Hello everyone,
It has been quite a good week indeed and we have uploaded a new build of the game. Build 41.
We have been focused quite heavily on art content this week as we were last week.
Updates to plant shaders:
The little programs that tell the graphics card how to draw plants have been updated. These plant shaders have been vastly simplified which should result in them rendering faster. They also use less GPU memory which is very nice as well. As you might be able to see from the above gif we have made changes to the underwater "wind" movement. This is going to be tweaked quite a lot in the near future because each plant requires slightly different settings to get the movement to look nice. The new algae and waste textures also appear on plants now.
Black Sand Substrate:
White Sand Substrate:
It has been a while since we have added some new substrate materials. These two have been on the to-do list for quite some time. We have also modified the "default" sand substrate to look a little nicer and the shader for sand substrate has been modified to have those tiny reflective glittery specs that you sometimes see in sand. This hopefully will make things just that little bit more charming.
Sponge filter progress:
The lovably ugly sponge filters have been painted. These will be in next weeks update once I have written the new code for how they work. The code for waste filters is being updated specifically for these items but more details shall be revealed next week. It will also affect how waste filters work in the plumbing area too. At some point we will also add different coloured sponges.
Triceratops Skull Model:
I have been working on this skull in the evenings for about half an hour at a time for a while now and this week I decided to finish it off and it is on the list of things to be painted. We already have a Tyrannosaurus skull in the game but I feel like it is getting a bit lonely. That Tyrannosaurus skull will need a bit of an artistic rework in the near future because it is starting to look a little dated. We will certainly be adding more fossilised bones to the game because they are so fun to make and to look at.
Auto Mode Help:
A new entry has been added to the in game help. It does it's best to simply explain what the auto mode for powered items is but I foresee changes to it's text over time.
There have also been a lot of tiny tweaks here and there to various different parts of the game. Small reduction in memory use for every dissolvable item that uses particles. Separating the gold used for the treasure chest into it's own gold shader rather than having a complex combined shader. Turning off shadow casting for small plants like glosso and flame moss to reduce rendering times. Really small or thin objects have no business casting shadows because shadow rendering really does slow things down and I feel like the performance cost is not worth it. They do of course still receive shadows and their shadow casting might be turned back on in the future once I am more happy with shadows in general.
Progress has been made with painting the new fish. Unfortunately I cannot show it here because we are painting the surprise fish first so we are sure it will actually be in the game when we said it would be. Otherwise we just look silly. But you can expect to see painting progress with both puffer fish next week if everything goes well.
Also for next week's update.... Sea shells! and more.
Busy times indeed. As usual we wish you all a very good weekend.
The Fishery Team.