New feature: Variable water volume
From now on, the amount of water in the aquarium is no longer constant but can vary over time. This leads to new gameplay challenges and increases interactivity. In the first iteration, we focus mainly on the effects that a variable amount of water has on the simulation and handling. For example, the amount of water decreases over time due to evaporation and must be re-filled manually.
New display page: Heat balance
The heat balance, which is the basis for computing evaporation, can now be viewed on a separate statistics page. On the "Balance" information page, there is a new tab to display the flow of heat between sources and sinks. These calculations have always been done to determine temperature, but were never displayed. Motivated by the variable water volume, we wanted to make these calculations transparent to the players.
Redesign of water change: separation between refill and drain
Until now, a water change was an abstract process without visual feedback. Due to the variable water level, it is now possible to model draining and refilling as independent actions. The player must first perform a drain action, which visibly lowers the water level, and then perform a refill action. To this end, the "water tap" icon in the inventory has been repurposed. In addition, there is a new permanent inventory item, the "bucket", which stands for drainage of water by means of a hose and bucket.
New fish model: Mikrogeophagus Ramirezi
The Butterfly Cichlid (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi) is a new fish model, and the first new model ever since first release. Say hello to the butterfly cichlid!
Full change log
New features
- Coupling of the visible water height to the actual amount of water present
- Calculation of density, salinity, volume and evaporation of water
- Display of the actual water level on the info page
- Display of the heat balance on a separate statistics page
- New inventory item "Bucket" to symbolize the draining of water by means of hose and bucket
- The faucet item now only symbolizes filling up water, not the water change as a whole.
- Adjustment of simulation code, fish behavior, particle effects, glass reflections, and falling physics to the fact that a fixed amount of water can no longer be assumed
Other changes
- OpenGL 1.3 compatibility mode has been removed. OpenGL 3.2 or higher is now mandatory to run the program.
- Improvement of texture compression quality, and subsequently a re-export of all textures as well as all inventory icons.
Fixes of serious bugs
- Crash when pressing the escape key while moving an object with the mouse button held down
- Crash when loading a profile while a previous load operation was not yet completed
- Crash when a savegame contains invalid floating point values
Other bug fixes
- Collision geometry for object "Exotic Totem"
- Overlong title label in the status panel for the T5 light
- The marker line from the status panel is pointing in the wrong direction
- Bad textures (mipmaps) for the fish model "Hemichromis Stellifer"
- Bad textures (specular map) for the fish model "Hemichromis Letourneuxi"
- Improvement of physics stability and performance since the last update
- Water evaporation was calculated incorrectly
- Glass reflections sometimes flicker
- Compression artifacts on texture for object "Blue Life 'Clean' 300 internal filter"
- Scrollbar of listboxes sometimes can't be clicked
