development update #28
Hello everyone
New build is uploaded!
Fortunately my life by default is one of social isolation and self quarantine. Therefore much progress has been made this week. Not everything that has been worked on is in the current update but that will be explained near the bottom of the post.
Inspect mode now has more functionality. We made it so the manipulation toolbar works in this mode and players can creatively fiddle about without needing to be in the shop mode. The shop mode now allows for the selection UIs to appear. Now that things are improving with the simulation and the numbers are starting to become meaningful to players. It makes sense to allow them to be seen in the shop mode when things are selected. It was completely dumb to have these mode-specific restrictions and now when we play the game it feels much less cumbersome.
The creation UI has been improved. It is a bit more clear and organised and there is more information about what is assigned to the brush. When the brush is turned off the part of the UI that shows brush-specific options becomes darker which is to show that it is turned off. These settings mean nothing while in that state. There are also several tweaks that make things feel less clunky when switching between brush mode, translate mode, etc.
There is still more work to be done in these areas. There have been a lot of great feedback from players and we are going to put these ideas into the game in the upcoming weeks. Here is a small list of some of the most interesting features:
- Delete brush. For deleting lots of things without the need to select them individually. There will be additional controls added so players can define specifically what should not be deleted by accident when using this tool.
- Undo. sometimes mistakes are made or a creative choice does not turn out as envisioned. Players need to quickly correct that.
- Object attachment. If players create an object on the surface of another object it makes sense to literally stick it to that object so if the base object is moved then it moves the stuck object/s too.
We will aim to add one of these features per week along with the usual assortment of tweaks and new stuff.
This was actually added last week but we completely forgot to show it. To help make sure players can see clearly when plumbing objects are connected correctly we have a better visual overlay that shows the difference between input and output connectors. Inputs will not connect to other inputs and outputs will not connect to other outputs. This is just the first step in showing how this works. We will probably have a small alert icon show up when connectors are incorrectly connected in the next week or perhaps 2 weeks depending on how everything else goes. There will also be clear instructions written in the new help system once that is added.
Algae reactors are really cool. They exist in the real world for use in aquariums as a means to filter out excess carbon dioxide and nutrients from the water to prevent algae from growing. Since we are about to add the new and improved algae system into the game we needed a solution to allow players to prevent algae from growing out of control. We are not super happy with the design. We will change it to be more detailed and have a more "sciencey" feel to it so keep that in mind. It wont stay boring forever.
We almost got the first part of the new algae system into the game this week but as we were testing it. Algae would just grow out of control and steal all the resources from plants, eventually killing them all which then kills a lot of fish. It is actually quite cool to see this sort of chaos unfold in realtime but it will for sure frustrate anyone who plays it. We will spend the weekend and next week tweaking this so everyone does not have an algae catastrophe or an algastrophe....
We made some small-ish tweaks to the fish AI. We were hoping to get deeper into fish AI this week but a few things got in the way. We will prioritise these changes for next week.
There are also quite a few features and art content being worked on that we are not ready to show just yet. Especially the next versions of fish. Certain types of fish require more work than others and they require a few more technical and artistic problems to be solved. There are so many shapes and colour appearances of fish. Each type needs it's own stylized art language in which some are more complex than others but we are making good progress and hope to show some progress very soon. We are also writing text for the career mode which is really going to add depth to the game.
We shall see you all next week with lots of juicey progress.
The Fishery Team
New build is uploaded!
Fortunately my life by default is one of social isolation and self quarantine. Therefore much progress has been made this week. Not everything that has been worked on is in the current update but that will be explained near the bottom of the post.
Inspect mode now has more functionality. We made it so the manipulation toolbar works in this mode and players can creatively fiddle about without needing to be in the shop mode. The shop mode now allows for the selection UIs to appear. Now that things are improving with the simulation and the numbers are starting to become meaningful to players. It makes sense to allow them to be seen in the shop mode when things are selected. It was completely dumb to have these mode-specific restrictions and now when we play the game it feels much less cumbersome.
The creation UI has been improved. It is a bit more clear and organised and there is more information about what is assigned to the brush. When the brush is turned off the part of the UI that shows brush-specific options becomes darker which is to show that it is turned off. These settings mean nothing while in that state. There are also several tweaks that make things feel less clunky when switching between brush mode, translate mode, etc.
There is still more work to be done in these areas. There have been a lot of great feedback from players and we are going to put these ideas into the game in the upcoming weeks. Here is a small list of some of the most interesting features:
- Delete brush. For deleting lots of things without the need to select them individually. There will be additional controls added so players can define specifically what should not be deleted by accident when using this tool.
- Undo. sometimes mistakes are made or a creative choice does not turn out as envisioned. Players need to quickly correct that.
- Object attachment. If players create an object on the surface of another object it makes sense to literally stick it to that object so if the base object is moved then it moves the stuck object/s too.
We will aim to add one of these features per week along with the usual assortment of tweaks and new stuff.
This was actually added last week but we completely forgot to show it. To help make sure players can see clearly when plumbing objects are connected correctly we have a better visual overlay that shows the difference between input and output connectors. Inputs will not connect to other inputs and outputs will not connect to other outputs. This is just the first step in showing how this works. We will probably have a small alert icon show up when connectors are incorrectly connected in the next week or perhaps 2 weeks depending on how everything else goes. There will also be clear instructions written in the new help system once that is added.
Algae reactors are really cool. They exist in the real world for use in aquariums as a means to filter out excess carbon dioxide and nutrients from the water to prevent algae from growing. Since we are about to add the new and improved algae system into the game we needed a solution to allow players to prevent algae from growing out of control. We are not super happy with the design. We will change it to be more detailed and have a more "sciencey" feel to it so keep that in mind. It wont stay boring forever.
We almost got the first part of the new algae system into the game this week but as we were testing it. Algae would just grow out of control and steal all the resources from plants, eventually killing them all which then kills a lot of fish. It is actually quite cool to see this sort of chaos unfold in realtime but it will for sure frustrate anyone who plays it. We will spend the weekend and next week tweaking this so everyone does not have an algae catastrophe or an algastrophe....
We made some small-ish tweaks to the fish AI. We were hoping to get deeper into fish AI this week but a few things got in the way. We will prioritise these changes for next week.
There are also quite a few features and art content being worked on that we are not ready to show just yet. Especially the next versions of fish. Certain types of fish require more work than others and they require a few more technical and artistic problems to be solved. There are so many shapes and colour appearances of fish. Each type needs it's own stylized art language in which some are more complex than others but we are making good progress and hope to show some progress very soon. We are also writing text for the career mode which is really going to add depth to the game.
We shall see you all next week with lots of juicey progress.
The Fishery Team