Can we please get a path fix now?

[CISAC]

I'm new to the game but I assumed that a game that has been out for more than 2 years now would have its issues ironed out.
Apparently not.

I spent almost 2 hours yesterday trying to make a non-round connected paths area around two of my exhibits and it was probably one of the most frustrating gaming experiences I have had.
After giving up on that, I decided to expand my zoo a little and add another habitat to it.
I saved one of my habitats as a blueprint and thought "wow, what a neat feature!".
Boy, was I wrong.

Can you tell me why in the world habitats can't be placed near paths? Why do I need to delete all my paths in order to be able to line my habitat with the line where the paths used to be?
To the people telling other people "Oh, you need to plan ahead".
Please tell me what kind of real life zoo places a habitat first and then the paths.
Or better yet, what kind of zoo has to destroy all its paths to be able to place a building next to them.
Are paths not made for going around buildings? This isn't rocket science.
How did this pass testing?

Better yet, how has this not been fixed more than 2 years later?
Why do we need to rely on mods like FreeBuild to do something the game should be able to do normally in the first place?

With this being said, I'll repeat what I posted on the newest Steam update comments:

Can you PLEASE fix the placement of habitats near paths and paths in general? Seeing "Terrain Modification Failed" and "Obstructed" every single time is driving me insane.
I don't want to have to move my habitat tens of meters away from the path or needing to delete the paths before placing them.
That shouldn't ever be necessary and the fact that it is completely ruins the enjoyment of the game for me.

The newest update broke the FreeBuild mod so we can't even use that to fix it!
Why is a mod needed for something that could and SHOULD be fixed by the developers?

The way paths work currently is terrible, it's a pain to build paths around exhibits and trying to have them merge because it'll ether say it's obstructed or it'll create areas where the edges of the path can be seen and it just looks ugly.

This is just ridiculous:

"Obstructed" by what? Not the lamp, I moved it too and it still failed.
Why can't the same paths intersect each other? This makes absolutely no sense.
The path was like this before but I had to delete it in order to be able to rebuild my wider path after placing the habitat because my new path kept auto-connecting to the old ones and becoming spaghetti.

Thanks to this fantastic feature, my path now has to look like this:

FreeBuild fixes this and more so it's clearly doable.
It's only driving away new customers and making old ones stop playing because they have to rely on mods to fix it, which break every update, so you'd think it would be in the best interest of the developers to implement the mod's functionality into the base game.
Just implement it, PLEASE, for the love of all that is holy.

 

[Kolikokoli]

If you delete further away and then disable grid placement, it still doesn't work?
It looks like you have path ready on the bottom path with is in strange angle and that's why it is not connecting.
You can also use fence quite close to the path. If not, then you can use invisible barrier - path can go through it.

I agree they are some issues with pathing system (mostly the space needed under/above path to go over water/other path) but this doesn't strike me as path problem.

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

Pathing really isnt that bad, its mostly a thinking thing.
At the start its weird, but as times goes on you learn how to use it.
Imagine it like an old car, for the first times it feels like a mess and really stupid, but once you get familliar and learn the subtle ways of dealing with it, change your thinking a bit its really not that bad and quite fine.
The best tip i can give you is that no, paths arnt made to be build around. The best way to approach an area is to set down the path to get a nice flow, paint under it the shape you want with a groundcolor, delete it and then start terraforming the area.
Now you can go back and forth between terraforming, building path and if you dislike it delete it again, often also helping with the pathing as you get more efficent with it. If you need lots of fiddling to put your path back where it was before, it propaply wasnt a really good one anyways so deleting and taking a new angle often helps.
Also fiddling with the path size often helps with problems, for example i find the easiest way to build a round plaza to be using the really really wide path and just do a circle, then combining the inside how ever you want and to put planters or other decorations over places it didnt fit, making for really well put together looking plazas with out me really putting much thought into it.
So yeah, tdlr you will get used to it and if the path is killing you, just simply delete it and try again maybe a bit differently. Welcome to the community and have fun improving at the game like we all have

 

[CISAC]

I touched on two different points in my original post: habitats not being able to be placed next to paths and paths not connecting.

