I guess every one has his / her pet peeve in game, that annoys them. But I still don't see what THAT specifically has to do with the engine.
Planet Zoo 2 or very long support for this beauty?
- Thread starter NikolaP
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I would imagine the clumpy mane has more to do with being able to animate said mane than stylistic choice. As far as I'm aware, the hair "particles" in the game are static and can't move or flow - they just stick straight out, which makes it especially hard to use it for very long fur. In theory, this is also why so many tufted-tailed animals have weird bulbous tails (like the zebra and wildebeest). They were able to get away with longer fur on, say, the bison, but a bison's neck ruff doesn't exactly move like a lion's mane, so they had to form clumps of geometry with hairs on them to simulate the movement for the lion. True hair particle systems are extremely taxing on a system, and I don't think many games have them, since it can't be rendered real-time - on a game such as PZ, it would be impossible, no matter what engine they were using. This theory could be completely bogus, but it would make sense. Yes, the manes and the tail tufts on other animals do look strange, but I'm not sure they had much of an alternative. They could've used hair cards, but I think that would've looked really weird on the lion. In any case, the PZ lion looks miles better than the ZT2 lion did.
Anyway, I'm a bit torn in regards to long support vs. a sequel in a couple years. The engine in its current state seems to have a lot of problems and limitations, and the game is lacking a lot of features that I was really hoping for that are extremely unlikely to be added at this stage, so on one hand, I'd like to see a sequel. On the other, there's no guarantee that a hypothetical sequel would have those features, either. Guess I'm just gonna have to gather a team and create my own zoo sim someday.
Did anybody mention yet that the orang utan looks and moves like an orange gorilla?
You can find faults everywhere, if you look long enough for it.
All in all: PZ is the most beautiful game I ever played. There was no other game before I loved so much and got me "hooked" for so long.
Sure, some things might be in need of revision, but that doesn't diminish my fun with this game.
If it is not "real" enough for you, I think you have to go outside and visit your local zoo: Best graphics ever!
You can find faults everywhere, if you look long enough for it.
All in all: PZ is the most beautiful game I ever played. There was no other game before I loved so much and got me "hooked" for so long.
Sure, some things might be in need of revision, but that doesn't diminish my fun with this game.
If it is not "real" enough for you, I think you have to go outside and visit your local zoo: Best graphics ever!
The only thing that I am not sure they will be able to pull out is the large zoos optimalization. I really wish we could have more species in a partk without the game starting to lagg badly (yes I know you can limit guest numbers, and no, it is not helpful to challenge or franchise, because you start looking money sooner or later.)
I do believe we will see semi-aquatics, not sure to what extent, but I cannot imagine a zoo game without penguins or sea lions. The big zoo lagging, if because of the engine, is quite worrying though. Since we get more and more animals, but we are forced to have small parks because of the fps drops... That would be the only reason I would consider getting a sequel.
I do believe we will see semi-aquatics, not sure to what extent, but I cannot imagine a zoo game without penguins or sea lions. The big zoo lagging, if because of the engine, is quite worrying though. Since we get more and more animals, but we are forced to have small parks because of the fps drops... That would be the only reason I would consider getting a sequel.
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Great suggestion! Thanks for being the voice of reason.
Exactly. I think the only animal design that bothered me was the Polar Bear, they clearly had the snout wrong. It's very different than most bears. But I think they've updated that since then, although to be honest I only have them in one zoo and it's a failing large franchise so I don't play it that much right now.
The way I look at this is, if they can address the main issues caused mostly by engine limitations (like performance with bigger zoos and underwater navigation), I'd prefer longer support for the current game; but if those issues are impossible to address, then, new game with a new engine sounds better.
The engine limitations is definitely a real thing and I agree, if they can't move it past a certain point, that would certainly be a clear reason to begin looking towards a path to PZ 2. Unfortunately that would likely be years away at best. And in order to fund the work for those years they'd need to have PZ have enough sales to follow through. And of course, in order to extend that, we're talking extra content. I'm not saying it's set in stone but even with the game limitations I would be surprised if we don't get content at least through 2022. Maybe that would mean in 2024 give or take a year, at best, we'd see a PZ 2.
