Working On A Bass Fishing Sim

[live4ever]

I think the problem with fishing and hunting sims is that they are too easy. I guess developers have to do this to appease to non-sim gamers. It would be nice to actually feel as if you accomplished something when you catch a fish rather than just a rinse and repeat process.

[Hawkeye21]

Just now, live4ever said:

I think the problem with fishing and hunting sims is that they are too easy. I guess developers have to do this to appease to non-sim gamers. It would be nice to actually feel as if you accomplished something when you catch a fish rather than just a rinse and repeat process.

Making a video game too realistic can ruin it.  A game is suppose to be challenging but overall it needs to be entertaining.  Doing something in a video game is like doing something for an hour in real life.  This is why playing a football game only takes about an hour but in reality they are about 3 hours.

 

I think a fishing game needs to make it somewhat easy to catch fish IF you find the best locations on a body of water.  It should make it hard to catch fish over 3 pounds, depending where the lake is geographically.  Putting in the time and effort should be rewarded.

 

I've always thought that games like this work best when there are accomplishments to be had.  Statistics, winnings, earning sponsors, upgrading equipment, progressing from amateur to pro are all features I would be looking for.  Something that emulates real life where you start fishing local events then move onto BASS Opens, BFLs, Costas and series like that.  Working your way up to a career where you can decide to fish the FLW or Elite series.  Trying to qualify for the Bassmaster Classic.  The problem with that is you have licensing issues with BASS and MLF.

[schplurg]

We'll see. Those are all good ideas. Right now I'm only concerned with the fish behavior and fishing mechanics, which is something I may be able to handle by myself. If I manage to make a good sim then I will check my options.

 

I may not go commercial with it. I know there are several possible money-making routes I could take, but the sim aspect would shift from the fishing to the other stuff - earning this, pursuing that. Can we make money off the users? Make it easier? Hey Rapala says their baits don't catch enough fish in the game...fix that or we lose 'em! Hey let's add the Youtube youngsters as characters! Ack! Ya, lots of options. I'm aware of them but not thinking about them at all. 

 

I played Falcon 4.0 in realtime once. Took me several hours to fly the mission, most of it boring. But the hardcore sim fans like that. You don't have to earn anything in the game. It's not really a game I suppose. No score.

 

It used to be that you could buy EA Sports NHL hockey games and you just played it. No cards to earn or players to unlock, or money for trading and buying players. You want Gretzky? You got Gretzky. The hockey was better then, and the older games are usually regarded as the best ones to have, for the hockey.

 

So like I said, I'm old school. Sim first, since that's what I want most of all, then I'll think about what to do with it.

 

But yes, those ideas would be great in a fishing game, I don't mean to bash. It's a LOT of extra work. For instance, the MENUS are my least favorite aspect of game design. Pain in the buttocks!!! Even a simple tic-tac-toe game ends up being a major project.

 

Your average gamer will have no clue about bass behavior. Bass anglers will. When I took music theory my teacher said, "You can make good music, or you can earn money with music, but it is rare to do both"

 

Maybe a hardcore sim for us and a dummied up game for the masses. Just make all the fish hungry and it's a different game!  

 

Thanks man, I appreciate the comments. That would be a fun game if someone did all that

[Luke Barnes]

It would be cool the make a Wii remote work for it. I have a gaming pc so I would definitely be interested in trying it out. 

[RB 77]

On 1/22/2020 at 5:49 PM, slonezp said:

I don't play video games. I might play a fishing game if it was realistic.

