Update v2.0.13 (22 July 2020)
Balance/Improvements
- Added message about search feature to 5. Napalos.
- Moved search examples tooltip to a little info 'i' to the right of the search bar so it's easier to find.
Bugs
- Fixed issue where tasks say they are inaccessible to staff when they are not.
- You can no longer sell the Manatees in FF 5. Diamond River.
- German: Steinkoralle renamed to Montipora
Update v2.0.12 (5 July 2020)
Balance/Improvements
- When zoned staff don't have a task they will return to and stay in their zone. They can still exit their zones to complete any part of an assigned task e.g. to reach a dispenser or if the shortest route to a task is outside the zone.
- Zoned staff are assigned tasks before non-zoned staff. This means when a new day starts, they will have first pick of the tasks and then non-zoned staff will collect tasks from the ones that are remaining.
- Guests will not be attracted to podiums if they have already heard the current talk.
- Prestige generated by guests who have left the aquarium will continue to count toward your prestige total until they decay in the normal way (1 game day after the prestige was generated). Previously, you lost the prestige immediately when the guest left.*
- Smoothed out work done when a new day starts to reduce the frame spike in large aquariums.
Bugs
- Sandbox: merchants and trades which provide shoalers will give 1 extra animal so it can be traded away.
- Fixed bug where guest thoughts would show the thoughts that were generated the latest in the day, rather than most recently, first.
- Removed large margin on right hand side of dropdown items to make more space for the text.
- Fixed bug where accessory icon stayed grey in staff manage tab even after it has been collected.
- French and Russian: money symbol next to current money will not roll onto next line.
*In practice this won't make a large difference. In medium to large aquariums, guest prestige tends to decay before they leave anyway. However this small tweak will make the mechanic easier to understand. Your prestige total is simply the amount of prestige generated in the last game day.
Update v2.0.11 (16 June 2020)
This patch fixes an issue in the Chinese version of the game, where the cashflow window did not appear correctly.
I have a more substantial update coming soon with some nice (much requested) improvements to the staff behaviour when they don't have a job, plus some optimisation improvements which will hopefully smooth out some of the frame spikes that occur when you are operating a large aquarium.
Update v2.0.10 (16 June 2020)
Balance/Improvements
- Bred animals appear at the location of eggs/fry.
Bugs
- Updated Chinese and Japanese fonts with missing characters.
- Altered Japanese font to use Japanese variant of shared characters.
- Fixed typo in Portuguese.
- Fixed bug where Piranhas were not affecting all animals.
- Fixed bug where larger animals would get stuck in the corner of the tank.
- Improved stability of game when starting a new day.
- Fixed bug where tiles painted with default paint would switch to current default paint when save as loaded.
- Fixed a rare bug with ledger table when switching tabs.
- Fixed a bug where correct accessory bonuses were not shown in all locations.
- Fixed bug where tooltip would not disappear after bringing up sell confirmation dialog.
- Fixed bug where land animal animations would flicker on low detail mode.
Update v2.0.9 (11 June 2020)
Balance/Improvements
- Added 4 extra staff to 4. Kairobi in case they are needed.
- Improved land animal movement so they smoothly enter the water after climbing down from the land.
- Feeding platform and viewing platform tanks no longer accept lights. Existing lights on these tanks will continue to work correctly, but you can't add them to any tanks from now on.
Bugs
- Fixed issue with lights not appearing in the correct place.
- Fixed issue where the tooltip would hang around after deselecting the sell tool while hovering over something.
- Fixed a bug where the move tool would get stuck on and would only deselect if you clicked the button in the top left or pressed the hotkey.
- Improved save behaviour to check for and remove 'read only' flags on save files.
- Fixed bug where new save thumb would be blank if you returned to the save menu multiple times before returning to the game.
- Fixed a bug where the coldwater icon on an animal would not indicate that the animal was insufficiently chilled.
- Fixed a typo in 1. Hitama.
Update v2.0.8 (8 June 2020)
Balance/Improvements
- Hybrids have a hybrid name when they appear e.g. Emerald Cobra Guppy 1.
- Added the name of the animal to the tooltip for the animal portraits in the ledger.
