Goldfish is superior to MA!
 

I prefer GA. Why does it feel like everyone thinks that MA is superior to GA?

Because it is? :)

Stating opinion as fact doesn't get either of us anywhere.

Respect to Jim really, who started it all. Unfortunately, the MA hasn't come very far despite the fact it's been around for years. It just feels kinda dated now. It's still a great piece of work but just the lack of progress despite the new fish and the goldfish have held it back.

For me the Goldfish aquarium is superior in many ways:

Better fish models.
Much better swimming behaviour (back, forth, in, out, behind and in front of plants).
More interesting tank (more than just a static bitmap and static bubble column!)
But the thing that makes it more realistic to me is that the fish are much closer to normal size on a monitor. With the MA, it's spoiled by the fact those fish which are normally huge are tiny on your monitor. Therefore you know they are not real before you've even looked at it.

Of coure GA uses much more CPU and requires a more powerful video card to get a full framerate with all fish and features enabled, so there's a cost to all that eye candy. But if you have the system it's lovely :-)

I do have the system, and it cost me a lot, but it's definitely worth it, seeing those beautiful fish in the fps they deserve!

Falz, I agree with you. I hate bitmaps. The thing that annoys me most in MA is the static tank background and bubbles. Re-sizing of the fish is very annoying too.

Hey - I like GA too - a LOT - but superior to MA? Not.

Different. Great fish. Great movement. Cool swaying water plants. BUT - the graphic quality of MA is superior to GA IMHO.

They are both outstanding programs and I eagerly await the future enhancements - to each - that are sure to come!

Well said MM. :)

WOW!!!!! ..... Where does one start to challenge a statement like that!
If Jim has a fault, - then it's his perfectionism, and therefore the time he takes to achieve his goal. - When I first got his aquarium, back in the autumn of 2001, it was already near perfection. - So how do you improve on that? :)
I think we will find that the answer to that one will be the scrolling 3D background. - But that won't 'update' it, because it isn't 'dated'. - (Unless you call the Mona Lisa, 'dated'! :) ) - It will be the next stage in it's development.

The Goldfish aquarium was introduced to most of us at a much earlier stage in it's development, and that has contributed to it's problems, - IMHO! :)
Don't get me wrong, the fish in the Goldfish aquarium are great! - and the gravel is fine. - But those fuzzy faded plants??? (Some look virtually dead to me!) - And that 'rock' ! :rolleyes:
To compare those plants and that lump of fibre glass, ;) - with Jim's coral, - is just not on! - IMO!

I too look forward to the time when the MA fish will move around the tank more. - But I find the way the Goldfish currently hog the sides of the tank to be very irritating.

As MM says, they are 'different', ..... but the Goldfish aquarium needs much more work on it. - IMO! ..... Rant over! :)

MM took the words right out of my mouth: "...The graphic quality of MA is superior to GA." It's true, dang it. Every time I look at that thing it makes me crazy; I see yet another thing that mine is missing (artistically, not botanically).

I learn more about what I'm doing wrong by looking at what he did right than I do by looking at what I did wrong. If that makes any sense.

CJM, that "rock" (at first) was an attempt to celebrate the "cheesy" decorations we've all had in our fish tanks... it wasn't meant to look real. But the more I looked at the tank, the more I wanted to fix things about it. So now it's kind of a hybrid of ideas, none of them good. So I agree. It's got to go.

Oh, and I agree also about Ginger's tail. I was trying for something there that I didn't quite succeed at. I'll have to make another pass at her in a future version.

I expect to be sort of playing a game of technical (and animational) leapfrog with Jim for a while... but I don't ever expect to be able to leap over him artistically.

Thanks again for all your comments.... I really do appreciate even the critiques.

--Eric

My pal Eric is being too modest. He's done a fantastic job on the Goldfish tank, with incredible animation of the fish. Someday maybe he'll tell you a little about his background, when he leaves the witness protection program:)

Yeah! Eric, your goldfish have PERSONALITY. Even the way they hang around the edges of the tank - so very much like real ones do.

signed,

A BIG FAN

I think that MA, though more limited in its scope than GA, has a finer finish in its execution. In my opinion MA holds up very well despite several years on the market, and I daresay I've spent as many hours looking at it as anybody except Mr. Sachs himself. :)

GA has a more difficult problem to solve by being more general and do a lot more. However, I think Eric will get there, and where it is now is pretty impressive.

Personally, I think comparing MA to GA is like comparing apples to oranges. Hmm, they are both fruit, they are both spherical, they both grow on trees, they can be made into juice...lots of things in common but they have very different appeal (or they have a very different peel :p ).
I love MA, and it was that affection that compelled my to purchase GA (which I now also love). I look forward to Jim and Eric as they continue to perfect these two outstanding screensavers (there are no others that even come close, IMO).