Stop off at the gas station in the morning and grab coffee and donuts and use the facilities when you fill up the tank only to find out the crapper is out of order. Pull up to the ramp and launch the boat. Drive the boat to the first spot and make a few casts, change baits, and make a few more casts. Snag a carp in the back. Fight the fish cursing because you don't want a break off of your favorite $30 crankbait. Land the fish only to see the rear treble is bent and have to replace the hook but you can't find the ring pliers so you pick up another rod and start casting while your getting more ticked because you couldn't find your ring pliers. You go to take off to another spot only to realize you left your trolling motor down. Take the boat out of gear and stand up to go bring in the trolling motor but you forgot your kill switch lanyard is attached to your PFD and you kill the motor. Bring in the trolling motor and now have to screw around with the kill switch because the lanyard has to fit just right to close the switch. Now, the wife calls and asks you if you know where she left her car keys because they're not on the counter where she usually puts them. You tell her you have no clue where the keys are at in a stern voice because you are already frustrated at the way the day is going and now she's upset and grilling you about something you did or didn't do 10 years ago. She hangs up the phone all upset and you take off to the next spot. You get to the next spot and first cast you get the birdsnest of all birdsnests because you forgot to reset the breaks when you switched to a crankbait with unbent hooks. You put that rod down and pick up a worm rod. First cast with that rod, you get a bite and set the hook and the line snaps because you forgot to retie the last time you used it. You throw the rod down Iconelli style but instead of hitting the deck, it ricochets off the gunwale into the drink. You spend 20 minutes with a spoon trying to retrieve the lost rod and then quit. Take off to the next spot only to find out 2 other guys are sitting on it so you turn and head to another. Here is where you catch your first bass. A 3" bass on a 4" senko....There's hope!!! By this time, the pleasure boaters and jet ski's and wake boats are starting to come out in numbers......

 

See where I'm going with this?

 

If you could design a fishing game that was realistic, I might play it. So far, no one has been able to do this

 

d**n... Haha

[schplurg]

So I decided to concentrate on why the bass will and will not bite a given type of lure, when why where how. That's something that will be fun to test, I hope, and maybe I can rig it in such a way so y'all can check it out too.

 

I'm messing around with categorizing the baits and retrieves. Like "wounded"/jerk, fast, slow, hop, drag, topwater, noisy, fall, dead stick.... And what retrieve will be effective with fish in different "moods", say hungry, lethargic or full, aggressive, agitated, average mood, spawning.

 

If a more aggressive fish is more prone to hit topwater, then aggression needs to have a higher priority when it comes to the calculations that make him bite. His hunger could be low but he eats anyways. A fish can get more agitated the more you - uh agitate it and maybe eventually driven to strike, I've seen that myself. So I need the anger to be able to increase for certain fish so that it may strike when ticked off enough. Sometimes.

 

Then I have to figure out or decide how and why bait, color, size, vibration will entice what type of fish. Research will be needed, but I can still build the system and adjust it as I go. A poster in the other thread mentioned having wildlife and bait fish and stuff that the fish will naturally eat, so I need to have some rudimentary way of having that info available.

 

Am I making sense? Had a beer and maybe this is just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo geek stuff.

 

Anyways, I'm just brainstorming for now and writing notes and trying to fit it all into a bunch of "complicated mathematical equations". The other night some guy from India told me he smokes weed because it is a gift from god that helps him with "complicated mathematical equations", so I'm going with that phrase from now on. I suck at math so it's weird to me that I program. I don't think my math is complicated - it's pretty much a hack-job.

 

I want to go fishing so bad! Took out the new telescopic rod and that went well. For the fish anyways :(

 

Maybe I will be able to catch more fish once I discover this holy grail of "complicated mathematical equations" that the fish must already have memorized! 

 

Edit to add:

 

This is super duper basic code for an example, but if anyone who doesn't program is interested:

 

Let's say the fish sees a nearby bait. Some factors have already told the fish that it should attack the bait (attacking = true). But then there are these final conditions...

 

if(hunger < 3){attacking = false;}
if(fear > 7){attacking = false;}
if(energy < 3){attacking = false;}
if(health < 4){attacking = false;}

 

attacking = false means the fish gives up the chase or never starts it. Now if a fish is super aggressive and irritated it may strike even if the hunger is low, or it's been spooked, or on a bed.

 

if aggression = 10 then attack anyways!

 

And I wish it were that simple. This is a pretty cool and challenging project.

[Luke Barnes]

I like the idea. Will water clarity come into play as far as color is concerned? Every other game is gin clear water. But what if its chocolate milk? Would a silver and blue spinner bait still be as visible as a black one? Would green pumpkin be visible in heavy stained water and attract the fish the same way it would in slightly stained? 

 

Also I like the aggression model and adding natural forage is a good idea. Maybe varying terrain where craws are more prominent than say shad or minnows. 

