Welcome back to another Fishblast, this month's edition is all about extinct creatures. We will be looking into some amazing things the community has done with the theme. Did you know that Megaquarium has a very active extinct creature modding community? You will read all about it here in the Fishblast!

Imagine a public aquarium, but when you walk up to the first tanks you see extinct animals. You would be confused right? Maybe a bit amazed as well. User Paleodude on the Megaquarium Discord showed us a lovely creation using various extinct marine creatures.



They created a lovely small facility that could show the beginning of a public display that focuses on extinct animals returning to the current times. With the big open area, guests can see what to expect during their visit.



Do you like this lovely creation as well? Let us know in the comments!

In the theme of extinct animals, this mod spotlight will focus on a collection of animals that could be readily housed in modern aquaria if they were alive today. All the animals included in this mod come from the Green River Formation, and lived about 50 million years ago.


Introducing fifteen new species of extinct animals for your tanks.

• Amyzon gosiutensis
  
• Apalone heteroglypta
  
• Borealosuchus wilsoni
  
• Crossopholis magnicaudatus
  
• Diplomystus dentatus
  
• Heliobatis radians
  
• Hypsidoris farsonensis
  
• Knightia alta
  
• Lepisosteus simplex
  
• Notogoneus osculus
  
• Phareodus encaustus
  
• Presbyornis pervetus
  
• Priscacara serrata
  
• Procambarus primaevus
  
• Tsoabichi greenriverensis

With these animals, your guests will get a peek into the distant past!

[Click here to discover this mod pack].






Range: Indo Pacific Ocean
Habitat: Shallow Seas (Maximum of 2000 feet)
Size: up to 20 cm (8 inch)
Diet: Live prey and carrion

• Cold waters
  
• Water quality at least 85%
  
• Dislikes Lights
  
• Greedy
  
• Wimp
  
• Armored
  
• Congeners Only
  
• Requires Feeding Skill 3

• Nautilus are considered living fossils and have been around for hundreds of millions of years.
  
• A Nautilus moves by jet-propulsion by blowing out water through a siphon. Position of the siphon decides the direction of the nautilus: front, back, upward or descending.
  
• Nautilus have 90 tentacles, situated outside the shell to catch and manipulate their prey.

For the monthly building challenges we would like to challenge you in a different way this month. We have carefully selected a few mods from the workshop and want you to create a singular tank using vanilla items and only these mods. By doing this you can practice with new ways of decorating tanks.

• Must be a freshwater tank
  
• Only use mods that are in [this collection]
  
• If you're struggling for ideas on where to start, why not post in the comments, Steam discussions or pop on the game's https://discord.gg/jKpSJKA7Rh and ask for a helping hand. :)

We can’t wait to see your creations. Feel free to post them in our discord or upload your images on to the screenshot page for Megaquarium.

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Want to be more involved in our community? Join our https://discord.gg/jKpSJKA7Rh and share your works, we love seeing what you created and maybe we will feature your work in the next FishBlast.

See you in the next one!
Your community liaison, Timmiegun

I've just updated the [beta] branch with what is hopefully the final patch before v2.2 comes out of beta.

This patch (v2.2.2) includes some pathfinding optimisations, guest behaviour improvements, fixes a couple of bugs and also include translations for all languages.

• Fixed bug - if a mod caused an animation error, it would cause the animations of all the following objects to stop working. Now, only the modded object itself will stop working.
  
• Fixed bug - after selecting and deselecting a paint, all items on people could be picked up with the move tool for a limited time.
  
• Fixed bug - stopped a harmless "collection modified while iterating error" from occuring.
  
• Simulation (Freshwater Frenzy) - Changed Electric Eel starting size so that it eats size 3 animals.
  
• Simulation - starfish eater size ratio changed to 40% (same as fish eater and crustacean eater) for consistency.
  
• Simulation/optimisation - when attracted to an object, guests will choose a random square within range, rather than always the closest one. This creates a more natural looking behaviour and also makes it more likely for guests to view a tank from interesting locations like the middle of bridges and tunnels, rather than always going to the closest square.
  
• Optimisation - added a maximum range to the guest pathfinding algorithm equal to the maximum range of the object which is attracting the guest. This saves a significant amount of computation in the case where the pathfind is impossible e.g. glass edges of tanks which are inaccessible. In particular, this change will make Mega Tanks run a lot faster.
  
