I actually wrote a list like this when the game first came out, but never released it. Some of the things from my list have been added by now (vending machines, custom terrain etc), so I thought I'd post the rest here so you might add it to your list
First off,
Null items. You mention null paths in your post, I think it's worth mentioning that to have them work wel, they would need to behave like null barriers do, that means when you have the path menu opened, or when building around them, they show up with the blue glow like null barriers do.
Then, I think there's more Null fun to be had:
- Null shops (could be added by adding a toggle to the shop menu that removes the box) would allow us to make much more custom shops and restaurants (there's a reason the Boxless Shop is popular).
- I'd also be a fan of Null habitat gates, there' already a way to hide habitat gates underground, but that leads to some funky behavior from the staff. Official null gates would be super helpful.
- Null editable signs would allow us to make floating text which would be super cool and helpful.
- Null stations would allow us to make the whole station yourself without dealing with the boxy station, which would be especially nice for docks. Even more so since , and I hate this so much, even when us have the exit and entrance on one side, the other side still has a platform. So either remove that platform, or give me null stations!
- Null tracks would allow you to make it look like the boat is just actually floating like a boat would, or make the adventure tour cars appear to be driving on their own.
Next up, I'd like to talk about the
Dynamic Moss,
You're all familiar with the Dynamic Mossy Rocks, which always have a layer of moss on top. I think it would be super amazing if we could have this available for all items, through a toggle in the item menu or something. This way we could make mossy planks, roofs and all sorts of things
More dynamic textures could be added as well, like fallen leaves, dust, dirt or sand. This would all help to make our zoos look a bit more wethered and used.
Disabling lights:
The ability to disable lights was super helpful and very much needed, but I would like the system to be expanded to any item that requires power. Right now, there's still no way to disable the glow of signs, windows and those small glowing pieces from the australia pack. The only one you have remote control over is the windows, since setting the light to be black makes them look turned off. For a large number of signs and all the small australia pieces however, there's no way to prevent them from glowing, other than simply not having them be powered (which is such a hassle it's not even worth it). It's a real bummer since these are great pieces but them glowing in the dark makes them essentially worthless.
Flexicoloring Groups:
When you select multiple flexicolor objects that aren’t the same material (different types of wood, plastic etc) you can’t recolor them all at once. I think this is a stupid restriction. Just let me recolor them anyway and see what happens. Better yet, give me a list of all the materials and colors in my selection and let me paint them there. That saves so much time not having to disassemble the group and select exactly the item you want to recolor.
Rock Materials
All the rocks in the game consist of the same set of rocks, recolored to fit each of the biomes in the game. This is perfectly fine, but what irks me about this is there is no easy way to switch between these colors. Why can’t I place a rock and then select what type I want it to be? Right now if I build something out of one rock type and then decide I want it to be a different one, I can’t change it, I would have to replace each rock with the same rock of a different biome. If the rock type was some kind of setting this would be much easier.
Additionally, I would love to see the snow rock be made recolorable. Frontier’s argument against making many items recolorable is that it sacrifices the quality of textures. A lot of objects look their best in their original color, which I totally get. However, the snow rocks are just white, they hardly have a texture to sacrifice, and making these rocks recolorable would let us build some really cool things.
Wall Materials
The same thing goes for walls to be honest. With a few exceptions, all walls have the exact same few shapes. So why is it that when I want to change texture, I have to rebuild the entire building?
Material Selector
Speaking of being able to select the material of items though, wouldn’t it be nice if we could select whatever material on anything we wanted? In the sims 3 this was actually possible. You could basically replace an object’s texture with any other texture in the game. I can imagine something like this being hard to add for all objects but what if we had a designated group of objects that consisted of a few basic shapes in a bunch of sizes that you could use to create anything you wanted. HMmm??? HMMM?
Enough of that bit, I still don’t know if this would be feasible, but imagine being able to change the material of art shapes into any material in game. Need pieces of chain link for your aviary? Click, now you have chain link art shapes.
Making a statue out of art shapes? Click, now it’s actually made out of stone
It would add so much versatility to the art shapes, which already are some of the most versatile pieces in the game.
Selecting Paths and Path settings
I would love the game to have settings for individual path pieces. While it’s great that we can make staff paths, they are ugly and look very out of place when trying to make a realistic zoo. I want to be able to tell guests or staff what paths they can walk on without changing the aesthetics of the path. A tool that lets you select paths and change settings like these would be the way to go I would think. It would work much the same way as how the barrier system works right now.
This would also make it easier to change the current settings paths already have, like enabling or disabling kerbs and fences, without having to destroy and replace the path.