Heck, Cities Skylines is 5 years old, and has game limitations. But it's still had content even as recently as this past spring. Not to say Frontier's content roll out is the same as Paradox's, just that with or without game limitations, sequels in this the simulation genre take quite some time. Which is interesting in of itself, that other genre's of games are able to release sequels on a shorter cycle than simulators (farm manager excepting, for some odd reason). Maybe it says something to the open ended avenues for additional content the genre provides...which actually kind of brings us back to the initial question...
I thought this would be the case, even though many people seems to claim that Planet Zoo sells less than Planet Coaster, I did not have this feeling. If it would be up to me I would say cute animals, which internet is obsessed with would sell better than coasters, but this is also something people seems to claim other way around.
I think we will see support at least as long as for Planet Coaster, but I hope it will be a bit longer. So many animals and features that could be added, that I think cannot be fullfilled in 2 years.
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I'm pretty sure zoo will land on consoles next year. Planet coaster and Zoo are built on broadly the same code base, so it will be a fairly simply project to make Zoo for the console. It won't be three years down the line, 12 months at the most. In fact as soon as coaster comes out I expect the team that did that will move straight onto Planet Zoo conversion. So might even be done by the middle of next year.
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They are never changing their engine. Why would they when they have invested decades of work into the cobra engine.
Name another engine that can for 7K crowds with the same level of sophistication as Planet Zoo and Planet coaster?
This game just released and , its awesome. Lets just enjoy this one.
What do you mean exactly by QOL features? Usually those are considered small things like UI updates and such, which they do include in every major update. They should never do an update that doesn't bring in something new for the animals,or new animals if nothing new to add to current ones. If anything they need to focus more on animals in the future and less on buildings. That would probably generate more interest, but just a guess based off the forums general atmosphere.
I think the interest in streamers is going down because people are less interested in building and more in the animals. I know for me personally I got bored of the streamers a while ago, can only see them use a thousand pieces to build one building so many times till it gets pretty stale.
I have my doubts about that, mostly because Coaster is finished and Zoo is not. Granted they can re-release DLC as it comes out to both console and PC, but I would have assumed they would leave the console version out until support for the PC version was more or less finished (like with PlanCo).
That isn't what this thread is about. This thread is about speculating as to the future of the game.
Don't really think so. I for one am mostly interested in building videos and although I try to keep my piece count reasonable, I enjoy watching these videos with 1000ds of pieces nevertheless. There are always inspiring twists and tips and tricks to be seen.
A possible explanation would be that in the start, there were only 3 to 5 youtubers, but now there are.... I don't know? 10? 12? 15? People don't watch less planet zoo videos, but the watches are distributed between more creators, so the first 3 to 5 get less views than some months before.
Another reason (at least for me) NOT to view a video are the endless hours livestreams. For me it's quite boring, when youtubers greet 15 friends and welcome another 5 new subscribers and laugh at things written in their chat and commenting the chat instead of building (or showcasing) PLUS: nobody has that much time! Either watch a livestream for an hour or so or watch 3 20-min. videos.
While this can be true there are definitely more youtubers so the views are spread out. It could be they have just gone down because the game is very repetitive. It’s build an enclosure decorate the park etc. Theres only so many things you can do in the game before it gets too repetitive and boring to watch.
I am not an expert on engines. i know it doesnt work and it's not following the "create the zoo of your dreams" moto. no i cant create it if its moving as slow as a snail and when im hovering over crowds its like getting a slow motioned seizure.
Also dont "recommend" 4770K/Ryzen 5 1600 and 1070/580 when it wont be stable even with much better hardware than that. Either dont "recommend" anything or actually say something like "yeah we recommend these until you reach 2.5-3k guests.. if you exceed that number good night and good luck."