- Merchants and trades give a minimum of 2 animals so that you always have 1 extra to trade away.
- Slightly reduced initial health decrease when an animal is at the wrong pH to give you a little more time to fix the issue.
- Posters now always generate prestige. A guest can enjoy up to 3 posters. The prestige generated is a random number from 1 to the prestige value shown on the poster.
- Slightly increased various chances of mutation during hybrid breeding to speed up the initial process, without removing the skill and challenge from the overall process.
- Tweaked target animals on level 3 'Rare Guppies' objective so that the colors are slightly closer to the starting color.
Bugs/Improvements
- Fixed some translations strings.
- Fixed a bug where the wrong message was deleted in the message log.
- Fixed a bug where a tank would changing between saltwater and freshwater incorrectly when pumps were involved.
- Fixed a bug where a tank would highlight as connectable to via pump, but wouldn't actually connect when you clicked it.
- Fixed a bug where the naming process would not complete due to leading or trailing space.
- Fixed a bug where a animal which requires a supplement would grow from a fry and immediately say it had missed a supplement.
- Fixed a bug where points floating off guests were not correct, under representing low numbers of points within a large group of a different type of point.
Update v2.0.6/v2.0.7 (6 June 2020)
Balance
- Made it so autofeeder cannot feed live foods.
Bugs
- Fixed/tweaked some text in French, Italian and Chinese version.
- Fixed bug where destruction events were not deletable.
- Fixed issue where floating plants could be placed over bridges/platforms at some tank rotations.
- Made it so you have access to the starting paint in level 3 and 4.
- Added autofeeder textures for roach, vegetables, brine shrimp and bloodworm.
- Fixed issue where sandbox could create objectives which you couldn't complete. If your save is affected by this it will automatically upgrade when you load it so that all quests are completable! ː
- Fixed icon for "dislikes rocks".
Update v2.0.5 (5 June 2020)
- Fixed an issue in level 4 where mussels, vegetables, sand eel and supplement dispensers didn't start unlocked. Unfortunately the fix will only affect new starts on the level. Sorry!
- Fixed an issue where land animals got stuck walking on the spot.
- Fixed an issue where animals could do breeding interactions the day they grew into "full" animals.
- Fixed issue where unlocking live mysis did not automatically unlock zoo plankton.
- Fixed issue where after moving a tank which had a poster attached, you couldn't attach another poster until the game was reloaded.
- Fixed issue where you could build under the stairs of the platform/bridge tanks. Any that have already been placed will continue to have the issue but newly built tanks will be fixed.
- Fixed issue where the science/ecology windows didn't update when something new became available.
- Fixed issue in level 2 where additional grant funding was not released.
- Fixed an issue in level 4 where mussels, vegetables, sand eel and supplement dispensers didn't start unlocked. Unfortunately the fix will only affect new starts on the level. Sorry!
- Prevented strange bug where timer at the start of level 1 did not start properly (hopefully!).
Update v2.0.3 (4 June 2020)
- Ledger added.
- Live cultures added.
- Moon Jelly now eats Zoo Plankton.
- Guests don't like seeing food/tool dispensers now! Put them behind the scenes with your filters. ;)
- You can now set default paint for new construction by right clicking on the paint in the build menu.
- Improved messages - growth events have a clickable link to the animal and you get a message when a tank is too small for an animal to grow up.
- Tunnel tanks generate prestige.
- Increased prestige of some of the more prestigious animals (some sharks, green turtle).
- Costs of most animals have gone up a small amount in a balance pass. The cost of some high prestige (12+) animals has been increased quite a bit as they were underpriced before. Noticeably the Whale Shark and Manta Ray both cost 2-3x what they cost before.
- New reliability icon tells you estimated time between breakdowns so it's more useful in making judgements between equipment.
- Tweaked equipment reliabilities so that they remain useful throughout the game.
- The aquarium can now be closed. You can find the toggle by selecting the entrance.
- A number of sharks and rays require skill now.
- Autofeeder cannot be used on as many animals due to previous change. The time between breakdowns has been increased to make it more competitive.
- Research window now scrolls rather than shrinking the projects. It also has unlimited capacity now.
