FISHERY News

Hello everyone,

Build 57 should be uploaded sometime in the next few hours. It has had some very much needed changes made to it. I came back from my little break about two weeks ago and we decided that it is about time that we addressed some parts of the game that make it look and feel rather shabby.

New aquarium Selection Screen:


The way that players used to choose an aquarium was bland, boring, uninspiring and extremely grey. That has now completely changed. We provided a better visualisation of each aquariums dimension's and volume and removed that tedious scroll list at the bottom of the screen. This should help new players to feel less baffled when choosing an aquarium for the first time. This mode will be added to and improved further over time. For instance some players have suggested that we add the possibility for players to add a premade plumbing setup and a few other utilities to their aquariums at this stage and we think that is a good idea among many others.

New Main Menu:


The main menu is perhaps the least exciting part of any game but it used to look totally rubbish. Flat grey colour and a tiny menu. New players were not very impressed as it is a very ugly way to start playing a newly purchased game.

Colour Editor:


The backdrop system has been re-worked to allow for better customisation. Specifically we have added a colour editor so players now have a choice between 3,600,000 colours to apply to the various attributes of their chosen backdrops. Yes we are working on more backdrops which will be added to the game. Feel free to check out the backdrop list on the forums and make suggestions.

The new colour editor is going to get a lot of use throughout the game. Over time we will make it possible for players to adjust the colours of various decorations, substrates and eventually plants and fish when we add some of the genetics features to the game.

We spent the whole week working on these changes. Last week was spent working on bug fixes, cleaning up simulation code, trying to balance how the water chemistry works. The algae code has been re-written so it grows in a manner that is not as frustrating as before but im sure we have not worked out all the nuances with it.

We are also continuously working on the next iteration of the fish ai and painting the models of the new fish we showed you many weeks ago. All of that and more is going to be put into the game as soon as we are happy with them. Quite often we have to change the priority of certain things because a player finds an important bug that needs fixing or players let us know what is more important to them to see the in the game sooner. This was the case with the example aquariums and the game is much easier for new players to get to grips with when they have examples to look at and understand. It was well worth prioritising that over painting new fish in that instance.

Now that I am back and feeling refreshed I think we can make a lot of very meaningful progress in the coming weeks. I have not been as active in the forums these last weeks because I and my colleague mostly just had our heads down working on getting this update ready. I'll be able to answer forum posts over the weekend and more next week.

We wish you all a very good weekend and hope you find some nice bargains in the summer sale.

The Fishery Team

Hello everyone,

Build 56 has been uploaded.

We have done some quite important changes to the game but they are different to what we said we would be working on in our last update post. Essentially for quite a while we have overlooked the needs of new players. This has to led to a lot of confusion about how to setup an aquarium and keep it from going wrong. In recent weeks we have improved a lot of the help text found in various parts of the game that give explanations about various aspects of the water chemistry and information about fish and plant populations.

That was not enough and what players really wanted was a tutorial and some examples scenes. A full blown tutorial is not possible at this time for reasons I won't go into but we have put together a lot of example aquariums that players can learn from and experiment with.



The aquarium loading browser has been modified to have a separate selection of example scenes. They are separate from your scenes so there is no confusion with names or anything like that. There are eleven examples in total and they are all fairly different from each other. Each of them shows a different way that an aquarium can be set up. Each of them has a different maintenance routine as you might expect. Occasionally you might need to drop a fertilizer ball into the water to keep the nutrients level at a good level for the plants. Other aquariums will have the nutrients levels taken care of via the plumbing system. You will also be able to see various ways to filter waste. It can be done completely naturally using fungi or with a sponge filter in the aquarium or with a filter in the plumbing system. Some aquariums have problems which are immediately obvious when you load them up or they will manifest over time because there is a small imbalance somewhere that was overlooked. It might be an interesting challenge to try out ideas and fix some of these aquariums. Example aquariums cannot be saved over. They are designed purely as a learning feature and you can modify them as much as you like. If you manage to completely screw them up then fear not you can just reload them without fear of accidently saving it..

Heaters:


Heaters are now fixed for good. They operate with a thermostat and will not overshoot their target temperature. They are also more effective in large aquariums so it does not take 50 heaters to heat the largest aquarium in a reasonable time. They have also been re-textured to look better than before.


