development update #125

I thought I would give all of you an update on the game's progress since the last progress update.

Substrate painting:

The way that players apply different materials to their substrates has changed. The version currently in the game uses some spherical volumes to apply the second substrate material to the substrate. It was an interesting way to do it at the time but since then we have found that adding lots of these volumes can increase the amount of calculations needed for the overall effect quite a lot. It is also not great at creating slightly more detailed patterns quickly. Overall it is a bit fiddly and potentially slow if players have lots of these substrate volumes.

We have changed it to a simple brush based system where players just use their mouse to draw onto the substrate. It is nice and simple and requires a lot less gpu instructions to process during rendering and it wont ever slow down due to paint complexity.

I remember one player really wanted the ability to paint paths on the substrate and this tool will enable that.

You may have also noticed that there is a new material in these images. We are also working to add quite a few new substrate materials in the next update. Aside from adding as many coloured pebbles as possible we are adding other materials like the one that is shown above which is a riverbed material which is a mixure of mud and stones. We are also adding materials like clay, bone fragments, prehistoric reef fossils and more.

Here is some of the new pebble colours.

They are a little harsh on the eyes but generally when the overall lighting is adjusted to compliment the colours then it does not look so garish. On the other hand brightly coloured pebbles are part of fish keeping especially when children are making all the design choices so it is fun to have them in there if that is the look players might be going for. But to just reiterate we will have a whole range of materials which are not coloured pebbles aswell.

Sound:

I cannot really show any images of the next thing because it is about sound. There has been a serious lack of sound in the game but that will change in the next update. More or less everything that players interact with will have a sound. When a player places an object like a rock into the aquarium there is a satisfying thump sound the plays and gives it a more physical feeling of being placed into the substrate. The sound of fish and other objects splashing into the water has been changed and given more variety. There is also a nice underwater ambience track that plays when the player moves the camera inside an aquarium that makes it seem like the camera is actually underwater. And of course there is much more to come. There will be sounds made by fish as they bite food. Dissolving tablets will make better fizzing sounds, mechanical devices like filters or heaters will give off sounds too. Everything will be based on the camera's distance to them so in a very large and busy aquarium the sound will not be overwhelming.

Languages:

We decided it would be simpler to support all the languages that steam supports which is 29 in total. Which does create a bit more work for us but it is less tedious to support all languages at once instead