Hello everyone,
It is finally the end of a very tricky week and a new build uploaded to steam. Build 43 has some new fish and a lot of modifications done to fish animation in general.
Amazon Puffer:
Hawaiian Whitestopped Toby:
The gif quality is not great but hopefully that will give you a sense of what they are like. Getting the game ready to add these fish has been the big challenge for the last few weeks. This is mostly because they required a few things to be done differently. They don't undulate their bodies like most other fish in order to propel themselves through the water but only use their smaller fins to do so. This is a problem for us because suddenly there are less interesting things happening with their animation and they look like odd little puppets floating through the water. For these fish we need to make their actual movement through the water from the point of view of position and rotation more interesting which is what we will work on next.
This is somewhat disappointing because I had hoped we would get their animation a little further along than it is right now but due to time and I dare say a bit of tiredness we were not able to do so. To add to that disappointment we were also not able to get the inflating behaviour into the game either so it is a double disappointment.
On the bright side though we have completely overhauled the fish animation and locomotion systems and improved all the current fish behaviours in the game. All fish should have more fluidity in their movements and there is now independent control over their pectoral and body swim motions. Breeding animations are now more interesting. The partners swim around each other in a more interesting way rather than just headbutt each other. It is not final but it is a good next step for it.
Once we have added the inflating behaviour for puffer fish it will be triggered as a result of the fish becoming too stressed. All fish species will have their own stress behaviours. Some fish will act aggressively and attack other nearby fish while other fish might simply stop eating. Other fish might start comfort eating and begin eating every piece of food that it can find in the aquarium.
There will also be "health behaviours" which will be triggered when conditions are such that their life could be in danger. For instance a lack of oxygen in aquariums will leave the fish gasping for air near the surface. Lack of energy as a result of not being fed enough will lead to slow, lumbering movement.
There are also further improvements that are going to be added to existing behaviours. One important aspect that is missing is the different levels of the aquarium that fish prefer to swim at. For instance guppies swim more towards the top level of the of the aquarium and fish like Platies, tiger barbs and neon tetras tend to swim around the middle. Other fish like Corydoras prefer to swim around the bottom because that is where they get a lot of their food. At the moment all fish just swim about anywhere and it makes them all look like they have the same brain but that will change soon.
Other behaviours that are being worked on are different types of shoaling behaviours, more interesting rest behaviours, territorial behaviours, playfulness, fear, loneliness and more.
We will have a little bit of a break next week. The work days won't be as long but there will still be a development update post on Friday and there may also be a new build uploaded so keep an eye out for that. We will still be working on some new art content as well as some new fish behaviours that have been mentioned above so we will certainly have something interesting to share.
We wish you all a relaxed and restful weekend.
The Fishery Team.