FISHERY News

Hello everyone,


Tis Friday once again and we have the week's progress to share with you all. There is no update to the build this week due to large changes being made to the code. But I will get to that in a little bit.

Tomorrow will be almost exactly a year since we released Fishery in Early Access and I think there is much to be said about the progress that has been made as well as the progress we hope to make in the next year. After the next build is uploaded (hopefully next week) we will write a about it. It might be a bit of a long post because it has been a busy year but it is important to reflect on such things and keep all of you informed about progress.


Back to this week's progress. First here is a little look at what some of those new pipe pieces can do.

Invalidly Positioned Pipes:


Here we have a situation where we want to overlap two pipes for whatever reason. Usually the reason is just that we are running out of space. This does not work as the pipes are intersecting through each other rather than neatly connecting at their connection points.


Mini S-Pipe:


So we created this small S shaped pipe that allows for players to overlap pipes without causing trouble. Very useful pipe piece indeed.


Tight U-Bend Pipe:


Here we have a situation where we have 3 pipes that are all not attempting to connect to one another but want to go their separate ways. This sort of thing will happen when the space is tight and the devices plugged into the pipes have irregular input and output pipe positions.

One of the more interesting aspects of the plumbing system is that is allows players to use their problem solving abilities in a creative way. The plumbing area is always going to be a little tight depending on the size of aquarium you have chosen and how complex you wish to make it's water chemistry. Hopefully this will encourage lots of experimentation.


Now that we are coming close to adding the functionality necessary for creating marine aquariums. Namely the ability to add salt but we must also take into account some of the more subtle changes that happen to water when it is heated and how this affects aquariums. The oxygen saturation limit of water becomes lower. Carbon Dioxide that is stored in the water is released. That is one reason why carbonated beverages are best served chilled.

In doing research over the past weeks and months into this subject I have gone done several rabbit holes in pursuit of information that can be ever so gently massaged into a form that can fit within our slightly odd aquarium game. Naturally we have had to modify how the water chemistry simulates and completely change how information is shown to players.

New Rollover UIs for Inspect Mode:


These are not entirely different to what they are like in the current build of the game but the aim is to show simple numbers and use standard measurement symbols where it makes sense.

You might notice in the UIs for Oxygen and CO2 that there are sections for "surface agitation rate". This is a new feature we are adding into the game which mimics a real life process. Surface Agitation refers to the process of the water's surface being disturbed in some way causing movement and breaking it's surface tension. This allows for whats known as "gas exchange" to occur. Oxygen from the atmosphere is absorbed into the water and causes the release of carbon dioxide from the water. We are not sure entirely how much the player should be able to increase or decrease surface agitation via the use of airstones and other devices but it is something that will be worked on and tested.

You might notice some standard units of measurement. Watts for power and degrees Celsius for temperature, we shall be adding degrees Fahrenheit for those whose want it, There will also be units of measurements for the size of aquariums and their water volumes. CM, Inches, Litres and US Gallons. We were a bit hesitant to add them into the game thus far because they don't make sense in the context of the code for reasons I wont go into here but if it helps players get a sense of scale and intuition about things then we are happy to add them now.

All the code that deals with water chemistry is being looked at and modified to accommodate new features and changes to existing ones.

Changes To Other UI:


Since we are making changes to UI we finally did some much needed modification to the shop/inventory ui. It took too many clicks before the desired items would display in the scroll list and now that has drastically been reduced. Sub-categories will be added when there are more items to choose from and they will be displayed as icons on the right hand side of this menu and correspond to the selected category on the left.


There are even more changes being made to the simulation system then will also feed into the fish ai and plant systems. Not to mention even more general UI changes but a lot more of that can be shown next week when hopefully we can release a new build. I shall be working on it for a good 6 hours on Saturday to squeeze in a bit more progress. I'll also try and find more time over the weekend to update the lists on the forums.

As usual we wish you all a good weekend

The Fishery Team

Hello everyone,

There is no update to the build this week but we have some nice progress to show you.

A lot of time was spent working on things related to the plumbing system. We have started making new items as well as updating older ones. The models are finished but the texture maps are in the early stages of painting.


Oxygen Regulator:


Co2 Regulator:


These are the new gas regulators; Oxygen and CO2. Unlike the air-stones already in the game they do not require electricity to work and they are capable of adding much more gas into the water.


Algae Reactor:


This is a redesign of device already in the game. The algae reactor uses macro-algae to consume CO2 and nutrients from the water and produce oxygen. The design currently in the game is not that interesting to look at and has been on the plumbing to-do list for a while.


