development update #56
Hello everyone,
Unfortunately we were not able to get the new build ready this week yet again because the features we are working on are quite big and a lot needs to change to fit them into the game. So to prevent us looking foolish again by saying we will likely have a new build next week; I shall instead say that in a small number of weeks there will be a new build for sure.
Last week we talked mostly about water chemistry and how that is changing. This week we shall talk about how these changes are allowing us to make further progress with fish.
Fish Status Selection UI:
There are a lot more attributes that contribute to the overall status of a fish. the will also contribute to how the fish behaves.
Energy:
This replaces the old attribute of "Food". Calling it energy allows us to use it in different ways. For instance now it makes sense to couple it with what the fish is doing. If the fish is swimming around very frantically then it will use more energy and require food more often. However if it is chilled out and relaxed and taking life easy it will use less energy and requires less food over time.
Oxygen and Co2:
These are not handled that differently. Their sliders show the current saturations of Oxygen and Co2 in the water and shows the saturations of these gases as desired by the fish. If any of these saturations our outside of these ranges then the fish will slowly start to loose health due to suffocation of toxicity.
Disease:
This is an entirely new attribute. Disease will occur in aquariums that are quite unclean. The risk of disease spreading through an aquarium is increased when there are the corpses of dead fish floating about. We are still deciding exactly what diseases the fish can get and how exactly we can show it visually but we can still code disease into the game and get it working before we have decided all of that. Career mode will have entire career paths dedicated to treating diseases as well as understanding their causes.
Injury:
Fish might get attacked by other fish and this will cause injury. This could be the consequences of housing fish together that should not be together. Adding two male betta fish together can only end badly. Severely injured fish that are left untreated will eventually die of these injuries unless players take action to heal them.
There will be a few ways to treat diseases and injuries. They include using medicines that the fish must eat. Adding specific plants into the aquarium that release healing chemicals into the water under the right circumstances. There will also be a few secret ways to do this that we are not going to tell you about.
Stress:
This is a very important thing to consider when keeping fish in real life. It also allows us to trigger behaviour changes in our game fish that we could not do before. For instance each fish species will have a "Stress Response" that it does when it's stress levels are too high. It may hyperventilate, stop eating, over eat, act aggressive towards other fish and more. Fish that are stressed to the max will eventually die of stress but hopefully it wont come to that.
There are a lot of attributes that contribute to stress.
Temperature:
This one is fairly straightforward. If you put a fish used to cold waters into a tropical aquarium it will not like it.
Habitat:
This one is a bit more complicated and may not be turned on in the next update because it will take a bit longer to get right. Essentially some fish like to be surrounded by certain things. Long leaved plants, rocks, sandy substrate etc. If they do not have enough of these things in the aquarium they will get a bit stressed. We don't want to constrict player creativity too much so there will be a lot of careful balancing done by us to this feature. As you can see in the image there will be an entire tab devoted to habitat. Players will be able to see all the habitat requirements of a fish and see how well they are being fulfilled.
Population and Social:
Some fish like to live with lots of other fish and some do not. "Population" refers to the total number of fish in your aquarium while "Social" refers to total number of fish of the same species.
Algae and Waste:
Having a really dense amount of algae in the water will upset some species of fish. Other species that eat algae will have a higher tolerance to it. The same is true for waste. Some fish like really clean water and others can live in water that is a quite dirty.
Salinity:
We are getting close to adding saltwater features to the game we promise.
Fish Info Selection UI: (it is overlapping it's bounds just so we can show you the whole thing in one image)
The second tab of this ui shows the actual number values of what is required to fulfill their needs as well as a few more pieces of information. (but in this image they do not correlate to the values in the status sliders)
We are also going to add detailed information in the in-game help system that explains each need of the fish and how to satisfy it. The days of people being confused by almost everything in the game will hopefully be behind us after we do this update.
All of these new attributes will help us make more interesting AI for the fish and in general create a more interesting atmosphere inside each aquarium from the point of view of fish emotions.
A lot of these changes are a long time coming. A good amount of them are inspired by suggestions and feedback made by people on the forums so we encourage you to keep asking questions and suggesting changes. Even if some of the suggestions may clash with what we have in mind for the game we always read them fully and reflect on their implications.
Yes there is a breeding tab in the new UI that we have shown but we wont be talking about it just yet, stay tuned ;)
Female Koi Plakat Betta. (very rough painting stages)
We have also begun painting the female koi betta fish. This is in the very very early stages of painting but it is already starting to look interesting.
Plumbing Co2 regulator:
Plumbing Oxygen Regulator:
A few finishing touches to the gas regulators but knowing me there will probably be yet more finishing touches to add hehe.
Well it has been a very eventful week. I say this a lot but the game is really coming together the more we work on it. All the new possibilities that will arise out of these updates is very exciting. There will be some more interesting things to show you all next week.
We wish you all a good weekend.
