development update #19
Hello everyone,
It has been a rather intense week and we have been focused solidly on one thing. The plumbing system. Because of this there is no update to the build this week but we can provide you with more info about this feature and show some progress.
Players are frequently asking for filters, gas regulators, power supplies and other utilities to be added to the game. We more or less always wanted to have such items in the game from the beginning but we were hesitant to do so because adding bulky filters and other similar items to a nicely designed aquarium made things look a bit ugly. We do however like the technical aspects of creating the right balance of filtration, c02 and oxygen regulation and temperature controls and more.
The tricky part is putting together these two different game ideas. On the one hand there is the placement of decorations and plants to create a nice habitat for the animals that also looks nice. On the other hand is the utilitarian task of putting in place all the machinery to support this creation. These two concepts cant really exist in the exact same space without stepping over each other. Of course in real life there are perfectly fine aquariums with smallish filters and other devices inside the tank doing their jobs but our vision for fishery is to take things much much further.
The solution that has been discussed in previous blog posts is to have what is called a "Plumbed Aquarium". If you search for that term in a search engine and look at the all pictures you will see that it is a real thing and holds a lot of potential for interesting gameplay mechanics.
In the example you can see we are just joining up a pipe. What this is doing is connecting the pipe that is bringing the water out of the aquarium to the pipe that puts it back into the aquarium. Not very exciting but imagine adding all kinds of devices in between these pipes such as filters and gas regulators and lots of other things that can alter the water chemistry in interesting ways.
Each aquarium will have a plumbing area equal to it's width and depth dimensions. This means that smaller aquariums have a smaller plumbing area than larger ones. This will work as a sort of built-in difficulty factor. The water chemistry is easier to control in a smaller tank because there is just less water to deal with. Small, less powerful devices can easily change the conditions inside a small aquarium but larger aquariums need larger/more powerful devices to make changes to it.
As players become more skilled and experienced they will be able to handle creating and maintaining the plumbing for larger aquariums. In the beginning of the game players will only be able to access the small aquariums until they have made enough progress to unlock the larger ones. However we cannot talk about that until we have some of the career system in place which we will be working on next week.
Here is a picture showing the debug info. Each green ball represents a correct connection made between two plumbing objects. Each plumbing object has an input connector and an output connector. Water enters the object via the input connector, it is then modified, e.g oxygen is added to it and then it leaves this object via the output connector. In this case water is passed from pipe segment to pipe segment without being modified.
You can also see some little coloured lines attached to each pipe segment. These represent the orientation of each pipe. There is a bit of tricky maths happening to get these objects to properly line up and then allow for them to be rotated by the player. furthermore there is some logic that prevents the player from accidentally attaching an output connector to another output connector or an input connector to another input connector. We want players to freely express their ideas without worrying about making technical mistakes like this.
Our next steps are to add logic that detects when an object goes outside the plumbing area or intersects with existing plumbing objects. There will also be some logic that figures out if the water actually makes it's way from the water intake pipe to the water output pipe. Much like an electrical circuit it actually has to all be connected to work.
There are a lot of less interesting bits of code to write and then of course there is the UI. Players will be able to see the current state of the water chemistry and clearly see how each plumbing object modifies the water at every step. This will allow players to finely tune their ecosystem to remain stable and balanced.
Next week we will be working on the plumbing system and the career system. There may or may not be an update to the build but there surely will be a post showing what we have been working on.
The Fishery Team
It has been a rather intense week and we have been focused solidly on one thing. The plumbing system. Because of this there is no update to the build this week but we can provide you with more info about this feature and show some progress.
Players are frequently asking for filters, gas regulators, power supplies and other utilities to be added to the game. We more or less always wanted to have such items in the game from the beginning but we were hesitant to do so because adding bulky filters and other similar items to a nicely designed aquarium made things look a bit ugly. We do however like the technical aspects of creating the right balance of filtration, c02 and oxygen regulation and temperature controls and more.
The tricky part is putting together these two different game ideas. On the one hand there is the placement of decorations and plants to create a nice habitat for the animals that also looks nice. On the other hand is the utilitarian task of putting in place all the machinery to support this creation. These two concepts cant really exist in the exact same space without stepping over each other. Of course in real life there are perfectly fine aquariums with smallish filters and other devices inside the tank doing their jobs but our vision for fishery is to take things much much further.
The solution that has been discussed in previous blog posts is to have what is called a "Plumbed Aquarium". If you search for that term in a search engine and look at the all pictures you will see that it is a real thing and holds a lot of potential for interesting gameplay mechanics.
In the example you can see we are just joining up a pipe. What this is doing is connecting the pipe that is bringing the water out of the aquarium to the pipe that puts it back into the aquarium. Not very exciting but imagine adding all kinds of devices in between these pipes such as filters and gas regulators and lots of other things that can alter the water chemistry in interesting ways.
Each aquarium will have a plumbing area equal to it's width and depth dimensions. This means that smaller aquariums have a smaller plumbing area than larger ones. This will work as a sort of built-in difficulty factor. The water chemistry is easier to control in a smaller tank because there is just less water to deal with. Small, less powerful devices can easily change the conditions inside a small aquarium but larger aquariums need larger/more powerful devices to make changes to it.
As players become more skilled and experienced they will be able to handle creating and maintaining the plumbing for larger aquariums. In the beginning of the game players will only be able to access the small aquariums until they have made enough progress to unlock the larger ones. However we cannot talk about that until we have some of the career system in place which we will be working on next week.
Here is a picture showing the debug info. Each green ball represents a correct connection made between two plumbing objects. Each plumbing object has an input connector and an output connector. Water enters the object via the input connector, it is then modified, e.g oxygen is added to it and then it leaves this object via the output connector. In this case water is passed from pipe segment to pipe segment without being modified.
You can also see some little coloured lines attached to each pipe segment. These represent the orientation of each pipe. There is a bit of tricky maths happening to get these objects to properly line up and then allow for them to be rotated by the player. furthermore there is some logic that prevents the player from accidentally attaching an output connector to another output connector or an input connector to another input connector. We want players to freely express their ideas without worrying about making technical mistakes like this.
Our next steps are to add logic that detects when an object goes outside the plumbing area or intersects with existing plumbing objects. There will also be some logic that figures out if the water actually makes it's way from the water intake pipe to the water output pipe. Much like an electrical circuit it actually has to all be connected to work.
There are a lot of less interesting bits of code to write and then of course there is the UI. Players will be able to see the current state of the water chemistry and clearly see how each plumbing object modifies the water at every step. This will allow players to finely tune their ecosystem to remain stable and balanced.
Next week we will be working on the plumbing system and the career system. There may or may not be an update to the build but there surely will be a post showing what we have been working on.
The Fishery Team