FISH FEAR ME News

Ahoy, cosmic debtors! It is once again FISH FEAR ME Friday!

Let's jump right in with the patch notes. As always, notes tagged with ⚓ are community suggestions!


[h2]Balance changes[/h2]

• ⚓ Buffed Cursed Crown: now, instead of the curse being that you're stuck at 1hp forever, it's that you can no longer heal. This is still a very significant downside, but it should hopefully provide build niche opportunities outside of Ghost Ship runs.
  
• ⚓ Added triple invincibility duration on expending a Stitched Heart
• Accidentally nerfed and then partially buffed Chum. So it turns out that Chum was actually getting called twice per fish summon initialization, which meant that it was significantly stronger than intended when combined with Ichthyomancy, Dragon Tooth, or Tamed Shark. I fixed the double call to rein in the balance more towards what I'd intended... and then gave it a more intentional buff so it'd stay competitive in the meta. It's weaker than it was, but stronger than it was originally supposed to be!
  
• Improved fish summon AI
  

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• ⚓ Fixed a bug where the Trawler and Party Boat would show missing day 4 unlocks
  
• ⚓ Fixed a bug where using the Bell of the Deep would consume junk fish lots, causing the spawn pool to deplete prematurely
  

[h2]Misc[/h2]

• ⚓ Changed the sprite for Moonwater Lure to make it more apparent when it's been unlocked (and cuter)
  
• Made the "continuous hold" fishing minigame the default. I'm keeping classic mode in the options menu for the real sickos, but it's very apparent that this new version is strongly preferred by pretty much everyone. I'll be doing some UI changes on it soon to make it more visually clear what's going on, but the long and short is you can hold down the spacebar forever now to just continually summon new fish!
  
• Did a gigantic optimization pass on pretty much the entire game.
  

I want to talk a bit about this optimization pass. As I mentioned in the last newspost, I brought in visiting programmer (and absolute genius) Noé Charron to help fix some of the lag spikes the game was having, and they REALLY delivered. To showcase this, I ran a benchmark on my old Thinkpad, with the build the community's started calling "the lag bomb" (Ichthyomancy/Cursed Crown/Absolute Violence/Summoning Ritual). Here it is with last week's build...

(VAR is short for Framerate Variance; basically the distance between the longest and shortest frames in the past 60 frames. High VAR means a huge lag spike has just happened.)

And with this week's build.



Long story short, Noé's a miracle worker.

Now, there's two things to discuss with optimization. First off, this is a continuous process. There are still parts of the game that need optimizing, and I'll be partly relying on y'all to point out specific circumstances that cause lag spikes! I'm already aware of one element that still needs fixing (squid trails are a huge lag culprit at the moment), but I'm sure there's other elements that I haven't spotted yet because I'm just one person.

Second off, optimization can introduce some really subtle bugs. The way that optimization works is you take a previously-flexible part of the game and make it more rigid by encoding some gameplay assumptions as fundamental rules. Stuff like "attacks will never change size over their lifetimes" or "fish all have the same set of components." Then, you suddenly remember an edge case to that, and then an edge case to the edge case, and now you have a bunch of tiny changes to game logic where things don't work quite like they're supposed to. I've gone through and already fixed a fair few of these bugs, but it's a near-inevitability that I've missed something because -- again -- I'm just one person!

So, with both those in mind, if you notice anything odd about the game over the next week or two, please let us know! Community manager Hearth has put together a bug reports thread in the Forum for your convenience.

Now, on to the future! My current plans include:

• Continuing to work on optimization
• Continuing to work on usability
• Giving the new fishing minigame a more unique look
  
• Making controller support a lot more functional (this one's a bit of a bear to fix, but I promise it's on my list)
  
• Starting production on the free WOMEN WANT ME expansion

Actually, on the topic of WOMEN WANT ME, I've got two pieces of news!

First off, I'm excited to announce that Josie Brechner will be returning to make another song for the expansion! Josie's the composer for the base game, and I think we can all agree her music is one of the best things about it. The new track doesn't have a name yet, but I can already tell you it's gonna be a great one.

