Animals laying eggs and realistic sex births, plus realistic animal growth, aging and death

Right now, when animals breed to reproduce offsprings (babies), the newly born animals just pop up into existence out of nowhere. That makes no sense. Births should be properly simulated by having species of animals the lay eggs to spawn eggs from their sex and other forms of birth showing the babies being born from the sex of the female (mother) animal. That is to include all habitat species, exhibit species and aquatic species alike.

Baby animals does not grow in Planet Zoo, right now. They suddenly mature into adults, just like magic, which also makes no sense. Proper and realistic animal growth rate and aging should be implemented so that animal birth, growths and aging is to be realistically simulated in Planet Zoo. Planet Zoo is all about the realism of animals so lets update animal birth, growth and aging realistically for all types of habitat animals, exhibit species and aquatic species as well.

When animals are born, grow and age, their skin or fur changes color as well as having increasing number of wrinkles as animals becomes old, similarly to humans when they age. This is the physical realism that is missing from aging animals in Planet Zoo as well as the proper physical realism of animal births and growth into adults. After the adulthood of animal species, they should begin to age as their counterparts do in real life. The realism of animal birth, growth life and death should be properly simulated in Planet Zoo.

When animals die, their body begins to rot and be eaten away by other animal special or maggots. Then, the only thing which is left is the skeleton of the dead animals. Realistic animal death is also something which is not properly simulated in Planet Zoo, so I suggest that when animals die in a habitat, exhibit or aquatic environment, those species of animals are consumed by the death process of the food chain from the feeding process of other animals or maggots fishing off the rest of the meat that is left on the bones. Skeletons should show up once the dead animals have been fully been eaten away by the life cycle of the animal food chain such as other animal species and maggots.

Please developers make those changes in a future update in Planet Zoo.

Thank you.
 

This and many similar subjects have already been discussed a few times, and Frontier already said they aren't adding it because it only resembles a really small part of the animal's life it's not worth the investment.
 
Right now, when animals breed to reproduce offsprings (babies), the newly born animals just pop up into existence out of nowhere. That makes no sense. Births should be properly simulated by having species of animals the lay eggs to spawn eggs from their sex and other forms of birth showing the babies being born from the sex of the female (mother) animal. That is to include all habitat species, exhibit species and aquatic species alike.
It is likely simpflified so they can keep their family friendly rating. I would like to see more mother/cub animations and nursing instead. But looking at animals giving birth is not something I would enjoy in game or think it is worth the development time, personally.

Baby animals does not grow in Planet Zoo, right now. They suddenly mature into adults, just like magic, which also makes no sense. Proper and realistic animal growth rate and aging should be implemented so that animal birth, growths and aging is to be realistically simulated in Planet Zoo. Planet Zoo is all about the realism of animals so lets update animal birth, growth and aging realistically for all types of habitat animals, exhibit species and aquatic species as well.
I think the devs already confirmed that this is not something they plan to do. It would require a HUGE amount of work for a very short life stage of most animals.

When animals die, their body begins to rot and be eaten away by other animal special or maggots. Then, the only thing which is left is the skeleton of the dead animals. Realistic animal death is also something which is not properly simulated in Planet Zoo, so I suggest that when animals die in a habitat, exhibit or aquatic environment, those species of animals are consumed by the death process of the food chain from the feeding process of other animals or maggots fishing off the rest of the meat that is left on the bones. Skeletons should show up once the dead animals have been fully been eaten away by the life cycle of the animal food chain such as other animal species and maggots.
Why? In real life, zoos do not let the animal corpse to rot in the enclosure or be eaten by other animals. They remove it asap. Plus it is already a thing in game, if you leave the corpse in there for too long, the corpse becomes bones.
 
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I agree with both of you. Animal births, grows and aging would require a lot of work, but developers could make a more simplified version of birth, growth and aging which would bring more realism to animals. For example, eggs could quickly spawn, hatch later on, and other births could be simulated by having the baby quickly appear below the mother's legs so that more realism is brought to the birth system of animals. Animal growth could be simulated in a sequence of animal growth steps in a similar way as to how an animation plays back a series of frames. Aging could be realistically simulated in a more simplified form by simply adding some wrinkles to the faces of the animals when they become old.

I bet that would be possible with a workaround twist. Developers would have to really thoroughly re-think of animal lifespan and evolution if that is to become a feature thing in Planet Zoo. However, my ideas are always here to help making Planet Zoo better.

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I prefer they don't waste time creating several variants for each animal depending on their age. That would require a lot of time and work from the devs. It's better than they use that time to create new animals. I'm totally fine with just two versions: juvenile and adult.

After all, this is a game and not everything can be realistic. What about an employee running with an elephant in a box? Why trees don't grow up and die or don't need to be watered? There are many things that could be added to increase realism, but that would affect performance too.
 
If there were more animal age variants, that would make simulation of animal growth and aging more suitable and more realistic. I am not exaggerating but at least having four animal growth variants would really help to make growing animals more realistic than it is currently. There is too much of a big step between a baby animal and an adult. We need age categories in between.

Growing trees could be simulated within hundreds of passing years, but I agree with you that such a feature would be too much to bare for Planet Zoo because of game performance and also because Planet Zoo mostly focuses on animal simulation, lifespan and welfare.
 
Frontier has repeatedly said they will not add additional life stages. The game simply runs too fast that for some of these, they would last about 1-2 min in real time. Not worth the developers time since it changes absolutely nothing for actual gameplay.

