FISHERY News

Hello everyone,

This week we have managed to get the first version of the breeding features into the game. I dare not try to predict precisely when we will be updating the build but next week we will be in the phase of putting all our changes together and making final tweaks so hypothetically if we were to be successful then next weekend would be the time to upload it for you all to play.

Breeding Timelapse:



This is a timelapse that shows how fish breeding works. Some might say it works too well because we start off with only one male and one female and after a while there is close to one hundred fish in the aquarium. This will be tweaked before we release the next update and for many months afterwards. Each fish species will have their own set of needs that must be satisfied before they are comfortable enough to breed. It will be quite easy to breed guppies and zebra danios for instance but a bit harder to breed the betta fish.

The fish will be able to decide who they partner with. The exact parameters will be different from species to species. It might be quite common that fish may reject other fish based on their health, stress, age etc.

Breeding Timelapse 2:


Here is a slightly more closeup view of the breeding. You can see fry swimming about and the more larger juvenile fish. You might also notice some wacky behaviour from the adults. The mating behaviour is something that will be tweaked endlessly. At the moment they just travel towards each other and stare lovingly into each other's eyes which is very romantic.

There will of course be bubble nests and live births added in the near future but we have to start simple and get more complex over time.


Plumbing System:


Here is a quick look at the plumbing setup for this aquarium. Oxygen, Co2 and nutrients are all being pumped into the water when they detect that levels are too low. This is using the auto-enable feature that we showed last week. There is also only a single passive filter to keep things clean. We will also be adding all the updates to models and textures of plumbing objects in the next build too.


This post can't be too long tonight because there is lots of work to do and not enough hours to do it in.

Feel free to ask questions and I'll try to answer them in detail when I have a spare moment each day.

As usual we wish you all a great weekend,

The Fishery Team

Hello everyone,

It has been another fruitful week. Quite a few important problems have been solved and a few new-ish ideas implemented. We are edging ever closer to our big update to the build. I will stay away from the trap of trying to precisely predict the date of this update but I will say that it looks like the update will be on steam in less and two weeks and one day, probably.


Panda Platy Female:


Panda Platy Male:



These two lovelies are Panda Platies. Platies always seemed to me to be very relaxed and peaceful fish and after a week or two of intense work painting betta fish it feels good to add a fish to the game that is just happy to be there and hang out. Fortunately there are quite a few Platies still left to paint and we are still yet to add Mollies and Swordtails to the game but we hope to have at least two species of each added by the end of the year.


Auto Enabling Powered Devices:



This sped up gif shows a new feature that was added this week. Electrical devices now have the ability to turn themselves off and on again depending on the circumstances of the water chemistry (or if their operating system crashes hehe). In the above example there is a small aquarium with some plants inside that are consuming more Co2 than is coming into the aquarium. This causes Co2 levels to drop and eventually the Co2 will be completely gone and the plants will eventually suffocate.

New Airstone Settings UI:


However the new "Auto Enabling" feature is activated and the airstone checks to see if the current Co2 saturation is below the minimum Co2 saturation threshold. If so tt turns itself on and keeps adding Co2 into the water until it reaches the maximum Co2 saturation threshold at which time it turns itself off.

These thresholds are set by the player for each device that they add into the aquarium that uses this feature so there is a lot of room for fine tuning and experimentation. Setting both thresholds to Zero will cause the device to turn on and stay on indefinitely. This now works with all electrical devices that are currently in the game. That also includes in the plumbing. All the devices that regulate temperature, Co2, oxygen etc all use this feature now. There are some devices that will not use it. Certain devices use a passive or chemical process to modify water chemistry and can't be turned off. Co2 and oxygen scrubbers use a chemical reaction to remove gas from water in the exact same way that Gas masks use activated charcoal to remove harmful chemicals from the air. The only way to turn these off is to remove them from the system.

One of the more striking aspects of the above gif is that it appears as if the aquarium is breathing. These devices are life support after all and we think this features adds another layer of interest and depth to the game that might be overlooked.


Some of you who read last week's post may have been slightly tickled to read that we are going to reveal an upcoming feature that we had previously decided not to add.

