Hayo Zookeepers,
It's time for a deep dive into what you can expect to see in the next Planet Zoo free update! We're happy to announce that Update 1.8 will be available for you to dig into from 14 December
If you saw our previous post about
restaurants, you already know our developers have been cooking up some exciting new features for you all, but what else can you expect? Let's find out!
Restaurants
Restaurants are making their way to Planet Zoo! From fine dining to fast food, serve your guests a unique culinary experience with this new feature. With up to 20 tables able to be connected per restaurant, flexicolour table options, and table placement even being available in safe habitats, you've got the freedom to let your creativity run wild. For a full rundown of what you can expect, take a look at
this forum post.
Shop Counters
Restaurants aren't the only new way your guests will be able to enjoy their time at your zoos - introducing shop counters! This alternate option of creating stores will provide you with a counter-only version for an assortment of shops, allowing you to create your own custom shop designs. Check out this list of what shop counters will be available:
- Bernie's Bakes
- Chief Beef
- Cosmic Cow Milkshakes
- Gulpee Energy
- Gulpee Slush
- Hot Dog Squad
- Pipshot Smoothies
- Streetfox Coffee
On top of this, there will be new small signs of the shop logos for you to place on your builds. What theme are you going to do for your first custom shop?
Burrows
Dig down deep with our new animal burrowing behaviour, just in time for winter! This will allow certain animals to explore burrows that can be freely placed in your zoos, giving them a place to seek shelter, sleep, adjust to the correct temperature, or even give birth! The entrance to the burrow will always align with the terrain, which leads to an underground chamber that will position itself below the entrance.
But that's not all! The burrows will come with internal habitat cameras that you can access through the burrow info panels, so you can see exactly what's happening underground! Plus, with the ability to link them to billboard screens, this means your guests won't miss out either!
Animal Memorials
Lastly, we know losing your animals is never easy, and that's why we're adding animal memorials into the game. Give your beloved inhabitants a proper dedication to ensure that while they may be gone, they're never forgotten, and will always be part of your zoo
This will be split into two parts: a new UI section to keep track of the animals that have passed away in your zoos, and physical memorials that you can place as a tribute to specific animals.
The memorials UI will be added as a new screen to the Zoo overview UI, and will contain two lists: one to track habitat animal deaths, and one for exhibit animals. Here you will find info on each animal that has passed, including their name, age, date of death, and cause of death. This will have a max entry level of 200, so if you have a particularly busy zoo with several generations of animals, your oldest animals may end up overwritten. Don't worry though! If you have animals you want to ensure stay on the list, we've added the ability to mark entries as "favourites" which protects them from being deleted. (Please note: this UI will be backdated to include existing animal data but cause of death was not previously stored, so this field may be empty for deaths prior to the 1.8 update).
From this menu, you can select an animal and then choose a memorial asset to place into the world. When creating a memorial you will be given two tabs of options. The first, "Overview", will show you a summary of all content on the memorial and will let you adjust the custom image or font colour (depending on asset). The second tab, "Animal Information", will let you adjust animal-specific information, such as what information is shown, or adding a dedication line.
When choosing what dedication to make, you'll be able to choose from 3 memorial assets:
- Memorial Plaque Screen - a screen asset with custom image functionality, similar to the billboards already in-game
- Memorial Plaque Editable Sign Brass - a dedicated plaque featuring the animals' name and other information in brass
- Memorial Plaque Editable Sign Limestone - a dedicated plaque featuring the animals' name and other information in limestone
On top of this, should you wish to create an animal memorial for an animal outside of your zoo (such as a real-world pet), you can do this too. Simply place a blank memorial and edit it manually to include the right information.
Guests in your zoos will interact with your memorials by viewing them if they are close by, stopping to read the dedication, and then receiving a small mood boost due to appreciation of fond memories with the animal.
We hope these various memorial features allow you to create meaningful dedications to your beloved animals, both from within and outside of Planet Zoo
Of course, as always, these features come alongside various tweaks and fixes that will be included in the patch notes upon release. We hope you're excited for this new content, as we're certainly excited to bring it to you and see what new dimension it brings to your Zoo builds!
We'll have more news for you soon so keep an eye on our socials and here on the forums, but before that, join us today at 17:00 GMT on
Twitch and
Youtube for a special stream! Grab a blanket, get a hot choccy (Bernie has a great recipe in our restaurant post!), and settle down for cozy vibes with El & Tim. See you there!
Thanks Eltanin and Tim (and the others behind the scenes!) for the lovely time. And of course Fran thanks for the lovely Fairytale of Lumi 
Maybe I'll try building a Pineapple shaped Shop once my Computer works properly again.
