Hello everyone! It's been a while — I've gotten a bit caught up with life and other stuff, and there were also some internal issues preventing me from updating the site (which have luckily been resolved). But I'm back with some updates on the game development!

First off, I never imagined this project would attract so much attention. We've now surpassed 2000 newsletter subscribers, achieved an average search ranking of 1.8, and the website recently hit 10,000 unique visitors! It’s amazing to see the community coming together around this, and I’m truly grateful for all your support.

I’ve also received hundreds of support emails in multiple languages - Czech, Spanish, English, Turkish, Italian, and more. While I can’t respond to every single one, I make sure to read each message personally.

Enough about the numbers, let's talk about the game!

GUIs

GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) are a core part of every game, providing the interface through which players interact with the game world. My main goal over the past few weeks has been to create a responsive framework for the game's GUI and start porting all interfaces into my new game engine. This means no external GUI libraries will be used; everything is being built from the ground up to ensure seamless integration and top performance.

There are over 100 different GUIs in the original game, ranging in complexity from simple buttons to intricate menus and overlays. Each GUI element needs to be carefully designed and implemented to fit the new engine's architecture.

For now, I've implemented the vast majority of the simple static GUIs and am now moving on to the more intricate ones, like scrollable lists.

I've also implemented the main game HUD using this new framework.

Map Editing

Since none of the existing map editors (like Tiled) fit my specific needs, I decided to write my own custom map editor in C++. This editor allows me to create, save, and load game maps seamlessly and export them to a compact custom map format optimized for the engine. This should vastly simplify the process of map creation and editing, especially for large maps like Rio, which features an absurd number of animated sprites.

Preview of the editor on Pinheira Beach

Fishing

I've also started working on the fishing system. So far, I've implemented a custom script to extract fishing rods and import them into the game engine. Getting the rod positioning right turned out to be much trickier than I initially expected, but now the rods behave and appear correctly in-game.

The next major milestone is animating the fishing line rope along with the throw-in animations. I consider this one of the toughest parts of the game and a real challenge to get perfect. The original game relies on Verlet integration for the rope physics, and I plan to replicate that as faithfully as possible. Regarding the player throw-in animation, it's hard-coded directly into the movie clips - essentially how Flash operates: the movie script acts as an animation timeline, similar to After Effects. Translating that into the new engine will definitely be tricky.

Website Revamp

The website also got a small revamp and was migrated to the SvelteKit framework. This change makes the site feel faster and also allows me to write blog posts more easily using Markdown. The very first blog post was hard-coded in plain HTML (lol), but now all posts are server-side rendered from Markdown files, which streamlines content creation a lot. The deployment process is also much easier thanks to Fly.io.

What's Next?

Looking ahead, I’m considering open-sourcing the project some time soon to encourage community contributions and transparency. Also, I know there was a gap of almost two months between this and the last blog post - whoops! Hopefully, it won’t take that long again. I’m aiming for more regular updates, so stay tuned for more frequent news and behind-the-scenes looks at the development.

There’s a lot of exciting development ahead, and I can’t wait to share more updates with you all.

Welcome to the first official dev blog! You've probably noticed that things look a bit familiar. That's because, much like the game itself, this website has been completely rebuilt from the ground up to serve as the new home for this project.

And that brings me to the big news: the entire game is being rewritten from scratch. This is a massive step, but a necessary one to create a stable, performant, and future-proof foundation for the game we all love.

Why the Rewrite?

As many of you know, the original version was built in Flash back in 2013. Technology has changed a lot since then, and Flash was officially deprecated in 2021. While emulation tools like Ruffle exist, they aren't capable of fully supporting the game in its original form. This technical hurdle was a major factor in the original game's shutdown and is the primary motivation for this ground-up rebuild.

My remake of Pinheira Beach - one of the original game maps

About Me & The Plan

I should probably introduce myself! I'm a university student, and this is a solo passion project I'm tackling in my spare time. It's a huge undertaking, but one I'm incredibly excited about.

So, what's the timeline? I'm aiming to have a very early release targeted for the end of the year. Please keep in mind that this initial release will be a "pre-alpha" version. This means it won't be a final game, will likely contain major bugs, and will primarily serve as a test of the core gameplay logic, focusing on fishing in select locations (pinheira beach, laketown). There will likely be no account system, progression or advanced fishing logic in this very early demo.

It's crucial to remember that these are just goals, not guarantees. As a student project, development will happen as my schedule allows. There's no promise of a release, but I'm committed to sharing the journey with you all. If the development ends at any point, I will make sure to communicate that clearly on this blog and open-source the code so others can continue the work.

What's Next?

I'll be updating this blog a few times a month to share progress, screenshots, and thoughts on development. Thank you for being here from the start. I can't wait to build this new foundation together! If you'd like to contact me, you can reach out via email at hello@fishao.net

This post was edited on 15/5/2025 to better reflect the timeline of the project and its goals.