- Build menu scroll speed has been capped for when the menu gets very full (with mods!)
- Improved tooltip for growth icon.
- Tweaked tooltip for tank depth and require tank depth icons for compatibility with expansion.
- Tweaked tooltip for warning/danger to icons for compatibility with expansion objects. It now shows the size as a range. "Fish" has been replaced with "Animals" so that it can include reptiles and mammals. Mechanically nothing has changed. It basically means any animal that is not a crustacean, starfish, clam, gorgonian, soft coral, stony coral or anemone.
- Added new icons for starfish, clam, gorgonian, soft coral, scavenger, anemone and empty dispenser.
- Guests holding balloons can go inside toilets now.
- Animals move between containers e.g. they will move between all parts of the u-shaped tank.
- Small tunnel tank has an extra container at the top to allow animals to swim over.
- Mega tank is now a large tank instead of huge. It doesn't need its own category.
- Food dispensers appear before the fish in the search so they are easier to find.
- Improved scenery placement on tanks with sunken floors. The scenery now appears at the cursor instead of below it.
- Messages with enclosed objects do not jump to the top when you pick one up.
- Creator mode starts on rank 12 so you have access to better staff.
- The quick start preset has been tweaked to work better with the new achievement.
3 new achievements: Sandbox Trials - Standard, Sandbox Trials - Limited, Sandbox Trials - Completionist.
Update v1.6.2 (27 January 2020)
- Japanese localisation.
- Place staff doors directly over walls.
- Slightly reduced memory footprint.
- Fixed bug where floor tiles in maps with default paint were not being automatically painted.
- Fixed bugs where painted objects were not appearing correctly when being moved/placed.
- Fixed 'silent sound bug' which occured when you held shift in first person mode.
- Fixed positions of shark hat and copperband toy gift shop items.
- Fixed bug where not all water quality icons (skimming, uv sterilising, heating, chilling etc.) were appearing in the context bar when placing an object.
- Fixed hard and brutal difficulty strings which had some incorrect figures.
- Fixed bug where tank point value was updating before animal health, leading the out of date tank point values (until updated again, which happened regularly).
- Fixed bug where pump could connect to same tank twice.
- Fixed bug where you could switch to the pipe connecting tool when already using it, caused extra connections to stay on screen permanently.
- Fixed bug where staff did not return their item when they were fired.
- Fixed bug where staff did not resume their work animations when game was loaded.
- Fixed various bugs where item accessibility was not being updated correctly for use in tasks.
- Fixed bug where music label disappeared when at a value of 0.
- Fixed bug where guide book shelf was not lit correctly.
- Fixed bug where supplements were not causing animals to lose health correctly.
- Centred "Let's Go" button on rank up screen.
- Expanding, filling in, walls, platforms and stairs all vary in cost based on difficulty.
- Guests now switch to standing animation when they view a tank or use an object.
- Tweaked Megalopolis final objective to remove the angelfish and surgeonfish requirement. Too restrictive.
- Tweaked Napalos level so that you need 24 animals to win. The level lasts slightly longer and forces you to use some of the animals you unlock at rank 7 which is fun.
- Reworked podium code to be more robust and deal with interruptions, saving/loading etc. mid-talk.
- Fixed bug where dispensers for non-consumable items were being refilled at the beginning of the day.
- Fixed bug where if you moved a wall when it was 'dropped' then it would not drop in the new position.
- Increased size of text in drop down list items.
Update v1.5.2g (20 October 2019)
- Tweaked staff speed algorithm to make increase between fitness levels more linear. Speed now increases by 8% for each level of fitness. These values are exposed for modding in simulation.data.
- Added staff salary to staff window.
- Fixed bug where game would not load when a mod had a corrupted info.data file
- Added Italian localisation.
- Smoothed out 'freeze' on new day in large aquariums.
- Removed freeze during autosave when entering the menu.
- Improved animal swimming animations.
- Tweaked fixing animation so that toolkit sits on the floor next to staff.
- Fixed bug where an object could be not "in game world" but still occupying the floor.
- Reduced cap for zoom level.