 

I know this could get as deep as the ocean, just brainstorming, a certain lure moves and reacts different with different rods, reels, lines. Will gear come into play? Setting a hook on a squarebill with a 7'3 heavy with braid is way different than a 6'6 medium with mono. Same with a jig. 

[schplurg]

16 hours ago, Luke Barnes said:

I like the idea. Will water clarity come into play as far as color is concerned? Every other game is gin clear water. But what if its chocolate milk? Would a silver and blue spinner bait still be as visible as a black one? Would green pumpkin be visible in heavy stained water and attract the fish the same way it would in slightly stained? 

 

Also I like the aggression model and adding natural forage is a good idea. Maybe varying terrain where craws are more prominent than say shad or minnows. 

 

I know this could get as deep as the ocean, just brainstorming, a certain lure moves and reacts different with different rods, reels, lines. Will gear come into play? Setting a hook on a squarebill with a 7'3 heavy with braid is way different than a 6'6 medium with mono. Same with a jig. 

 

Oh my gawd I'm getting a headache!!! Yes this is a difficult thing to make, especially for me! Thanks for all the input I love it!

 

I will include water clarity. The water effect I will use has clarity adjustments. Initially I think clarity will serve to drive the fish deeper or not, as well as make their sense of sight less accurate. I don't know about affecting color and blade differences. I don't really know how fish react to those things (I read about it but what do we know?), and I wonder if anybody really does.

 

It might be interesting to leave some of that stuff out for awhile and see how it goes. Maybe it will seem real that way because maybe we don't know if they actually do like certain blades at certain times! They seem to....but then sometimes they don't! 

 

We have a tendency to remember the times it did work, then form our opinions based on that. Like my brother once said, "Every time I think of Mark, he calls me!! How weird!"

 

"No he doesn't, you just don't notice the 70 times per day you think about him and he doesn't call." Stuff like that. People believe all kinds of stuff based on crap.

 

We think we know these things through experience, but people rely on anecdotal evidence to dictate their lives a lot, and often times it's complete rubbish. "Hey this creme cures cancer! Look at all the customer testimonials saying it does!"

 

"Hey this crystal cured my back pain!" No it did not. How much of that is there in fishing?

 

I'm a pretty hardcore skeptic. I don't believe much of anything without good evidence. You say your livewell additive powder removes heavy metals? I say that's impossible and so does science. Lot of weird stuff in fishing, as well as good science.

 

I'm saying all this because I can ask 20 different anglers what lure to use and get 20 different answers. Every time I see a thread like that here I just laugh to myself. "You're gonna get 20 different answers and they will all be correct!"

 

Sorry, I digress. So I may start it out simple, see how it plays, and add more complicated stuff later. It may not make a difference.

 

And some people, no matter how accurate or inaccurate I make it, will think it's deadly accurate and others will say it's not. Depends on how it compares to your individual real life fishing probably.

 

I bet I can make this a lot simpler than I'm doing and make it seem real. But this is as much an experiment as anything else, and I want to see if I can program a fish AI, set it loose and see how it behaves.

 

I mean I could write a simple script. For it to be real for me it would be like this:

 

- If Mike has fished 3 times without fish, let him catch one today.

- if Mike did catch fish last time, then 50% chance he catches today.

- Twice a year Mike needs a good sized fish, relative to his normal catch size.

- Lose a lure once every 1.36 trips

- Have a great day once in spring and once in fall

- Fall down and cut your leg on a rock 15 times per year

- Give up early and drink beer 6 times

- Close-bail cast once a day, breaking the line 20% of the time.

 

I couldn't tell the game from reality if it went like that! But seriously, how real would it need to be for people to think it is, or isn't? I want it to be real, but interesting question.

 

Last night I got the moon phases to work. Looks pretty cool.

 

And I'm still working on how to make the fish bite or not bite and all that jazz. I'll be working on that probably after the game is complete trying to perfect it.

 

Just think though, I can make fish finders as awesome as I want! I could make it so you can have a camera you can steer around underwater if I wanted to. Or maybe you can "be the bait" in first person and swim around haha.

 

I wanted to fish today, but it's very windy. Guess I'll have to watch my home team in the Super Bowl today instead, if I can stomach the politically geared (and "correct") ads that I know are coming with it. I really just wanna hang out with the fish today.