This is the discussion thread for the
SereneScreen Marine Aquarium 2.0 announcement.

5 of the fish in the 2.0 version of the Aquarium were created by Prolific. We have reached an understanding that the artist will be listed for each fish in the "Fish-picker" section of the Settings screen. That way, if you see something that doesn't quite look like my work, you will see who the artist was. Any fish done by Prolific must first be approved by me, but the chances are I would have done them differently.

That's great! When will it be available?
Rob

2-3 weeks hopefully.

V2
 

Great News this one and such a short time after the MAT.

Is this version 2 going to be free (for the ones having bought the .99? version) or how much will we be charged for this upgrade?

Also will we have the same problem (frame rate reduced by 50%) as in the MAT?

(curious to see the emperator angel swim arount the tank!)



Christian

Well, I'll give you this Jim, you're 100% honest about how these new "non-Jim" fish make you feel. :)

I wonder what happened to only Jim doing the fish?

Well, look at that wall calendar.

No updates to the Marine Aquarium in 1 year and 2 weeks.

And being extremely optimistic, I don't think Jim will be doing more fish for the Marine Aquarium until 2004.

As long as he has approval on the fish, why not? I hope he is being stringent about the quality though. It's hard to tell from the snapshots. As soon as I get a test version, I will post a scathingly-honest review.

Don't get me wrong, I think everyone is excited about the new version plus the five new fish, me for one. Its been along time since anything really new and now we got MAT, the goldfish, and now version 2.0 of MA. Its really been a treat. It seems like I've read before that it only takes a day to do a fish, why would it be not until 2004 for Jim to make any new fish? I've always considered Jim an artist first, programmer second, now we have some programmer at prolific designing fish. It seems in the past Jim was agaisnt anyone else making fish for him and now this. I guess I was just alittle shocked to hear he wasn't making the fish.

Kindof on a side note, is this screensaver project that Jim started taking longer than he expected? I know there was talks of a butterfly and a bird screensaver but if it takes as long to do those as it did to do this MA and freshwater screensaver he might not never get to his movie.

Ken is an artist at Prolific, not a programmer.

Yes, the screensavers are taking much longer than I had hoped.

When you started this project what kind of time frame were you thinking of?

If Jim or Prolific start doing fish with the new tools, I can guarantee you it will take more than 1 day because of the new possibilities.

150 vertices per fish limit? Gone
fin structure cannot deviate significantly from current fish without rewriting the code? Gone
new fish require new programming, for instance the big wavy fins on the triggerfishes? Gone

And now things like realistic physics (a Wimplefish with a long, flowing banner that moves properly as the fish turns or darts off in a different direction), unusual fish shapes, individual fish behaviors, etc. are possible. Again I have not seen the new tools so I am extrapolating from what I've been told, but I'd imagine that someone could sit there for a week twiddling knobs and being creative and still not be 100% happy with the fish they created.

These 5 new fish do not use the new tools yet.


This is incorrect, and this is why I am going to write a philosophy statement about Prolific. Prolific is not 16 programmers. It is mostly artists and a few programmers. I think the artists at Prolific making the Goldfish Aquarium, FlagPride, etc. would take great offense at the implication that they are not artists.

As for Jim being an artist first and a programmer second, he's not willing to let go of the programmer element one bit. Please look at the chat logs of Feb 15th. Jim has spent the last months programming and studying code for the Freshwater Aquarium, not creating art.

I am quickly learning that Jim's philosophies are expressed more strongly here on the forum than is necessarily the case.

Jim has encouraged his long-time friends at Prolific -- Reichart and Will -- to create other products and contribute to the Aquarium. Jim does not want "developer of the best damn aquarium ever" engraved on his tombstone. He wants to be known for his CG(I) movie. Yes, Jim has incredibly high standards for himself and is very guarded about his work after being screwed by so many companies over the years. But in the end, the Aquarium, Butterfly Garden, etc. are revenue streams to pay to make the movie.

Back in December 2000 when I first got involved in the Aquarium fan site, Jim said that he thought a developer's kit for making fish could be a possibility. Then he mentioned that Prolific would handle this if such a thing happened. A few months ago, Jim updated his personal website with these comments:

I guess no matter what Jim does, it will be considered "selling out" if he has other people help him.

In February 2002, Jim was quoted as saying that he thinks the Freshwater Aquarium would take "about 45 days".

379 days and counting...

The latest schedule (to quote Jim):
Freshwater Aquarium with 5-7 fish
3D background for Marine Aquarium
Creature Pack 1 for Marine Aquarium
Butterfly Garden
expire from exhaustion

Derrek - One per year for 5 years.