- Fixed darkening of rounded corners of tanks when viewed from behind.
- Improved visual look of animals with transparent meshes like the Volitans Lionfish.
- Added minimum work animation speed for staff.
- Fixed purple plume fan and leopard clam icons.
Update v1.3.5g (15 April 2019)
- Fixed issue where new point meshes (introduced in Feb update) were not cleaning up after themselves causing crashes for some players.
- Made improvements to blended mesh animation code to reduce game's memory allocation.
- You can no longer delete rubbish.
Update v1.3.4g (08 April 2019)
- Reverted back to an earlier build of Unity (2018.2.21f) because the newer version still seems to be causing the odd crash.
- Another attempt at fixing the animal counts going out of sync. They seem to be working well now, but let me know if you see it go out of sync again!
Update v1.3.3 (02 April 2019)
- Fixed bug where object counts visible in build/buy menu would go out of sync when you traded an animal away.
- Fixed issue where if an error is logged from a worker thread the game would crash (shakes fist at Unity developers).
- Modders only: Fixed bug where when the game generated a new tc3d from a new fbx file it would fail in countries where ',' is used as a decimal point.
Update v1.3.0 (29 March 2019)
- Tweaked prestige generation rates so that larger animals have a greater success chance than small animals. In other words, you need less in a tank for them to be seen.
- Likewise, larger decoration items have a higher chance to be seen, reducing the need for many large items in a single tank which could look less appealing. Groups of small items are still encouraged.
- Tweaked the prestige generation rates so that you get diminishing returns, the more animals of the same type you add to a tank. This encourages more smaller groups of small fish in different tanks.
- However for large animals a single group will continue to be sufficient.
- Added a more detailed tooltip when you hover over the prestige icon on any animal so that it communicates the prestige generation mechanics better, allowing the player to make more informated decisions.
- Added option for window to close when you click a second time, this is also now the default option but can be switched off in the settings.
- Changed "requires skill" icon to military chevrons. Added this indicator to task bubbles so you can see the skill level of a task at a glance
- Auto-feeder changes color depending on what food it is feeding.
- Reduced some animal aquascaping requirements. Many of these were increased in the February update but I believe they threw the balance off especially for small animals which need to be kept in larger numbers to fulfil their prestige potential.
- Added additional details to the task bubble tooltip so that it lists the skill level and a breakdown of the animals that need feeding in the tank (for feeding tasks only).
- Added load game confirmation dialog if a game is already in progress.
- Facilities apply their effects to guests instantly now, rather than over time.
- Fixed paint glitch
- Stopped guests dropping rubbish straight after looking at something
- Added reset to default key bindings
- Increased cave value for gaping cavern
- Increased rock value for rubble and live rubble
- Increased starting money for level 3. Elmshorn
- Fixed so the search menu doesn't come up when you finish naming something.
- In sandbox, all side objectives, trades and merchants appear on the way to rank 12. Before they continued to appear above Rank 12 but this led to some confusion and missing some events.
- Sped up zooming with keys.
- Fixed a pump UI error.
- Refresh message count immediately when you delete group of messages.
- Fixed 'running on spot' bug when auto saving and returning to menu.
- Fixed bug where supplement feeding times were sometimes over-calculated.
- Fixed ground dweller eating animation.
- Shows skill numbers when you hover over skill bars in the manage tab.
- Fixed the positions of the skills in manage tab so they are always in the same places.
- Fixed bug where it would show "When fully grown" eat/damage information on animals even when no numbers change as they grow. For example, when an animal will damage Gorgonians or Stony Corals.
- You can open the advanced tab by right clicking on the portraits in the staff manage tab.
- Cursor texture only loaded once
- Decreased some coral sizes (affects food consumed, bioload and prestige generation rate). Note: growing corals to full size now has large effect on prestige because size determines the prestige generation chance.
- Added '=' as alternative to ':' in search box.
- Added 'equipment' as a search criteria to differentiate to animals.
- Fixed bug where end game credits could be interupted by pressing escape.
- Fixed bug where end game credits would be in 'fast-forward' mode if you were at that speed when you completed the game.
- Fixed bug to do with info/task bubble positioning on some objects.
