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Right now the "new" part for MA3 is the entire background. For the invertebrates to have somewhere to crawl, and items to be animated, the entire thing had to be redone.
In the old versions the background was due to Jim's "magic" and fooling the eye. The coral and things you see in those are flat, like cardboard cutouts with a picture pasted on. There was no way any creatures could interact with anything without giving away the illusion that created it in the first place, and there was no way to animate anything.
Everything in this new background is now truly 3D. It has a depth to it. That way creatures can interact with their environment. And, items in the background can be animated because they have actual parts and depth. But they have no back to them. That's why nothing in the aquarium can be moved or resized or the camera can't "swim" around throughout. It has to maintain it's strict placement and movement.
That's why it took so long for one man to create it. Every item you see had to be built in 3D from the ground up, and then placed where Jim wanted it relative to what was near it, and then the whole thing had to be tweaked and moved and changed over and over to get everything in there placed properly so it would work and could be animated if it's an item that needs to be. Practically everything you see in the new background Jim already has a reason for.
All that had to be done so invert's could crawl over them, or they could be animated. Plus the new tank is almost 3 screens wide for more room, movement, and scrolling. Now you can have 30 fish at once, plus when the invet's get created they will be in there as well. This sets up the foundation for Jim to be able to add many things that there was just no way to have happen in the old versions. Plus, the new version has the capabilities to play user selected music which the old ones could not.
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