~ SICK FISH ALERT ~

Do NOT click the OK button. Instead do a CTRL-ALT-DELETE to bring up your task window and end the task.
Each time you OK messages or close the game, AZ writes the information to its journal of what's happening in your tank.
Using CTRL-ALT-DEL to end the task doesn't allow AZ to update its journal.  Now bring up your computer's Date/Time Properties
window & select a date in the past when you're sure the fish were in good condition.  Then open the tank & correct whatever led
to the problem (usually too dirty a tank, underfeeding or not enough plants).

If you messed up & OK'd a sick/dead fish message, all is not lost.  If you have only one species of fish in the tank, you can use
Fisherman to 'heal' or even 'resurrect' them.  If you have more than one species, remove each species to separate .fsh files,
then run FM on the .fsh files before putting them back in the tank.




~ INCREASING YOUR SUPPLY OF FISH ~

Copy a tank of fish (if they're all the same species) or a .fsh file to a different location, then run FisherMan on it to change the name
& all the fish stats except sex.  You now have a tank or file of fish that AZ won't recognise as already existing in its database.

If you have only one fish & would like to breed more from it, copy the .fsh file & do the above, but this time also change the sex of the fish.
This works for all but guppies, which require one additonal step:  You must first use Fisherman's Splicer option.  Select the .fsh file &
click 'Splicing'.  In the first box on the left of the splicer put a '3' for males or a '1' for females.  Now change the stats of the fish in the
usual manner.  NOTE: If you get a 'file differs' error, you don't have a 'real' guppy, you have a user-made guppy.  You can't always
tell which type it is, but if it's a user-made gup, both male & female look like males.




~ REINSTALLING ~

Before you uninstall, remove any .rez & .dna files from your AZ System folder & keep them in a safe place.  Replace them after the reinstall.
You might also remove your Items folder to a safe place.  Uninstalling AZ does not remove certain files containing all the tank and fish
information, so before you reinstall, go to your Windows folder & delete the AquaZone.bin & Aquazone.ini files or you'll receive "This fish is
in another tank" messages.  During the reinstall when AZ asks for your name, be sure to use a different name than any other you've
used in the past.  Last, after the reinstall & after you've returned your Items folder & any .rez/.dna files to the AZ folders, you
should delete the AZ journal file (Aquazone.ajn) from your AZ System folder to force AZ to create a new one.

You may uninstall and reinstall as many times as you want. Just remember to delete the .bin & .ini files after you uninstall & change the
name you used in the game to one never used before, & delete the .ajn file.




~ TIMEWARPING ~

There are different ways to do this:

(1) AZ allows you to adjust the speed of your tanks. Look under Edit/Aquarium Information for the time slider bar.
Setting the slider to 100x means for each actual day that goes by, 100 days will pass in the tank. If you're interested in breeding your guppies,
discus, marble angels or goldfish for a particular color or strain or would like to play around with FisherMan's gene splicing capabilities, but are
unwilling to wait months or even years to accomplish these goals, this is a nice feature, but there's one catch: if you plan to speed up your tank,
first you MUST remember to open the autofeeder window and change the Add Food time to 0 hours and 0 minutes, then click OK.  It doesn't
matter if the fish werejust fed, this extra feeding won't hurt them.  It's important because if the amount of time left until the next feeding
doesn't get set to 0 your fish may starve, since if you have, say, five hours left until the next scheduled feeding & you turn up the speed,
the autofeeder will wait five REAL hours, and at 100x speed, five hours of real time equals 500 hours--or 20 days!--of virtual time.

(2) You can use FisherMan to set the age & condition of your fish, which is the easiest way to mature a batch of fry.


(3) You can use your computer's Date/Time Properties to set any time you wish. Keep your tank at normal 1x speed.
Advance your computer calendar a month at a time.  After warping ahead, when you bring up the tank, you will get various AZ messages such
as 'fish are mating', 'fish is pregnant', 'fish has given birth'.  OK these messages.  If you get the message 'fish is sick', you have two options:

a) Do NOT click 'OK'. AZ cannot record the sickness in its journal until you click 'OK'. So don't.
CTRL-ALT-DELETE and end the task.  Then change your computer calendar settings back to an earlier time.
When your fish is no longer sick, you can open the tank and correct the condition that led to the problem
(probably too little food or too dirty a tank), then use FisherMan to optimize fish & tank stats. 

b) Go ahead & click thru the messages (even if fish die) & then use FisherMan to heal/resurrect the fish.

When you're ready to return to present time, logic tells me that if I leave the fish in the tank & return to present time, AZ should either have a fit & the
tank will be corrupted, or the tank AND fish will revert to present time, but AZ doesn't work this way (so much for logic). You can safely return
a tank of fish to present time with no problems.  When you open the tank AZ will inform you that the tank time is incorrect & ask if you
want it updated. OK this & then be sure to reset the autofeeder time till next feeding & you're good to go, back in present time with your new fish.
If you forget to reset the autofeeder, your fish will starve, since this method causes the autofeeder timer to be totally out of whack.

There are a few things you must remember for warping to be successful. Before you warp:

(1) Your tank & fish must be at optimum conditions; also there must be plants in the tank for breeding to occur.
(2) Use FisherMan to set tank volume to 190 litres (50 gallons). At larger volumes things take longer to go wrong.
(3) You must be sure food containers are full (do this by removing them & than adding them back).
(4) Autotimer must be set to Add Food In: 0 hrs. Interval: Every 6 Hrs
(5) Enough food is fed to allow for growth (what's sufficient for fry will be slim pickin's later on). Each time you open
     the tank after moving the clock forward, check & correct the time until next feeding, feed them until they're full,
     & then 'clean' the tank with FisherMan.

