Megaquarium News

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'm currently in the middle of a significant update on the performance side of things. As the game continues to grow both via official content and user generated mods, great performance is a must.

At this point, a lot of the "low hanging fruit" has already been harvested, so to make significant performance improvements I need to make fundamental changes to the game engine.

I'm currently working on a new system which utilises the CPUs additional cores (currently the game only uses 2 cores at a time) to crunch the numbers for objects which move and are animated (animals, guests, staff).

As you can imagine this is a big update which is taking time to do right. But early signs are pointing to a good performance boost, especially on very high spec CPUs which have many cores.


Another feature I'm excited to share once it's ready is a new perspective camera mode. I know that this is really important to some players out there so I'm glad to finally be able to add this.



It's a subtle difference but for people who find the orthographic perspective unpleasant I imagine it'll be a real blessing.

It's not ready to go live just yet, but once it is you'll be able to switch between the two modes at will so it's up to you how you play. Will you switch to perspective or continue with the "classic" orthographic camera?

[h3]25% off Freshwater Frenzy DLC[/h3]
Thank you to everybody who's had kind words to say about the expansion. The response has been overwhelmingly positive which is really great.

If you've played the expansion, please consider leaving a review to let other know what you think of it. This will help other players decide whether it's something they're interested in. You can do this via the store page if you own it:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1315300/Megaquarium_Freshwater_Frenzy__Deluxe_Expansion/

And finally, just a quick note that there's currently 25% off Freshwater Frenzy for the next week. If you've been sitting on the side-lines not sure whether to dive into the world of freshwater, now might be a great time to get stuck in!

Small patch in between larger updates to stay on top of recently reported bugs.

[h3]Balance/Improvements[/h3]

• Added message about search feature to 5. Napalos.
  
• Moved search examples tooltip to a little info 'i' to the right of the search bar so it's easier to find.
  

[h3]Bugs[/h3]

• Fixed issue where tasks say they are inaccessible to staff when they are not.
  
• You can no longer sell the Manatees in FF 5. Diamond River.
  
• German: Steinkoralle renamed to Montipora
  

[h3]Balance/Improvements[/h3]

• When zoned staff don't have a task they will return to and stay in their zone. They can still exit their zones to complete any part of an assigned task e.g. to reach a dispenser or if the shortest route to a task is outside the zone.
  
• Zoned staff are assigned tasks before non-zoned staff. This means when a new day starts, they will have first pick of the tasks and then non-zoned staff will collect tasks from the ones that are remaining.
  
• Guests will not be attracted to podiums if they have already heard the current talk.
  
• Prestige generated by guests who have left the aquarium will continue to count toward your prestige total until they decay in the normal way (1 game day after the prestige was generated). Previously, you lost the prestige immediately when the guest left.*
  
• Smoothed out work done when a new day starts to reduce the frame spike in large aquariums.
  

[h3]Bugs[/h3]

• Sandbox: merchants and trades which provide shoalers will give 1 extra animal so it can be traded away.
  
• Fixed bug where guest thoughts would show the thoughts that were generated the latest in the day, rather than most recently, first.
  
• Removed large margin on right hand side of dropdown items to make more space for the text.
  
• Fixed bug where accessory icon stayed grey in staff manage tab even after it has been collected.
  
• French and Russian: money symbol next to current money will not roll onto next line.
  

*In practice this won't make a large difference. In medium to large aquariums, guest prestige tends to decay before they leave anyway. However this small tweak will make the mechanic easier to understand. Your prestige total is simply the amount of prestige generated in the last game day.

This patch fixes an issue in the Chinese version of the game, where the cashflow window did not appear correctly.

I have a more substantial update coming soon with some nice (much requested) improvements to the staff behaviour when they don't have a job, plus some optimisation improvements which will hopefully smooth out some of the frame spikes that occur when you are operating a large aquarium. ːsteamhappyː

[h3]Balance/Improvements[/h3]

• Bred animals appear at the location of eggs/fry.
  

[h3]Bugs[/h3]

• Updated Chinese and Japanese fonts with missing characters.
  
• Altered Japanese font to use Japanese variant of shared characters.
  
• Fixed typo in Portuguese.
  
• Fixed bug where Piranhas were not affecting all animals.
  
• Fixed bug where larger animals would get stuck in the corner of the tank.
  
• Improved stability of game when starting a new day.
  
• Fixed bug where tiles painted with default paint would switch to current default paint when save as loaded.
  
• Fixed a rare bug with ledger table when switching tabs.
  
• Fixed a bug where correct accessory bonuses were not shown in all locations.
  
• Fixed bug where tooltip would not disappear after bringing up sell confirmation dialog.
  
• Fixed bug where land animal animations would flicker on low detail mode.
  

[h3]Modding[/h3]

• Game can now recover if a save is loaded and the current research has been removed because it was a mod.