The new simulation system works in a slightly more realistic way than the previous iteration. For instance if we put a single filter in an aquarium that is full of waste it will eventually filter out all of that waste. The old system did not do that, it simply reduced the waste by a certain amount and that was that. It was highly deterministic but lacked a sort of intuitive chaos that is inherent in natural systems. the initial version of fishery that was released had a simulation system similar to what we have now but it was all chaos all the time. We have learned a lot in the last year and now we can solve these problems.

The auto enabling feature we just added will allow players to control their aquariums without lots of busy work all the time. It can be a system that is set up and left alone with only minor tweaks needed as new organisms are added. It also allows more experienced players to push the boundaries of what is possible.

The light bulb moment came to us when we were thinking about what the natural equivalent of this artificial life support is. This is because we want players to be able to try and set up an all natural aquariums without any artificial life support if they want to try it. It will also play a big part of a career mode storyline. But what natural mechanism can allow such a thing to occur???

A day and night cycle of course! (this is the teased feature)

Yes it was staring us in the face and was even mentioned by players on the forums many months ago to which I replied "nope". Though in my defense I felt I did not have enough reasons to add a day an night cycle into the game at that time because of game worked. I am also not a fan of just added features to the game just because most other simulation games have it or because it just helps things to be real for the sake of being real. Most of the important features on the game need to have at least a semi-good reason to be there and at this point in development having a day and night cycle solves a lot of problems.

Photosynthesis and respiration. during the day plants breathe Co2 and exhale oxygen while but at night they breathe oxygen and exhale Co2. The Co2 and oxygen levels fluctuate in opposite directions as these cycles progress. This ensures that if left alone and under the right circumstances the Co2 and Oxygen levels will exist in a state of balance over time and never spiral out of control unless there are large changes to the system. These changes in an aquarium could take the form of leaving the light on for too long or suddenly adding many more plants or fish.

Algae can now be simulated in a more interesting and natural way because algae growth is often attributed to having too much light in an aquarium that also has an abundance nutrients.

Fish like to rest at night so that allows us to add more behavioral variety to our fish. Most fish also like to spawn early in the morning at first light. This ties in nicely with the breeding features we are about to add.

Now that we are adding breeding features suddenly the concept of age has some importance and has a use. Fish will have lifespans and grow over time from fry to juvenile to an adult and hopefully die at an old age happy and contented with lots of babies. This also means that players will also be able to track the age of their entire aquarium.

Some fish are nocturnal and are more active at night. Some live so deep in the ocean that there is no sunlight. Yes we are going to add angler fish and other deep sea beasties but players will need an aquarium with very low light in order to keep them happy.


There are a lot of smaller features and interesting game tweaks that will happen as a result of adding a day and night cycle. It is not a particularly difficult feature to add but like every other feature it will start off pretty basic and we will build upon it over the months. The first version will most likely just be a bit of UI that shows the time of day, players have the option to turn the light off and on and there will be changes to fish and plant behaviour. The speed of each day will not be realtime of course. Our initial thoughts is that each day might be around 12 minutes. No doubt there will be lots of discussion and testing until we get it right.

Well this post is getting a little too wordy so more details on exactly how the day/night cycle will work will have to come at a later date and with more visual aids.


As usual we wish you all a very good weekend and thank you all for your continued support of our weird little aquarium game.


The Fishery Team

Hello everyone,

This week has gone by very quickly indeed and we have some really nice progress to show and talk about. There is still no new build as of yet but we are making good progress with getting it ready.


Female Zebra Danio:


Male Zebra Danio:



These are Zebra Danios, often called "Zebrafish". They are the first of the Danios that will be added to the game. The longfin variant will be added at some point in the not so distance future. Other Danios will be added much sooner. The fish list on the forums has a nice selection of them to work on. I am quite looking forward to painting the leopard and panther danios. I kept some actual Zebra Danios around 13 years ago and they were quite lovely, friendly little fish. It will be great to add them into our game.



