Okay, I had another idea for FT2. It sort of ties in with one of my other ideas that I posted in one of the other FT suggestion threads... can't recall which one now...
Anyway, in my original post on the subject, I suggested that players be able to design their own tanks.
I was thinking, to make it a bit more challenging and interactive, you could let the players have a few choices upon beginning the game: one of two or three possible gravel colors, two or three different plants of the player's choice, one of two or three types of "hideout" - cave, rock, or bridge, for instance, that sort of thing.
Then, in the supplies shop, have various plants priced at different rates. Let's say, ah, Vallesneria for $20, Hornwort for $40, etc. As the players accumulate Isola bucks, they could buy more plants and decorate their tanks as they see fit (and it's something to do with the excess $$ when you start breeding the more expensive fish!). Along the same idea, as the player gets more money, she or he can buy, say, sand from the shop and switch the substrate in one of the tanks from gravel to sand. And rocks... I was thinking along the lines of custom built rock caves... a player would buy a rock, put it on the tank bottom, buy another rock, put it on top of that one, and eventually have a nice rock wall with holes in them for the fish to hide in.
Another thought I had while I was in the bath was to make the Golden Seahorse more useful. I don't know what it's for, because I've not seen any difference when I played a game with a golden seahorse and a game without one.
Another thought that I had was for the fish counter that everyone seems to want. You could do a cute little crimson comet (or whatever other fish takes your fancy) as the background for the number counter.
If you liked my earlier ideas about the new lines of golden guppy ability research and new fish genetics research (read back up er, five posts or so) and plan on implementing a form of it into FT2, you should also have something that sort of tells the player that they just found all 441 species of Isola Lagoon fish (something like the screen congratulations that we get when we find all 7 Magic Fish).
Oh, I just had an awesome brainstorm! Listen up - we've got the Isola Lagoon, right? There's the 7 Magic Fish and 441 species of Isola Lagoon. The next level in FT2 could be about the Isola Ocean! Totally different Magic Fish and species. And this could be the basis for my idea - let's say, researching the New Fish Genetics line might lead us to find a new fish from Isola Ocean, and then that first level of research could give us new eggs to play with - Ocean Eggs. We play with the common Ocean fish while the level two research goes on and gives us a new Ocean fish, and level three gives us something like... I don't know...maybe special plants - say, a seakelp of sanctuary - that help to let us breed and raise high level Ocean fish (like we can only raise canary fire-arrows in level three environment).
I'm not sure if I'd want for the Lagoon fish to be able to breed with Ocean fish, but it would be interesting in either scenario. Maybe make it possible only when the Canary Fire-Arrow is present in the breeding tank... hey that might even be its Special Ability.
Anyway, I think that's it for tonight.
Rainbowfish