Hey, anglers:) As you well know, Fishing Planet will soon be expanding its fishing premises onto the much awaited European regions! An so, today we’ll tell you about the Ghent–Terneuzen Canal in the Kingdom of the Netherlands - a place where you’ll be having some unforgettable fishing adventures!
Also known as Zeekanaal (or simply the Sea Canal), it links Ghent in Belgium to the port of Terneuzen on the Westerschelde estuary in the Netherlands. This deep canal (about 12m / 40 ft in depth) runs 200m (660 ft) wide and 32 km (20 mi) long, while serving as a navigable passage for large vessels almost all year round. The in-game fishing locations are situated on the part of the canal near the small town of Westdorpe, just a few miles off the Belgium–Netherlands border. The shoreline is somewhat monotonous, which on the one hand makes this area seem a bit dull, but on the other - provides a perfect location for large-scale feeder and float fishing competitions. In fact, World Feeder Championships 2015 was held here as well as countless regional and local competitions. Among other things, this canal is so attractive to anglers because it is inhabited both by typical freshwater species (Ide, Common Bream and Common Roach) as well as sea fish (like the European Flounder, Thicklip Grey Mullet and the European Eel).
Only the eastern bank (right side) of the canal in this location is available for fishing. The fishing area is about 1km in length. Since this waterway is a canal, the steady-sloping grassy bank is basically unchanging, lined with some reed thickets close to the shore. Beyond the fishing area, you’ll see a hilly tree-lined landscape with a highway and farm fields barely noticeable in the distance. Although the landscape and the shoreline are largely unchanged, the fishing area can be roughly divided into two parts, that is two fishing locations: 1) An urbanistic bank near a large highway span bridge, overlooking a large elevator and massive warehouses on the opposite side; 2) A shoreline overlooking Dutch houses and farm fields with windmills.
Here are some interesting man-made objects that we added as part of the scenery: 1) a highway span-bridge across the canal; 2) huge cargo ships navigating the canal; 3) towboats and freight-laden barges navigating the canal; 4) an industrial area with a moore and an elevator across the canal; 5) modern and old-fashioned windmills atop the hills across the canal; 6) Dutch-style houses as part of the landscape. Here’s a quick overview to give you a general idea on how we created the new waterway: First off, our game-designer (who is also an expert angler) did some in-depth R'n'D looking for the right waterway in the Netherlands. The key factor to consider was the waterway’s popularity particularly among feeder anglers in the region. Since we were looking at the Netherlands, we wanted it to be a canal, to add some local coloring. Among other factors were the abundance of fish species, some interesting landscapes (we don’t want to repeat ourselves), etc. Once we found the perfect waterway, our angling game-designer drafted up a detailed plan with a map and all the necessary info that was further handed over to our 3D artists. It was up to them to create the scene, plant the trees and bushes, design and scale the industrial objects, etc. After that, it was up to our programmers to do some coding magic and make the towboats and cargo ships move, the windmills spin, the cars drive and the span-bridge turn. Finally, once all of that was completed, it was once again up to our angling game-designer to create the waterway’s bottom terrain and structure. And right now, we are working on fish setup for this waterway which is one of the final steps before waterway introduction into the Game.