Wishlist for Marine Aquarium 3 and Future

[feldon34]

I had a tropical marine aquarium for 5 years and I can testify that this screensaver is the most successful I have seen ever and also the most realistic.

As for the wishlist, I have a request for the Diodon Holocanthus (Pufferfish).

This one would be difficult to design due to it's dual state (normal or inflated when he is afraid)

I had one during those five years and it is a very friendly fish and nice too.

I also agree on the choices of the clownfish , the regal or hippo tang and the facula butterfly.

Thanks and hope to see these fishes in a future version of our favorite screensaver !

Christian

[feldon34]

Hello,

I Would like to congratulate you for your very impressive Web Site ,informations are quite accurate, very good job my friend. On the Wishlist I would like to see two of the most beautyful Marine fish and both of them are in my own Marine fish Aquarium

Annularis Angel
Imperator Angel

and you can get their photos on E-Tropicals.com Web Site

With My Best Regards

Andre

[Jim Sachs]

Almost everything that has been mentioned so far is on the list of things to add. The conventional fish will be first, ones that look similar and follow the same movement algorithm. Each of these takes about two days to complete. Then will come the other types, like puffer fish and sea horses, which are more difficult. Finally, there will be the "bottom-dwellers", like crabs, shrimp, and finally the octopus. In between all that, I have to find time for the new backgrounds and other features.
At the moment, I'm off to Seattle for two days of meetings, so I'll check in again tomorrow night.

--- Jim Sachs

- more backgrounds
- other species like water snails, flowers with leaves moving in bubbles
- the fish could throw shadow on the sand below
- touch screen support (another step towards fidelity)
- it would be awesome (but probably unsolvable) to have the aquarium as a windows desktop, below all the icons and other windows

[feldon34]

More backgrounds are coming.

Snails might be coming.

Flowers with leaves meaning water plants? I think this is pretty much in lakes and streams (fresh water). Sachs aquarium is saltwater. Perhaps kelp is coming though.

As for fish shadows, Jim and I actually had a conversation about this. Because the light in a fishtank is so diffuse, unless the fish is 1 1/2" inches or closer to the bottom, there is no discernable shadow. Check out a real tank and you'll see it's true.

Touch screen support? You mean so you can tap the glass? Jim is working on the ability to "tap the glass". As for touchscreen, using a touchscreen is like using a mouse, so moving the mouse would wake up the screen saver from its sleep. I guess clicking on the glass with the mouse could be implemented if you have "wake from mouse movement" turned off. If Jim makes it so you can click on a certain point on the screen, then this feature will be automatically forwards-compatible with touchscreens.

Well I think the most important.. before adding more and more fish would be to improve the backround.. a 3d backround would make the aquarim much more realist.. also I don't think this would be that hard to add but the ability to select a mp3 to play in the backround of the aquarium...
also it would be nice if the fish didn't swim off the screen.. it's kinda weird since it's trying to emulate a real aquarium.. and um where do the fish go if it's a real aquarium??

[feldon34]

Fish are much easier to add than a background. Hit the "W" key while the screen saver is running and you'll see why. The background has to be parceled out into several layers so that fish can go behind and in front of certain coral formations.

As for mp3s, I think this might be beyond the scope of Jim's project. If he were to do anything, it would have a hook to trigger your mp3 software (Winamp, etc.) to play from a random playlist. His efforts have been for realism and as such, the tank has 2 options, bubbles or silence. I do wonder if the bubbles are a simple sound loop (or a multi-layer sound loop). If so, I'd love to hear a tank with ALL the sounds associated with an aquarium including the faint sounds of the fluorescent lights, the water pump, the filtration, etc.

Anyone else's opinions?

[Jim Sachs]

Tetras and glass fish are freshwater species, and I have no current plans to do a freshwater tank.

However, there are some saltwater species with fairly transparent bodies which would also look good as "mesh-within-a-mesh" objects, and I am planning for this effect.

--- Jim Sachs

I would like to have more sounds.
Seperate big bubbles instead of a constant stream of small bubbles.
Personally I think that there are enough "normal" fish, but I would like to see other lifeforms like snails, starfish, shrimp etc.

[Lostboy]

On the subject of sounds, I love the real sound that this screensaver has, opposed to the many bad attempts that other fish screensavers have. However when falling asleep to the screensaver, it’s not as relaxing as it could be. Are there real aquarium sounds that could be made more relaxing for this screensaver?

[feldon34]

Ridder: Starfish and Coral shrimp are coming.

As for the aquarium sounds, I would like to see not just the droning bubbles (which I agree is not that relaxing) with the sounds of flourescent lights, water pump, filtration equipment, etc.

-Morgan

[Jim Sachs]

I'm open to suggestions on the subject of sounds. The main problem is that the filesize can get out of hand very quickly. If anyone has an appropriate sound sample under 60K, I would be happy to consider it.

--- Jim Sachs

Hi! First off, very nice development. Everyone who sees it on my system simply MUST know where I got it.

The only thing I could add to the list of requests I've already seen is to do something with the bubble sounds. I work with audio a good deal, and have an ear for details. And unfortunately, while I enjoy the serene "pink noise" the bubbles provide, I end up runing back to the computer to turn off the bubble sounds; the looping of the same audio clip over and over just drives me nuts! I think it would be an interesting change to maybe either lengthen the audio clip for the bubbles to make the looping a little less obvious (to some of us hehe) or to incorporate a series of bubble clips, that switch randomly, so that while they are still short and loop, there is enough randomness to it that it doesn't sound so much like a broken record.

