I can see where you're coming from because I'm a gamer and I used to be a game developer as well, but there's a difference between what you're suggesting and what is right for this type of product. Jim's fears have always been that if he allowed end-users to modify his product, it might lead to exploding fish, or art that was far from tasteful. If that ever happened it might reflect back on his work and his reputation as an artist.

When you liken the screen savers to games (especially games like Quake, Unreal, etc), you're talking about games that focus on violence and so far the majority of the people that have made the same request that you have also happen to be gamers that play those same games. I'd probably be hesitant myself (were I in Jim's shoes) if FPS gamers made the same kind of request to me simply because of the type of content that might make it's way into the product (less than serene species, violent and aggressive AI behavior, alien fish, etc).

On the other hand, IF Jim and Prolific were to allow users to submit their own fish (model w/art) to Jim and Prolific for approval, that's another story altogether because that would allow them to control the content.

Hey, what about my question? :)

Re: Quality
 

Ok Mr. Spelling. And I don't mean Aaron. :)

Btw, it's changing to SereneScene soon. You guys decide what company name is going in front of the Goldfish Aquarium?

Except that the goal all along has been moving mouth & gills, individual fish behavior, etc. which cannot be done by "skinning".

Morgan - The Goldfish Tank won't be either SereneScreen or SereneScene - Those are my labels. Last I heard, they were toying with the name HyperReal, which I think is pretty good.

I actually really didn't think it would be SereneScreen. I know better. :)

Taking that into consideration, is that something that Jim and/or Prolific can do after the fact? By the way, I wasn't simply suggesting a skin job, I meant both model and art submission.

I'm going to program the mouth and gill movements on someone else's fish? Someone else gets the fun of creating the model and applying the texture, then I get the drudgery? Not likely.

Sorry Jim, didn't mean to lower you to drudgery. I guess I didn't view it from that angel. :)

On an entirely unrelated note to my last comment, Derrek has asked this question a number of times and I don't believe he's had a response back as of yet. The question was directed at Reichart I believe. He asked what the pricing on the Goldfish Aquarium is expected to be?

Myself, I'd like to know if there's a free upgrade for registered owners of the MA? (JUST KIDDING!!!!) ;)

Or perhaps just a free upgrade for forum members? :)

Pat,

WOW, that new avatar is quite a bit less than "serene". I think I remember seeing something else you did quite some time ago and it had sharks in it. You like people getting munched?

mmmmmmmmmm...very un-serene indeed

Pat, u really like Shark do u?
even like been eaten by it!!!LOL

however, not a bad one though, keep 'em comming

Yup, it's brilliant! A couple of bites like that and you'd have to change your handle to patscarface ;)

/Tiny Bite

Forum members might get a Prolific product, but I don't think it will be Goldfish. Hmm...

I am going to venture a guess that the Goldfish Aquarium might be $15 as a promotional price just like FlagPride FoNA. Not sure how many fish that will end up getting you except the 3 at first.

Realize that while it takes 1-2 days for Jim to create the artwork/model for each fish in Marine Aquarium (because they use the same behavior/animation engine and there is not much customization besides lighting/reflectivity), the fish in Goldfish Aquarium and future versions of SereneScreen Aquarium have a ton of possible customization to them.

The 3 Goldfish we'll see in the first release of GA really are 3 completely separate entitites.

Did I ask some kind of forbidden question? Even a "No, I can't tell you" or a "No, I don't have a clue" would be great... Of course "Yes" would be better. :)

drfish,

Sorry, I guess this thread flew by and I kept forgetting to go back and find out what your question was. As far as GF goes, I don't have a working demo yet to tell you about, so I don't have any definative info for you on that one.

Sorry we did not answer this sooner.

I have not run the Goldfish Aquarium, but I can venture some guesses.

32-bit is very demanding for very little benefit except your monitor not switching modes.

SereneScreen Marine Aquarium 2 uses approximately 10-20% of a 1.2 GHz Athlon, as little as 4% of a 2 GHz Athlon depending on video card, etc. This is all at 1024x768 16 bit color.

I would imagine that your CPUs will be fine. You might run into problems with an unoptimized beta version, but those wrinkles would likely be smoothed out by the public releases.

I am not familiar with ATI cards much, but I know those are very recent models. I would be surprised if the setup you describe would not be able to run GA smoothly at least in 16 bit and maybe at slightly lower resolutions than that. Also I think Antialiasing/Anisotropic Filtering would have to be off.

I also don't know if the PCI would have an effect. Theoretically, PCI can push way more data than a video card would ever need, but someone might not have spent the amount of time necessary to optimize PCI.

Someone using an ATI care to comment?

Thanks Morgan. I was hoping for an answer from Reichart too though... I thought it be interesting for all of us to know the frame rate we can expect from different system setups (even just a couple, they don't have to be the ones I mentioned)... The only reason I'm being so insistent is because I've asked questions like that before of game developers and never gotten answers, here however I figured I'd have a pretty good chance. :)

I know everybody is thinking this also, so I will just come right out and ask if there are any new pics or screenshots of the aquarium, just to wet our appetite :)

TIA