The Aquarium Experiment: Spawner!

I managed to rewrite the whole critter spawning system into a version that will spawn fish in an aquarium. It still needs a few more tweaks to keep the fish inside the box, which takes a more complex algorithm than the usual spherical or conical critter spawners. But the worst problem is that the motion of the fish is not very natural at this scale because the traversal distances are so short. The movement is pretty stop-and-go, with abrupt changes in angle as they reach the next target point and stop to wait for their script to calculate a new target. Crash dives and zoom climbs are pretty common as well.

The pre-animated FX are just more suited for this, in terms of both smoother motion and less demand on the processor than a bunch of fish running scripts. I guess the effort wasn't totally wasted, though, since I learned a lot from the process. And my new spawner might come in handy for someone wanting a very large tank with bigger salmon and/or pond fish.