For the paths not connecting:

I get what both of you are trying to say but I disagree with this entirely when it comes to building games.

paths arnt made to be build around

Every single other building game I've played let's you build paths around buildings.
Cities Skylines, Timberborn, Rimworld, Prison Architect, even Rollercoaster Tycoon which is super old by now.
Players shouldn't be expected to place things willy-nilly first, realise their paths won't work that way and have to delete everything again to make it work.
This is being compliant to the developers not wanting to put in the effort to make a functioning path system, no offense.

My path should have been able to connect no problem since it was connected before and I didn't move any of the buildings around it.
The pathing is inconsistent.
My paths were both completely straight, so it doesn't make any sense that they shouldn't be able to connect at that angle, especially when the only issue I could see was the new path overlapping the old one.
The game has the technology to merge paths, clearly, so why doesn't it work there?

Now for the habitats not being able to be placed next to paths:

If you delete further away and then disable grid placement, it still doesn't work?
It looks like you have path ready on the bottom path with is in strange angle and that's why it is not connecting.
You can also use fence quite close to the path. If not, then you can use invisible barrier - path can go through it.

I agree they are some issues with pathing system (mostly the space needed under/above path to go over water/other path) but this doesn't strike me as path problem.

This is definitely a path problem because for some reason the paths in this game have massive collision boxes around them that extend super far from the sides, making it so you need to place the habitat super far away from them.
The path "ready" was a remnant of my failed attempt. It wasn't working even when that bit wasn't there.
It's a path problem because the only way I was able to fix it was completely delete every path surrounding it and then placing the habitat worked.

I simply do not believe this is not a path issue.
This was a brand new zoo and I tried to place the habitat next to the path, gradually moving it farther away with the advanced moving tool every time the game told me "Terrain Modification Failed".
This was the least amount of distance from the path at which I could place it and this is not okay.
So much free, unobstructed space right there and I had to move it super far away from the path?
The game doesn't calculate obstructions properly just like it doesn't calculate other hitboxes properly like other people have mentioned in other posts about their animals not fitting clearly huge gaps in their habitats.
This is the game saying it can't modify the terrain around the path because the collision areas around the path that the game recognises as obstructions are way too large.

Completely empty zoo apart from the paths.
It's a path collider issue.

 

[shirandhak]

To connect the paths in the first picture: did you try to uncheck the 90°-angle snap checkbox? The 90° thing is quite fiddely. If it's 90.5°, it won't connect.

Edit:
The blueprint placing problem: yes, that's very annoying.

 

[CISAC]

To connect the paths in the first picture: did you try to uncheck the 90°-angle snap checkbox? The 90° thing is quite fiddely. If it's 90.5°, it won't connect.

Edit:
The blueprint placing problem: yes, that's very annoying.

I tried everything including deleting the whole path and attempting to reconnect it but absolutely nothing worked so I just gave up and decided to go around the side as shown in the picture.
I might go back to it and try again.

The blueprint placing problem is extremely annoying, I'm glad someone else agrees.
Really wish they'd fix it as it makes saving blueprints pretty pointless when I can't place them again easily whenever I need them.

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

Idk about blueprints, never used them before but i can only repeat.
No the pathing system is neither broken or bad, just something to get used to.
Do other building games do it differently?
Yes, but that doesnt mean that planet zoo has to do the same. For the game that it wants to be, the pathing system is a ok.
And for the hitboxes, paths dont have big hit boxes when being placed. Simply putting down/terraforming first whatever you want to do and adding the path afterwards fixes most of your problems.
So yeah, tdlr system aint bad, simply learn to use it

 

[Kolikokoli]

That seems more like a blueprint problem than path one. You can place paths quite close to barriers.
Also when connecting 2 paths, I'd recommend turning of angle snap.