Anyway, I know it's really nit-picky, but I thought I'd share.

--Lee

This is one impressive screen saver. More like a living
3D Saltwater aquarium. We have the Registered Key and love each update!

I do hope when I read the calls for variation, that prior to that, such attractive fish as Rock Beauties, and Persian Butterflies, and BiColored Angels make it in. When there is a variation of the true PC living saltwater tank, us purist want to have a nice stock of the gorgeous coral reef fish! While cute, sea horses and puffers just lack the vibrant colors of these fish!

Thanks Mr. Sachs for a wonderful program! And a super THANKS for making it so realistic, we leave it running on one screen all day.

I do want to add, the guy who wants a freshwater version, has a great idea, but that's another program totally.

And a Thanks for having a nice website Morgan, offering
added info and educational support!

Excellent program, I've emailed Jim a while earlier when I got the very first version of Sachz Aquarium, well to say the least, the first time I saw it I thought it was a DVD video playback of a real aquarium, not until later I saw the frame rate on the upper left corner that says D3D HAL heh.

There are a couple things I want to be added to the wishlist (though I know some are coming soon, woot!)

- hermit crabs and snails (you won't see a good reef tank without them, they're nice janitors!)
- moving corals (that's the 3D background I think Jim is working on, keep it up!)
- some species of gobies? my favorite species is the diamond sleeper goby..
- some species of demsels? sure they're a little aggresive but I don't think you'll find a reef tank without them as well =)
- some species of clown with their anemone partner?

I think it's quite important to study the behavior of the different species of the fish too. I've kept a Royal Gamma before, it's not too aggresive but it's pretty shy too. They tends to hide itself behind live rocks (which I think that's their home), and when they do leave their home, they don't really swim horizontally.. they are more like darting around almost vertically, and when they're in idle they are also positioned in a 45 degrees angle.

Other species like the tangs loves to nip on live rocks, they're gaze on algae and that's why they often nip on live rock in search of any algae they can gaze.

While Angelfish and butterfly species looks nice, they are actually coral eater, they nip on both type of hard and soft corals, that's why you usually won't find them in reef tanks. They are mostly kept in marine fish only tanks.

That's my 2 cents, keep up the great job Jim!

[feldon34]

solos,

I can help you out with what's already waiting in the wings...

A clownfish is coming, although it will, sadly, be a free-swimmer until the 3D coral and anemone are done (hey that's the answer to 3 questions, what a bargain).

Check out the Wishlist at my website and see if there are any other fish you want to add. I'll put the Diamond Sleeper goby up there today.

I've got a picture of a white-tail damsel and Jim has had white-tail damsels in his illustrations before, such as the Commodore Amiga advertisement (check the link at the bottom of my wishlist page), so their inclusion is likely.

Individual fish behavior is coming! Jim studies fish a lot (he's flown to 2 major aquariums, plus checking out local ones). Jim told me that he's handling all the ordering, acceptance of checks, money orders, plus e-mail support and questions, plus life in general, plus dealings with a few large companies for partnerships of sorts. He only gets a few hours a day to actually work on adding fish, etc. to the Aquarium.

Jim has told me that the Mandarin Gobi is a guaranteed future fish. It'll just be harder to animate than the current fish because it can bend left-to-right, as well as bending vertically.

If there is some element of realism (except for fish that die or attack each other), it's coming.

Thanks for voicing your wishes!

Spanish Hogfish. www.animalpicturesarchive..._rufus.jpg

Anemone Hermit Crab
Sadly I couldn't find a good picture of one on-line for an example.

Oh..by the way, when the dual monitor support is done. I do believe that I will have to sacrifice several beers in honor of this fine program and all those working on it.

A Turtle... yes a Turtle, is it at all possible or in real life would it eat fish?
and if so what about a real small turtle?
call me crazy but that would be cool!!
jim your aquarium is the best around!
THANKS.

Sea Turtles usually only eat dead fish or .. erm (sorry don't know the name in english) Fresh water turtles usually eat EVERYTHING the see, even little turtles

About The Aquarium, I made my own litta wish list.

#1 Better Fish AI movement
#2 Realistic Background
#3 There are more living objects in a Sea Tank then fish, keep that in mind o_0

(about the AI movement, hide behind a stone, swim in groups, I sometimes see fish picking up little stones form the ground could be kinda cool to see)

Greatz, Coin

[Digital Lungfish]

Snails and starfish sound very interesting and I like the idea as well, but from what Jim tells me he's actually trying to avoid showing any tank walls (i.e. glass, etc.).

To quote him from a previous e-mail:

"If I show the walls of the aquarium, I have to get into reflections, which doubles the bandwidth hit."

This being the case, it seems like these types of sea creatures will be limited to the surface areas of the coral and gravel only. That doesn't seem like a lot of space for them to navigate around since a shrimp and octopus will be sharing the lower regions of the tank as well. The only other feasible place for them to travel would be on the front side of the aquarium facing the user, but then that would obscure the view since these little guys travel extremely slow. For that matter, that means that the octopus would need to be able to adhere to the front as well, that's if you want to remain consistent.

Your thoughts Jim? Anyone?

- DL