Feed and Grow: Fish News

In late cretaceous ages a super-family of marine reptiles dominated seas and oceans.Scaling from early tiny mosasaurs like Aigialosaurus whose probably took advantage of cold-bloodness, breathing air and kept distance close to the shores where their stronger arms and legs could be of use.


Up to late massive Prognathodon that developed a special fluke on their tails that gave them the thrust while swimming. These late 'mosas' gave up on their walking agility in trade for swimming efficiency. They also possessed a very interesting feature that is yet only known to moray eels - Second pair of internal jaws which were useful (with combination of tongue) in devouring flesh since their teeth were for gripping not for cutting into smaller pieces.


Thanks to all of these features mosasaurs eventually out dominated their older siblings the Pliosaurs such as Kronosaurus. They used very unique way of swimming that can only be compared to turtles or birds. Depsite being the biggest in early cretaceous they simply could not compete with modern mosasaurs, even if they had stronger jaws and were very efficient in swimming for long distances, simply too slow in acceleration.

Therefore they went extinct.



Gameplay

• Achievements can no longer be gained after using cheats, also "Cheater" appears under coins if you used them.
  
• Survival currency does not save after using cheats.
  
• "pink food" that grows on the bottom now gives double experience.
  
• Your babies no longer get scared of you if you open your mouth.
  
• Megalodon has been resized to keep scale with Prognathodon
  
• Re-balanced costs, speeds, damages and sizes of many species.
  
• Bosses now seek much further for prey - so they will see you just when you see them.
  
• Aggressivity has been recoded, so even smaller predators will attempt to attack a weak or otherwise afk creature.
  
• Babies have gained double speed.
  
• Bigger fish now require more EXP to level up but at the same time bigger prey leaves more meat.
  

Graphics

• Fixed multiple "missing" eyes on creatures.
  
• Fixed instant rotation on some parts of creatures when changing direction ( mosa, ichty, etc )
  
• When changing graphics quality optimal image effects now turn on or off.
  
• Fixed model / animation bug that happened after spawning
  
• Fixed water splash effects
  

Controls

• Teeth - biting indicator no longer disappears when facing depth.
  
• While controlling a creature it's no longer possible to do a more than 180 degree turn which caused camera to "jump" from one direction to other and the creature turned opposite direction.
  
• Game now slows down when opening the in game menu - Pause returns
  

Networking

• Launched new more stable facilitator server.
  

Heavy thanks to all of you who gave us feedback.

As always looking forward to next update!

btw new prehistoric food - Knightia

This extinct, prehistoric class of jawed fish once dominated the oceans have been resurrected in this update.

Placoderms were in many ways very similar to sharks whose have been developing alongside placoderms. As air bladder was not yet evolved in their times, both of them required thick, not very movable pectoral fins that helped them to convert motion into sinking, rising or being upright.

Titanichthys - Great map
- largest placoderm that decided to go whale-filtering style

Armor on their head and thorax did not allow for very efficient gill movement, so they had to keep swimming to not drown. But unlike the naked sharks the armor also reduced their elasticity and streamlining making them very vulnerable to attacks from back. They had to face any attacker with their head, so they developed a large tail fin to counter the turning problem.

Coccosteus - Ocean map
- a very tiny placoderm - literary mini dunk would be ideal for aquariums

Most of placoderms turned their facial armor plates into thick ( not real ) teeth that were very effective at crushing / breaking through most of Devonian prey armor (mostly arthropods and other placoderms).

Dunkleosteus - before named 'Browurag'
The pop-star of placoderms

Game changes

• Placoderms take heavily reduced damage from front and increased damage from back
  
• Placoderm AI has been adjusted to face threat, instead of running away with slow speed
  
• Snap passive now charges even without mouth open and increases bite speed.
  

-was hard to take a screen as they are not usually seen
Replaces old eel visually and gets a AI rework to hide in between rocks.
Still will need a better rework as in real life they have second pair of jaws to help them swallow prey, but that's on a list for Mosa's dentist as well.


Wachuma visual rework

Blu visual rework

• All fish now instead of running straightforward from predator attempt to run away from it's way and mouth, so when the predator is too close they'll go behind him and then away.
  
• Herb/Coral fish have now have way reduced speed but increased agility.
  

Replaces old eel visually and gets a heavy stats rework to appear more fast accelerating and streamline predator. Also they and Goliaths have been temporary removed from Great map.

Why not just throw in one of those kick-ass predators.


Game changes

• Now can not stay still but have to keep swimming - like placoderms
  
• Shark AI now attacks bigger prey from back or side. 2x especially when attacking pacoderms.
  
• Shark AI now attacks crabs / crustaceans prey from bottom.
  
• Shark AI now does not let go, to utilize their passive.
  
• Cartilaginous skeleton makes them way quicker to turn around than bony fish similar to their size.
  
• Megalodon is now way bigger.
  
• Other species and their cost have been adjusted.
  
• Tiger sharks and Hammer heads now eat each other.
  
