Wishlist for Marine Aquarium 3 and Future

I'm all for the Clownfish and the Mandarinfish, and would love to see the octopus too. They'd all be icing on the cake for me. This is the best screensaver I've seen, and I'm happy to check in often and see what's progressing. I am a Deluxe registered user...Jim has done a tremendous job with this program. People have remarked about seeing it on my system and I give them the web address. Jim, keep it real...no tiny scuba divers or little castles..let's keep it a true reef environment.

[Jim Sachs]

My rule about not showing the aquarium walls doesn't apply to the front wall, since reflections are not a factor there. So I don't mind having snails and starfish crawling (slowly) on the front glass. Like the fish, the invertebrates could each be turned off, or set to different creatures, if the user doesn't like obscuring the view.

--- Jim Sachs

[Digital Lungfish]

Good point Jim, thanks for clearing that up. I personally wont mind if they do crawl across the front of the tank, I just pointed it out because I thought it might be something that could bother some users. But I guess I had one of those good ol' fashioned brain farts and forgot that you will be able to turn them off, my mistake! heh heh

-DL

Hmm... octopus in a sea tank, is the tank not a bit to small for that?

I rater see some animated starfish, coral and anemone. Perhaps one or two seashells?

Greatz, Coin

*excuse me for the bad english, looks at "Spell Check" Thank god*

[Ascii]

Hi there,

I don't know if this has already been said, I'm late for work and don't have time to read all the ideas yet.

How about having a size setting? I like certain fishes and would like to have more than one of the same type yet have some larger or smaller than each other so that they look like different fishes instead of exact copies of the same fish. Does that makes sense?

Gotta run, I LOVE this program.

Ascii

[Lostboy]

Combining Ascii’s idea, with the adding new skins idea by JagCrAsH and feldon23, would it be worth it worth it to make a few skins of each fish, that look slightly different. Much like these two fish that are very close, but not exact. I’m mostly thinking about the future when you have fish with personalities and some that swim in schools.

[feldon34]

Animated Starfish, and a Sea Anemone are coming. Other animated Coral will take a while and require serious computing resources.

Realize that the fish in Jim's tank are up to 10 inches long. An Octopus isn't that much bigger in comparison.

Animated Starfish, and a Sea Anemone are coming

YES! =)

Please make a fresh water aquarium for the rest of us fresh water aquarium fiends. And African Cichlids are an ABSOLUTE MUST!!! =)

First of All i would like to say thank you for the best piece of software that i have ever registred this is the first one that have been worth the money payed.

I have been reading all this ideas and suggestion i must say there is a lot of ideas out there, and i also read a reply where you mentioned that it would take a life time to comlete, and you are most probably right,

If you are doing it all alone then it will take a life time, but why not make a plug in system, then all the programmers Graphic designers, could start working on some of the designs, like the octapus, more fish designs, backgrounds, or eaven behaviour patterns.
Or like someone mentioned, starting a MP3 song.

If you take on all the responsibility your self, it will take you an etenity to complete, just imagine where Winamp would have been today if it havent been for the plug in system. and the plug in system was not in the first releases.

The download size would be smaller if you only had the 3 original Fish in it, and then people could download the extra features, and then add them as a plug in.
In the programming you would still be able to determine the maximum alowed number of functions depending on the registration.

Anyway, that was my inputs.
Brian Levinsen
b.levinsen@chello.nl

[Ascii]

Here another idea. How about having, on a long random timer, a quick cat's paw dropping down into the tank from the top, a single splash (with sound effect?)with the fish doing a quick dart away from it. It would probably have to be a 2d paw, but if it's a fast in and out maybe people won't notice.

Ascii

p.s. Forgive the image to the left, I usually post on the Everquest forum and that's my character on Everquest (well, ONE of them)

[feldon34]

Eldaria,

While it would be nice for the Aquarium to be completely open-ended, nobody would pay for it. Also, it would be harder for Jim to get people excited about it if there are too many steps involved in getting all of the fish.

Also, the Octopus will require a completely different programming and animation routine. If anything in the Aquarium WERE to be opened to the public it might be the backgrounds and regular flat fish. I don't forsee anything else being opened to the public because it would require the source code being given away for free. It's hard to build a business model off of that!!

And support for alternate fish tank sounds or mp3 music can be added very easily. All Jim has to do is make the Aquarium run a single commandline (which you could specify in Settings). This would allow people to record their own aquarium sounds, or play their favorite Winamp playlist.

[jimmy1975]

I think it might have been mentioned before, but it would be nice to see the fish forage for food: nibbling on the plants/rocks, picking stuff off the ground.

P.S. I absolutely LOVE the program (I have a freshwater fish tank and have been playing with the idea of getting a salt-water one as well)! This is one of the few programs that I actually registered and paid for

"Sea horses would be fantastic"

Ditto

I just got the full 7-fish version running in my computer. I can't say anything else but the fact that the whole thing is realistically awesome!

I would like to see two features added in the future, if feasible:

- That fish move their mouth (I think it's already been suggested here somewhere)
- And my wife's suggestion: "If the rock-live creatures of the bottom moved as in a real aquarium, I'd say it would be perfect!"

[Digital Lungfish]

Here's one that I don't think anyone has mentioned yet. I know that we've all pretty much agreed that an octopus would be great and one that changes color is even better, but what is the one thing that is being overlooked?

INK!!!

When the tap on glass feature is added in along with the octopus, tapping would frighten it and cause it to release it's ink. Either that or it could do it if another fish is agressive towards it.

-DL

A friend who recently saw the program suggested that more realism would be reached if fish casted shadows when swimming close to the corals, rocks and bottom of the tank, as well as over other fish.

[feldon34]

This is a very common request here. Fish do not cast shadows in a fish tank because of the unique diffuse lighting.

If you check out an aquarium or fish store, you'll discover this to be true

You know, I had 2 fishtanks (freshwater) in the past and never really was aware of this.

It's interesting, because you want
to keep it as real as possible, and then these
shadows would actually make it less real! (it
seems like anti-intuitive, huh?)

a nice looking fish possibility for the wishlist is: koran angelfish (as a juvenile as coloration changes as adult). a pic can be found at: www.aquarist.net/photo/gallery.htm
also, since there are so many wishlist ideas, maybe, a voting system for registered users as to what gets incorporated?