The first two videos in a series taking a deeper look at the expansion are now live.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPImMP8RCJo

This first one introduces how some of the basic mechanics work like freshwater, pH and some of the new care requirements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w76fYXMBog

In the second we look at how you can breed and hybridise the animals in our aquarium.

A new chapter in Megaquarium history. Freshwater Frenzy is the first Deluxe Expansion for Megaquarium. It adds a brand new environment for you to explore and master – freshwater!

This expansion has been in the works for the last 9 months! Suffice to say, it is jam-packed with exciting new features and content. Here's a brief rundown:

• 5 levels in a freshwater-focused campaign
  
• 30 freshwater species
  
• Breeding and hybridisation
  
• 7 new tanks
  
• 4 accessories to equip your staff
  
• Dozens of new objects including decorations, plants, equipment and posters
  
• 4 brand new paints to keep your aquarium looking “fresh”

The expansion will be priced at $11.99 or your regional equivalent.

I'm going to draw a spotlight over some of these features later in this post but before we get started, head over to the store page for a full rundown.

I'd also recommend adding the expansion to your wishlist so you get a reminder on release day, which is 4th June 2020. ːsteamhappyː

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1315300/

What's more, the base game is set to get a huge upgrade with additional quality of life features, gameplay improvements and even some brand new mechanics.

But more on that later. First, let's dive into some of the big features in Freshwater Frenzy!

I have received a lot of requests to add freshwater to Megaquarium over the months and I know its addition will make a lot of people happy.

I've taken the time to do it right. Freshwater comes with its own set of unique challenges: new aquascaping types, pH requirements and compatibility considerations. This all adds up to a design challenge with a completely new feel.

I mean how many of these icons do you even recognise? ːsteamfacepalmː


Ever dreamed of raising your own baby fish in Megaquarium. That will soon be a reality.

A selection of the new freshwater fish are breedable. Each has its own set of unique breeding requirements, which, if you fulfil them will allow them to breed. Some require a special location to lay their eggs, others need lighting or a specific temperature to induce their breeding tendencies.

Getting them to breed is the easy bit. Then you have to look after the eggs and fry until they reach adulthood. Trust me when I say this: it's going to require your full attention.

There are some very special species in the game that can be hybridised to create new colors and patterns. Check out what is possible with the humble Guppy:



I won't reveal all the mechanics just now, but suffice to say this isn't a purely random thing. By pairing specific animals together you can increase the chances of getting the hybrid you want.

Let's talk about some of the improvements heading to the base game. Let me be 100% clear: players who don't own the expansion will still enjoy all of these improvements.

Live Cultures - live foods such as live mysis, live lug worms and artemia will need to be fed themselves to ensure a constant supply of food.



I think this is a really fun mechanic. It's a low skill job so if you can get your weaker feeders to feed the cultures while your experts handle the actual feeding to the animals it works well.

Default Paint - another popular request. Ever wished you could change the default paint used on new constructions like it does on some campaign levels? Well soon you will be able to do just that.

Animal Ledger - one of those features that once you get used to using it, you won't know how you ever coped without it. This ledger provides a filtered list of your tanks and animals allowing you to simultaneously get an overview of your aquarium as well as focus down on any areas that need attention.



New non-freshwater specific care requirements - some of the new care requirements introduced in the expansion are not specific to the freshwater environment. I've decided to make these compatible with the base game too so that modders can make use of them on their marine animal mods!

If you're as excited as I am about this release then I have more to share with you. Between now and launch day I'll be releasing a series of videos which will show off all the new features in more detail.

If you don't already, consider subscribing to my Youtube channel.

The major addition this update is Japanese language support. But for all the existing players there's a neat package of bug fixes and small improvements. See below for all the details.

I've mentioned this a few times in the forums, but I can officially confirm that new content is in the works.

I would love to share certain details about the theme of the new content, and what the exact format will be, but as things are still changing from week to week as I explore ideas, I've decided to wait until I have something concrete. Thank you for your patience. ːsteamhappyː

• 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.

• Tanks no longer *need* PointGenerator.
  
• Expanding, filling in, walls, platforms and stairs costs are set in data file so can be overriden within mods.
  