• Great White (boss in ocean map) - now eats big chunks of meat instead of just big fish
  

- all eyes in game are now shiny

• Now take reduced damage from top and increased from bottom.
  
• Trilobites received burrowing animation,
  
• Crab AI now defend them selves way more effectively. ( scales with game difficulty )
  

-new catfish model

• New fluid like tail animations on most bigger fish.
  
• TESTING FEEDBACK - under 30% HP after few seconds fish go into "wounded" state, they can't swim properly and turn bellies upwards. During this time they bait nearby predators.
  
• Big fish now cost more but drop more meat.
  
• Big meat now takes longer to break but gives more exp.
  
• Some of the reworked fish don't have babies reworked.
  
• Starfish like food now gives more exp.
  
• Optimization - you can now bite at max only 10 objects.
  
• Ocean map is now available for testing on multiplayer.
  

Ocean Map

• Heavily optimizations have been done, should yield at least +40% FPS
  
• New rocks have been added for Morays to hide within. ( we will continue on updating the map visually in next updates )
  
• Spawns have been replaced for balance.
  

Difficulty

• Easy- AI has bigger reaction time, swims slower + more herbivore count
  
• Normal- No significant changes
  
• Hard- AI has less reaction time, defends better + more predator count
  

Our 2 years old implementation of multiplayer was way too hard to maintain and too complicated to even just setup. So we've decided to create a new easier, simpler and more stable one.

The old one was so deeply connected with everything in game that we had no other choice than to just rewrite 80% of whole game logic code. (spaghetti code ) After constant three months of removing - fixing - implementing. Somewhat stable "release-ble" version is in our hands, ready for further debugging.

We have also improved our error reporting tool to send us the location the error occurred and the stacktrace so we can start fixing these pesky bugs.

The temporary solution we came with, seems to work well enough despite the latency and packet loss connectivity over the internet comes with.
btw piranhas are broken


We know that the current deathmatch mode is broken in it's essence, yet it's the most flexible mode for a "very" nice multiplayer experience. That's why we've added some sandbox-like server settings that let you guys set what fish should spawn, how many and at what price.

So please somehow ignore any game beaking bugs (restarting the game should fix most of them and we will start working on them as soon as we get the bug reports)

Finally go and try some of the entertaining modes which we will make into presets. For example try playing as swamp crabs, trying to jump over waterlilies while dodging predators underneath.


Pike - Remake

Piranha - remake

Puffer fish - Remake

Megalodon

and some seals


-Fixed a unavailability to spawn in survival mode.


-Adjusted size, strength, and behavior of Megalodon
-Added highlighting effect into Server Settings list of creatures for better orientation
-Added new Players online table into multiplayer games so you can see who's playing with you, what creature they are and at what level
-Added 15s Timeout message when attempting to connect to a server

NEW Creature - Ghost shark

NEW Creature - Narwhal

NEW Creature - Lantern fish

NEW Creature - Tomco fish

NEW Creature - Colossal crab

NEW Creature - Whale shark

• Unlocked Browurag
  
• Unlocked Barracuda

• Deathmatch mode can now be played on Great map.
  
• Crab madness mode can now be played on Great map, currently with only 2 creatures - Colossal Crab and Megalograptus.
  
• Added an option to hide attack indicator into controls settings. This should be usefull for taking screenshots where you don't want the indicator to be visible.
  

• Fixed a bug where water "fog" color wouldn't change when translating between cold/warm water.
  
• Fixed a bug where two bosses wouldn't fight each other as they were inheriting code from base fish that forced to never fight a boss.
  
• Fixed a graphical bug where above water surface the would would be enlighten wrongly when global illumination is turned on. Image effect ambient occlusion has been also removed from very distant objects.
  
• Fixed a bug where your mouse cursor would disappear when opening a new map.
  

Looking forward to do next update!

*edit 0.8.7a - Fixed unavailability to select a fish in Crab madness mode ocean map

NEW Creature - Ghost shark

NEW Creature - Narwhal

NEW Creature - Lantern fish

NEW Creature - Tomco fish

NEW Creature - Colossal crab

NEW Creature - Whale shark

• Unlocked Browurag
  
• Unlocked Barracuda

• Deathmatch mode can now be played on Great map.
  
• Crab madness mode can now be played on Great map, currently with only 2 creatures - Colossal Crab and Megalograptus.
  
• Added an option to hide attack indicator into controls settings. This should be usefull for taking screenshots where you don't want the indicator to be visible.
  

• Fixed a bug where water "fog" color wouldn't change when translating between cold/warm water.
  
• Fixed a bug where two bosses wouldn't fight each other as they were inheriting code from base fish that forced to never fight a boss.
  
• Fixed a graphical bug where above water surface the would would be enlighten wrongly when global illumination is turned on. Image effect ambient occlusion has been also removed from very distant objects.
  
• Fixed a bug where your mouse cursor would disappear when opening a new map.
  

Looking forward to do next update!

*edit 0.8.7a - Fixed unavailability to select a fish in Crab madness mode ocean map