When I say it's dated I mean that it looks now almost exactly the same as when I bought it in 2000. Sure there are some new fish and they have been fine tuned, but you can't expect that "wow" or "oooh, ahhh" factor to last 4 years, especially when games and everything else has made huge advances.

The 3D background, better fish behaviour (rather than just swimming left, turning, swimming right, turning) and hopefully the ability to make the fish larger (by "zooming" in one area of the tank) would all rejuvenate the project in my opinion.

Each product has it's own strengths and weaknesses and since both are still evolving they'll continue to change and improve. IMO, I don't consider GA and MA to be competing products. Sure, both are aquarium screensavers, but one is freshwater, the other is marine. If I'm going to make direct comparisons with MA and other products, then Sim-Aquarium and AquaReal would be first on the list.

But even so, to me each product has it's own appeal so I appreciate each one for it's differences. I've been with MA since the beginning and it's still my number 1 marine aquarium screensaver, but I also really enjoy GA for what it has to offer me.

Um, they're both screensavers so I would say they are competing products. One on the screen at the time, eh?

I'm in favour of MA though

/Tiny Tang

MA gets my vote too!

Mine too!

Oh, that one was cold, Eric! :)

Oh sure, gang up on me now why don't ya? :p

I wasn't quite sure where to post this, except that this thread seems to be watched regularly. I had the strangest thing happen to GA today. I had it on while reading a book, and looked up to see that the monitor screen was black. I first thought that I had turned off the monitor, but noticed the green "on" light was steady. I wiggled the mouse and the screen went back to my desktop pic. So, I clicked on the GA icon on my desktop...and got the black screen again. I went into Start>Programs>LifeGlobe>Goldfish Aquarium and clicked on that. Again, black screen. I right clicked on my desktop and clicked the screensaver tab and did a preview of GA. Again, blank screen. Same outcome from right clicking on the desktop icon, finding target, and clicking on the icon there. Then I had the bright idea of hitting the space bar while the screen was black. Voila, the GA setting screen came up. Somehow, foreground and background lights were both all the way off. I know I didn't do this, so does anyone have any idea how this would have happened when less than an hour earlier GA was running fine with the settings I'd chosen for it?

The codebase that I gave Prolific had a feature which insured that the foreground and background colors were never both black at the same time. Maybe this got lost in translation to Goldfish. Edgar can probably track it down.

I suspect you've held down [Alt] and written the first lines of Genesis from the Bible backwards. Y'know, the "Let there be light" part. ;)

:D At least with those settings I don't have to worry about screen burn in.

I've had that to happen to me also and came up with the same solution as you, but I thought that I must have set it that way. Maybe I didn’t.

I remember bumping the left side of my keyboard right before this happened. But, I've initiated GA and then pressed every button on the left of the keyboard again. None of them make it go black. It's a mystery!

Ok, this is something that I've been meaning to bring up for awhile, but have never felt like taking the time to fully explain it. I have the same problem. Every so often, maybe 3 or 4 times a week, GA will inexplicably set my lighting to zero. I'll leave my office for a few minutes, the screensaver comes on, and I come back to a black screen. A few times I have thought that my monitor was turned off, but I hit the space bar, and everything comes back up. I never set the lights all the way down, and I do not have the automatic lights turned on. I can find no reason for the settings to change like this without any input from me, but this is what seems to be happening. No other settings are ever changed, just the lighting.

I have had the same happen with my PC. I assumed it was some quirk of the saver getting along with my vid driver, or some such.

Maybe it's NOT "just me". :)

Wow! I ran into this same black screen this morning! It must be a phase of the moon we're all going through! ;)

:D :D :D

Not the moon, the comets.

If someone can reproduce it in such way so that we can do it to, we will fix it in 24 hours.

Here you go.

Oh, that. That is our black fish on black easter egg.
We thought that would be a big hit.

Nice. Black goes with anything. It's also quite elegant, and I think it makes the Goldfish look slimmer.

Oh, stop it you two! :D

I think I'm going to add to the confusion by saying I'm pretty sure I 've seen the same thing on sharks. I'm switching to that one as default to see if I can figure it out there.

/Tiny Too

ROFLMBO:)

I've just discovered this hacked version of the Goldfish Aquarium, - is nothing sacred? :rolleyes:

Are those fuzzy white spots supposed to be goldfish? I bet that's very interesting to watch.

No those are hacks, Mrs. Nichols...

Thank you Mr. T.;)


PS:
By hack do you mean sushi?

as in lunch:D