• Doubled bonus Ecology and Science from cheat hotkeys for faster testing.

Hey guys, v1.5.2 is now live and comes with lots of nice goodies.

Since the addition of Workshop support for Megaquarium, players are building bigger and better aquariums than ever! One piece of feedback that came back to me as a result was that there were not enough staff in sandbox mode to cope with all the extra animals available via the Workshop.

I communicated the various options available to increase the staff numbers and asked for additional feedback on the preferred option. The results were unanimous: adding fully randomised staff to sandbox mode - thus removing the staff cap completely. Just in case you're not aware. Before this change, all the staff were hand-designed by me which, to avoid duplication, lead to a hard cap on the total staff available.

One of the things I liked about this solution was that it also has the potential to add a new gameplay dynamic to sandbox games. Due to the randomisation, there's a larger variety in the type of staff that are available.



While testing, I found there were often times where I had to compromise on one talent. Like "this person has some fixing skill and decent precision but they have 1 for fitness! Do I really want to hire this slowcoach?" or "Nice, a 7 for fitness, and actually a decent amount of Empathy for feeding but they currently have no feeding skill and a 2 for Memory so they are going to learn really slow!".

During the time that this update spent in beta I received additional feedback that people were missing the predesigned staff, so as of v1.5.2 you have the best of both worlds: unlimited randomised staff with a sprinkling of your favourites from the campaign missions. All hail Dante - the divine comic!

Personally I've really enjoyed playing with this new feature and I hope you do too!

It took several weeks but I think the results are worth it! This is part 1 of a large rewrite of the entire graphics pipeline for Megaquarium in an effort to improve performance.

The increase in FPS that you see will depend on the size of the aquarium and PC specs but I've recorded an increase of 75% (!) when zoomed out on a large map where the CPU is the limiting factor.



I've also slightly reduced the maximum zoom-out level. The reason for this is that the number of objects onscreen is a major factor when it comes to performance. Off-screen objects contribute a lot less. My goal is to reach a point where the engine can run at 60fps, on a PC with the recommended specs, with an aquarium of *any* size. This is much more likely to be achievable with this new max zoom level. The alternative would be a cap on total game objects which I believe would be much more restrictive for players.

Based on yet more player feedback, I've made a few tweaks to the sandbox generation code.

1. Trades and merchants are generated even with animal availability set to 'everything unlocked'.
2. With animal availability set to 'standard', Trades and merchants generally try to offer the player animals that can't be unlocked with research points. Previously, when these ran out, no further trades or merchants would be generated. With the update, they will still be generated but will offer animals from a rank above instead, so they are still valuable.
3. Some side-objectives will offer base prestige as a reward instead of money.

There are few other subtle changes but overall I think the play between the various trades, merchants and side-objectives now feels better than ever!

Megaquarium can now be played in Italian! :)

• 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.

This update has been live on the beta for a little over a week so it should be pretty stable, but if you notice any bugs or graphical glitches, don't hesitate to let me know.

If you'd like to gain early access to the next update while also helping me test the game, then consider switching to the [beta] branch of Megaquarium as described here. Make sure you subscribe to the discussion so you know when a new beta is available.

Tim

I'm thrilled to announce the Megaquarium is now available to play on Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PS4!

If you're reading this then you probably already own the game on PC and that's great, there's certainly no need to buy the game on another console unless you want to - although I know a few people are excited to play the Switch version on the go!



However, perhaps you have a friend who doesn't have a gaming PC or a partner who's in love with their Switch, and up until now you've been unable to share your enthusiasm for the game with these people, well now you can! :D

Put simply, more platforms means more access, more people playing and hopefully, more fun for everyone involved!

Here's the links to the various store pages for those that are interested:

Switch
Xbox One
PS4

I'll finish by repeating something I've said before. Megaquarium on console is a collaboration between myself and a company called Auroch Digital.

The fantastic thing about this is I've been able to continue working full-time on the desktop version throughout the development of the console one.

With that in mind I have a big update just around the corner which will improve game performance and upgrade the sandbox game mode with unlimited randomised staff and better trader and merchant generation!

