Top Nine Technical Questions I Get Asked:
Q. I uninstalled Aquazone and reinstalled it. Now it won't let me add fish to my tanks!
A. You didn't delete the aquazone.bin file. You must delete this to add your fish to a tank after a reinstall! To do this you run the Windows Explorer or File Manager, whichever you prefer (hey, you could use DOS if you want!) Get to your Windows directory. Find the above mentioned file and delete it. Then reinstall Aquazone. Your fish can now be added normally.
Q. I did all that, but it still won't let me add fish! I'm running Windows 3.1.
A. You also need to delete the aquazone.ini file. Don't ask me why it wasn't deleted when you ran the uninstall.
Q. How do I change my GH or pH?
A. To get the AZ GH Balance Plus medication, you need to click the left hand aquarium in the Attend/Medications window. This will bring up an Add Medication screen. Select AZghPlus and add it. For some reason it didn't get autoadded like the other medications did. To use AZ GH Balance Plus in the add water window you must add one thousand ml to get the effect of a single ml added directly to the tank. This is easily the most annoying (and notorious!) bug in the game! To my knowledge, it wasn't fixed in Aquazone Deluxe.
To change your pH you need to buy the pH add/reduce medications from the AZ Shop. To lower your GH you can buy the GH Minus medication, or you can use the AZ Water Conditioner. The GH medication works better probably, since it doesn't change anything else.
Q. I just changed my tank speed to 100x and my fish all starved! I had the autofeeder on, what happened?
A. When using the Autofeeder and you set the tank speed to a higher (or lower) speed, it will NOT change the next time the fish need to be fed! The simplest way to get it set right is to change your tank speed to whatever you want it. Then open up the autofeeder window and change the Add Food In: time to 0 hours and 0 minutes. Click okay and it will feed the fish. The next feeding will then proceed as planned, in tune with the new time setting. To make your light timer function at the new speed, go into the window and turn off the timer. Go back and turn it on again. It is now set correctly.
Q. How can I change that annoying buzzing noise?
A. To my knowledge, you can't change this. If it really bothers you that much, I suggest turning off the sound.
Q. I can't get this tank set right! Here, set it for me! (This is accompanied by the tank file, uncompressed, in my mailbox)
A. Please don't send me your actual tanks by email! My email account can't handle attachments, and I'd really prefer to not have your tanks anyway (I have enough of my own!) If you really can't set it, go to the downloads section and download a preconditioned EMPTY tank and furnish/stock it yourself. That's the best I can do folks!
Q. My fish died. Could you send me some of yours?
A. I could, but I won't. Doing this would be software piracy, and as such is illegal.
Q. I have a whole bunch of baby mollies. Want some?
A. Here, read this:
Subject: Re: Trading fish - A reply from 9003
From: Dean Hamilton
Date: 1998/06/23
Newsgroups: alt.games.aquazone
Dear AQUAZONERs,
It has always been our policy to stay out of the newsgroup discussions regarding AQUAZONE, mainly because we feel the newsgroups are a forum for the user to exchange thoughts, discussion, ideas etc., and the continued presence of the developer on the newsgroup might be considered intrusive and irritating.
On the subject of trading fish, we felt that a few quick comments might clarify why trading AQUAZONE fish is not permitted under the AQUAZONE license agreement.
The challenge of AQUAZONE is essentially that of keeping any real-world aquarium: raising and breeding healthy, happy fish in a beautiful environment!
In El-fish, the challenge is creating new and unique varieties of fish with different and changable appearances. Indeed, the "genetics" of El fish are specifically designed to permit a user to create a specific unique fish and cross it with the characteristics of another created by a different user. This is similar to the ideas governing Creatures, with the predominant objective being to breed unique and specific characteristics into the creatures that can result in different emergent behaviors. Again, the program was designed for this type of trading. This is not done in AQUAZONE.
While each AQUAZONE fish is unique in personality, characteristics and traits, they do not evolve or change (yet! future versions: maybe!). Currently you cannot breed a variation on the fish. There is no genetic gain (or need) inherent in trading the fish. The only reason to trade fish in AQUAZONE is to obtain a species you do not currently possess or have run out of. When you trade for fish, whether baby fry or adults, you are basically getting full access to the species and this is access that (if you have not purchased the fish) you do not legally possess.
It is not our intention to sound draconian or try to hurt our users enjoyment of the product, but the simple truth is that trading fish is not permitted under the license agreement. Fish trading hampers our ability to make new species available at a low cost to our users. If we know that once we sell a fish in the AZ SHOP ONLINE, it will rapidly be bred and traded, we would have to charge a much higher price for that fish in order to recoup our costs and stay in business.
That's all I plan to say on the subject of trading fish. If anyone has any comments or questions, please feel free to email me. Sorry if this is seen as an intrusion into the newsgroup discussion.
P.S. For your information, we have finally worked out some of our scheduling and resource problems (we lost two developers) in updating the AZ Shop Online. Two new fish species are scheduled for arrival in the Shop in approximately two weeks. Updates will be carried out roughly every two weeks from this point onwards (alternating fish, accessories & other stuff, and Mekasia). Our apologies for the slow updates of the AZ Shop Online. We will try to do better.
Happy fish-keeping!
Sincerely,
Dean Hamilton Marketing, 9003inc. Canada Corp.
Reposted with permission from the author
Q. Well, I don't have a credit card. How am I supposed to get fish?
A: I used to have access to a credit card, but that is no longer an option. So I have no clue how you can get more fish without one… perhaps by finding a friend who does have one. Hopefully someday 9003 Inc. will make the option CD's they said they would when they first released the program… at this point that's the best I can do. If I manage to get a credit card at some point, I might be convinced to order fish for people. Trust me, I really do understand how difficult it is to function in an online society without one!