Megaquarium News

Hey everyone and welcome to the very first FishBlast.

Written by the community, for the community: The FishBlast is your monthly update on what is happening within the Megaquarium community, their creations and more.


Don’t you love it, when the aquarium is well decorated, and the visitor emerses themselves in the theme of your aquarium? User 100_pourcent_clafoutis really showed us what your builds could look like by using some of the many mods on the Steam workshop. This cave-tunnel adds depth and style to your builds. Causing all your visitors to feel like they are in an underwater cave-adventure!











You might be wondering; these items are not in the game, are they? These are some of the top-notch mods that are available for you on the workshop. Look for the Building kit, Custom Rocks, and maybe you can create this build yourself!


This edition’s spotlight will be focussed on a mod that changes the way your aquarium looks. Not in the way of the fish collection but the way you can display the fish.

We are talking about the “Raised Tanks” mod by Flishster.

These tanks change the way your aquarium looks by putting the tank floor on eye-level for your guests. Now everyone can easily spot those hermit crabs and look through the caves to see that one tiny chromis in the back of the tank. This really is a mod you would need to have in your game.


Build of the tank is by Bosjesman

Get this amazing mod right here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1996820999&searchtext=raised




[h3]Common Name: Spotted Boxfish[/h3]
[h3]Scientific Name: Ostracion meleagris[/h3]



Range: Indo-Pacific and predominately along the coast of Mexico
Habitat: Lagoons and seaweed reefs
Size: 15CM (6 inches)
Diet: Small sponges, mollusks, algae, and other small marine life
[h3]Needs in Megaquarium:[/h3]

• Warm waters
  
• Greedy
  
• Dislikes Food Competitors
  
• Armored
  

[h3]Fun facts:[/h3]

• Males of the Spotted Boxfish are more likely to swim in open waters than females
  
• Juveniles of the Spotted Boxfish stay usually near rocky areas, while the adults tends to go near reef crests.
  
• All Juveniles are born as a female; some can change biologically to become males over time.
  

Want to be more involved in our community? Join our discord and share your works, we love seeing what you created and maybe we feature your work in the next FishBlast.

https://discord.gg/jKpSJKA7Rh

See you in the next one!
Your community liaison, Timmiegun

It's been a little while since the last update so I thought I'd let you know what I've been working on.


I mentioned back in August that I've been working on a significant performance update. I've achieved what I originally set out to and am currently looking at a potential fps (frames per second) improvement of 64% over the current live version!

However while working on this I've delved into the engine more and discovered that even greater gains could be possible. The figure mentioned above would probably only be available to those with quad core CPUs because it relies on a lot of multithreading.

The next stage has the potential to deliver the same sort of performance to those with lesser systems by making greater use of the calculation potential of the graphics card.

It's an exciting development and if all goes to plan should pave the way for bigger and better aquariums than ever! I'm hopeful to release the update early in 2021. Thank you for your patience!



Beyond the performance update, there are many exciting things on the horizon.

For starters, I have an ambitious redesign of the sandbox mode planned. My aims are to:

• Improve the way Sandbox mode interacts with DLC and mods. Lots to talk about here, maybe enough for an entire blog post! ;)
  
• Make a truly everlasting sandbox where trades and quests are generated forever rather than at specific prestige values.
  
• Increase the variety and complexity of side-objectives.
  

But these are just ideas. How would you like to see sandbox mode improved?

I also want 2021 to be an even bigger year for Megaquarium than 2020! It'll be a tough year to beat, but I'm going to give it my best shot!

I would love to be able to release new official content more often and I'm working on some ideas which might help with that. I'll hopefully have more to share next year.

All that remains to be said is: Happy holidays!

[h3]Bugs[/h3]

• Fixed bug where you couldn't delete miscarriage reports.
  
• Fixed bug where some items would not appear in build menu at ultrawide resolutions.
  
• Fixed typo in 4. Valberg. "less" -> "fewer".
  
• Removed unused eater tags from midas cichlid.
  
• Reduced width of cashflow window so it can appear in very narrow resolutions.
  
• Staff with all level 10 skills will not create a level up message. Existing messages created before this patch will stay around.
  

[h3]Modding[/h3]

• Fixed another issue that was preventing custom sounds in mods. Should be working now.
  

After spending the last week on the public beta branch, v2.1.1 is now live for everyone. Apart from a couple of minor bugs which I've now fixed, the latest update appears to be going down really well.

Thank you to everybody who switched over to the beta branch to test the new features, I appreciate all of your feedback!

I've posted the same information as appeared in the original beta announcement below, for reference.


This update is crammed full of great suggestions that have come directly from the community. From an improved build menu interface to a button which allows you to toggle all your mods at once - this update is all about making it easier for you to play the game. A better interface allows you to concentrate on what's important - all of the fishies!

For a full changelog see the bottom of this post, but first let's take a closer look at the heavy hitters.


I mentioned this in the last dev blog but perspective mode is now live!



It's a subtle difference but for those who find the orthographic camera mode disorienting, this small change will make the game much more accessible. For the rest of us, it's a matter of personal preference.


I wasn't 100% sure about this feature prior to implementing it, but I'm really pleased with how it's turned out.



It's now possible to collapse individual categories in the build menu so that you're not looking at everything at once. Coupled with a button at the top which allows you to collapse/expand all the categories at once, it's now really easy to find a particular group that you're interested in.

I think this feature will be especially helpful to those players who have a lot of mods installed.

NB Don't forget about the search function though! If you know the name of what you're looking for, the search function is still the fastest way to find it IMO. Remember you can use the Enter key as a hotkey to start a search!