- Fixed coral food box which had the wrong icon on it.
- Fixed Power Light so lights are in the correct position.
- Dropdown menus go in front of other information windows.
- Improved platform laying tool so it guesses the height your require more intelligently.
- Upgraded to Unity 2018.3.
Update v1.2.1 (17 February 2019)
Mini patch with a couple of things that didn't quite make it into the big February update, plus a couple of bonus fixes/features. :)
Changelog:
- Upgraded underlying Unity version which should hopefully fix the 'Citrix workstation' bug. Let me know if you still encounter this issue.
- Added 'Exclusive fullscreen' mode.
- Added tooltip to point button toggle in top right.
- Fixed bug where messages don't reload if you drop an animal with the message window closed.
- Fixed bug where floor arrows blocked 'attraction aura'
For the next couple of weeks I'm going to be working through the backlog of small and medium sized feature requests that have built up over the weeks and months and making some headway through that.
I'm also going to be experimenting with some tweaks to the prestige generation formula and the way that this information is communicated to you. :)
Update v1.2.0 (07 February 2019)
Hello all, a new update has just gone live with a bumper crop of new features and improvements. Let's take a look.
New search menu
You can now bring up a new search menu in-game which allows you to filter the contents of the build menu to just the items you are interested in!
For example: by writing "tropical shoaler count:0" you will see only tropical animals with the shoaler care requirement, which you currently have zero of in your aquarium.
New update! Build menu search, new sandbox options and plants!
You can bring the menu up by pressing the Return key (this is rebindable) or by clicking the search button at the top of the build menu.
New plants
5 new plants have just been added to the game. The focus here was adding more large plants and also adding more variety in terms of the gameplay purpose of each plant.
For example, the all new 2x3 Shellweed is only worth a few additional plants but adds a lot to the rock count and a whopping 50 filter power!
Meanwhile the Velvet Horn is more balanced with a mixture of plants, rocks and filter power.
I've also rebalanced some of the existing plants to make the differences between them more drastic. Some are excellent for plant count, while others are strong passive filterers and then there are the ones which give a range of minor benefits.
New sandbox modes
The final big feature is an expansion to the sandbox mode. There are now additional options which allow you to unlock all animals and equipment from the start of your game, as well as toggle access to unlimited money.
I know some people have missed having a fully "creative" mode with absolutely no restrictions and these new settings allow you to do that.
I've also added a set of new presets to challenge you to try the game in different formats. Let's take a look:
- Full unlock - here you have access to everything from the start but don't have unlimited money, so you still have to create a balanced aquarium. It's harder than it sounds!
- Research mode - here you have unlimited money but you still need to work through the ranks to unlock all the animals and equipment. This is definitely a relaxed mode where you can proceed at your own pace however it does reduce the burden on managing your staff efficiently.
- Creator mode - the ultimate sandbox experience. Everything is unlocked and you have unlimited money.
Just like all the other presets you can tweak individual settings to your own preferences.
And the rest...
That's the major stuff out of the way, but the update comes with all these minor improvements/fixes too:
- Added drag-to-paint for tiles.
- Added rebindable hotkeys for all the buttons in the top left.
- Rebalanced plant/rock/cave lover requirements. Some are also worth extra prestige.
- Added info panels for any animal given to the player as a gift in the campaign so you can see what its needs are before picking it up.
- Added difficulty to save game info.
- Switched to proper fullscreen borderless window mode. If you click on your other monitor it won't minimise the game.
- Fixed animation speed going faster than simulation.
- Optimised build menu so that it loads quicker.
- Optimised animations in general for better FPS in large aquariums, especially on low detail mode.
- Redesigned point bubble system to increase performance.
- Optimised objective checking to increase performance.
- Zoning interface now scales/wraps when it gets to full.
- Slightly increased opacity of build menu UI.
- Added feeding skill requirement to Blue Spotted Ribbontail Ray.
- Striped boxfish no longer eats starfish.
- Danger to tooltip now says "Starfish with size x or less".
- Fixed bug where tank counts were calculated incorrectly.
- Slightly increased size of tooltip text and width.
- Fixed mega light lights.
