Customizing Petit Mates

Use Settings for size and speech on/off controls. This page explains how to add your own remarks by editing text files. You do not need to edit the built-in character images or the app itself.

Choose a file

File	Purpose	Applying changes
user.toml	Everyday display, counts, speech, and weather	Restart the app
speech.toml	Remarks and bubble duration	Restart the app
behavior.toml	Additional animation conditions, reactions, and personality	Use a restart for user-file changes
params.toml and related files	Detailed movement, timing, and physics values	See behavior parameters for OS-specific paths and watching
manifest.toml	Sprite and animation definitions	For character asset authors

User folders for speech.toml and behavior.toml sit below the same folder as user.toml.

System	Base folder
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/PetitMates/
Windows	%LOCALAPPDATA%\PetitMates\

PetitMates/
├── user.toml
├── common/
│   └── speech.toml
└── bearded_dragon/
    └── speech.toml

Use common to add remarks for all species, or a species folder to target one. Species folder names are bearded_dragon, pond_turtle, and leopard_gecko. Create the folders and files you need.

Add a remark

1. Quit the app and back up any existing user files.
2. Open common/speech.toml for all species, or bearded_dragon/speech.toml for Bearded Dragons only.
3. Save the example below. To add it to an existing file, append the complete block starting with [[speech]].
4. Launch the app, enable speech, and wait.

[[speech]]
text_ja = "少し休んでいこうかな"
text_en = "Maybe it is time for a little break."
trigger = "random"
weight = 1.0

Your remark joins the built-in candidates. It is not guaranteed to appear immediately after launch; ordinary remarks involve waiting and random selection. If text in the selected language is missing, text in the other language is used as a fallback.

Loading and merging

The order is built-in common → built-in species → user species → user common. [[speech]] blocks are appended, not used to replace built-in remarks. Repeating the same text in multiple files creates duplicate candidates.

For [speech_display], fields specified in later files take precedence. Remarks have no override ID. Files that cannot be parsed as TOML are skipped, so check quotation marks and the spelling of [[speech]] if your text does not appear.

Change bubble duration

[speech_display]
duration_sec = 8.0
fade_out_sec = 1.0

[[speech]]
text_ja = "今日はゆっくりいこう"
text_en = "Taking it slowly today."
trigger = "random"
duration_sec = 10.0

The default total duration is 6 seconds, including a 1-second fade at the end. An entry's duration_sec applies only to that remark. Use positive durations and keep the fade shorter than the total display time.

Speech conditions

Key	Values and meaning
text_ja, text_en	Japanese and English text. Provide at least one
trigger	random, time, weather, or state
weight	Weight in ordinary selection. Defaults to 1.0. Use a positive value
hours	Array of hours, 0–23
weekdays	Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun
months	Array of months, 1–12
seasons	spring, summer, autumn, winter
weather	sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy
temp_min, temp_max	Minimum and maximum temperature in Celsius
state	Event name for the state trigger: startup, landing, or hour_change
duration_sec	Display duration for this remark
oneshot	Name of an asset-defined animation to accompany the remark

Use trigger = "time" for time conditions. If you specify several conditions, such as day, month, and hour, all must match. Seasons use fixed month ranges: March–May for spring, June–August for summer, September–November for autumn, and December–February for winter.

[[speech]]
text_ja = "そろそろひと息つこう"
text_en = "A good time for a short break."
trigger = "time"
hours = [15, 16]
weekdays = ["Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri"]
weight = 1.0

This makes the remark a candidate during the 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. hours on weekdays; it is not a notification scheduled for exactly 3 p.m. Time fields on a random entry do not filter candidates in the current implementation.

Use the weather trigger for weather conditions. Candidates require data from weather settings. The state trigger supports the three named events above; it does not monitor arbitrary movement state names. For hour_change, hours can restrict the target hours. Event remarks are chosen separately from ordinary weighted selection.

Personality and additional animations

The [personality] section of behavior.toml influences movement frequency, speed, and rest. These values come from the built-in files; they are not defaults for fields in the settings window.

Species	restlessness	curiosity	sleepiness	agility
Bearded Dragon	0.60	0.50	0.25	0.65
Japanese Pond Turtle	0.15	0.25	0.65	0.35
Leopard Gecko	0.70	0.75	0.30	0.60

Values range from 0 to 1 and relate to activity, exploration, sleepiness, and speed. The current implementation recalculates some values from personality after loading parameters. See parameter priority.

User behavior.toml files participate in startup merging, but the live personality watcher uses the Mac asset folder or an EXE-adjacent {species}_behavior.toml on Windows. Reloading after startup may change the personality, so do not treat a user personality override as a fixed setting.

[[behavior]] adds animations triggered by time, weather, or random conditions. [[reaction]] responds to grabbed, dropped, or hovered. Animation names must exist in the asset's manifest.toml; undefined names are ignored. These lists are appended and do not replace the full state machine.

For changes involving assets or code, see state transitions and behavior parameters. Start with adding remarks if you want to keep the scope of your changes easy to follow.