Nutrients Injector New Mode:


Paint Blocking In Stage:


Another item that was in need of a slight redesign was the nutrient injector. This allows for the precise release of nutrients into the water without the need for players to use fertilizer balls, although those will still be in the game.


New Pipe Parts:


Three new pipe parts will be in the next update too. These will enable players to make better use of space in the plumbing area. For really complex aquarium setups players will need to balance the natural and artificial parts of their ecosystems. In terms of plumbing this will put a greater need for players to efficiently use the space in the plumbing area and come up with ever more creative ways to connect their plumbing networks together. There will be more detailed examples in the upcoming weeks that show how these new parts can be used in-game.


There are still more plumbing items yet to be designed. For instance there is a whole range of filters not just for waste but for filtering out gases and algae. There are some redesigns due for the water heater and some completely new devices that regulate the salt content which will allow for new types of fish, plants, coral etc.

On top of all that there are still changes being made to the fish ai, overall simulation balancing, ui and much writing, planning and designing for career mode features. As always there is so much to do and not enough hours to do it in but we shall keep chipping away at this mountain of work.

We hope you all have a good weekend.

The Fishery Team

Hello everyone,

The build will be updated on Monday. We were working until late last night to get things tested and working properly and there are a few small things left to do before the build is ready. On the whole this has been quite a good week and we have managed to get some important things into the game.

Male Halfmoon Plakat Koi Betta:


This is a Male Halfmoon Plakat Koi Betta. It will replace the existing version of the Betta fish currently in the game which is rather outdated. It will soon be joined by the female which was modelled this week and will be painted soonish.

We will be adding more varieties for Betta fish as time goes on. You can expect to see Veil tale, twin tale, Comb tale etc. There will also be quite a few colour variations for each Betta type.

Female Halfmoon Plakat Koi Betta: (Unpainted Model)


Here is a quick look at the female model for anyone who is interested.

The first versions of territorial behaviour for Betta fish is almost ready. At the moment it is rather simplistic but works quite well. Male Betta fish can detect another male Betta in the same aquarium as themselves and if they are within a certain distance of each other for a period of time then they will act aggressively and eventually attack one another.

More complex versions of this behaviour will actually include territorial regions that are defined either by the fish or the player. The fish will have attributes for things like stress, fear and aggression. The levels of these attributes will determine how intense their behaviour is. These attributes will also be assigned to all other fish as a means to create more complex behaviours.


Marquee Selection:


Finally we have marquee selection in the game. The whole point of this feature is to allow players to select/de-select a lot of objects very quickly without being tedious and tiresome.

Marquee Toggle:


This feature needs to be toggled on in order for players to use it. We have not removed previous selection techniques from the game.

Selection Mask + Marquee:


It works with the selection mask feature so if players have an aquarium full of many different types of objects they can more easily select only what they want without needing to be extremely accurate and fiddly.

Performance is pretty good when using this feature. If you are selecting many hundreds of objects all at once you could expect a brief stutter in framerate when you release the mouse button after dragging out the selection box; but any dip in performance should be relatively small.

This feature will be explained further in the in-game help which will be included in Monday's update.


Next week is going to be very busy indeed with lots of art content being worked on. We are also getting closer to adding saltwater features into the game. For this to happen we need to make some adjustments to the plumbing system; specifically we need to make more plumbing devices and upgrade some old ones.

As usual we wish you all a very good weekend.

The Fishery Team

Hello everyone,

This week was a "tying up loose ends" week for the game due to me not being able to complete all of my work last week because of a family emergency. The family member in question is doing well. Thank you to all who expressed their well wishes.

There were quite a few small/trivial changes made to the game this week which are not terribly interesting to speak about. One slightly interesting change is to the way we display the version of the game when it is started. Before this week it has been displayed as a slightly cryptic software version number like 0.45. That has now changed to a simple build number. Our latest build released onto steam is build 35.

Plumbing Backdrops:


One of the more interesting changes made was adding the possibility for players to change the backdrop of the plumbing area. Up until now players could change the backdrop behind the aquarium only. Now that has changed and once we add more choices of backdrops players can make their creations feel a little more unique and interesting.

The only backdrop available for the plumbing area for the moment is solid colour. It will not share all the same backdrops as the aquarium itself. This is because there is meant to be a distinction between the plumbing area and the aquarium. The aquarium represents creativity, a sort of colloquial definition of chaos theory and butterfly effect, ecosystems etc. Whereas the plumbing area represents artificial life support, rigid parameters, machinery, limited choices etc. This distinction should be present is the type of backdrops available so things are thematically consistent.

Last week the backdrop list was posted on the forums which has some ideas for the directions we are going for both backdrop types and as always you are invited to make suggestions. We are working on some new backdrops already and are fixing up the existing ones to be better.

