Hello everyone. We are still on track to release Fishery on the 26th, (in 5 days. aaahhhhhh!). The game will unlock at approximately 10:00 PDT, or around 19:00 for most Europeans. I say "approximately" because even though we set the exact date and exact time of the release into the steam system we actually have to personally press the release button.

Today we will have a technical look at the fish of Fishery. Next week we will give you an exact list of all the species of fish in the game at the moment and a rough list of the fish we plan on adding as well as fish-related features of the game.

Animation:
As always there is more than one way to solve this problem. We have chosen to go for a hand animated/keyframed approach.




The above animation show a swim cycle for the "Tiger Barb" fish. This particular animation is a more intense and rapid swim (though it might look slower in the gif) which will be played when the fish is trying to get somewhere faster than usual. There are other animations like "slow/casual swim" and "hanging around/idle". As we develop the game further we will make these animations better and add more variations to them. for instance when a fish is sick or near death it's animations must reflect that state of being. that is a fun creative challenge because it means we have to come up with the fish equivalent of a limp. Each fish has it's own hand crafted set of animations. There is no copy and paste of keyframes. They all look similar because they are all fish but we animate based on their body shape and length and visual personality. It just makes it more fun and brings more value for the players.



Floppiness:
This is probably the most important thing to get right. When a fish is swimming and changing direction it's body bends. This gives a very nice smooth feel to their movement and without it everything feels wrong and rigid. This is not done with physics. We create different animation poses of "body bend" and then blend between them based on the difference in position and rotation of the fish over time.



Obstacle avoidance:
Our fish can detect when something is in their way and will try to change their direction in order not to crash into it. This is a simple concept that can be quite tricky to get right. The way we do it is to shoot a little laser beam from the nose of the fish and if it detects an object or the glass of the aquarium it then shoots more laser beams in multiple directions until it finds a direction that is not obstructed by an object. Once it finds this direction it then begins to move towards that direction and thus avoid smacking it's face into a rock. The above image shows this being done across multiple frames.



Flocking:
We cannot make a game about fish if we cannot have them flocking around. The techniques and algorithms for flocking have been around for a long time and more or less everyone in computer graphics programming has encountered or tested something to do with flocking. It is very simple and follows only a few rules.

1) Fish should try to move towards each other to form a group.
2) they should not get too close, personal space is important,
3) they should all be heading in the same general direction.

If you simulate that over time with a few tweaks then you can get some nice flock-like movement. In Fishery we have added a few more rules to increase CPU performance and to make things visually more interesting. For instance each species has a maximum flock size. In the above image the "Sunburst Platy" species has a maximum flock size of 6, which means if you have 24 fish of that species at once in your aquarium they will split off into 4 distinct groups rather than just one big lump of fish. Each group will swim in different directions and visually it will be more interesting. There will of course be some fish species that have much larger flock sizes and fish that are very anti-social that only swim by themselves.



The image above shows a visual representation of the flocking forces I talked about before. Red represents the force of that stops them being too close together. Dark blue shows the force that keeps them in a group, pink is showing general direction they are all facing and light blue shows the direction towards target for the whole flock to follow which is shown as a blue sphere.


And that is this week's update. As the release is next week we will be posting stuff here and in the forums a little more often so keep a look out.

Have a good weekend.

The Fishery Team

Fishery will be released on the 26th of September 2019.

Yes in less than two weeks Fishery will be available for you all to play. Just before we release the game we will post an update as a sort of "before you buy" update where we will tell you all what the current state of the game is and our plans for what the updates will be about in the weeks immediately after the release.

We would also like to say sorry for the lateness of this update. We had promised to do it by last Friday evening but we had a perfect storm of exhibiting Fishery at the Zurich Game Show from Friday to Sunday and our project leader had to move apartments. There was a lot of stress and worry and tiredness and we were just unable to write this until now.