- Megalopolis tank enquiry objective tells you to check log.
- Fixed objective tooltip in level 1 tutorial with incorrect description of button.
- Tweaked active swimmer icon so that it always says the required volume even when met.
- Added rounded tank and kreisel tank icons.
- Fixed minor display bugs for needs rounded, needs kreisel and congeners only icons.
- Fixed supersonic walking bug.
- Fixed issue where tooltip hangs over edge of screen on higher than 1080p resolutions.
- Added kreisel tank description.
- Fixed a number of portraits positions.
- Fixed double unlock of some science items in sandbox modes
- If you have already unlocked everything at a new rank it skips the "newly available" screen.
Update v1.1.7 (07 January 2019)
Hey all, quick patch with a few bug fixes.
Changelog
- Fixed bug where one of the Chicago tanks was always available regardless of the rank you started at. Unfortunately the fix only affects new sandbox games. Sorry about that!
- Cursor is now hidden in first person mode.
- Altered the way the game calculates whether a deep tank has been correctly connected to the floor in level 3.
- Fixed a minor graphical issue caused by moving stairs.
There's still a ton of smaller tweaks/features that I'm itching to get into the game over the next few weeks but the next major feature I'm planning to work on will be some kind of smart search/filtering system for the build menu to make it easier to find things (especially animals) in the later stages of the game.
Exciting stuff!
Update v1.1.6 (15 December 2018)
Howdy all and happy holidays!
The brand new Winter Update for Megaquarium is brimming with new features, improvements and even some new stuff to build!
New and improved Staff Management
Managing your staff just got a whole lot easier with a new and improved 'Manage' tab and zoning tool
The new 'Manage' tab shows your staff in a vertical list rather than a grid. Each row has enough space to show useful information such as what they are currently doing, which zone they are assigned to and what their skill priorities are.
What's more, you can directly adjust the skill priorities right from this tab, rather than having to bring up each individual staff window.
You can also get directly into the new and improved zoning tool by clicking on the zone button itself...
I'll be the first to admit that the old zoning tool needed some improvement, but I'm really proud of its replacement!
All the zones are shown at the same time and in different colours, so it's way easier to get a overview of how your zones are set up.
Even better you can now directly edit zones and reassign staff with a few easy clicks, all from inside the tool, no more having to go find each individual staff member just to edit a few zones.
The Chicago tank!
Players have been calling out for a new rounded tank that is larger than the Belfast or Small Tunnel Tank but not quite as big as the Mega Tank. One that comes out early enough in the ranks for your fully grown Spotted Eagle Rays.
Well, I listened! Introducing the brand new Chicago tank. Rather than just being a large version of the Belfast tank, I've tried to design something interesting.
This tank comes in two variants, one with the access on the inside edge, and one with the access on the outside. This means it can be used as an internal or external corner of your wall of tanks.
New large decorations
The update also comes with 6 new decorations spanning sizes between 2x2 all the way up to 6x3.
I'm also planning to add some brand new plants in the early part of next year. They are fully designed, I'm just waiting on the assets from my artist.
Other changes
- Added information about the max size an animal can eat when fully grown to its tooltip.
- Slightly reduced volume of small tunnel tank.
- Swapped Angel and Lemon shark ranks so that you have access to the Mega Tank at the same time as the Lemon Shark
- Added difficulty tooltips on the main menu.
- Redesigned animal animation system to avoid clipping issues and weird movement of larger animals.
- Fixed various issues to do with animals eating each other.
- Fixed bug where negative prestige would not show on prestige bar on load.
- Fixed various minor graphical bugs.
As always, please let me know if you notice any bugs. I'm around until this Thursday and then I'm on my hols for a couple of weeks.
Happy holidays everyone!
Update v1.1.5 (25 October 2018)
Hey guys, I've been super busy with a house move over the last week but I've still managed to squeeze out a little patch for you!
Changelog
- Added staff priorities to level up messages.
- Added fully grown active swimmer requirement to tooltip.
- Fixed bug where cashflow was misreporting the costs of food, drink and gift shop items.
- Fixed bug where guide book and balloon refills were too cheap.
- Fixed bug where calcium reactor was free.
