Hello all, a new update has just gone live with a bumper crop of new features and improvements. Let's take a look.
New search menu
You can now bring up a new search menu in-game which allows you to filter the contents of the build menu to just the items you are interested in!
For example: by writing "tropical shoaler count:0" you will see only tropical animals with the shoaler care requirement, which you currently have zero of in your aquarium.
For more examples check out the latest episode of the official Megaquarium vlog:
https://youtu.be/BKINwrUdP9U
You can bring the menu up by pressing the Return key (this is rebindable) or by clicking the search button at the top of the build menu.
New plants
5 new plants have just been added to the game. The focus here was adding more large plants and also adding more variety in terms of the gameplay purpose of each plant.
For example, the all new 2x3 Shellweed is only worth a few additional plants but adds a lot to the rock count and a whopping 50 filter power!
Meanwhile the Velvet Horn is more balanced with a mixture of plants, rocks and filter power.
I've also rebalanced some of the existing plants to make the differences between them more drastic. Some are excellent for plant count, while others are strong passive filterers and then there are the ones which give a range of minor benefits.
New sandbox modes
The final big feature is an expansion to the sandbox mode. There are now additional options which allow you to unlock all animals and equipment from the start of your game, as well as toggle access to unlimited money.
I know some people have missed having a fully "creative" mode with absolutely no restrictions and these new settings allow you to do that.
I've also added a set of new presets to challenge you to try the game in different formats. Let's take a look:
Full unlock - here you have access to everything from the start but don't have unlimited money, so you still have to create a balanced aquarium. It's harder than it sounds!
Research mode - here you have unlimited money but you still need to work through the ranks to unlock all the animals and equipment. This is definitely a relaxed mode where you can proceed at your own pace however it does reduce the burden on managing your staff efficiently.
Creator mode - the ultimate sandbox experience. Everything is unlocked and you have unlimited money.
Just like all the other presets you can tweak individual settings to your own preferences.
And the rest...
That's the major stuff out of the way, but the update comes with all these minor improvements/fixes too:
- Added drag-to-paint for tiles.
- Added rebindable hotkeys for all the buttons in the top left.
- Rebalanced plant/rock/cave lover requirements. Some are also worth extra prestige.
- Added info panels for any animal given to the player as a gift in the campaign so you can see what its needs are before picking it up.
- Added difficulty to save game info.
- Switched to proper fullscreen borderless window mode. If you click on your other monitor it won't minimise the game.
- Fixed animation speed going faster than simulation.
- Optimised build menu so that it loads quicker.
- Optimised animations in general for better FPS in large aquariums, especially on low detail mode.
- Redesigned point bubble system to increase performance.
- Optimised objective checking to increase performance.
- Zoning interface now scales/wraps when it gets to full.
- Slightly increased opacity of build menu UI.
- Added feeding skill requirement to Blue Spotted Ribbontail Ray.
- Striped boxfish no longer eats starfish.
- Danger to tooltip now says "Starfish with size x or less".
- Fixed bug where tank counts were calculated incorrectly.
- Slightly increased size of tooltip text and width.
- Fixed mega light lights.
- Megalopolis tank enquiry objective tells you to check log.
- Fixed objective tooltip in level 1 tutorial with incorrect description of button.
- Tweaked active swimmer icon so that it always says the required volume even when met.
- Added rounded tank and kreisel tank icons.
- Fixed minor display bugs for needs rounded, needs kreisel and congeners only icons.
- Fixed supersonic walking bug.
- Fixed issue where tooltip hangs over edge of screen on higher than 1080p resolutions.
- Added kreisel tank description.
- Fixed a number of portraits positions.
- Fixed double unlock of some science items in sandbox modes
- If you have already unlocked everything at a new rank it skips the "newly available" screen. =Modding=
- Animal mods can create a new animal category without updating gui.data, see Azure Demoiselle for example.
- Game is slightly more resilient to mods being added/removed midgame
Hope you enjoy the update guys, please let me know if you notice any bugs via the Steam discussion forums as usual. https://steamcommunity.com/app/600480/discussions/0/ ːsteamhappyː