The Zurich Game Show went very well indeed. It was quite different to exhibiting at GDC. The cost of entry for people to attend was much more affordable which meant that a lot of people were at the venue. This included entire families with young children. We never specifically made fishery to appeal to children but we saw a lot of these youngsters drag their parents to our booth when they saw our poster. One little boy was playing for around 15 minutes and was completely consumed by it. He loved feeding the fish, watching the fish race each other to get to a piece of food. After his parents dragged him away from the game we heard him ask his parents if they could get their aquarium out from their basement and he had a big smile on his face.

Here is another peak at what is in Fishery right now.

Game Features:
The main game mode at the moment is a sort of sandbox mode. Players have unlimited money and all items are unlocked. You can really get creative and experiment with the game but most of all push the ecosystem simulation to it's limits.

Here is an example of what someone made at the Zurich Game Show by a group of mischievous teenagers. Just over 150 fish splashing around near the surface after they sculpted the terrain to be just below the water line. It actually surprised us quite a lot because we thought perhaps the physics would be a bit unstable. We were running the game on a small laptop that only has on-board graphics, no actual graphics card and it still ran around 60fps and did not crash which is always great.



You may notice the user interface is drastically different from what is in the trailer on the main steam page. That trailer is very out of date but we will have an updated version of it ready for the release so you get a clearer picture of what you will get before you buy.



Here is an image that shows off a backdrop that players can choose. We often have have people asking for the possibility to have the background be themed. This is the first version of the ocean backdrop. It is still a little empty right now. we plan to have things like whales and submarines swimming by in the background as well as a few more details here and there. As time goes on we will be adding lots of new backdrops. A common request is to have the aquarium on a table in bedroom so it looks like it is placed in someone's house. We will no doubt be given lots of ideas from you in the discussion forums as to what backdrops we should add and we will of course spend time to add them into the game.

That wraps up today's update. Stay tuned for another one towards the end of the week.

The Fishery Team

Fishery WILL be released this month (September 2019). The exact date will be announced here in a week. The date is already locked into steam and will NOT change.

This is the first of the weekly development updates that we will be doing from now on. Every week we will tell you of all the progress we have made with bug fixes, new features, new content etc so you can see how things are shaping up. We will also be keeping a closer eye on the forums on a daily basis answering questions and reading any and all the feedback as well as any bugs or problems you find. We will most likely be addressing bugs especially if they break the game but we will certainly try to read every post.

Once the game is released we will aim to release an update every Friday that would fix bugs and make small "quality of life" improvements to the game that may also include new or improved art content like new fish, plants and/or decorations. So every Friday you can play a new version of the game.

At the same time we will be working on larger features and content updates which we will aim to release at least once a month. These monthly updates will include larger or more complex changes like the fish breeding system, career mode/objectives etc. We will also be spending time improving current systems and art already in the game based on your feedback.

so just to recap the update schedule:
Updates every Friday will include - Bug fixes, fixes for small annoyances, new fishes, plants or decorations.
Updates every month(on a Friday) - Larger game features, larger more complex collections of art content,

Next week we will give you all a more detailed list of game features and art content that will be coming in the first release. we will also begin updating the steam page with all new screenshots and perhaps a new trailer.

Now we will give you a little peak at what is actually in the game right now.

Plants:
They are a critical part of any ecosystem. There will be 17 different species of plant available in the first release. Each plant has 3 model variations. This is to help make things look less repetitive if you have lots and lots of the same species of plant in your aquarium. Each plant has a different "visual language" to it. There are a very large number of aquatic plants that we could put into the game but there are a lot of plant species that look very similar to each other. What we want to do is have as many different plants in the game as we can that look quite different from each other.
Below are screenshots of all the plants in what's called a "palette" scene. We position them like this so we can inspect that the correct models are in use and their textures and shaders are correct.





What we hope you notice is that all the plants have different shapes, silhouettes and variations of colour. (We definitely need more non-green plants.) This is important to us because it makes sure that we are not wasting time making lots of plants that are only slightly different from each other and from a design point of view it allows players to create a very specific personality for their aquariums. All of the plants are stylized versions of real life aquatic plants but we will be adding plants that we design ourselves to fill any creative gaps.