We also managed to fix a few minor bugs for backdrops. Mostly these were around robustness and efficiency. One interesting fact is that both backdrops are loaded at the same time and sit on top of each other in the scene but they are attached to certain "visibility" layers which the camera chooses to see or not. This means switching between plumbing and aquarium modes will not trigger the unloading and loading of backdrops because that would be slow and inefficient. This method will use a little more memory but it is not like loading a huge level from a AAA game.



A new entry into the quick help window was added that talks about backdrops.

Selection/Manipulation Tool Settings UI Toggle:


A toggle button was added for showing/hiding the selection and manipulation tool options. These options are quite useful but they can get in the way sometimes. Players can now hide them to avoid unnecessary clutter in the UI.




Another small thing that has caused much irrational irritation to myself was the design of the water level UI. In previous builds players would need to adjust a horizontal slider in order to change the vertical height of the water which disturbed me. The weird thing is that it was myself who implemented the first version of that UI which forces me to conclude that I must have temporarily taken leave of my senses when creating it. Gladly this has now been fixed and I am feeling much better about the whole situation.



Marquee selection or the "selection rectangle" feature is about 90% finished. This sort of thing is commonly found in realtime strategy games where players can draw a box across the screen and anything that is fully or partially inside that box will get selected. The only thing left to do for this feature is to fit it into the game and have it not clash with existing selection features that use the same mouse clicks and gestures. It is not a particularly hard thing to do but I would rather not rush to squeeze it into this week's update because I am sure I would miss something. I am pretty confident it will be in the game next week though.


Work has been progressing on making new fish. The next fish pair are rather special and require changes made to the fish ai before we release them into the game. These changes are long overdue anyway so I am personally happy to be getting them done. Hopefully we will have something to show you all next week.


Well now I am off to the forums to curate the lists some more. There have been a large amount of suggestions and questions that I have fallen behind on yet again.

We wish you all a good weekend,

The fishery Team

Hello everyone,

Sorry for the delay with this weeks updates. A new build should be uploaded either tonight or tomorrow. There was a serious medical emergency with a family member that happened towards the end of the week which as far as the game is concerned meant that I could not finish everything I wanted to this week. However a good portion of the work did manage to get finished but the rest of it will be finished next week in a sort of "tying up loose ends" update. This will include organising the selection and manipulation options into a hideable UI, marquee selection (fingers crossed) and new entries for the help menu. We also should be able to add a new fish, fix some bugs and add a few more tweaks and enhancements here and there.


Dragon Mosaic Guppy (Female):


Dragon Mosaic Guppy (Male):


Finally we managed to get these lovelies finished. Sometimes the most colourful fish are tricky to paint because quite often painting is a discipline where the painter uses as few colours as possible to describe something. This male guppy just had so many colours that it starts to look more like a fruit salad than a fish if one is not careful.

New Backdrop Menu And Settings:


Most of my week was spent working on the backdrop code. Backdrops have not been worked on for quite a while but we do have a lot of very interesting things planned for them. Before new backdrops can be added to the game and existing ones tweaked it was necessary to update the UI so it is consistent with the rest of the game. That means allowing players to choose a backdrop from a scrollable list menu that uses icons and further control details of the backdrop via a "settings UI".

Seabed Backdrop Settings:


Above you can see some colour settings for the seabed being modified. The compression in the gif is not great but what is happening is that the water fog colour is being changed as well as the overall background colours. There is a lot more planned for this backdrop. At some point we will add some more things in the distance swimming around like whales, the occasional submarine, debris and small plants in the foreground, a crab or two walking about the floor looking for something to nibble etc etc

Abstract Shapes And Patterns:


This was alluded to last week, We have added a few more abstract backgrounds. Their colours are not by any means final but what is in this update should serve as an example of the types of things players can expect to see in the future. The whole idea of the abstract backdrops are similar to what is seen in product advertising. Usually the backdrop is designed to better show off the colours and shapes of the subject as well as just help make an interesting image.

The overall aim for backdrops in general is to have enough variations of themes and styles so that players can really make some interesting images and allow for a lot of variety and re-playability. The current set of backdrops up until this point are feeling rather boring because they are few in number and have not been updated in so long. We promise this will change and this update is the first step.

Probably early Monday I will create a backdrop list thread on the forums that has a list of the backdrops currently in the game as well as some that are planned and as usual we encourage you all to give us your suggestions.

This update also includes everything from last week too since we were not able to make an update last week. Check out last week's post to see what that includes.

We wish you all a pleasant weekend and look forward to improving Fishery more in the coming week.

The Fishery Team