Ok, both of you take a chill pill and go to your respective corners for a moment.
"all I was asking for was a simple option to increase the number of ANIMALS -- repeat, ANIMALS, NOT NECESSARILY FULL-SIZED FISH -- on screen at any one time."
Coelacanth, Jim has already stated in the past that the fish limit might not include the invertebrates and/or certain schooling fish which means that you ARE likely to see more in the tank than we do now.
"a GeForce3 could display more than 7 fish very well (and I have a 21-inch monitor, so I *wouldn't* mind having slightly smaller fish), but more than that, it could also display other things such as waving soft coral, pulsing Xenia, small creatures such as snails and even bristleworms, and other details as an option for people that have these cards."
With regards to why Jim is not adding in all of these additional features supported by the high end GeForce2 and GeForce3 cards, it's a fair bet that it has to do with a couple of things.
First of all, Jim has always wanted to keep the file size down to a minimum so that the program can be zipped up and placed on any 3.5 easily. Therefore, everything that gets added to the program adds to the file size.
The second reason being that he doesn't want anyone to miss out on what the aquarium has to offer regardless of what graphics card they have. Right now the aquarium can be viewed in whole by pretty much anyone that meets his base graphics card requirements and those of us with higher end GeForce cards like me (GeForce2 Pro DDR) can enjoy it as well in higher resolutions with AA or FSAA, not to mention the rather high frame rates that we get as well.
So to be perfectly honest, Jim has done a great job of balancing out our wants with his plans and what's realistic when all that is taken into consideration. What some people just don't seem to understand or fully grasp is how incredible the aquarium IS going to be when Jim drops in things like:
- 3D background
- invertebrates
- schooling fish
- specialty fish
- individual AI for each type of fish
- and the list goes on...
Needless to say, we've only seen the icing on the cake. Jim still has a LOT in store for us and he's trying to make as many people happy as possible (himself, his publisher, and us) and that's one VERY tall order for one man. In any case, the best thing for us to do at this point is to sit back and enjoy the ride, it only gets better from here.
- DL