SpongesFishermansTally
Fish that genuinely vary in size, drawn at the size they weigh, a record book of your best catches, a shared board, and a rod bench selling luck and sale-value upgrades.
About this mod Author’s original text
Sponge's Fisherman's Tally
Fish that actually vary in size, a record of your best catches, and a bench that
sells rod upgrades.
What it does
Fish that vary
The game already gives every fish a weight and already pays you more for a heavy
one. The catch is that the range is narrow, so nearly everything lands near average
and a genuinely enormous fish never turns up.
This widens the range. A monster becomes possible, and a runt becomes possible too.
Because value already follows weight, a record fish is worth real money without
changing a single price.
Every player sees the same fish at the same weight. The game decides weight from a
seed rather than a dice roll, and this widens that calculation rather than replacing
it — so it stays identical on every machine, with nothing extra sent over the network.
Fish that look their size
The game tracks weight but draws every fish identically, so a record catch is just a
number. This draws a heavy fish larger.
Size follows the cube root of weight, because weight is a volume and length is its
cube root. Scaling length by weight directly would make a big fish look absurd and
push it through whatever it is lying on.
Bigger fish are tougher — optional
Off by default. Turn it on and weight affects health as well as value, so a record
fish is a fight rather than a lucky catch. At the default strength, a fish twice the
average weight has about 1.5x the health.
Your record book
Every species you have landed, heaviest first, with the weight, what it was worth,
how many you have caught, and when you set the record. Your single heaviest catch is
highlighted, and a banner appears when you beat one of your own records.
The book is yours alone and stays on your machine, stored as plain JSON next to your
saves, so it survives reinstalling and you can read it yourself.
Everyone's board
One row per player, showing the biggest thing each of them has landed in this world.
The host keeps it, so it survives the session and everyone sees the same thing. A
player joining halfway through is sent the current board straight away.
One honest note. The catch is noticed on the machine of whoever lands it, because
that is the only place it happens — so the board takes each player's word for their
own fish. The host bounds what it will believe, clamping a reported weight to what
this world could actually produce, so nobody can post an unbeatable number. It is
not proof against a determined cheat and is not meant to be. Your own book is
unaffected either way.
The rod bench
Set a bench down in front of you, walk up, and use it to buy:
- Luck — flattens the odds toward rarer fish. It does not favour any particular
fish, and nothing becomes impossible; the gap between common and rare narrows.
- Sale value — pays a percentage more for everything you sell.
There is one bench per world and everyone shares it, along with the tiers bought
on it. That follows the game's own money, which is a single pot everybody draws from.
The host does the buying, so a client cannot grant itself an upgrade. Costs rise with
each tier.
The bench is a plain slab on four legs. A mod cannot add new art to a game, so rather
than a bad imitation of the game's furniture it is honestly a box.
When you want it
You want fishing to have a progression and a story — a personal best worth chasing,
something to spend money on, and the chance of landing something absurd.
Keys
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| F8 | Open your record book |
| F9 | Place the bench in front of you, or take it away |
In the book: ← → switch to everyone's board, ↑ ↓ scroll, Esc closes.
At the bench: ↑ ↓ choose, Enter buys, Esc closes.
Both keys are rebindable in the config, and both actions are also buttons on
this mod's two tabs in Sponge's Mod Menu, which opens on F5.
Settings
| Section | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Size | On/off, spread, smallest and largest limits |
| Appearance | Whether weight shows in the model, how strongly, update interval |
| Difficulty
Install & use Install: follow the bundled instructions
- Unzip the archive from playbuff and read the bundled readme / instructions first.
- Most mods rely on the game's mod loader — the usual route is a community mod manager (such as r2modman): pick this game, install, and it handles the loader and dependencies.
- For a manual install, put the mod files into the matching Mod / plugins folder inside the game directory.
- Launch the game to confirm it loaded; mods with listed dependencies need those installed as well.
Install locations vary a lot between mods — the bundled readme is the most reliable guide.
Install these first, or the mod will not work: