To start playing Petz 4, you can go ahead and download the game (it’s abandonware!) from Yabiko, a Petz site run by the awesome community member Reflet. All you have to do is pop that folder somewhere on your computer other than Program Files (Desktop or Documents works great!) and start up the Petz 4.exe.
-Don’t navigate away from the splash screen until a popup comes up talking about something called “ViaVoice”- just check off for it not to show up again, and the game should load. If you don’t handle this popup, the game won’t load- and if you can’t find it/it doesn’t show up initially, you can navigate to it in Task Manager. Once you have that handled, you should be good to go!
-Reflet’s installation of the game comes with the fanmade utility PetzA installed, which allows you to do things like view and manipulate the “brainsliders” of your petz (changing things like age, hunger, energy, etc), breed petz manually, and a whole lot more. You can access it in the top bar of the game! You can even take out more than 2 petz at a time- just click a nametag even if it’s in use, and the pick-a-pet menu will pop up all the same.
-If you're using our prepackaged install (found in the misc downloads section), you will need to do some utility shenanigans to make the edited .exe work out of the box. There's a readme inside the download for further installation explanations. Please read this or your EXE may not work.
-For best results on running this game on new computers, run it as Administrator + in Compatibility Mode, ideally the Windows XP + service pack version specifically. If you have issues, this’ll probably fix it. If not, feel free to ask someone in either the Morbit or Petz communities!
-Petz is meant to be a game explored- it doesn’t have tutorials, and any instructions are given as suggestions in the on-screen tips at the bottom of the screen. If you have questions, never be afraid to ask, but you can find a lot of things on your own!
To install the modded content found here, unzip the .zip files and navigate to your Petz 4 folder- here’s generally where to install stuff, based on file extension. When in doubt on where to put things- check if there's a readme .txt file included!
.pet files (individual petz)- Petz 4/Adopted Petz/
-these files will sometimes come with external textures- check the readme!
.cat files (cat breedfiles)- Petz 4/Resource/
-these files will sometimes come with external textures- check the readme!
.dog files (dog breedfiles)- Petz 4/Resource/
-these files will sometimes come with external textures- check the readme!
.clo files (clothing)- Petz 4/Resource/Clothes/
.toy files (toyz)- Petz 4/Resource/Toyz/
.env files (playscenes)- Petz 4/Resource/Area/