Hello everyone,
Build 55 will be uploaded later this evening. It is first and foremost a bug fix update but it comes with a few nice tweaks in addition. A normal update should come towards the end of this week the details of it's contents will be talked about further down.
Bug Fixes:
There were problems with displaying the correct Fahrenheit temperature and switching between Celsius and Fahrenheit would only update the main UI after the temperature changes.
Not all data associated with water chemistry was properly reset when loading an aquarium after previously loading another which could cause some errors if the newly loaded aquarium has a smaller volume than the previous,
Tweaks:
Changes in water chemistry are happening a little too slow for larger aquariums. Steps have been taken to speed this up but more will be done this week to make the speed of increases and decreases feel correct and appropriate.
The small heater has been modified to be much stronger so less are needed to heat larger aquariums. Small aquariums will require players to turn the strength of the heater down so the temperature is not too high. Soonish we will add different sizes of heater which will be enable players to use the right heater for the right aquarium without too much fiddling about.
Light:
More progress has been made with Light. Players can now see the amount of light exposure in their aquarium. It changes depending on how long the light is turned on or off. It is recommended that players keep the exposure within the moderate range.
When the light is turned off it not only causes plants to inhale oxygen and exhale co2 but it also causes fish to go towards the bottom of the aquarium and sleep. When fish sleep their stress decreases, their health increases as does their energy.
Eventually we will have species of fish that are nocturnal and will only come out of hiding places at night and become very active. There will also been some fish species added that have evolved in isolated environments like caves where there is no light and it does not affect them.
Fish population ui tweaks:
A few more changes have been made to the fish population ui. It shows the total amount of fish mass as before but now there are two additional sliders that show the percentage of live and dead fish. This can be useful because in large aquariums full of plants and other objects it can be difficult to notice dead fish. It also helps give players an expectation of water chemistry changes. Having dead fish will increase waste dramatically over time. The same changes have been made for the plant population ui too.
Co2 Scrubber:
This can be used to remove excess Co2 from the water to help bring the balance of Co2 and O2 closer. It does not require any power.
As was said before this update was released mostly to fix the bugs mentioned at the top of the post. We can't have them staying in the game too long once they are noticed.
Towards the end of the week we are aiming to do an update that includes more water chemistry tweaks as well as some changes to fish behaviour in the area of breeding.
We are trying to get the live birth feature added this week as well as some changes to shoaling.
We are also trying to fix some problems with the larger fish in the game. They move a little too fast sometimes especially as they rotate and as a result their movement feels less believable.
We also still have fish to paint. Hopefully we can finish off the Oscar fish and then add more predation features. Hopefully we can squeeze most of that into this later week's update. If not then we will stick in the game the week afterwards.
We wish you all a pleasant Monday evening
The Fishery Team