Ability to select temp range for biomes

[Roxxsmom]

This has come up in some other threads: Deserts are arid by definition, but they aren't always hot (and may even get dusted with snow upon occasion); temperate zones and grasslands vary greatly in terms of snowfall, winter temperatures and so on. Even the tropics, tundra, and taiga aren't monolithic. It also seems strange that the default vegetation in my North American grassland zoo are African tree species instead of (say) cottonwood, oak, and sycamore. Side note--wish we had cottonwood in the game.

Individually programming different biome temps and vegetation for each possible continent, let alone microclimate within a continent, would be cumbersome, though. An alternative might be some kind of slider during the biome selection process that allows one to choose a seasonal temperature range (from realistic possibilities). So you could get a grassland where it snows but doesn't have the same kind of heat waves that make my bison and wolves wilt like daisies or, you could maybe have a temperate zone where it rarely snows in winter, and a cooler desert. Being able to independently select vegetation by continent would be nice too, but the temp selection could make zoos more realistic and appropriate to their actual continents and remove the need to "cheat" and spam heaters or coolers in outdoor habitats that wouldn't actually need them in a given locale.

I have no idea if this is something the current program/engine would allow--temp and weather independent of a specific biome model--or not, but it would be fun.

 

[Firestar97]

We definitely need those Options. Due to Backgrounds also including Trees, we should also be able to change those, so we won't have wrong Trees at all

 

[markun]

I’d like it to be possible to manually change the temperature in sandbox. My major issue is that on non-tundra maps it snows but when it stops actually falling, the snow disappears, melting straight away. The only map where you can have snow on the ground with a blue, or even cloudy sky, is tundra and I think it would be great if we could make wintery zoos on other maps.

 

[Roxxsmom]

I’d like it to be possible to manually change the temperature in sandbox. My major issue is that on non-tundra maps it snows but when it stops actually falling, the snow disappears, melting straight away. The only map where you can have snow on the ground with a blue, or even cloudy sky, is tundra and I think it would be great if we could make wintery zoos on other maps.

It's probably because months of game time pass in minutes, so with seasonal snow, it would never last long. But the nice weather wouldn't last long either. They seem to make it so the snow is less frequent, even in taiga. It would be nice to be able to set it so you could control the percentage of time snow was on the ground versus not.

I'm still trying to figure out why it always seems to snow in June and July in my north American and European temperate zoos as well

 

[markun]

It's probably because months of game time pass in minutes, so with seasonal snow, it would never last long. But the nice weather wouldn't last long either. They seem to make it so the snow is less frequent, even in taiga. It would be nice to be able to set it so you could control the percentage of time snow was on the ground versus not.

I'm still trying to figure out why it always seems to snow in June and July in my north American and European temperate zoos as well

I don’t want it to be seasonal as I ignore the passing of time in game, it’s completely irrelevant to me. I just want to be able to set it to cold so that the snow doesn’t melt.

 

[ElectricMonk]

I'm still trying to figure out why it always seems to snow in June and July in my north American and European temperate zoos as well

Because there are no seasons in the game - temperature & rain are not connected to the calendar. A dev post a long time ago indicated that this was because, due to the speed of in-game time, seasons would shift every couple of minutes.

 

[DarthQuell]

Because there are no seasons in the game - temperature & rain are not connected to the calendar. A dev post a long time ago indicated that this was because, due to the speed of in-game time, seasons would shift every couple of minutes.

Unless, unless we get a feature like the animal aging feature: we can adjust season speed. Of course, it won't coincide with the months.

Or we can get like a time feature where time isn't as fast? Like, we can have normal, fast, super fast, pause. But also super slow, slow?

Or a mix of both? I don't know

 

[ElectricMonk]

Unless, unless we get a feature like the animal aging feature: we can adjust season speed. Of course, it won't coincide with the months.

Or we can get like a time feature where time isn't as fast? Like, we can have normal, fast, super fast, pause. But also super slow, slow?

Or a mix of both? I don't know

Yeah,… waaay back when the animal aging slider was introduced it was in response to in-game time being too fast - essentially it’s a work-around because changing the actual speed of the date/time counter was impractical (I think it’s pretty deeply coded into the engine so lots of smaller things are directly linked to it - e.g. frequency of staff visits to habitats etc). Whilst I’d LOVE it to be able to be changed to slow down time and/or for seasons to be added (e.g. just by making each ‘season’ last one in-game year), I don’t think it’s likely to happen.

 

[MKD2187]

I’d like it to be possible to manually change the temperature in sandbox. My major issue is that on non-tundra maps it snows but when it stops actually falling, the snow disappears, melting straight away. The only map where you can have snow on the ground with a blue, or even cloudy sky, is tundra and I think it would be great if we could make wintery zoos on other maps.

When I've played, the ground snow melts any time the ambient temperature is above 32F.

My issue with snow is that if I terrain paint places where I want there to always be snow when it is below 32F, then the only terrain option in that location is rock. Which sucks when you're building in a habitat (or biome) where it should be lush and green when it isn't wintertime.

I'd also love it if the diciduous trees changed colors with the seasons in the appropriate biomes (maple trees should go red/orange/yellow in autumn, and barren in winter in a temperate biome). I don't know anything about programming, so I don't know how labor-intensive that would be; if it isn't a matter of coding complexity, they should consider adding it as a feature. Right now, all I can do is take wrong-region plants (like the Ipe, and durian larch) to create that depth/variety of color.

