Lots of Ideas

[Steve]

First of all I'd like to compliment you on your work, this is a great screensaver. It's got a lot of promise, but still needs some fine tuning (which I'm sure you probably have planned). Even so, the work you've done up to this point is VERY nice. Anyway, that being said, I'd like to offer up some suggestions of my own for consideration in a future release.

Lighting Modes

- Daytime (different positions of the sun from dawn until dusk)

- Nighttime (different phases/shapes of the moon)
-> Tiki torches
-> Japanese lanterns (hanging rice lanterns and/or cement lanterns, goes with theme listed below)
* water should reflect the moonlight and any night lights

Theme/Landscape Mode (in addition to the current landscape)

- Japanese garden (temple, bridge across the pond, ornaments, and plants consistent with a Japanese theme)

Misc. Ideas

- Waterfall coming into the pond at one end
- Different pond configurations (shape of the pond)
- A small island in the middle of the pond
- Leaves falling from trees onto the water causing ripples across the pond

Anyway, I hope you like these ideas and maybe if I'm lucky they "might" appear in a version later on down the road.

[raefer]

We are definitely doing a bunch of fine tuning right now, and thanks for the praise and suggestions for improvement!

Multiple landscape themes - definitely on our list. We actually have done two, our original garden was different, but we had to scrap it since we made changes to the way the pond works. The major issue is that the themes require lots of high res textures that would bloat download size, which is already quite large (9 megs) due to the high res fish textures and the like. These are probably going to show up as paid-version-only downloads/add-ons, rather than as features of the demo version. We actually did a version of the current garden with a higher count of Japanese themed elements, an enclosure around the pond, etc. but we decided the current version looked better in practice. We may pick that version back up and put more work into it when we have a chance.

Waterfall - discussed... difficult to implement a decent looking waterfall using generic techniques that will work on enough graphics cards. The trick with a waterfall is figuring out how to do a 3D animated waterfall that looks good enough that it doesn't detract from the rest of the scene. I have seen it done well in a graphics demo by ATI, but it used features we can't use because they are only available in the latest graphics cards. I am planning some experimentation with techniques for this, and if I find a decent one, we'll add it!

Different pond configurations is probably out for now - it demands too much of the fish "AI", at least to handle arbitrary or complex configurations without getting the fish trapped in places and other ugly stuff.

Leaves falling onto the water is a good idea - rather than an island, we are going to try adding a lily pad or two in the next few weeks, which should make the water surface a bit more interesting. That you will definitely see soon (assuming it looks as good as we hope it will).

The different lighting modes is a great suggestion too... will add it to the features-for-discussion list. Haven't spent too much time thinking about it yet.
_________________
Raefer Gabriel

[Guest]

Thanks for the response Raefer. Glad to hear that you have future plans in store and I look forward to seeing them implimented.

[Steve]

Trying to resist overloading you guys with ideas (as a mutual friend of ours says I might be doing), but this one I can't help but suggest. If you're going to add lily pads, perhaps in the future (even if it's way down the road) you might consider adding a single frog that would reside on one of the pads. You could add his sounds to the current background sound.

Just a thought...

[NaaMar]

Could you add a "don't duplicate random choices" feature like sachs marine aquarium? I would really like to see different koi each time, now the random choice often gives me at least 2 duplicates.

[Bronwyn Sixsmith]

Hi,
What a great Screen Saver ( Progrm (( Work of Art))) Congrats!

Just a couple of small Suggestions that would probly be programming nightmares..

Feeding the Koi and the Kaos that follows would be nice. (turn offable)

Is it possable to give each Koi an individual size and agression factor, so that the smaller or less agressize Koi get out of the way of the larger or more agressive Koi