- Reduced number of horse eye jacks given as gift in Myra level from 5 to 3.
- Fixed bug with deep outcrop tank where staff would go inside temporarily if you dropped it on top of them.
- Fixed bug where Blue Whiting had no ecology point value.
- At end of day we don't auto drop items that are being carried by the player unless they are tanks or animals.
- Scenery no longer produce negative prestige if a guest sees it over and over.
- Clicking cancel task now drops the item making it slightly easier to force staff to do a particular job. (More stuff coming in this area!)
- Fixed bug where staff learned slightly slower on fast mode.
I'm still very busy with the house move but after I've moved I'll be back with more update goodness!
Update v1.1.42g (16 October 2018)
Hey guys, big update for you today. There really is something for everybody in this one!
Upgraded message log
a) Important message toggle - filters out unimportant messages like autopsy and growth reports after they have been read. Also trades, merchants and missions that have already been completed.
b) Delete message functionality with the option to "delete all" of the same type e.g. autopsy and growth messages.
Staff level ups
Staff level ups are now just messages which sit in your log until you are ready for them. This was a highly requested feature from players who found the constant interruptions annoying.
The good news is that staff continue to accrue skill points even when they are ready to level up. Therefore there is no penalty if you delay levelling up while you are busy with something else!
Staff cap increased
I have added 14 brand new staff to the game. That is a 50% increase on the existing staff cap.
I have made this change in reaction to requests from players whose aquariums were being constrained by the old staff cap, especially in sandbox mode. This boost should help a lot!
If you already have a large sandbox aquarium you should be able to load it up and you'll immediately gain access to new staff!
I am not ruling out additional increases to the staff cap in the future but I want to change things gradually, to avoid breaking the game.
One thing I'm keen on, is staff not feeling like mindless drones like you get in RTS games. I want to keep the total number low enough that the player is familiar with their staff and can manage them effectively.
To that end, the next area I want to focus my attention on is improving the productivity of each staff member via additional control settings, improved zoning, a better staff manage tab and by tweaking certain mechanics.
My hope is that by improving overall staff productivity we can allow for huge aquariums but without resorting to the blunt instrument of hundreds of unmanaged staff, which I believe would reduce the overall fun of the game.
Other changes
- Massively increased performance of the simulation when running on fast speed setting.
- Build menu now remembers its place if you return to the same menu as last time.
- Min and max volume of tanks is now shown in the build menu.
- Fixed bug where hats and hair appear to lift off guest and staff heads on low and medium detail graphical settings.
- Fixed bug where guest animations would stop when too close in first person mode.
- Added two new hair colours for guests and staff!
- Slightly reduced point bonus when giving talks with a very high talking skill.
- Added missing food boxes to Hartcliff, Myra and Carbon City levels.
- Calcium Reactor no longer gives Prestige points (whoops!) and will stop providing coral growth benefit if broken down for too long.
- Corrected coral growth bonus provided by Calcium Reactor. The bonus was being incorrectly inflated before.
- Slightly increased staff salaries.
- Renamed Other Inverts to "Anemones, Clams and Gorgonians". There were two sections named "Other Inverts" before.
- Added missing string to end of level 10.
- Fixed issue where daily sales objectives were blank in French language.
- Sandbox mode always starts with at least one "cleaner"
- Large tunnel and Kreisel tanks are now paintable.
- You can now paint underneath Belfast and Kreisel tanks.
- Fixed various Kreisel tank issues: off-centre task bubbles, could not build across back wall.
- Fixed bug where certain walls on Deep Outcrop and Large Tunnel Tank could not be built across.
- Fixed bug where info box on message would escape its message window when you scroll.
- Tweaked words on level 3 to point player to message log for two of the corals.
Enjoy!
Update v1.1.3g (03 October 2018)
Hey guys, lots of background performance stuff in this patch, plus a few minor bug fixes.
Changelog
- Increased performance on main thread for better UI responsiveness in large aquariums.
- Slightly reduced memory consumption rate during game (more work needed here! Quite complicated!)
- Increased performance of save and load menu.
- Reduced memory usage of save and load menu.