Similar changes have been made for other plumbing devices. For the nutrients injector players only need to set their desired nutrients level and the device will release enough nutrients over time to get it to that level. However if you have a lot of plants consuming nutrients at a rate that is more than rate that nutrients are being produced it will never reach the target level and players will need to add another nutrients injector or fertilizer ball to keep nutrients from running out.

Similar changes have been made to other plumbing devices and the devices placed in the aquarium like air stones and sponge filters.

There have also been the usual set of bug fixes and tweaks to the maths behind the water chemistry etc.


A lot of these changes were long overdue and obviously what the game has needed for quite a while but when taking into account that I cannot remember the last time I took a proper break it is not surprising that these mistakes have been made.
For the next two weeks I shall be away resting and relaxing my brain, I might even go outside. My colleague will be working on the ever growing list of art content so you can all be assured that work on the game will continue during my brief absence. I will be checking the forums and answering questions every one or two days.


We wish you all a good Monday evening

The Fishery Team

Hello everyone,

Build 55 will be uploaded later this evening. It is first and foremost a bug fix update but it comes with a few nice tweaks in addition. A normal update should come towards the end of this week the details of it's contents will be talked about further down.

Bug Fixes:
There were problems with displaying the correct Fahrenheit temperature and switching between Celsius and Fahrenheit would only update the main UI after the temperature changes.

Not all data associated with water chemistry was properly reset when loading an aquarium after previously loading another which could cause some errors if the newly loaded aquarium has a smaller volume than the previous,

Tweaks:
Changes in water chemistry are happening a little too slow for larger aquariums. Steps have been taken to speed this up but more will be done this week to make the speed of increases and decreases feel correct and appropriate.

The small heater has been modified to be much stronger so less are needed to heat larger aquariums. Small aquariums will require players to turn the strength of the heater down so the temperature is not too high. Soonish we will add different sizes of heater which will be enable players to use the right heater for the right aquarium without too much fiddling about.


Light:

More progress has been made with Light. Players can now see the amount of light exposure in their aquarium. It changes depending on how long the light is turned on or off. It is recommended that players keep the exposure within the moderate range.

When the light is turned off it not only causes plants to inhale oxygen and exhale co2 but it also causes fish to go towards the bottom of the aquarium and sleep. When fish sleep their stress decreases, their health increases as does their energy.

Eventually we will have species of fish that are nocturnal and will only come out of hiding places at night and become very active. There will also been some fish species added that have evolved in isolated environments like caves where there is no light and it does not affect them.

Fish population ui tweaks:

A few more changes have been made to the fish population ui. It shows the total amount of fish mass as before but now there are two additional sliders that show the percentage of live and dead fish. This can be useful because in large aquariums full of plants and other objects it can be difficult to notice dead fish. It also helps give players an expectation of water chemistry changes. Having dead fish will increase waste dramatically over time. The same changes have been made for the plant population ui too.


Co2 Scrubber:

This can be used to remove excess Co2 from the water to help bring the balance of Co2 and O2 closer. It does not require any power.


As was said before this update was released mostly to fix the bugs mentioned at the top of the post. We can't have them staying in the game too long once they are noticed.

Towards the end of the week we are aiming to do an update that includes more water chemistry tweaks as well as some changes to fish behaviour in the area of breeding.

We are trying to get the live birth feature added this week as well as some changes to shoaling.

We are also trying to fix some problems with the larger fish in the game. They move a little too fast sometimes especially as they rotate and as a result their movement feels less believable.

We also still have fish to paint. Hopefully we can finish off the Oscar fish and then add more predation features. Hopefully we can squeeze most of that into this later week's update. If not then we will stick in the game the week afterwards.

We wish you all a pleasant Monday evening

The Fishery Team

Hello everyone,

It is not May the 7th. Which was the date we were aiming to get the next build out for. From last Wednesday until now it has just been one long day. Lots of changes, tweaks, bug fixes and adding some of the new art content we have been showing over the past few weeks. We are doing final testing for the next build and we are quite certain that tomorrow lunchtime we will upload it for everyone to play.

The art content that will be included are all the discus fish, dead fly, mealworm, beef heart cubes, water lettuce. The nudge tool will also be included and the various tweaks and improvement to fish behaviour. We have shown a lot of these things in previous posts so I won't repeat images of them here.

