Koi Fountain pumps and other suggestions

[James]

1 - If there's no waterfall, then I wish there's a fountain, I remeber the Koi pond I saw in Taiwan has a water-pump or a fountaoin which keeps the water oxygenated

I particulary like the type of fountain in the middle one in the attaching picture


2 - And I also like to fly the camera down into the pond so that we can view the Koi underwater not only above.

3 - Is the feeding feature possible to implement? I remember I once visit some parks in Taiwan which has many Koi in small lake/pond, and there are several Koi food tablet vender machines for tourist to buy and feed the Koi. (I also remeber that vender machine is a huge Koi sculpture beside the lake, very eye chatching.)

4 - Jumping Koi, I definetly saw that real Koi jump up above water before(in the lake I mentioned above and when Kois trying to gather for food), Koi is actually mutanted Bream, and all Bream fish always like to do the jumping trick above the water and makes the splashing on water surface, there are also chinese lengend which tells if the Bream can jump over a waterfall, those fish will turn into dragon and fly into sky. I think this is a good addition if you try to improve fish behaviour.

[raefer]

I like the fountain too, and it seems possible to build a fountain, perhaps easier than a waterfall.

The underwater camera - definitely possible, in fact earlier versions of the program let you go underwater. The water surface looks weird though when you get too close to it, so what we actually didn't want was the camera sitting right at the water surface and seeing strange artifacts on the water.

Feeding is definitely one of my higher priorities. I would like to be able to feed the koi, watch them congregate in one area, pecking up food pellets in a bit of a frenzy, and sticking their heads through the water surface. I'm probably going to work on this, since everybody seems to like feeding koi, and it's a suggestion that I've heard several times (and that I like myself). Having the koi interact a bit with the surface and occasionally disturb the surface, even "jump" a bit up and make a splash - this is not very hard, and I have meant to implement it for a while now.
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Raefer Gabriel

[James]

Thanks for reply raefer!! Now I'm looking forward for the development and I'll purchase it once my sound problem has been fixed.

By the way, do you have any beta testing program for this product? Just don't forget me when you are selecting the candidate

[Steve]

[camberley]

We currently do limit the range of motion so that you can't get too close to the water. However, if we let you go underwater but still limited your movement so you couldn't get too close to the surface, you would end up sort of 'jumping' under the water in a way that wasn't very smooth.

Alternatively, maybe we could just let you choose to be one of the fish if you wanted, instead of the pondkeeper. Definitely a possibility for version 2.

--Camberley

[Steve]

Ah I see, good point. As for being the Koi, now that sounds like fun. Would we be able to control where the Koi goes using the arrow keys or something like that or would we just see things from the Koi's perspective as he swims around?

[BlueAdept]

[camberley]

Hmmm... I sort of prefer the idea that you could press the arrow keys and "influence" where the koi decides to go, but if you do nothing, he keeps on swimming around on his own.

[Steve]

Sounds good to me.