Female Black Neon Tetra:


Male Black Neon Tetra:


These were painted by myself last week. I was getting a bit burnt out with programming as sometimes happens and my brain was screaming for a more artistic task to do. I went through our library of fish photo reference files and picked out the Black Neon Tetra. It took just under a day to paint them both which is quite fast for me because I find painting quite hard, though the aim is not to be as fast as possible.. The day after painting these my brain was artistically satisfied enough that it could solve programming problems without complaining and good AI progress was made.


Female Lavender Plakat Betta:


Male Lavender Plakat Betta:


These Lavender Plakat Bettas are not quite finished yet. A few small paint tweaks are required but they are in a good enough state to give you all a sneaky peak at them.

Female Koi Plakat Betta:


We made the male koi plakat betta a few weeks ago but took a little longer with the female. We showed a rough painted version of her back then but now we can show her in a state of near completion.


This now takes the total count of fish species in the game to 16 but that number of individual fish is close to 30 because the male and female of each species are individually painted and modelled. This not only helps to give more variation to players when adding a lot of a particular species to their aquarium but it is also accurate to real life which helps satisfy those of you who know more about this subject. Judging from the fish list over on the forums there will be hundreds of individual fish added to the game over time. We certainly intend to add as many of them as possible and the goal is to be in a position where we can add two new fish species per week, which amounts to 4 new fish per week. That means over the course of a year we could be adding around 200 individual fish to the game. We are not quite in that position yet but that is certainly our aim.

Next week we should be able to show you all some of the mysterious progress that I keep saying we are making with the next build. Just to tease you all a little bit more, we are putting a feature into the game that we actually said we probably would never put into the game but after a lot of thinking about it I am happy to say we changed our minds and it will be in the game soonish. That is enough teasing for now though.

As usual we wish you all a great weekend and a good start to next week.

The Fishery Team

Hello everyone,

It has been another busy week and we have done much. There is no new build this week but we can give details on something special that will be in the next build.

Generic fry and juvenile:



Ahh yes, the first phase of the breeding features will be in the next update. In the above gif you can see a juvenile fish and a tiny fry. They are meant to look somewhat generic. This is because the first version of breeding that we put into the game will be relatively simple.

What we mean by simple is that all fish that exist in the game now and any new ones we add for a will all breed in the same way and their offspring will look the same until they grow into young adults. The "style" of breeding that all fish will adopt at first is based on how zebrafish breed. The female releases eggs and the male fertilises them soon after. The eggs then hatch around 3 days later and if all goes well these young fry will survive into adulthood so they can have babies too.

Certain requirements will need to be met before the fish are comfortable enough to breed. They must be healthy, not stressed, the population in the aquarium should not be too high etc. Each fish will have their own requirements specific to their species. These requirements will be shown to players in game. Quite often fish eat eggs that have just been released, often by the female who released them, this means that the eggs need to be protected. In the wild the eggs usually fall in between small rocks or into some dense vegetation where larger fish cannot follow. We of course plan to imitate this as best we can in our game so players will be encouraged to use specific types of substrate and have specific species of plants present in their breeding aquarium so when the eggs are released they have a higher chance of survival.

As we develop these features further we will implement more breeding behaviours such as bubble nests, giving birth to live fry etc. We will also be looking into ways that players can separate fry from adults without just deleting adults from the aquarium. Adult fish will only eat fry if they themselves are starving. There are species of fish that will eat fry as soon as they see them. That behaviour wont be added until we have ways to reliably separate them so we don't frustrate players. There are quite a few ways to do this in real life like adding a little box within the aquarium or having large separators that effectively split the aquarium in half. These are being looked into as well as a few more ideas that could be interesting.

So to briefly summarise. Breeding will be in the game a small number of weeks from now. It will be simple at first but all fish currently in the game as well as new ones we add will be able to breed. Over time we will upgrade all the breeding features to accommodate the various ways that fish breed as best we can. That will include updating the fry and juvenile models to look like young versions of the species they belong to but for a while all fry and juveniles will look as they do in the gif at the beginning of this post.

Feel free to ask any questions and I'll try and answer them asap but I will be working on fish AI intensely tonight and over the weekend so I may not reply to questions too often but I will reply to them.


We wish you all a great weekend.

The Fishery Team

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