 

[shirandhak]

The "blueprint placing problem" taught me to never ever use blueprinted habitats in places with paths in (just use your blueprinted habitat, set it in place and then build the rest of the zoo around it). And if you don't work with gridded plazas (because your npcs might get stuck there), you would have a hell of "fun" replacing the same plaza (or the same nice swing of a path), when first delete the path for placing the blueprint correctly.

(But you'll get used to do things in a specific order - like first put your blueprint and then put your path. Doesn't trouble me any more.)

 

[ElectricMonk]

Habitat blueprints alter terrain. Terrain can’t be altered near paths. It’s nothing to do with hit boxes, it’s a result of constraints on terrain alteration. Could paths be easier to place? Yes, but it’s generally an issue that can be dealt with. If you have to use habitat blueprints it’s best to path afterwards in that vicinity but you’re generally better off building habitats in situ anyway. As for joining paths, the issue you have above could most likely be dealt with by turning angle snap off (as others have noted) and also flatten terrain off (if you have that turned on).

 

[CISAC]

The "blueprint placing problem" taught me to never ever use blueprinted habitats in places with paths in (just use your blueprinted habitat, set it in place and then build the rest of the zoo around it). And if you don't work with gridded plazas (because your npcs might get stuck there), you would have a hell of "fun" replacing the same plaza (or the same nice swing of a path), when first delete the path for placing the blueprint correctly.

(But you'll get used to do things in a specific order - like first put your blueprint and then put your path. Doesn't trouble me any more.)

Don't you think that if this is such a well known issue and completely ruins most of the utility a blueprint should offer that it should be fixed or improved by the developers?
I don't understand how a community can just say "Oh, you need to get used to it" at such a terrible UX decision like this one.
This has ruined the game for many people (people who need to depend on FreeBuild and desperately wait for it to be updated) and has also ruined it for me because I can never remake my path designs and expecting people to place habitats first with no path guidance whatsoever is just, once again, being compliant to bad game design and devs who don't want to put the effort in to fix it.

"Oh, but it's related to AI, so it would be hard", exactly what AI happens that's not on top of paths? I'm asking for the area around the path where you can't place blueprints on to be expanded, not for the entire path system to be remade.

Habitat blueprints alter terrain. Terrain can’t be altered near paths. It’s nothing to do with hit boxes, it’s a result of constraints on terrain alteration. Could paths be easier to place? Yes, but it’s generally an issue that can be dealt with. If you have to use habitat blueprints it’s best to path afterwards in that vicinity but you’re generally better off building habitats in situ anyway. As for joining paths, the issue you have above could most likely be dealt with by turning angle snap off (as others have noted) and also flatten terrain off (if you have that turned on).

It's still a hitbox, collider, area, trigger, whatever you want to call it, because it's an area the game has to be aware of and that's the correct term for it.
As long as the habitat is intercepting it, it won't let you place it, so I'd call it a trigger.
To me, there is no reason why the non-terraformable area around the paths needs to be this ridiculously big.
I'm not asking to be able to terraform paths, I'm just asking to not have to move my habitat super far away from the path to be able to place it when I can place barriers next to it just fine and terraform the exact same place afterwards with no issue.

This game has been out for 2 years.
I'd understand the "get used to it" mentality if it was in Early Access since then it could be fixed eventually.
But this has been an issue for more than 2 years now and no one has bothered to fix or at the very least, improve the system.
Devs should care about their games more but they won't when the community tells people who point out real issues to "get used to it", no offense to any of you.

 

[HeatherG]

Just so we have this topic already in a recent thread I'm going to close as a duplicate.
Feel free to post in the following thread. Thanks

It's 2022, fix your pathing already.

People have been asking for YEARS since PC came out in 2016. Fix. Your. Pathing. It is hot garbage.

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