Also, not all animals show signs of aging. And even the ones that do, the changes are incredibly subtle, and the impact on gameplay is zero.

Lastly, there is zero need to add animations (which would affect performance) for animal decomposition. As was pointed out, there is no way that this would be allowed to happen in a zoo. Your arguments are for increasing realism, this actually would move the other direction. And again, zero impact on gameplay.

I'm all for adding realism where appropriate, but also realize that some concessions need to be made since this is a game, and other factors like practicality and performance are probably more important. If something is changed to add realism but it comes with reduced performance and no added gameplay mechanics, it is a bad idea.
 
I personally would just need an other, intermediate or very early (for the primates-thinking that they stay the whole time with their mothers) , life stage for the slow growing animals (elephants, most of the primates, hippos, most of the habitat reptiles, rhino, some of the bears,..). For the other features I don't think there would be a real need for them to be implemented, in this case I think the work should stay with the DLC and the big updates.
 
Like I said above, having four stages of animal growth would be appropriate for more realism. More growth rates would impact performance and the current two we have are not enough. Four growth stages of animals would simply be the perfect middle point between game performance and realism.
 
Yes, that would add realism, but that would mean adding 76 X 2 = 152 new models to the game. If you add two variants to both the male and female then it is 152 X 2 = 304 new models.

With 5 Dlc so far, we have received 23 x 3 = 69 new models. As I said, I prefer that the time needed to create 304 new models for animals that we already have is devoted to create new animals that we don't have yet.
 
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I don't see a need for this and it's not something I'd like for Frontier to focus on. I think it's purely personal preference (and one that asks a lot of developers) and I don't feel it greatly enhances the actual gameplay or experience of Planet Zoo--except, as many have pointed out, to remove the family-friendly rating of the game.

I can remember playing Zoo Tycoon, and then Zoo Tycoon 2, for many, many years--and I loved those games and had so much fun with them. I know a lot of other people did too. And the reason I bring them up is because they looked, as generously as I can say this, pretty clunky! There was a lot of charm in both games, visually, and I have a lot of nostalgia for those clumps of polygons, but they were definitely not anything close to realistic in regard to how animals and their life cycles were depicted etc. and it really didn't change anything about how fun and wonderful they were to play.

I think it's a little unfair to hold Planet Zoo to a higher standard just because it's possible to make more realistic models these days--especially considering that being able to do it doesn't mean the same thing as it being easy to do. Like many have pointed out, actually implementing this suggestion would be a huge toll on both the developers to make the models and introduce the new birth animations/aging scale/decay scale etc. and on the game itself to run all of it. I'd rather use my imagination a little bit, like I have for over two decades of playing zoo games, than ask a Herculean task of the team for honestly no real benefit.
 
Even though I would like a little bit more Realism in the Game, I think the only Animal that is currently in the Game and needs a new Birth Animation is the Giraffe. It's just a too unique Way of Birth to just being replaced with the Giraffe laying down instead of the Giraffe standing while giving Birth and the Baby falling from such great Height. For all other Animals that are currently in the Game, Birth is fine like it currently is in my Opinion (even though Eggs would be nice but I think it was already confirmed that they won't add this).

Rotting Bodys are kind of a Thing already in the Game. They don't really change their Appearance but as Time progresses more and more Flys appear around it and after some Time the Corpse turns into a Pile of Bones. Carnivorous Animals can even eat dead Animals.

Even though I would like more realistic aging, I agree that it would be too much work. It would be great but either the Developers would need to spend way too much Time on creating new Models of existing Animals or a easier Solution would be to let the juvenile Animals get bigger but this would start to look ridiculous after some Time with only one juvenile Model. Maybe it could be done similar to how it was implemented with some Zoo Tycoon 2 Mod Animals where the Animal had a juvenile Lifestage, a subadult Lifestage and a adult Lifestage but this would also be a lot of Work but at least way less than if they would create 2 additional Models for each Species. Personally I would love it to see young male Lions with shorter Manes in the Game
 
I would also like a little bit more realism when it comes to births, but that can be done by having baby animals spawn underneath the mother so that it looks more realistic. Just think of animals born from eggs such as birds.

Its a great idea to have juveniles grow into three stages before reaching adulthood. Three juvenile models would be needed to be made for that.

Carnivorous animals should eat dead corpse of animals like in the wild. Also maggots should slowly appear to finish off eating all the remaining flesh until bare bones are left over.
 
Yes, that would add realism, but that would mean adding 76 X 2 = 152 new models to the game. If you add two variants to both the male and female then it is 152 X 2 = 304 new models.

With 5 Dlc so far, we have received 23 x 3 = 69 new models. As I said, I prefer that the time needed to create 304 new models for animals that we already have is devoted to create new animals that we don't have yet.
Like I said, not all the animals would need a new life stage, only the slow growing. It's just very strange to see an 15 year old African elephant looking like a 1 year old.
 
I do like the idea of creating new DLC animals for upcoming updates. I support that, but I wish DLCs would be free and included within the Planet Zoo game foundation.
 
If I may haul this thread back from the dead, I would like to add one thing to the list in terms of realism.
Please let this game have a somewhat realistic fatality rate, if I may call it that. Meaning some animals don't survive being born, some of them die because of unknown causes early in life, there are diseases that the vet is just not able to cure. Even if it is just a small percentage (let's say 2% or something), it would add realism to the game, even if it is sad realism. And I see why that would not be wanted, of course.
 
What about the possibility of overfed/underfed animal conditions? Visibility noticing the condition of your animals would be a realistic addition 😊
 
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