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