*If you're warping many times, as for breeding, & will be advancing the calendar in steps through a year or two, remember to
check food containers after 3-9 months (depending on how much you're feeding) so they don't run out & the fish starve.

After you return to present time be sure to reset the food timer, it will be confused & may read, for example, 620 hrs until next feeding.

This covers the basics; if you want more detail as to how all this works, go to Don's Attic & read his excellent tutorials, complete with graphics.




~ MAKING ACCESSORIES/BACKDROPS ~

There are two problems you may encounter.  One is finding an image that looks great on your monitor & even in your paint program after
conversion to 8-bit, but looks awful when dropped into your tank.  This is because you're converting 24-bit images to 8-bit.  Bit depth
defines how many colors are in the image:  8-bit has 256 colors, 24-bit has 16.7+ MILLION colors.  The pretty image you found is likely
24-bit & converting it squeezes all those millions of subtle shades down into 256 colors.  Also, you must import the AZ palette into your paint
program & convert using it.  If you simply use your paint program's native 8-bit format, you may come up with some really ugly things.

The other problem is what we call 'white jaggies' that appear around the edges of your accessories when placed in tanks with darker
backdrops/items.  AZ only sees what I'll call 'pure' white (RGB 255,255,255) as transparent.  To make .accs (or fish) you must
put your images on a pure white background.  Unfortunately, most of the images you'll be working with won't be on pure white backgrounds
& even backgrounds that look white may be off by a shade or three.  And after cutting & pasting your image onto a pure white background
you can end up with many pixels that seem white, but aren't.  If you up the magnification of the image, you'll be able to see most of these.
They aren't too apparent when seen against the white background, but every one of the little devils will show up around the edges of your
.acc (or fish) against darker tank backdrops.  Of course, this would only be a problem if you plan to use them in different tanks, or share
them with other AZers; if you're making it for one specific tank, you could ignore the jaggies & simply use a lighter colored backdrop.

There's also the problem of getting the accessory where you want it in your tank. If you have a large accessory, you may not be able to move
it up or down in the tank.  This is where the topview image comes in. The picture below shows how the size of the topview image affects
placing an accessory in the tank. The top left view shows the acc placed on the bottom of the tank, the top right shows it as high as it will go
& the bottom images show the aquarium layout views.


As you can see, the height of the topview image depends on how far 'back' in the tank you can put the item.
The flatter the topview image, the higher you can set it in the tank & the further 'back' it will appear.

The problem with the third image is it's too flat; it's difficult to get hold of in the tank & it really
doesn't make much difference compared to the second, less flat image.

As for the fourth image at the very top, that's a different method entirely.  To accomplish this,
you need to alter your original image; the topview image has nothing to do with it.
To place an item at the top of the tank, you'll need to make a white image the same width as your image,
but much higher. Then paste your image at the top of the new image, like this:






~ USER-MADE FISH ~
There are two different types of AquaZone fish, those made by the company & those made by AZ fans using FishMaker.
User-made fish can be made from animated .gifs or single images & therefore do not necessarily have to take fish form.
Unlike some of the more picky AquaZone fish, all user-made fish take standard AZ or default FisherMan water conditions.

To make a fish, you need an icon of your fish, & a folder containing 144 images of the fish, all in 8-bit 256-color .bmp format.

The icon should be 82x82 pixels & the 144 images can't be more than 252 pixels wide.  Also, be sure this number is divisible by 4.

All images must have been converted to the AZ palette.  FisherMan unfortunately will only accept images using this palette;

if you used your paint program's native 8-bit palette you'll get the message 'Not A Image File' & Fisherman won't make your fish.

Finally, the image backgrounds must be transparent.  AZ only sees what I'll call pure white (RGB 255,255,255) as transparent.
Any other white (RGB 254,255,255; RGB 255,252,255 etc.) will appear as annoying white jaggies against darker tank backgrounds.

Also, if the image itself has any true white areas, you'll need to change that color to a near white or light grey
or the white parts of your fish will show up as transparent holes in your fish.

Lastly, you should understand that your fish's animation will only be as good as the original animation.


To do a full-turn fish, you'll need 8 images for each of the following 18 viewpoints, numbered as shown:


To make a fish from a single image, you can copy & reverse it for the left & right images, then
rotate & reverse those for the up & down sideviews, & use the following sequence:


But do understand that this fish won't have the smoother movement you get with the larger range of image views;
there will be no graceful turns, the fish will just instantly be facing the other direction.

Now, on to using FishMaker to create your fish:

At this point you should have on your desktop the icon & a folder with the 144 images numbered 0000-0143.
Open FishMaker & point it to the fish image folder, then fill in the boxes: this information will show up under
Reference: Species Info when you tank the fish.  Point it to the icon & then assign an ID number between
0-127.  Click 'Build' & fill in the name you're giving the fish.  When you click 'Open' FishMaker will
create a .fsh file on your desktop containing 20 fish of varying ages, 10 male & 10 female.

Regarding the very important ID number, AZ will not accept two species of fish in the same tank if they both have the same ID number.
This could occur if you've made many fish & mistakenly re-use a number, or if you happen to use the same number as some other user(s)
when they made fish & you're attempting to add your fish to a tank which already contains their fish.