Confused
 

I am confused........ here we have an announcement, of what? Some upcoming product? Can I see it? Where is the link to D/L? Seems there is a long list of "coming soon" software. Am I missing something?
Ralph

Ralph,

No you are not missing anything yet. But the next few months should make everyone very happy, ( and astounded ). :)

I've cleaned up the announcement message some more.

An product announcement is... an announcement.

Not to be confused with a product release. :)

Serious, if it were a product release, you would've gotten an e-mail. :)

Definitely great news all around!!! I'm curious about something though. Why was the Queen Angel redesigned yet again? I think the current incarnation is by far THE closest thing to a real Queen.

This new one does look nice, but to me it looks less like a Queen than any of the others before it. Just curious and feeling a little disappointed that I'll be losing one of the fish I happen to really like. :(

In a poll with 900 people voting, the brown Queen Angel was ranked dead last. That's 21st place out of 21 fish. But don't let that take away from it being one of your favorite fish. :)

I foresee a day when we can choose amongst the 3-4 versions.

Wow, absolutely great news here! The new fishies are awsome, especially the new (old?) Queen Angel! Can't wait to see it in the aquarium.

DL,
you don't loose a fish, you can always use an older version, like I, use the old widescreen version (.99K) because of the Queen Angel and the faster movements of the fishes. Looks more real to me, hopefully the wider speed range comes back in a future version, somewhen...

5 Fish.
 

These are done by an Artist who I found about 8 years ago, and trained to use the computer. He is very respectful of Jim's style, and Jim approved all of his work. Think of him has a back-up singer.

We tried to stay away from the wishlist here on the forum. One of the fish Ken did is now my favorite, it is a Squarespot. Everyone has their favorites, for some reason, this one just makes the tank even more real for me.

Reichart,
The Squarespot you mentioned:

Would that be the Squarespot Anthias (Pseudanthias pleurotaenia) or the Squarespot Rockfish (Sebastes hopkinsi)?

/Tiny Spot

Anthias
 

Anthias

Here is my favorite pic of it on the web: http://www.mbayaq.org/efc/living_spe....asp?inhab=422

Ours is actually BETTER in my opinion.

Sweet! – Don't tell me anything more now :)

Tiny Square

I use the widescreen version, will there be a version 2.0 widescreen or will there be a single version that will support both scenarios?

Tom

Bullfrog,

The end result will be one version that supports everything. Let me see if I can clairify things:

Right now we have the standard version, the widescreen version, and the time version. All these products will meld into 1 product in the future. When the new 3D background gets made for the standard version, it will be twice as wide as it is now. In the setting's there will be an option for camera panning. What this means is that your monitor will be like a moving window that slowly travels left and right looking into the aquarium. For people with a standard monitor you will see about half of the aquarium at any given time, for widescreen monitors you will be able to see about 3/4's of the aquarium at any given time. Both will have some panning to do to see the whole thing. That takes care of the standard and widescreen versions. For people who also want to take advantage of the time version, you will be able to enter another key code, specificially for the time options to unlock them and be able to access them also and turn the crystal on and off.

Cool, profilic gets a lot of work done (goldfish, flag, ma2.0).

I like to hear that new fish are included (that Redfin Butterfly looks geat), and that they are done by profilic so we can get more fish and maybe other things. Jim has so much work, the support gets jim less work and more fish for us. JIIIIHA :)

Ehm, just a question Jim, but what were if fans would make fish, and give them to you completely for free, and if they are good enough, is there a chance that they will be included in one of the next versions? Just an idea...

Probably not. Unless a fish is done by a Prolific employee, the legal ramifications are just too scary. Yeah, I know -- contracts and all that. But a huge number of court cases are brought against people who thought they had an iron-clad contract. Where a large amount of money is concerned, lawyers will always find some argument why the contract wasn't valid. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client can't be held responsible for signing a contract when he was drunk."

But seriously, getting tied up in court is my number one fear in life. Win or lose, you lose. You spend your few precious hours on Earth in court instead of doing what you like. Ask Reichart, he's been through this. He won, but what a miserable experience.

".. and if they are good enoug .." - that's the point!

Hehe ok, thanks for the reply :)

Yellow Tang I have seen great things done by fans, look at all this modifications done for Half-Life or Quake some of them are really really good, and if Jim would sort out,... ehm forget it :D
Hey we could talk german :D

Any questions about other people making fish should be referred to Prolific. And Reichart has informed me that Prolific is not interested in "free" help. They would rather subcontract talented people and get everything on paper so there are minimal/no legal hassles.