Here is an example of the species known as "Dwarf Hygrophila". In the above image you can see it's status panel. Everything in the game (apart from inanimate objects) have a set of needs and effects. Plants have needs which must be satisfied in order for the plant to stay alive and healthy. Healthy plants will produce oxygen which of course is vital for fish. but we will go more into detail about this next week when we talk a bit more in depth about the ecosystem simulation features. The image below shows what plants look like when their needs have not been met for some time and they are close to dying.



Well that wraps up this week's development update. Expect another update towards the end of next week and we will announce the final unchangeable release date and more.

The Fishery Team

We are almost there.

We had a very interesting time at GDC showing our work to lots of people and the feedback was very positive and helpful. We are now in the final phases of getting the game ready for release. Which usually means there are a large number of small changes and hopefully a small number of large changes.

Once again we are past our target release time. This is due in part to going to GDC, it takes a lot of time and energy to prepare for such events but they are really important and based on the feedback we have gotten from people who played the game at GDC the game will be a lot better.

That is what we care most about. We want you to play the game for the first time and not feel like the game is clunky or poorly put together.

As we said in the start of this post we are almost there, but we don't know exactly how long it will take but it will be soon and we will be working our butt's off to get it done.

The Fishery Team

A belated Happy New Year from the Fishery Team.
We have been working like busy beavers mostly on the programming aspects of the game over the Christmas and new year break. Here is a quick run-down of our progress.

- Automatic creation of all in-game objects when the game starts. This one sounds a bit weird but what it means that every fish, plant, ornament, aquarium etc is created automatically through code when the game starts. This means we do not have to spend time manually creating and editing the game objects when we want to make a change. Of course we still need to spend time manually editing model and texture files which we are happy to do but the process of combining that data with game components for the selection, AI, saving and load systems etc is quite tedious and prone to human error.

We plan to have well over 100 objects in the game by the end of the Early Access period and having an automatic system that tells us if it finds the wrong data or can't find data at all for an object is much better than us checking by hand. Which also means we can make dramatic changes to a lot of objects in the days before a release and we don't have to spend hours checking everything and becoming paranoid.

- More progress has been made on the AI for fish, plants and other objects. It might sound a bit odd for plants to have AI but the behavior and state of a plant must be controlled somehow. For instance if there is not enough nutrients in the aquarium for the plants to live off then they will starve, die and decay. This is a complex set of steps that happens over time and works differently for each plant. That is just one aspect of how they interact with the world. We will be showing more of the AI system as we make more progress and have some really interesting stuff to show.

- We have started making more "real world" fish and plants. This is due to an increase in feedback from people asking for it. We had always planned to have a mixture of real and made up content but have decided to prioritize the real world stuff a bit more. Here is a look at some of the real world plants we have started prototyping. You also might notice the aquatic plant pots. All plants will be capable of having these visible or not. We will post some of the new fish soon.



- The variation system has been re-engineered to have even more possibilities. It is a bit tricky to explain only with text so we will make a post in the coming weeks that shows it with images.

- We will be at GDC 2019 in San Fransisco in March. We will have a booth where you can come and play Fishery. More information will be available as we get closer to it.

We will give another update in around a week from now. Stay tuned!!

The Fishery Team

One of the most requested features we keep getting messages about is about having multiple aquariums. Since we are making lots of progress with that feature we thought we would share a sneak peek and talk about it a bit.



Keep in mind of course that the gif is taken from our test scene so it looks a bit rough and is missing all the polish.

This feature is exciting to us because it allows for players to do more interesting things. For instance when the breeding feature is implemented players will be able to make an aquarium which functions as a sort of nursery. A safe place for baby fish to grow and not worry about being eaten by some of the larger fish.

Players could also make a sort of "wellness" aquarium which is populated by lots of plants that produce healing hormones into the water which allow any fish in that aquarium to be cured of sickness, stress or damage.

Breeding aquariums would also useful. Each fish species requires specific circumstances for it to breed. For instance it must be happy with it's habitat, have low stress, have good health etc. Players will be able to make special aquariums that make breeding more successful.