• Modding - Mods which contain geometry with no material assigned no longer stop the game from loading and force the player to disable all mods. Instead the geometry is ignored during the load process and a warning is shown in the mod info panel if you are the mod's creator.
  
• Modding - Added 200 chars to Chinese Atlas for modding purposes.

First of all a big thank you to everybody who has been getting involved in the public beta and offering up feedback.

I've just updated the [beta] branch with a small patch (v2.2.1) that aims to correct a couple of things that have come up.

• Fixed bug - stopped warning bubbles above tanks from querying the simulation more than once before the simulation had replied. This was causing a build of queries on the simulation thread which was causing the simulation to freeze while the rest of the game kept running - fun fact: this was introduced because the recent optimisation update made the main thread run so much faster! ːsteamfacepalmː
  
• Optimisation - increased performance of some simulation thread code.
  
• Fixed bug which was causing some weird behaviour when reordering mods in the Mod Manager.
  
• Fixed bug which caused the position of the animal when being picked up to be incorrect in perspective mode.
  
• Fixed bug which caused a harmless warning in the log: "Material doesn't have a texture property '_MainTex'".

This update has progressed from beta and is now live for everyone.

• New graphics pipeline for increased average framerate and increased capacity for on-screen game objects.
  
• Reduced memory allocations for reduction in frame spikes due to garbage collection.
  
• Added experimental feature: multithreaded rendering, accessible via the graphics options tab.
  
• UI redesign - increased text size, increased tooltip size, reduced empty space.
  
• UI redesign - Some text is truncated with an ellipses (...) but the full text can be read by hovering over it.
  
• UI redesign - space for icons in individual object window now changes based on number of icons. So when there are only 1 or 2 icons, only a single row of space is taken, but for tanks with 15+ icons it now has space for 4 rows so that everything is legible.
  
• UI redesign - Increased opacity of omni-present in-game buttons.
  
• Added a setting which makes the object count in the build menu visible at all times.
  
• Current Prestige value has more momentum and does not rise and fall so drastically. Your average prestige will remain the same but you won't experience the same oscillatory behaviour.
  
• New guest and staff models, there are now more combinations of guests and staff because glasses and hats have been divided into their own meshes.
  
• Some staff have had their hair style or color changed.
  
• Freshwater Frenzy - Breeding survival chance increased by 2% across the board.
  
• Freshwater Frenzy - Breeding survival chance affected by game difficulty. Easy +2%. Hard and Brutal -2%.
  
• Freshwater Frenzy - Added a place sound for fry and eggs.
  
• You can no longer assign LMB, RMB or MMB to hotkeys.
  
• Added a new tooltip to tell you how key assignment works on the key assignment tab in the options.
• Added a confirmation before starting a new game if one is already in progress.
  
• 'Browse Workshop' button in Mod Manager now scrolls so it doesn't overlap mods.
  
• Guests and staff can now be rotated while picked up.
  
• Reduced size of guest and staff colliders slightly so it is easier to select objects behind them.
  
• All scrollable menus have scroll speed capped at some value. The value can be edited via gui.data.
  
• Text for toggles in the build menu are now on one line in all languages.
  
• Dropdown menus now use full box height.
  
• Improved readability of downdown menu for podium.
  
• Added 5120x2160 as official resolution.
  
• Fixed bug where podium was not included in zone unless the access square was in the zone.
  
• Fixed bug where scrollable menus would effect each other when overlapping.
  
• Fixed bug where water in UI would distort text.
  
• Fixed bug tooltip for items on gift shop shelf window was wrong.
  
• Fixed bug where contents of Rank Up menu was not scaled correctly on non-1080p height monitors.
  
• Fixed bug in bounds calculation during load causing root rotations of geometry to be ignored.
  
• Fixed bug where objects won't make sounds after being picked up and dropped.
  
• Fixed bug where staff were not making a sound when they initiated feeding.
  
• Fixed bug where staff were making the sweeping sound when giving a staff talk.
  
• Fixed bug where staff would do a single frame of their last animation when they were dropped causing a flicker effect.
  
• Fixed bug where staff doing a fixing task while carrying some fish food would clip with the fish food.
  
• Fixed bug where top right toggle values were not being reset between games even though the UI made it look like they were.
  
