- Ledger added.
- Live cultures added.
- Moon Jelly now eats Zoo Plankton.
- Guests don't like seeing food/tool dispensers now! Put them behind the scenes with your filters. ;)
- You can now set default paint for new construction by right clicking on the paint in the build menu.
- Improved messages - growth events have a clickable link to the animal and you get a message when a tank is too small for an animal to grow up.
- Tunnel tanks generate prestige.
- Increased prestige of some of the more prestigious animals (some sharks, green turtle).
- Costs of most animals have gone up a small amount in a balance pass. The cost of some high prestige (12+) animals has been increased quite a bit as they were underpriced before. Noticeably the Whale Shark and Manta Ray both cost 2-3x what they cost before.
- New reliability icon tells you estimated time between breakdowns so it's more useful in making judgements between equipment.
- Tweaked equipment reliabilities so that they remain useful throughout the game.
- The aquarium can now be closed. You can find the toggle by selecting the entrance.
- A number of sharks and rays require skill now.
- Autofeeder cannot be used on as many animals due to previous change. The time between breakdowns has been increased to make it more competitive.
- Research window now scrolls rather than shrinking the projects. It also has unlimited capacity now.
- Build menu scroll speed has been capped for when the menu gets very full (with mods!)
- Improved tooltip for growth icon.
- Tweaked tooltip for tank depth and require tank depth icons for compatibility with expansion.
- Tweaked tooltip for warning/danger to icons for compatibility with expansion objects. It now shows the size as a range. "Fish" has been replaced with "Animals" so that it can include reptiles and mammals. Mechanically nothing has changed. It basically means any animal that is not a crustacean, starfish, clam, gorgonian, soft coral, stony coral or anemone.
- Added new icons for starfish, clam, gorgonian, soft coral, scavenger, anemone and empty dispenser.
- Guests holding balloons can go inside toilets now.
- Animals move between containers e.g. they will move between all parts of the u-shaped tank.
- Small tunnel tank has an extra container at the top to allow animals to swim over.
- Mega tank is now a large tank instead of huge. It doesn't need its own category.
- Food dispensers appear before the fish in the search so they are easier to find.
- Improved scenery placement on tanks with sunken floors. The scenery now appears at the cursor instead of below it.
- Messages with enclosed objects do not jump to the top when you pick one up.
- Creator mode starts on rank 12 so you have access to better staff.
- The quick start preset has been tweaked to work better with the new achievement.
- 3 new achievements: Sandbox Trials - Standard, Sandbox Trials - Limited, Sandbox Trials - Completionist.

Balance/Improvements

- Added 4 extra staff to 4. Kairobi in case they are needed.
- Improved land animal movement so they smoothly enter the water after climbing down from the land.
- Feeding platform and viewing platform tanks no longer accept lights. Existing lights on these tanks will continue to work correctly, but you can't add them to any tanks from now on.

Bugs

- Fixed issue with lights not appearing in the correct place.
- Fixed issue where the tooltip would hang around after deselecting the sell tool while hovering over something.
- Fixed a bug where the move tool would get stuck on and would only deselect if you clicked the button in the top left or pressed the hotkey.
- Improved save behaviour to check for and remove 'read only' flags on save files.
- Fixed bug where new save thumb would be blank if you returned to the save menu multiple times before returning to the game.
- Fixed a bug where the coldwater icon on an animal would not indicate that the animal was insufficiently chilled.
- Fixed a typo in 1. Hitama.

Modding

- Removed the limit on the number of research projects available (properly this time, I hope!).

This patch fixes an issue in the Chinese version of the game, where the cashflow window did not appear correctly.

I have a more substantial update coming soon with some nice (much requested) improvements to the staff behaviour when they don't have a job, plus some optimisation improvements which will hopefully smooth out some of the frame spikes that occur when you are operating a large aquarium.

After spending the last week on the public beta branch, v2.1.1 is now live for everyone. Apart from a couple of minor bugs which I've now fixed, the latest update appears to be going down really well.

Thank you to everybody who switched over to the beta branch to test the new features, I appreciate all of your feedback!

I've posted the same information as appeared in the original beta announcement below, for reference.

New features - designed by you!

This update is crammed full of great suggestions that have come directly from the community. From an improved build menu interface to a button which allows you to toggle all your mods at once - this update is all about making it easier for you to play the game. A better interface allows you to concentrate on what's important - all of the fishies!

For a full changelog see the bottom of this post, but first let's take a closer look at the heavy hitters.

Perspective mode

I mentioned this in the last dev blog but perspective mode is now live!
It's a subtle difference but for those who find the orthographic camera mode disorienting, this small change will make the game much more accessible. For the rest of us, it's a matter of personal preference.