Second off, I want to highlight one of the new fish I'm working on for the expansion! Say hello to the Lake of the Lady's stealthiest occupant, the Mimic Octopus...




What do you most want to see in a new map?

Happy fishing,
Heather Flowers

P.S. Here's the new sprite for the Moonwater lure! As is indie dev tradition, both it and the Moonbeam Catfish are based off my real-life cat.

Ahoy, cosmic debtors! Happy FISH FEAR ME Friday!!

It's been one week since launch and I'm slowly starting to exist on this planet again. Today, I've got a patch for y'all and a couple announcements!

First off, the patch notes! As always, patches marked with an ⚓ are community suggestions.


[h2]New content[/h2]

• ⚓ [EXPERIMENTAL] Added an alternate version of the fishing minigame which allows you to spawn more fish by just continuously holding the FISH button. To activate it, look in the Options menu!
  

[h2]Bugfixes/misc[/h2]

• ⚓ Fixed a bug where swapping bait partway through the fishing minigame would cause the wrong type of bait to be expended
  
• ⚓ Fixed a bug where sacrificing fish to an altar would cause Ichthyomancy to become dormant until you earned back all the fish you lost
  
• Fixed a major performance hitch when succeeding at the fishing minigame
  
• Fixed a bug where every boat's destruction animation briefly turned it into the rowboat
  

If you try out the alternate version of the fishing minigame, be sure to let us know how it goes! Big changes to fundamental systems like this are always a little tricky, so this alternate mode is very liable to change over the next couple weeks.

Additionally, I'm excited to report that the project has a couple new faces! You may have already seen Hearth, our new community manager, in the forums, but here's her self-introduction:

Hello everyone!

My name's Hearth, and my pronouns are She/Her. I've agreed to help Heather in organizing the bug reports and feedback you've all been submitting! You can think of me as your courier dragon, compiling and taking all your input to Heather for them to address.

I'll also be moderating in case any discussions here get too out of hand, but from what I've seen y'all are pretty well-behaved.

I'm here to help, so feel free to poke me with anything you've got! I hope you're all enjoying what Heather put together here, and I'll see you around!

-Hearth

She's already been helping out massively with the project, making sure the forums are organized and nobody's feedback slips through the cracks. And yes, fish do fear her -- she's been a playtester since day one!

Additionally, visiting programmer Noé Charron is going to be helping out with performance optimization over the next couple weeks. The performance fix in the patch notes is something they spotted immediately upon touring the project, and it's the first of many improvements to come! Next steps will involve completely retooling the fish and attack scripts to use object pooling, which should solve a LOT of lag issues once completed.

Finally, preparations for the next free content expansion, WOMEN WANT ME, are continuing apace. I can't share much yet, but I should have more news very soon! The Lake of the Lady calls...


[h2]Question of the Week[/h2]
If you could add any new boat to the game, what would it be?

Happy fishing,
Heather Flowers

Ahoy, cosmic debtors!

First of all, I want to thank each and every one of you for a tremendously successful launch. These past few days have been an absolute whirlwind of excitement -- did you know we've been on the New and Trending list for three entire days? I'm still barely on this planet. To every single person who played the game, or wishlisted it, or posted their thoughts on it: thank you, thank you, thank you.

So, with that in mind, let's talk about the future! I'm not planning on resting on my laurels here. Y'all have shown that there's a genuine desire for this game, and so I want to continue making it the best that it can be. This boils down to three things: optimization, usability, and content.

[h2]OPTIMIZATION[/h2]
I've heard the reports that the game doesn't run as well as it could -- I'll fully admit I'm not the best programmer when it comes to optimization, which is why I'm bringing in a more experienced programmer to help. They'll be looking over the codebase over the next week or two, noting any and all possible performance improvements, and I'll be making as many of them as possible. With a little luck and a lot of work, the game should be running much more smoothly soon!

