Hello everyone,
There is no update to the build this week. We have managed to get a lot of work done but certain parts of the game are being dissected in order to make them better. I will get to that further down but first we have new content to show.
Mesoheros festae. Commonly called the Red Terror Cichlid or Festae Cichlid
Male:
Female:
These lovelies will replace the last googly eyed fish we have in the game. They are about 95% complete and will be in the next game update.
Triceratops-ish skull:
This fine specimen has been painted. This will also be in the game in the next game update.
Now to the reason we have no build update this week. We have added a lot of changes to fish in the past month which also included puffer fish and now the new red terror cichlids which are larger than any fish currently in the game. Adding new fish that are unlike previous fish allow us to see where parts of the animation, locomotion and behaviour systems need more work. A lot of the focus this week has been on behaviour. We have added aggressive behaviour to the betta fish but in doing so we must add separate panic and combat behaviours as well.
After all it will not make sense if a Betta is attacking a neon tetra and the neon tetra is swimming along as if nothing is wrong. It should try to evade the Betta. However if the fish being attacked is another Betta or a fish that could could fight back then it should fight back. If some peaceful fish are nearby when this happens then they should show signs of alarm or panic and swim away from the fighting. It becomes a chain reaction of behaviour that propagates through the population of your aquarium. It is a bit tricky and requires a lot of thought and testing but we are on the right track for sure.
This is a little bit of a short post this week but I want to squeeze in some more time to program fish brains. I have not been as active as usual in the forums during the week due to the intensity of the work but I'll answer some questions and comments over the weekend for sure.
We hope you all have a good weekend.
The Fishery Team