It kinda irks me when I read people getting upset over "reskinned" animals. Who cares? That clearly wasn't a worry in past zoo games, not really sure why getting a new species that looks similar to others is a trigger for people now.
Not to mention people getting upset over that probably have 0 idea how much time and money is put into making one animal; it makes 110% sense to reuse rigs and models (to an extent) when so much time was already put into it. Plus it gives us more animals in a quicker time, so why not?
That is to say, I'd love Ethiopian wolf and dhole, I wouldn't be upset at all. Give me all the wolfies and doggos, I say!
Also I don't really care if an animal is normally seen in a zoo or not, I think that's an unnecessary restriction in a fictional zoo game. Gimme those kakapos. And if they release a badger I really hope they also give us a wolverine.
This is exactly how I feel. So long as the model and skin is adapted appropriately for the new animal, and requires enough of a change in environment to inspire a different exhibit format, decor, et cetera? I'm all about it! Especially if it gets us more animals quicker. Reading this thread, I've started to daydream about designing a section of a zoo dedicated entirely to species of wild dogs from across the world. Or mustelids (wolverines, badgers, otters, weasels, etc).
I think people who get upset about "reskins" either don't really care about diversity in their zoos (i.e., they are fine with having limited animals so long as they all look completely different) or they have been burned in the past by companies selling DLC that's literally the same as something else in the game but a different color or just a slightly different size. I really don't think Frontier would do that sort of thing.
As for reskins - anything that bumps species diversity (I wouldn't be so keen to see tonnes of subspecies, maybe a couple for the more charismatic species) without creating massive extra work for Frontier can only be a good thing in my book.
For me, I'm hoping for a combination of variations on existing animals to help flesh out variety across the board. For example: If they were to release a "Madagascar" DLC pack, I'd love for it to include a handful of new lemur species (red ruffed and black and white ruffed lemurs, sifaka, aye-aye), fossa, a new tortoise species, mongoose, and a few other exhibit creatures. Ultimately, the ruffed lemurs and the sifaka would probably be based on the same model but adapted to reflect the appropriate fur colors, features, etc. The behaviors would probably be fairly similar too, with slight variation. And I would assume the same would be true for the new tortoise species (based on existing models and adapted).
Probably relatively quick to develop compared to the aye-aye and fossa, for which there aren't a lot of similar animals in the game at the moment. But they could then utilize the fossa and the mongoose to create other, similar animals and so forth...
And I think a pack like that would balance out what people want well: Variety
and feeling like the devs aren't just taking an existing animal, making a few minor tweaks and updating it. I don't think they would do that anyway, based on what we've seen so far but... I hope we get a balance of variations on existing animals and completely new ones at the start!
About reskins...I’m a little wary of them and I’d like to share why. Let’s say we have a red fox, and we want to add an artic fox. So the model is tweaked a little, the size changed, needs are different and done! An artic fox!
This artic fox...there’s good companies that will put a lot of though on making it unique regardless of having used another animal as a base. Like making new animations, sounds and behavior that this fox and not the red one display; and removing the ones that doesn’t really work well. And making this new material and the reused one consistent, and balancing it to the other animals. Using the red fox as a base and reusing red fox material won’t make the artic fox worse.
But that’s just if the company do things right. And unfortunately, there’s so many bad, lazy or just to small companies out there that won’t deliver this result (not you Frontier!).
So a lot of times, we’ll have an artic fox that minus a very superficial visual changes, it’s an exact copy of the red one. I don’t like that. Two animals being similar doesn’t mind that are identical, and you can’t just copy one on the body of another. Some work have to be done, even if it’s so much less work than starting from scratch. Some games don’t even bother to fix the reskins animations of clipping issues! Like on the fox example, the snout will be different, and will need some little tweaking for properly using it on the environment. Or it will be blatantly obvious the model is behaving with the original rig without adjusting.
Well, in short, I don’t mind reskins when are made right. But I’m always wary of them. Using abase is no excuse for not polishing the result.
I definitely hear you here. And the arctic fox is a good example because they are similar enough to red foxes but... There's some distinctive features in terms of shape and size. The behavior (I don't think, anyway) wouldn't be hugely different in terms of gameplay, but there are different requirements for environment for sure.
Given the level of detail that Frontier has gone into thus far with some of these animals (the orangutan, for example) I don't think this is a concern but yeah... I'm hoping for the same thing you are!
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