get a failure message. If you start to place a building and decide you don't want to put it in your ranch, you can right-click before it's been placed finally, and it will just disappear.
Once a building has been placed, left-clicking on it will call the function associated with the building (if any). Right-clicking will bring up the painting menu that will allow you to change the color of the building if you wish.
Different things happen when you shift-click, however. A shift-left-click on a building will allow you to pick the building up and move it to another location (rotating it if you wish). While it's picked up, left-clicking will place it, and right-clicking will cause it to disappear, as it would if it were being placed fresh. However, it only disappears from your ranch, not from the main database. So, if you reload your ranch from the server, the object will still be there. Occasionally buildings will disappear when performing this process due to timing issues in the client. If that happens, just reload the ranch because the server copy of your ranch does not change until the building is actually placed in a new spot.
If you shift-right-click on a building in your ranch, then it will be deleted. Be careful with this as we will not be giving refunds of cash or tokens for when people delete things from their ranches.

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