There is also some other interesting things to show and talk about that are also going to be included that you have not seen yet. We have tweaked a lot of how the water chemistry works so it is less volatile and players can be more precise in modifying it. We have also changes how we show players that data in a way that is not overwhelming or confusing (hopefully).

Gas

The way that Carbon dioxide and oxygen are calculated has changed. This is because we are trying to base things a little more accurately on how the gas exchange mechanism works in real life. It is not totally accurate but it creates interesting ways to help players understand and exploit the mechanisms surrounding balance in the game. Essentially if you add something that consumes oxygen like fish then your oxygen level will go down and your carbon dioxide level will go up. Adding plants will change the gas levels in the exact opposite way and you could add plants to counter any imbalance created by having fish.

We still have air stones, gas regulators and dissolvable tablets to tip the balance in a certain direction when you want to get things to be more complex.

Nutrients:

The way that nutrients is calculated has not really changed but the way we show it's data is a little different. A few numbers have been removed and are replaced with sliders that show in a more meaningful way what the numbers failed to show. Players can better see the balance of production and consumption of nutrients in their aquariums. When things are not as balanced as they could be it is quite evident. Ideally players are encouraged to keep things in the moderate range and that will result in your water chemistry staying relatively stable going forward. When it is imbalanced the outcome could be nutrients running out too quickly or an excess of nutrients that leads to algae growth. Algae growth might be preferable to some players in which this serves as a useful guide to increasing nutrients to levels that which will lead to algae growth.

Waste:

Similar changes have been made to the waste panel. For most cases a balance is not necessary for waste. If you have adequate filtration then the consumption slider will be high and that will put your mind to ease knowing that you have more than enough filter capacity.

Temperature:


We have had a lot of comments about how players control temperature. Specifically how bad it is. The worst that would happen is that players would add a heater which would mean the temperature keeps going up and over their desired temperature setting. They could enable the auto mode for the heater but quite often the temperature would go higher than it should and take a little time to come back down which upset all their fish and plants. This has all been thrown away and a smarter but simpler way of calculating temperature has been created. Now when players add a heater it will increase the temperature of the water by however many degrees it can for the current volume of water and it wont go above it. Players can still adjust the strength of the heater to have precise control. This does mean that in very large aquariums more than one of these small heaters will need to be used as before but you don't need to enable auto mode on them and once you get the right temperature it wont go above it unless the power goes off.

The display slider is split up into regions to make it easier for players to read and not be too consumed by numbers too much if they dont want to. We also added two more temperature states, Deep Cold and Hot. This will come be used more in the future of the game when we add some fish that live in extreme environments. For instance angler fish and other deep sea fish that live at the bottom of the Atlantic and Antarctic oceans live in much colder water than your average river or lake fish and players will need to replicate those temperatures in order to keep them happy. On the opposite end of the scale the Desert Pupfish (Cyprinodon Macularius) has been recorded living in water that gets to around 43 degrees Celsius or 110 degrees Fahrenheit. There will be a number of fish added that live in these extreme temperatures.

We have also tweaked the code to be more forgiving when the temperature is on the border between warm and cold temperatures. We have received requests that players would love to be able to have a mixture of coldwater and warmwater fish in the same aquarium. If you are able to get the temperature to be more or less on the border between both regions then both species will be happy. The same also applies to salinity which means you will be able to mix cold and warm, fresh and marine species together if you are cunning and patient enough to get the values right. It is not exactly realistic but it's a fun way of rewarding players who work hard to be precise.

Salinity:

Salinity has also been rewritten for similar reasons as temperature. It was also difficult to control. We also display salinity as PPT which means Parts Per Thousand. This is a more common way to talk about salinity and hopefully the more experienced aquarists who play the game are less baffled by it than before.


Fish population:

Again we reduce numbers and explain things in simple text as well as showing a better representation of the data. Essentially if your population size is moderate and no more than 100% stocked then you should not encounter problems. It is only when an aquarium is over stocked that there could be problems with oxygen, waste etc. Over stocking is not necessarily bad but experts advise that overstocking should be done with caution and by people with more experience. There will be career mode storylines about building and maintaining over stocked aquariums.