Light bulb going on... :)

Bringing these things up to Jim is a dead-end. Sort of like asking the President if you can help him write laws. But if you go thru the proper channels and become a congressman, then there you go. Hopefully you don't have to kiss too much, erm, well, to get elected and involved. :)

Well, it's one thing if people make their own fish and leak them out, but there is too much respect and goodwill towards Jim for anything like to be successful or more than a fringe. Even if someone unofficially came out with a dozen AWESOME fish, how many people here wouldn't touch it because of their respect for Jim?

Also, Half-Life, Quake, etc. 95% of the modifications are maybe 30 minutes to 1 hour's work and then the person gets tired of working on it, uploads it, and says "look at my cool mod d00dz!" Then there's 5% who really work at it and 1% who put out something that's as good as what the original game designers came up with.

Thank God for sites like PlanetQuake, etc. (I haven't kept up-to-date on these) that skim thru the crap and give clear ratings/lists of which mods are the best.

Look at the Russian hacks. They have been putting out those versions for over a year now. They're just NOW starting to get somewhat palatable (that can't be spelled right).

Things seem to be changing around pretty quickly.

Originally, I was supposed to get a dual monitor-aware test version of the Aquarium. Now it looks like MA 2.0 is going to hit first.

As Michael said, eventually when the 3D background is done, then regular, widescreen, and dual monitors will all be 1 version of the Aquarium. Each person will just have a different 'window' on the Aquarium, viewing 50%, 70%, or 100% of the 3D background at any one time with buttons to pan, lock, and control the panning speed of the "camera". (you will NOT be able to move the camera up and down or pivot it)

But in the meantime, it is probably a tough decision whether to have one download with both the widescreen 2D/flat background and the regular 2D/flat background. The regular coral is 353KB. Not sure how big the widescreen coral is, but this would increase the file size by probably 400KB for everyone.

That doesn't sound like much until you think about 300,000 people a month downloading the demo and let's say only .2% of them have a widescreen display. So that's 299,400 downloading 400KB extra, or 114.21 GB per month that they really don't need.

So I'm guessing that Widescreen won't be folded into MA2.0 just yet.

Dual
 

And use those same numbers for Dual monitor.

We found 4 bugs last night in Windows OS that makes Dual monitor almost impossible for us to support correctly. We are talking directly to M$ about this.

Their response "Why do you care, we don't" (paraphrased).

OK..lots of info, so let me see if I really understand what you guys are saying. MA 2.0 will NOT support widescreen, I will have to wait until the 3D background is implemented, or there will be a 2.0 widescreen available like the last version I acquired (a seperate file from Morgan).

Tom

2.0 and Wide
 

2.0 will support Widescreen, as will MAT, but it will always come out a few days after we go gold on the normal version.

One day we will build the two together, or when the BG goes 3D this will no longer be a seperate version.

I did not mean to imply that dual monitor and widescreen versions were not coming! Only that the release schedule for them is not quite certain. It sounds like a widescreen ver will hit a few days later. Widescreen won't be bundled with the regular 2.0 version for the reasons I wrote about earlier.

I WILL be putting a prominent Widescreen link on the Fan site and sending out an e-mail to about 150 Widescreen users when the wide version of MA 2 hits.

...Awesome! My dedicated HDTV-PC thanks you! (it's tired of running 100%CPU 24/7/365).

OH PLEASE KIND SIR - PLEASE add me to your widescreen list, if I'm not on there already. :D

Glad to see we, 'Widescreen users' (with normal monitors), - have not been forgotten! :TU:

I second that.... I much prefer the widescreen over any version yet. I use it on a regular 19" monitor, set to "use desktop resolution" which is 800 x 600. If the fish are not in "true" proportions I can not tell the difference.
:TU:
Ralph

Poll??? What poll??? Was this something that we forum users were excluded from participating in? I dunno, if it was here on the forum, maybe I was just blind and didn't see it. :(

My apologies Reichart, my comments were not directed at the artist or the quality of his art (which is not in question). I guess I'm just concerned that people might be "enhancing" the Queen Angel visually to promote interest versus staying true to what a real Queen looks like. That poor fish has changed faces sooooo many times in the SSA that you'd swear it's under the witness protection program or something. :cool:

If possible, would you mind posting the picture of the real fish he used as a template for his work? I'd really like to see it since I haven't seen a Queen that looks like that yet.

Thanks for the suggestion Yellow Tang, but I'll pass. I don't like having to go back to older versions just to see a fish I like, I'd much prefer that they all existed in the most current version possible, but change is change and I can accept it.