The Fishery Team
Unfortunately we were not able to get the new build ready this week yet again because the features we are working on are quite big and a lot needs to change to fit them into the game. So to prevent us looking foolish again by saying we will likely have a new build next week; I shall instead say that in a small number of weeks there will be a new build for sure.
Last week we talked mostly about water chemistry and how that is changing. This week we shall talk about how these changes are allowing us to make further progress with fish.
Fish Status Selection UI:
There are a lot more attributes that contribute to the overall status of a fish. the will also contribute to how the fish behaves.
Energy:
This replaces the old attribute of "Food". Calling it energy allows us to use it in different ways. For instance now it makes sense to couple it with what the fish is doing. If the fish is swimming around very frantically then it will use more energy and require food more often. However if it is chilled out and relaxed and taking life easy it will use less energy and requires less food over time.
Oxygen and Co2:
These are not handled that differently. Their sliders show the current saturations of Oxygen and Co2 in the water and shows the saturations of these gases as desired by the fish. If any of these saturations our outside of these ranges then the fish will slowly start to loose health due to suffocation of toxicity.
Disease:
This is an entirely new attribute. Disease will occur in aquariums that are quite unclean. The risk of disease spreading through an aquarium is increased when there are the corpses of dead fish floating about. We are still deciding exactly what diseases the fish can get and how exactly we can show it visually but we can still code disease into the game and get it working before we have decided all of that. Career mode will have entire career paths dedicated to treating diseases as well as understanding their causes.
Injury:
Fish might get attacked by other fish and this will cause injury. This could be the consequences of housing fish together that should not be together. Adding two male betta fish together can only end badly. Severely injured fish that are left untreated will eventually die of these injuries unless players take action to heal them.
There will be a few ways to treat diseases and injuries. They include using medicines that the fish must eat. Adding specific plants into the aquarium that release healing chemicals into the water under the right circumstances. There will also be a few secret ways to do this that we are not going to tell you about.
Stress:
This is a very important thing to consider when keeping fish in real life. It also allows us to trigger behaviour changes in our game fish that we could not do before. For instance each fish species will have a "Stress Response" that it does when it's stress levels are too high. It may hyperventilate, stop eating, over eat, act aggressive towards other fish and more. Fish that are stressed to the max will eventually die of stress but hopefully it wont come to that.
There are a lot of attributes that contribute to stress.
Temperature:
This one is fairly straightforward. If you put a fish used to cold waters into a tropical aquarium it will not like it.
Habitat:
This one is a bit more complicated and may not be turned on in the next update because it will take a bit longer to get right. Essentially some fish like to be surrounded by certain things. Long leaved plants, rocks, sandy substrate etc. If they do not have enough of these things in the aquarium they will get a bit stressed. We don't want to constrict player creativity too much so there will be a lot of careful balancing done by us to this feature. As you can see in the image there will be an entire tab devoted to habitat. Players will be able to see all the habitat requirements of a fish and see how well they are being fulfilled.
Population and Social:
Some fish like to live with lots of other fish and some do not. "Population" refers to the total number of fish in your aquarium while "Social" refers to total number of fish of the same species.
Algae and Waste:
Having a really dense amount of algae in the water will upset some species of fish. Other species that eat algae will have a higher tolerance to it. The same is true for waste. Some fish like really clean water and others can live in water that is a quite dirty.
Salinity:
We are getting close to adding saltwater features to the game we promise.
Fish Info Selection UI: (it is overlapping it's bounds just so we can show you the whole thing in one image)
The second tab of this ui shows the actual number values of what is required to fulfill their needs as well as a few more pieces of information. (but in this image they do not correlate to the values in the status sliders)
We are also going to add detailed information in the in-game help system that explains each need of the fish and how to satisfy it. The days of people being confused by almost everything in the game will hopefully be behind us after we do this update.
All of these new attributes will help us make more interesting AI for the fish and in general create a more interesting atmosphere inside each aquarium from the point of view of fish emotions.
A lot of these changes are a long time coming. A good amount of them are inspired by suggestions and feedback made by people on the forums so we encourage you to keep asking questions and suggesting changes. Even if some of the suggestions may clash with what we have in mind for the game we always read them fully and reflect on their implications.
Yes there is a breeding tab in the new UI that we have shown but we wont be talking about it just yet, stay tuned ;)
Female Koi Plakat Betta. (very rough painting stages)
We have also begun painting the female koi betta fish. This is in the very very early stages of painting but it is already starting to look interesting.
Plumbing Co2 regulator:
Plumbing Oxygen Regulator:
A few finishing touches to the gas regulators but knowing me there will probably be yet more finishing touches to add hehe.
Well it has been a very eventful week. I say this a lot but the game is really coming together the more we work on it. All the new possibilities that will arise out of these updates is very exciting. There will be some more interesting things to show you all next week.
We wish you all a good weekend.
The Fishery Team