Plant population:

Plant population is show in a similar way. If plant coverage is below 101% then generally things should be fine so long as you have paid attention to nutrients. Keep in mind that coverage is based on the volume of plant matter in your aquarium and not the actual number of plants. The plant coverage value is going to be very important to a lot of features that will be added in the future. Certain fish like to live in an environment where there are lots of plants. Some fish Instinctively lay eggs in areas where there is more vegetation. There will be more needs related to habitat that players will need to take into account when making their aquariums but for the sake of fun it wont be unforgiving and there will always be cunning ways to bend the rules.

Food Population:

Again here we try to make things more clear and explain things without too many numbers. We may have more data that shows the type of food currently in the aquarium.


Water changes work the same way as before except for oxygen and co2 where It temporarily balances them out instead of just lowering both their values.

Algae is still being worked on. We are aiming to make it easier to predict and control but also have an element of difficult to it. Algae has such a legendary reputation when it comes to aquariums that we cannot just treat it the same way we treat nutrients or waste. It has to be properly done and there will also been algae filters coming soon.

A lot of these changes are in response to player feedback. We see a lot of similar questions or comments that make it clear that something is not explained properly by us in the game or that it is just confusing in it's current iteration. There is still a lot of that confusion in the game but we are going to make it better. Remember we are not even 20% finished with the game yet and there is a lot of things missing.

One thing that is not clear in the game is that the smaller aquariums are easier for new players to use than the larger ones. This happens automatically because the system is designed to take aquarium volume into account when calculating all the numbers so if you have the largest aquarium filled with plants then the nutrients requirements will be very much larger than that of a nano aquarium with 100% plant coverage. More information explaining some of these fundamental tips will be added soon so new players don't find the early parts of the game to be too hard and annoying.


It has been an absolute beast of a time to get this update ready. Our days started very early and ended very late and we are quite exhausted but finally we are getting rid of a whole class of annoyances and imperfections that should make the experience more enjoyable to players. After we do the final testing and upload the build I'll be able to respond to forum posts from the previous week.

The next build to be uploaded after this one will be probably the end of next week. It will include more of the fish that we have painted over the previous weeks and include more changes to fish behaviour. The new algae code will also be present and working properly.

We wish you all a very nice Monday evening.

The Fishery Team

Hello everyone,

It has been another week of painting once again.

Red Neon Dwarf Gouramis:
Female:


Male:


Players have been requesting this fish species for quite some time and finally we are putting it into the game. There is still some work to be done on it. The shiny scale map that reveals itself as the camera moves needs more variations in the colouring and it needs to be more intense on the fins and of course the usual list on endless tweaks needs to be done for the rest of the paint job. This is just the first variety we are going to paint. At some point in the near future we will paint the Neon Blue variety and so on.

Red Pigeon Discus Male (work in progress):


The most complex discus patterning we have painted so far. My colleague is able to paint the more complicated fish much faster than I paint the less complicated ones which is useful because goodness knows how long this would take me to paint this one. If all goes to plan this and the female version will be painted this week.

Freeze Dried Beef Heart:


Fresh Beef Heart:


I was fascinated to read that discus breeders highly recommend feeding beef heart to their fish. From what I have read online generally it is prepared at home and there are even recipes that include spinach and garlic. Naturally once I read this I knew we have to include it in the game. There are two varieties, "Freeze Dried" and "Fresh". I am also thinking that the freeze dried variety should float while the fresh variety should sink. Perhaps this is not realistically correct but I feel it is important us to make items that are similar to each other as distinct as possible where it makes sense.


It is in fact the end of the month and still no update to the build. As usual we have gotten too excited and cannot stop painting things when we are on a roll. This coming week while my colleague continues to paint I will spend time putting together and testing the new build for Friday the 7th of may. It will include as much of the finished content that I can jam into it. This will include all the discus fish, food items and the nudge feature. There will also be some tweaks to the maths behind the water chemistry because all too often it descends into chaos. Paradoxically this is somewhat correct or even desired because it is a non linear chaotic system but it makes the game more stressful and unwieldy so one must massage the numbers to be a bit more forgiving.
The new breeding features and other promised quality of life changes will most likely come in the week afterwards and so on if they can't be squeezed into this week.

Time for some relaxation coding. We wish you all a good Sunday.

The Fishery Team