In fact, it's currently available to try in the new beta branch.

Small patch with a few bug fixes and improvements.

• Added ultra widescreen support.
  
• The pause hotkey (spacebar by default) now brings up the next message that's stopping progress.
  
• Fixed bug where the game could unpause when completing an objective in the first scenario even when a message should be blocking progress.
  
• Tweaked numbers for detail settings (determines when animations are disabled/hidden based on zoom level).
  
• Entrance is now paintable.
  
• You can select rubbish that's on the floor at the entrance.
  
• When disabled, cloud save does not sync with the local copy of the save files in the Steam folders.

The workshop is now live for all players!

With 49 different items and counting (many of which contain entire sets of extra content) the Megaquarium workshop is certainly flourishing. And it just got even easier to access.

No beta branches, no special Steam Group, to access all these items all you need to do is go to the Megaquarium community hub and click Workshop.

To celebrate the full launch we're adding a new fish to the game! The nurse shark!



We are releasing this new shark as a mod. So to access it, all you have to do is subscribe to the mod here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1808619883

(If you're playing the game via GOG then you can manually install the mod based on the instructions here)

If you are new to using Steam Workshop and want somewhere to start, I highly recommend starting with the Nurse Shark. I've designed and balanced it to work as part of the main campaign so don't hesitate, give it a go!


As an added bonus we've recorded a 'making of' series which documents how the entire Nurse Shark model and mod were made.

Part 1 - Modelling
https://youtu.be/2eJnDDQMnKw
Part 2 - Animating
https://youtu.be/gzKb5j-qS0E
Part 3 - Designing
https://youtu.be/vZxRJXsoyWs
The series also operates as a tutorial for new modders.

If you're interested in the full patch notes for this update, you can find them here.

• Added Steam Workshop support.
  
• Fixed issue with transparent elements of 3d models being in the wrong order.
  
• Optimised info bubble reorder algorithm.
  
• Half fed fish carry over food amount to next day to help with feeding very large fish over multiple days.
  
• Tweaked food UI, the number remains 'full' on days that the animal doesn't eat so it's easier to see what needs feeding.
  
• Upgraded to Unity 2018.3.14f.
  
• Fixed many typos.

Hey all, the Megaquarium Workshop has now entered public beta. This means it is open for everyone to use but is currently operating via an opt-in mechanism.

To join the beta you need to join this community group: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/megaquariumworkshopbeta

And follow the instructions from there.

Look at all the exciting things that are already available for you to download:



Firstly it will give modders a chance to get used to the workshop and upload their creations before the full public launch. By the time the public launch comes it should be nicely stocked with all manner of things to play with!

Secondly it gives everyone, modders and players alike, a chance to give feedback on features, request new ones and report bugs.

With that in mind, please take extra care using mods during the beta period. I recommend that you manually save any existing games before applying mods in case they break the game.

Another note: the new mod manager in-game is in English only currently. When the full launch comes it will be localised into your local language.

This depends on the volume of feedback/requests that come back. Somewhere between 2 and 6 weeks is probable.

Hey guys, just a quick post to let you know the latest with the game.

The first news is I'm going to be away for a couple of weeks from today so I won't be able to answer any questions via the forum or email until I return on 23rd May. Hopefully other players will be able to pitch in and help any new players to the game. :)

But don't worry, the next update is already well underway. One feature that has been highly requested ever since launch is Steam Workshop.

I'm happy to announce that the next update will include support for this. I'm about half-way through implementing it and I'm looking to release a beta with the new features soon after I return.

This will give a chance for our enthusiastic modders to populate Steam Workshop with new and interesting mods so that when the official release comes there'll be lots of new things to try out.

As part of this I'll also be releasing a basic modders guide to cover the basics of modding the game. You'd be amazed at the sorts of things you can add with just basic text and image editing skills; things that can have significant gameplay impacts.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what people create.

I can also announce that I am in the early stages of working on the next batch of official content for the game.

I can't reveal all the details yet but I thought players would appreciate knowing that something new is in the works.

That's it for now but stay tuned in the coming months for lots more exciting stuff in the world of Megaquarium. ːsteamhappyː