- Fixed issue where staff in level up window would poke through windows in front of it.
- Fixed issue where closing the rank up window after clicking the rank up button would get the game stuck.
- Fixed minor graphical bug where rank tabs in research window would remain highlighted after everything was unlocked.
- Tweaked a few portrait positions to stop them escaping their boxes.
- Tweaked text in first level a little.
Now there is still plenty of optimisation to be done but I'm going to take a short break from that work to deliver some much needed quality of life and UI improvements, as requested by you, the players!
Top of the list are making the staff level up popups optional and improving the message log to make it easier to find what you are looking for.
Update v1.1.2g (24 September 2018)
Hey guys, here's what's new in the latest patch.
Changelog
- Completely revamped system for packaging 3d models to decrease load times.
- This seems to have relieved the issue with slow loading times on OSX
- This also seems to fix one issue facing the Linux version of the game but may not resolve all issues.
Next week, I'm hoping to do a bit more work on optimisation and try to reduce the memory footprint of the game.
I have been listening to all your quality of life improvement suggestions and some of these will start to filter through too!
Update v1.1.0 (20 September 2018)
Another patch for you guys:
Changelog
- Made zones more accessible, they now include tasks adjacent to the selected square and if any square of a tank is selected it will be included in the zone.
- Added additional safeguards against global save file and autosave becoming corrupted.
- Fixed bug where rubbish on stairs was not collectable.
- Fixed bug with bench where it couldn't be placed 1 away from wall
- Fixed bug with bench where it wouldn't let anybody else on.
- Allowed text on portraits to be a little bigger.
The big additions today are the tweak to the zone algorithm and the additional safeguards against save games becoming corrupted.
Please let me know if you prefer the way the zones work now compared to before, and whether you still have an issue with save games being corrupted (black screen bug).
Update v1.0.9 (19 September 2018)
Hey guys, I've just pushed a hot fix for an issue introduced with yesterday's optimisation changes.
If you had the issue where your staff were standing idle and not completing tasks, this patch will immediately fix the issue.
I am so sorry to anybody who lost their aquarium or fish due to this bug. I am going to continue to test the issue this afternoon to make sure it is 100% fixed but I wanted to get this patch out to you as soon as possible.
Update v1.0.8 (18 September 2018)
Changelog
- Major performance improvements in large aquariums.
- Severely reduced logging in log files.
- Some underlying bug fixes and stability improvements.
Performance improvements
I know some of you have been waiting for this one. The improvements I made today should make a significant difference to the smoothness and speed of the game once your aquarium gets large.
In very large aquariums you'll still probably encounter the odd judder here and there but the game should be totally playable right into the late game.
I can still squeeze more performance out of the engine in due course so more performance improvements will come out over the course of the coming days and weeks.
Log files
If you're one of the people who's suffered with a humongous log file and running out of disc space, please accept my apologies. These files are completely safe to delete (although I believe the game will wipe it automatically next time you run it) and from now on the logs should be much smaller.
Please let me know if they are still too big. I know some of you like to play the game for many hours in a row!
Thank you again for your continued patience. I hope you agree that the game has come a long way in terms of stability even since release just 5 days ago.
My next job is to tackle those loading times.
Let me know if you have any other problems,
Tim
Update v1.0.4g (14 September 2018)
- Stopped softblock on Elmshorn, if your Toadstool Corals die, you can buy more from the shop.
- Fixed bug where main volume did not affect atmosphere volume.
- Fixed bug where volumes set to 0 were not saved between game runs.
- Fixed growth tooltip on corals.
- Fixed bug where Elmshorn objective, skimmer wasn't recognised if connected by pump.
- Fixed bug where autosave failure due to not being able to access the user area makes the game crash.
- Fixed bug on Napalos where Herbivore Habitat will not complete.
- Fixed some other crash bugs.
- Reduced requirement for first part of Elmshorn objective from 6 to 5.
- Added cap for number of point bubbles on screen at once to improve stability.
Next I'm going to be seeing if I can improve load times on the Mac version of the game. Then I'm going to be looking into improving the general performance.
I hope you are all enjoying the game! Remember to leave a review once you have formed your opinion!