[h2]USABILITY[/h2]
I want to thank everyone who's been posting their thoughts in the forum about parts of the game that are unclear or don't work as expected! I'll be fixing as many of those issues as possible over the next few weeks, and rounding out some of the game's systems to better answer some of the questions that keep coming up (e.g. "where the hell is the Red Herring"). This may be a little patchwork over time -- certain things that seem easy are actually extremely difficult, and certain other things that seem difficult are surprisingly easy. I fully intend to get to everything, but it might take a while.

[h2]CONTENT[/h2]
As it stands, the game is a complete experience. It sets out a series of premises -- the life debt, the Leviathan, the book of forbidden knowledge, the multiple maps -- and fully explores each and every one of them by the end of its runtime. I wouldn't have launched the game if I felt it was incomplete! But that doesn't mean there can't be more to the story.

So, with that in mind, I want to announce my plans for the first free content update to FISH FEAR ME! It's still very early in its planning stage (I don't even have an idea of a release date yet), but I want to give you a taste.

You awaken in the middle of the night as your boat lurches. "Rise," a voice calls from the lake, and you do. You step onto the deck of your ship, gazing out at the reflection of the shattered moon on the water. The light coalesces into a figure beneath the surface: glowing, ethereal, feminine.

The Lady rises into the air, and as she does, you notice something trailing behind her. A long, metallic object: the only part of her that seems remotely real. "I wish to give you something," she says, holding the sword aloft. It lifts from her hands, suspended in moonlight, dripping and weighty.

In an instant, the sword points at you, flying forwards. No time to react. It pierces your heart and you fall. As you succumb once more to the Deep, the Lady whispers one more thing: "If you wish to prove your worthiness, find me again..."

Announcing the first free expansion to FISH FEAR ME...



FISH FEAR ME: WOMEN WANT ME will focus on a new map, the Lake of the Lady, and its supernatural inhabitants. It will feature new upgrades, new weapons, new boats, new fish, and new gameplay mechanics. If I do my job right, it'll provide both new content for new players and a new challenge for experienced players to overcome!

As previously mentioned, this will be a free content update, available to everyone who owns the game. I'm not certain when exactly it'll come out, but I'll keep y'all updated on its progress!!

That's all for this time! I have even more plans once all this is done, but I don't want to overwhelm y'all. Thank you for reading, and thank you for playing FISH FEAR ME!

Happy fishing,
Heather Flowers

Ahoy, cosmic debtors! It's time for another quick post-launch patch, focusing primarily on stability and usability. Changes marked with ⚓ are community suggestions!


- Changed the Argo's base health from 1 to 15


- ⚓ Added a cursor lock option to the controls menu, so you can lock the mouse to the boundaries of the game screen
- ⚓ Added a sell speed slider to the pause menu. Now you can set your default sell speed to be much faster, or much slower if you want that for some reason! The fast sell button still serves a purpose: at the highest speed level, it'll instantly sell all your fish once clicked.
- Changed the wording on certain altars to more accurately reflect their ritual requirements


- ⚓ Changed the Ichthyomancy/Dragon Tooth/Crossbones logic to play nicely with Summoning Ritual
- ⚓ Fixed the summon AI so it won't go chasing after distant fish

Thank you to everyone who's been posting their thoughts on the game and reporting any bugs they find! It's extremely valuable to get this kind of feedback. I'm currently putting together a development roadmap for the next couple months, so keep an eye out for that!

Happy fishing,
Heather Flowers

Hi, cosmic debtors!

First off, I wanted to thank you all for a successful launch! I'm extremely happy that the game has resonated so well with people, and I can't wait to continue working on it with y'all.

[h2]PATCH NOTES[/h2]

• Fixed a garbage collection issue that would cause game saving to fail in rare circumstances
  
• Fixed an issue where pressing "Fast Sell" on the first available frame would trap you in slow sell mode
  

I'll be posting a development roadmap sometime soon detailing my next plans for this game! For now, I'm focusing on squashing as many launch bugs as possible. Thank you to everyone who's been reporting their findings!

Happy fishing!
-- Heather Flowers