• Fixed bug where guest thoughts would appear in English at the beginning of some levels, even if the languages was set to something else.
  
• Fixed bug where you could click a second level button after clicking a first. No effect, but animation would play.
  
• Fixed bug where if you pressed escape while a dropdown menu was open you could get stuck in the menu and not be able to cancel the dropdown.
  
• If using 'manual save path.txt' it is ignored if the slash after the drive letter colon is not present.
  
• Updated to Unity 2019.4.25f1.
  
• Updated to latest version of Steamworks.net.
  
• Modding - voCollection is automatically assigned when left blank. It is recommended to leave it blank and the game will assign the most optimal voCollection automatically.
  
• Modding - added 'unoptimised' icon and tooltip to Mod Manager for mods which have multiple materials in a single mesh. These objects are not assigned a voCollection and continue to run with the (slower) legacy graphics system.

Good to see you again! We are back with some amazing works by the community. It has been a relaxed month for all of us, but we saw some amazing work that we wanted to share with you. Very soon we will also get an amazing optimization update to make your games run smoother!

The theme of this month is Back in Time, focussing on the early days in the game. So starter animals and no mods! Are you excited?

For this month’s community build that fit the theme we asked our Discord members to create a vanilla build. No mods and therefore true to the game’s beginning.

Creator Endy3032 made this nice aquarium for you to enjoy!



A small but cozy public aquarium. But as you can see, even without the usage of mods, you can make good looking tanks and facilities!



As you can see even in the early days we could create amazing builds. With the addition of the DLC and our workshop our works are only going to get nicer. What is your favourite decoration item in the vanilla game? Let us know in the comments.

For this spotlight we want to give you a look at one of the oldest mods around in the workshop. One created by the early birds when the workshop just opened for this game. Crazy thought right?


Introducing a brand-new species for your aquarium: Banana Moray Eel (Gymnothorax miliaris).

This yellow moray is amazingly created and was one of the very first creatures we could download from the workshop.



Get this unique mod right https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1775009308.






Range: Indo-West Pacific
Habitat: Reefs
Size: up to 7 cm (2.7 inch)
Diet: Plankton and Algae

• Warm waters
  
• Eats Orange Pellet
  
• Water quality at least 50%

• Damselfish are egg layers.
  
• First they clear a site ready for a nest, then engage in a mating dance with rapid swimming and fin movements, during this time the males will often turn a shade or two darker and may display white blotches. Spawning occurs at dawn.

Each Fishblast we try to inspire you to try and create new things. Last month we asked you to try and give a go at the ‘All around you’ theme! As you can see user Wolfi created an amazing Aquarium looks around all the fish!

• It can be a singular tank or a themed area
  
• You can use vanilla or add mods to spice up the build
  
• If you're struggling for ideas on where to start, why not post in the comments, Steam discussions or pop on the game's https://discord.gg/jKpSJKA7Rh and ask for a helping hand. :)

We can’t wait to see your creations. Feel free to post them in our discord or upload your images on to the screenshot page for Megaquarium.

--

Want to be more involved in our community? Join our https://discord.gg/jKpSJKA7Rh and share your works, we love seeing what you created and maybe we will feature your work in the next FishBlast.

See you in the next one!
Your community liaison, Timmiegun

Hey there, welcome back to the third edition of the Fishblast. This time we have some amazing new creations for you to explore in the community. We will be talking about how to use heights in Megaquarium. Using those heights can really spice up your creations and challenge you to (literally) a whole new level.

Heights can really add to your aquarium and spice up the way you and your visitors experience the creatures of the oceans. User RickReptile gave us an in-depth look at how he uses heights in their builds.



Using platforms and stairs, RickReptile created various viewing points for visitors to enjoy a tank from. By also having the ‘Building Kit’ mod RickReptile was able to hide the supports for the platforms, this really adds to the idea of the second floor.

RickReptile said to us: “People have been requesting multiple floors since the release of the game. By being a little creative you can already achieve this as you can tell from the images. Using multiple floors will change your aquarium from stale looking to something more diverse and interesting.”



Have you tried something similar yet? Or how would you use this technique in your aquarium? Let us know in the comments.

Last month we looked at animals that love to live at the bottom of your tank. So let’s take a look at those that live on the water’s surface this time.


Introducing a brand-new species for your aquarium: White-faced Whistling Duck (Dendrocygna viduata).