Another feature that I never considered until it was suggested by the community. There is now a toggle at the top of the animal build menu which allows you toggle between showing Tropical or Coldwater animals.



Given that these animals will never safely occupy the same tank, I can see how dividing them like this makes a lot of sense.


When you hover over the growth icon of an animal that isn't fully grown there is additional information now. As well as telling you how long until it grows up, it also lists any further stages of growth afterwards.



In addition the mechanic has been flipped around to make it easier to understand. Instead of an increasing count e.g. 0/3, 1/3. 2/3 etc. It's now just a simple day countdown. 3 days until growth, 2 days until growth, 1 day until growth.

It's a small thing, but in my testing it made an immediate impact on how easy it was to keep track of things.


Modding enthusiasts rejoice! You can now enable/disable all mods with the click of a single button at the top of the Modding Manager.


Another one for people who use a lot of mods. If a mods causes the game to fail to load, then all mods will be automatically disabled and the game reloaded.

This will at least allow players to get into the game. From there, they can re-enable mods one at a time (or in groups) via the mod manager to try to determine which mod is causing the issue.

The most common cause of the game failing to load was when a mod depended on another mod for extra animal food types, but this depended upon mod was not installed. If this specific case is detected by the game, it will now automatically insert "Orange Pellet" as the required food for the animal, rather than fail to load.

• Added perspective mode.
  
• Added collapsible headings to build menu.
  
• Added coldwater toggle.
  
• Improved growth icon.
  
• Added a note about when certain breeding locations unlock to the breeding tooltip.
  
• Added a count to the messages when fry and eggs grow up.
  
• Added a bubble above the poster when it's not connected to a tank.
  
• You can now build walls up against the edge of all tanks.
  
• Staff don't prioritise tasks for which they have the required item quite as much. When comparing tasks, those which don't require the staff to fetch a new item are considered slightly closer than those that do require an item switch. Previously, they were considered infinitely closer and prioritised above all tasks that required an item switch.
  
• Increased performance of build menu.
  
• Slightly improved efficiency of some graphical operations. (More substantial performance improvements are still on the way!)
  
• Fixed bug where if a Biter caused the death of another animal, no cause would be shown in the resulting message.
  
• Added a message when a pregnant animal loses their baby (miscarriage).
  
• Corrected autofeeder food tooltip.
  
• Added light icon to lights when you select them.
  
• Fixed bug where center of feeding platform tank was wrong.
  
• Calcium reactor (and other external "aquascaping") no longer counts towards explorer count.
  
• Increased stability of camera to stop it going out of alignment. 'home'/'h' shortcut should always correct issues.
  
• Fixed bug where staff animation kept playing when assigned a single square zone.
  
• Fixed bug where water quality would go above 100%.
  
• Fixed bug where long necked turtle, dwarf crocodiles, green anaconda and manatee could not be eaten. IE They can be eaten now!
  
• Improved aeroplane objective on 5. Diamond River so that freshwater subcondition will only tick if the aeroplane is in a freshwater tank.
  
• You can no longer sell the aeroplane on 5. Diamond River.
  
• You can no longer sell the panther crabs on 5. Diamond River.
  
• Fixed bug where you couldn't search for communal animals.
  
• Fixed bug where guests got stuck in toilet.
  
• Fixed bug: "Tank not listed in Ledger for some Animals" - blue knuckle hermit crabs.
  
• Fixed bug in 4. Kairobi where the small beach tank did not start available.
  
• The random seed is used for more things in sandbox mode.
  
• Fix type in Chinese on 10. Megalopolis.
  
• Fixed bug where highlight in game world would persist when moving over UI.
  
• Vending machines no longer sell an item to a guest when they reach them if they have run out.
  
• Removed shadows from animals while placing them.
  
• Added 1st person tutorial to 3. Elmshorn.
  
• Added ledger tutorials to 6. Hartcliff and 2. Paskovka.
  
  [h3]Modding[/h3]
  
• Added Enable/Disable all mods button.
  
• If a mod causes the game to fail to load, all mods are disabled automatically and the game is restarted.
  
• If an animal food is detected as missing, the animal is set to eat "Orange Pellet" instead.
  
• Added support for land predation. This is not currently used by any vanilla animals but can be added to a land egg with the following:
  

  "predation":{
      "landOnlyPredators":true,
      "parentProtection":0.06,
  },

• Fixed bug so that mods can use custom sound effects EDIT 19-10-20: This doesn't appear to be working after all at the moment. This will be fixed in a later update.
• Added additional logs during mod loading to help identify which object/mod is causing the issue.
  
• Regarding change "Staff don't prioritise tasks which use the same item quite as much." the parameters can be tweaked inside a data file:
  

  
  "parameters":{
      "taskfinderHasItemTaskDistanceMultiplier":1,
      // When taskfinder already has required item, the distance away is multiplied by this number.
      "taskfinderHasItemTaskDistanceAddOn":-11,
     // When taskfinder already has required item, the distance away is added to this number.
  }

• Fixed bug which occurred if W, A, S or D was held while transitioning out of 1st person view.
  
• Fixed issue where animals without a temperature requirement would not appear regardless of which temperature filter was selected. They now appear all the time.
  
• When a guest is selected, negative thoughts now appear with the number in red while positive ones appear green. This matches the color coding in the main guest thoughts list.
  

[h3]Update 18/10/2020[/h3]
This update has progressed from beta and is now live for everyone:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/600480/announcements/detail/4711287564971852993