This could possibly open doors for even more possibilities with paths, for example being able to select what railing you want on your selection, allowing to use railing from one path on another.
Another setting could be one way paths that allows players to further control guest flow. The only way to control guest flow now is to make paths wider. Settings like this would give this aspect much more depth.
You could also have a path setting that limits how many guests can enter a certain section of path, to help limit the amount of guests in a walk through habitat.
Natural Elevated path
This is a really small thing but the natural elevated path looks really cool and I don't understand why it's not available as a ground path. The texture's already there, it shouldn't be hard to add.
Billboards that aren't screens
Billboards are an amazing addition but personally I feel a bit let down by them being just screens. Many signs at zoos aren't screens.Of course we can pretend our billboards aren't screens but they look too smooth and clean.
I wish we got a few billboards that are basically wooden planks we can put our images on, that keep their wooden look, so you could see the shadows and highlights of the wood grains.
Similarly a stone billboard would be really cool as well, pieces similar to the plaster wall panels but with the ability to add our own images. This would let us make good looking murals and wall paintings for example.
Lastly, a "null billboard", a 2D plane similar to the decals we've been getting lately, would be super useful. Bonus points if it had transparency from PNG images so you could make your own decals.
I can't even begin to think about the amazing things we'd be able to create with billboards like this.
Sandbox Control over animal appearance.
Sandbox players should have the ability to control the appearance of their animals. I should be able to place down albinos, babies anything really. Personally in my main planet zoo project I am making a lot of implied habitats. I use a variety of animals to act as other animals. If I were to have control over whether animals are albino or juvenile or both, I would be able to do a lot more. Baby pronghorns could act as dik diks, juvenile or albino peafowl, flamingo and ostriches could act as a number of other birds I can fill aviaries with. It would give us a lot more options to create the zoo of our dreams, no limitations, just like sandbox mode is supposed to be.
Right now it’s super difficult to obtain albino animals, and near impossible to keep juvenile animals, since disabling aging also disables birth, so you can’t get any new baby animals without the others growing up.
Animals color variations made were an amazing addition, but made us be at the mercy of the randomness of the animal market even more. I really wish I could control what animal I get.
I see a few ways of giving players this control.
- They could add some cheats that change animal’s appearance, similar to how MeggieB makes animals conky, we could add cheats to make animals albino or juvenile or both, the only difference being that unlike the MeggieB cheat, these effects should last forever. The downside to this is that you will need a lot of cheats to cover animal variants and you have to name these animals according to the cheat. All in all, it’s still quite limiting.
- They could make a tab on the animal information panel, exclusive to sandbox, where you can edit the genes of the animal. I like this option the most because it gives the most freedom. On this tab you could enable options like albino, select what pattern you want the animal to have, and soon, what color variant you want it to have. Another tab in the animal information panel I would like to see is a tab that will allow you to enable certain animal settings on an animal. Currently, enabling animal settings, like disabling aging, enables them for all animals in the zoo. To make matters worse, disabling aging also disables breeding. So there’s no way to keep animals juvenile while continuing to breed new ones. I would much prefer it if these settings could be enabled per animal. If there’s a certain animal you don’t want to age you can enable the setting for just them, while keeping the rest of the animals in your zoo unaffected
- Another thing they could do to give sandbox players more control over their animals is to revise the animal market for sandbox players. In sandbox, I don’t see the point in having 4 of each animal listen in the market. Just list one of each animal and allow players to select the animal and then choose what appearance they want it to have. You could select the genes, gender, whether it's albino or not, juvenile or not. All selected upon purchasing the animal and then sent straight to your zoo. This would make the market less cluttered and make it much easier for you to get the animal you want.
Small fixes/bugs
- When editing a group and holding down ctrl, disable opening other groups!!! I'm obviously multi selecting stuff within my group, and therefore do not want to open another group as that will deselect everything I have carefully selected up to that point. This happens so often it's infuriating.
- Make items more distinct in the menus. Shops are indistinguishable from one another, as are particle emitters. These should have some icon displaying what they are (shop logo, picture of the particle).
- If you select multiple speakers you can’t set all their songs at once, this should work the same as flexicolor items.
- Sorting blueprints on recently added does nothing. It would be nice if this would show them in order of subscribing to them.
- When starting to edit a group, and switching to another group without exiting the construction mode, the silhouette of the group you initially started editing still shows, rather than the one of the group you are currently editing. This has been in the game since the start and I've tried to bring it to people's attention multiple times to no avail.
There we go I think that's all. If I ever think of anything else I'll add it but I think this covers the most important stuff.