This mod adds ducks into your aquarium. Perfect to add some variety into your beach tanks, and have unique interactions between these feathery friends and the other animals living in their enclosure.



Get this unique mod right https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2196279147.

Note: You need Freshwater Frenzy to use this mod.






Range: Amazon Rivers
Habitat: Ponds, swamps and rivers with heavy vegetation
Size: up to 9 cm (3.5 inch)
Diet: Mosquito larvae & bloodworms

• Warm waters
  
• Eats Brine Shrimp
  
• Wimp
  
• Shoaler of 3+
  
• Likes plants
  
• Likes floating cover
  
• Needs open space
  
• Water quality at least 80%

• This species of Freshwater Hatchetfish is able to jump and glide over the water surface for almost 3 meters (9 feet)
  
• There are saltwater Hatchetfish (Sternoptychinae). However, these live in the deep sea. They are also not related to the freshwater Hatchetfish

Each Fishblast we try to inspire you to try and create new things. Last month we asked you to create a dock! As you can see user Sardine created an amazing dock-themed viewing platform for a mangrove tank! The platforms used to create a dock floating on the water makes this such a creative build!

• It can be a singular tank or a themed area
  
• You can use vanilla or add mods to spice up the build
  
• If you're struggling for ideas on where to start, why not post in the comments, Steam discussions or pop on the game's https://discord.gg/jKpSJKA7Rh and ask for a helping hand. :)

If you're planning to take part in this month's building challenge, post in the comments below!

We can’t wait to see your creations. Feel free to post them in our discord or upload your images on to the screenshot page for Megaquarium.

--

Want to be more involved in our community? Join our https://discord.gg/jKpSJKA7Rh and share your works, we love seeing what you created and maybe we will feature your work in the next FishBlast.

See you in the next one!
Your community liaison, Timmiegun

A brand-new month and that means, another Fishblast! This edition we investigate an amazing community build and check out a great mod to add to your aquarium. But first we start off with some news for those that want to start making mods for the game.

In the past month a big revolution happened regarding creating mods for our beloved game. User Synchrolight created a guide for making your own mods using Blender. This means that modding will be more accessible for Megaquarium and gives all of you a chance to make the fish and scenery you always wanted.

[Click here for a tutorial on that]

Awesome right?!

You might have noticed that on the workshop there is a flood of mods being released within a regional theme every two weeks. After these two weeks we ask the members to build a themed area with the fish from that region. Today we take a look at the build of Ark-a-saurus Rex.



The build’s theme was the freshwater fish of Melanesia, which is the region of Papua New Guinea and a few surrounding islands. In this region we know that there are a lot of rainbow fish, however, there is so much more to be seen. Ark-a-saurus Rex really captured the beauty of the region with a nice variety of tanks.



In real life, every tank has multiple layers in which your fish prefer to live. While some like to explore at all depths, some only swim near the water surface or in the middle of the tank. However sometimes you want to have a fish that stays near the bottom. Reef tanks will instantly become more interesting when you must look for these creatures.


Introducing two new species of goby for your tanks.
- Orange Stripe Prawn Goby (Amblyeleotris randalli)
- Two Spot Goby (Signigobius biocellatus)

By adding these into your tank, your guests will also have to look down and search for these rapid bottom dwellers!



Get this unique mod right https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1847113815.






Range: Australia and New Guinea
Habitat: Shallow tropical waters
Size: 70 to 90 cm (27 to 35 inches)
Diet: Crustaceans, worms and small fish

• Warm waters
  
• Eats Sand Eel
  
• Rock Requirement +5
  
• Supplements
  
• Damages crustaceans
  
• Water quality at least 70%

• This shark prefers to walk rather than swim, using its stiffened under-fins to walk across the sea-bed.
  
• Epaulettes can survive outside the water for three hours. And during this time, it can even ‘walk’ back to the ocean!

Next month’s edition will need a brand-new build to be featured. Submit your best build fulfilling the following theme and your aquarium could be in the next Fish Blast!

• It can be a singular tank or a themed area
  
• You can use vanilla or add mods to spice up the build
  
• If you're struggling for ideas on where to start, why not post in the comments, Steam discussions or pop on the game's https://discord.gg/jKpSJKA7Rh and ask for a helping hand. :)

If you're planning to take part in this month's building challenge, post in the comments below!