Collapsible build menu categories

I wasn't 100% sure about this feature prior to implementing it, but I'm really pleased with how it's turned out.
It's now possible to collapse individual categories in the build menu so that you're not looking at everything at once. Coupled with a button at the top which allows you to collapse/expand all the categories at once, it's now really easy to find a particular group that you're interested in.

I think this feature will be especially helpful to those players who have a lot of mods installed.

NB Don't forget about the search function though! If you know the name of what you're looking for, the search function is still the fastest way to find it IMO. Remember you can use the Enter key as a hotkey to start a search!

Tropical / Coldwater toggle

Another feature that I never considered until it was suggested by the community. There is now a toggle at the top of the animal build menu which allows you toggle between showing Tropical or Coldwater animals.
Given that these animals will never safely occupy the same tank, I can see how dividing them like this makes a lot of sense.

Improved growth icon

When you hover over the growth icon of an animal that isn't fully grown there is additional information now. As well as telling you how long until it grows up, it also lists any further stages of growth afterwards.
In addition the mechanic has been flipped around to make it easier to understand. Instead of an increasing count e.g. 0/3, 1/3. 2/3 etc. It's now just a simple day countdown. 3 days until growth, 2 days until growth, 1 day until growth.

It's a small thing, but in my testing it made an immediate impact on how easy it was to keep track of things.

Enable/Disable all mods button

Modding enthusiasts rejoice! You can now enable/disable all mods with the click of a single button at the top of the Modding Manager.

Extra mod stability

Another one for people who use a lot of mods. If a mods causes the game to fail to load, then all mods will be automatically disabled and the game reloaded.

This will at least allow players to get into the game. From there, they can re-enable mods one at a time (or in groups) via the mod manager to try to determine which mod is causing the issue.

The most common cause of the game failing to load was when a mod depended on another mod for extra animal food types, but this depended upon mod was not installed. If this specific case is detected by the game, it will now automatically insert "Orange Pellet" as the required food for the animal, rather than fail to load.

v2.1.0 changelog

- Added perspective mode.
- Added collapsible headings to build menu.
- Added coldwater toggle.
- Improved growth icon.
- Added a note about when certain breeding locations unlock to the breeding tooltip.
- Added a count to the messages when fry and eggs grow up.
- Added a bubble above the poster when it's not connected to a tank.
- You can now build walls up against the edge of all tanks.
- Staff don't prioritise tasks for which they have the required item quite as much. When comparing tasks, those which don't require the staff to fetch a new item are considered slightly closer than those that do require an item switch. Previously, they were considered infinitely closer and prioritised above all tasks that required an item switch.
- Increased performance of build menu.
- Slightly improved efficiency of some graphical operations. (More substantial performance improvements are still on the way!)
- Fixed bug where if a Biter caused the death of another animal, no cause would be shown in the resulting message.
- Added a message when a pregnant animal loses their baby (miscarriage).
- Corrected autofeeder food tooltip.
- Added light icon to lights when you select them.
- Fixed bug where center of feeding platform tank was wrong.
- Calcium reactor (and other external "aquascaping") no longer counts towards explorer count.
- Increased stability of camera to stop it going out of alignment. 'home'/'h' shortcut should always correct issues.
- Fixed bug where staff animation kept playing when assigned a single square zone.
- Fixed bug where water quality would go above 100%.
- Fixed bug where long necked turtle, dwarf crocodiles, green anaconda and manatee could not be eaten. IE They can be eaten now!
- Improved aeroplane objective on 5. Diamond River so that freshwater subcondition will only tick if the aeroplane is in a freshwater tank.
- You can no longer sell the aeroplane on 5. Diamond River.
- You can no longer sell the panther crabs on 5. Diamond River.
- Fixed bug where you couldn't search for communal animals.
- Fixed bug where guests got stuck in toilet.
- Fixed bug: "Tank not listed in Ledger for some Animals" - blue knuckle hermit crabs.
- Fixed bug in 4. Kairobi where the small beach tank did not start available.
- The random seed is used for more things in sandbox mode.
- Fix type in Chinese on 10. Megalopolis.
- Fixed bug where highlight in game world would persist when moving over UI.
- Vending machines no longer sell an item to a guest when they reach them if they have run out.
- Removed shadows from animals while placing them.
- Added 1st person tutorial to 3. Elmshorn.
- Added ledger tutorials to 6. Hartcliff and 2. Paskovka.

v2.1.1 changelog

- Fixed bug which occurred if W, A, S or D was held while transitioning out of 1st person view.
- Fixed issue where animals without a temperature requirement would not appear regardless of which temperature filter was selected. They now appear all the time.
- When a guest is selected, negative thoughts now appear with the number in red while positive ones appear green. This matches the color coding in the main guest thoughts list.

v2.1.2 patch

Bugs

- 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.

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.

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.

Changelog
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!
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'".

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.

Changelog
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.