These examples are not hard-coded into the game. Players wont hit a button that says "make hospital aquarium". Players will need to use their knowledge of in-game fish and plants so they can make an aquarium that has the effect they want.

Since this is only a sneak peak at this feature we will stop here otherwise this will become way too long.

Stay tuned for more updates.


The Fishery Team

It has been a little while since an update on our progress and we have some good news. We have been given production funding from the Swiss arts council known as "ProHelvetia" to help us get Fishery ready for release.

What does this mean for players?
Firstly, it guarantees we will actually release Fishery. Up until now we have only been able to work on Fishery in our spare time between projects secondary to our main work which is a small 3d animation studio. Thanks to this grant we can now work on Fishery full time until it's release.

We have also decided that we won't be doing a Kickstarter campaign. This is mostly because now that we have funding, we would rather spend the time and money working on the game than working on a Kickstarter campaign for a month. We have also spoken to people who know a lot about Kickstarter campaigns including people who have had successful ones and we have determined that it probably won’t be successful enough to justify making it in the first place.

This also gives us more time to add more features and polish to the first Early Access release than we initially planned. Features like:

Multiple aquariums:
We have almost finished work on implementing the multiple aquariums features. This is where players can have more than one fish tank in their game scene which makes things so much more interesting as you can have separate aquariums for different fish, plants, themes and purposes etc.

Better manipulation/editing tools:
We have completely remade how players can move, rotate and scale objects. These changes make it much easier and more intuitive to quickly make changes and decorate your aquariums with ease.

Objectives:
It is crucial to give players things to do and work towards. Our objective system is being made larger and more interesting, so players don't get bored. This is also a mechanism for players to unlock fish, plants and other objects during gameplay as a reward and incentive for making progress.

More art content:
We will have more time to add some more species of plants and fish. We are also going to be adding more objects/ornaments to decorate the aquarium with.

Better UI:
We are also in the process of modifying the in-game UI to work better with high resolution monitors and be a bit more user friendly.

Breeding:
The ability to breed fish is one of the most important features in the whole game. The programming and implementation of the breeding system itself is not difficult. The problem is that we just have to design and create the art content of the baby fish and that just takes time especially when you think of all the combinations of inter-species fish breeding. However, breeding will be possible for a few species of fish when Fishery is first released and then through updates will be keep adding more and more to the game.

and much more...

When?
Some of you have probably noticed we have had a bit of a hard time estimating when we will actually release Fishery. This is due to the nature of working on it as a second job. Since that is no longer a problem we can say that we are aiming to get it released within the first few months of 2019 but we will only announce a release date when we are absolutely sure we can make it.

We will try to make more regular updates and show more progress in the coming months.

The Fishery Team

Hello everyone.
It has been a while since our last development status update. We have been working non-stop since then trying to get the game ready for release. We had a booth at the Zurich Game Show last weekend where a lot of people got a hands-on preview of the game and the response was fantastic.

We were surprised by how many different types of gamers were interested in Fishery. We knew we might attract people who play games like the sims, cities skylines and planet coaster. But we found that we got people interested who played a lot of FPS shooters like battlefield or doom and all ages and genders were interested. It was great to see that Fishery appeals to such a wide audience.

We got a lot of feedback from everyone. It was all constructive but they all had the same messages in common which was "some things still need more work" or "It would be great if this feature could also do a bit more" or "I did not notice this part of the UI" or "This part of the UI is a bit confusing to use".

This tells us that while the game works well and excites a lot of people for the most part it is still not ready for sale. Even in an Early Access state. We will not be one of those developers who release a very unfinished game as Early Access and expect people to just deal with how un-finished it is just because it is Early Access. Fishery is a product that must satisfy it's players.

The problem is we make our money at the moment doing client work as freelancers and the entire development of fishery is self-funded. Which means we must juggle multiple freelance projects and fishery at the same time. We want to free up our time so we can work 100% on Fishery and vastly improve it before we release it. Our only option is to turn to crowd-funding.

We will be launching a Kickstarter campaign at the beginning of October. All dates and details will be announced shortly.

Thanks for your continued support

The Fishery Team