 

[markun]

I'd also love it if the diciduous trees changed colors with the seasons in the appropriate biomes (maple trees should go red/orange/yellow in autumn, and barren in winter in a temperate biome). I don't know anything about programming, so I don't know how labor-intensive that would be; if it isn't a matter of coding complexity, they should consider adding it as a feature. Right now, all I can do is take wrong-region plants (like the Ipe, and durian larch) to create that depth/variety of color.

Given the fast pace of time in-game your trees would be constantly changing.

My preferred option would be to have autumn foliage and leafless options for the deciduous trees which you could manually replace.

I appreciate that isn’t ideal for everyone but as I play real-time in sandbox and ignore the in-game time it’s what I’d prefer.

 

[Firestar97]

I'd also love it if the diciduous trees changed colors with the seasons in the appropriate biomes (maple trees should go red/orange/yellow in autumn, and barren in winter in a temperate biome)

I would love this. I assume it would be possible but due to no proper Implementation of Seasons (and I think it also isn't planned at all) I don't think it'll make it into the Game but I hope for it to be included if we someday get a Sequel (in which the Time hopefully passes slower. Played the mobile Version of the first Wildlife Park a While ago because my PC wasn't working and I really like how the Time passes in that Game. You don't get a Notification that a Gorilla is pregnant and then 5 Minutes later it's already born, instead you need to wait longer and feel way more Excitement than when a Animal gets pregnant in Planet Zoo. What Wildlife Park also did better, is that you don't get all females pregnant all the Time. Really hope they look into these Changes if they ever make Planet Zoo 2 and also include Seasons which would work perfectly if Time would pass at that Speed)

 

[Iben]

I think just setting the temperature of the map like you can set the time of the day would be perfect for me.

Like, I want to make a zoo in Florida, but that means it should be more tropical in terms of temperature, but not the big mountain background that the tropical maps have. So a simple slider would work wonders here.

 

[ElectricMonk]

I think just setting the temperature of the map like you can set the time of the day would be perfect for me.

This’d be good but I’d still like temperatures to vary, rather than being fixed at a constant. I’d just want them to vary within a realistic range.

 

[Roxxsmom]

Because there are no seasons in the game - temperature & rain are not connected to the calendar. A dev post a long time ago indicated that this was because, due to the speed of in-game time, seasons would shift every couple of minutes.

That makes sense. That way they have it being "winter" once an hour or so instead of once every couple of minutes. And the temps don't change between day and night from what I can tell either. Games that take place over long time periods have an inherent inconsistency issue with time progression, since you want the player to be able to see their animals grow up and so on in a reasonable amount of time, but you also don't want everything in the game (like the guests and animals) to be moving at warp speed as they move around the map and day and night to be flickering constantly.

Makes me think of the issue in the game Civilization with navies, where it would take a ship centuries of game time to cross the ocean, so your carrik from the early part of the game would find another continent around the time you're getting airplanes

I agree it would be nice to have temps fluctuate within a range rather than simply being fixed. Maybe a bar with high and low sliders. You can look up the range of seasonal temps in a given locale that is where you imagine your zoo is. Also, you could toggle in whether or not how often it snows and rains, because some climates within temperate in particular are rainier or snowier than others. It almost never snows where I live, for instance (the game includes it in temperate) even though we do get below freezing, even occasional hard freezes, sometimes. In game, the animals never get too cold unless it snows.

 

[yoav_r]

This’d be good but I’d still like temperatures to vary, rather than being fixed at a constant. I’d just want them to vary within a realistic range.

Yes!! And allow for you to choose the range

 

[MKD2187]

IDK if anyone commenting here has computer background, but I still don't understand why an object (diciduous tree) couldn't be coded to change with the seasons, regardless of how fast the seasons are moving. I can understand why such a feature wouldn't come as a default setting (if someone has a lower-performance computer), but I would love the option of enabling said feature on my own hardware. Manually replacing foliage is not a sensible or viable alternative. While I don't mind playing mix-and-match with my plants to get the look that I want, that is not an option when I am building within a habitat that has very specific continents/biomes.

 

[ElectricMonk]

IDK if anyone commenting here has computer background, but I still don't understand why an object (diciduous tree) couldn't be coded to change with the seasons, regardless of how fast the seasons are moving. I can understand why such a feature wouldn't come as a default setting (if someone has a lower-performance computer), but I would love the option of enabling said feature on my own hardware. Manually replacing foliage is not a sensible or viable alternative. While I don't mind playing mix-and-match with my plants to get the look that I want, that is not an option when I am building within a habitat that has very specific continents/biomes.

Having plants change with seasons (if seasons were in the game, which they aren’t) could, certainly, be done. As with most other suggestions though, this would have at least some affect on performance - the more changes that are made/tracked and the more colours/textures required —> the more strain on your computer. Since seasons don’t exist in-game, there’s no point adding seasonal changes to plants.

 

[markun]

Manually replacing foliage is not a sensible or viable alternative.

Not for you but perhaps but I’d be quite happy with that and would find rapidly changing trees irritating and bordering on the ridiculous.