We can’t wait to see your creations. Feel free to post them in our discord or upload your images on to the screenshot page for Megaquarium.

--

Want to be more involved in our community? Join our https://discord.gg/jKpSJKA7Rh and share your works, we love seeing what you created and maybe we will feature your work in the next FishBlast.

See you in the next one!
Your community liaison, Timmiegun

Hey everyone and welcome to the very first FishBlast.

Written by the community, for the community: The FishBlast is your monthly update on what is happening within the Megaquarium community, their creations and more.

Don’t you love it, when the aquarium is well decorated, and the visitor emerses themselves in the theme of your aquarium? User 100_pourcent_clafoutis really showed us what your builds could look like by using some of the many mods on the Steam workshop. This cave-tunnel adds depth and style to your builds. Causing all your visitors to feel like they are in an underwater cave-adventure!











You might be wondering; these items are not in the game, are they? These are some of the top-notch mods that are available for you on the workshop. Look for the Building kit, Custom Rocks, and maybe you can create this build yourself!

This edition’s spotlight will be focussed on a mod that changes the way your aquarium looks. Not in the way of the fish collection but the way you can display the fish.

We are talking about the “Raised Tanks” mod by Flishster.

These tanks change the way your aquarium looks by putting the tank floor on eye-level for your guests. Now everyone can easily spot those hermit crabs and look through the caves to see that one tiny chromis in the back of the tank. This really is a mod you would need to have in your game.


Build of the tank is by Bosjesman

Get this amazing mod right here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1996820999&searchtext=raised






Range: Indo-Pacific and predominately along the coast of Mexico
Habitat: Lagoons and seaweed reefs
Size: 15CM (6 inches)
Diet: Small sponges, mollusks, algae, and other small marine life

• Warm waters
  
• Greedy
  
• Dislikes Food Competitors
  
• Armored

• Males of the Spotted Boxfish are more likely to swim in open waters than females
  
• Juveniles of the Spotted Boxfish stay usually near rocky areas, while the adults tends to go near reef crests.
  
• All Juveniles are born as a female; some can change biologically to become males over time.

Want to be more involved in our community? Join our discord and share your works, we love seeing what you created and maybe we feature your work in the next FishBlast.

https://discord.gg/jKpSJKA7Rh

See you in the next one!
Your community liaison, Timmiegun

It's been a little while since the last update so I thought I'd let you know what I've been working on.

I mentioned back in August that I've been working on a significant performance update. I've achieved what I originally set out to and am currently looking at a potential fps (frames per second) improvement of 64% over the current live version!

However while working on this I've delved into the engine more and discovered that even greater gains could be possible. The figure mentioned above would probably only be available to those with quad core CPUs because it relies on a lot of multithreading.

The next stage has the potential to deliver the same sort of performance to those with lesser systems by making greater use of the calculation potential of the graphics card.

It's an exciting development and if all goes to plan should pave the way for bigger and better aquariums than ever! I'm hopeful to release the update early in 2021. Thank you for your patience!


Beyond the performance update, there are many exciting things on the horizon.

For starters, I have an ambitious redesign of the sandbox mode planned. My aims are to:

• Improve the way Sandbox mode interacts with DLC and mods. Lots to talk about here, maybe enough for an entire blog post! ;)
  
• Make a truly everlasting sandbox where trades and quests are generated forever rather than at specific prestige values.
  
• Increase the variety and complexity of side-objectives.

But these are just ideas. How would you like to see sandbox mode improved?

I also want 2021 to be an even bigger year for Megaquarium than 2020! It'll be a tough year to beat, but I'm going to give it my best shot!

I would love to be able to release new official content more often and I'm working on some ideas which might help with that. I'll hopefully have more to share next year.

All that remains to be said is: Happy holidays!

• Fixed bug where you couldn't delete miscarriage reports.
  
• Fixed bug where some items would not appear in build menu at ultrawide resolutions.
  
• Fixed typo in 4. Valberg. "less" -> "fewer".
  
• Removed unused eater tags from midas cichlid.
  
• Reduced width of cashflow window so it can appear in very narrow resolutions.
  
• Staff with all level 10 skills will not create a level up message. Existing messages created before this patch will stay around.

• Fixed another issue that was preventing custom sounds in mods. Should be working now.