❄ Developer Journal: Arctic Pack ❄

Chante Goodman

Community Manager
Frontier
Hayo Park Managers, and welcome to another Developer Journal! This time around, we will be talking about the Arctic Pack!

Please give a warm welcome to Senior Artist Chris Martin and Artist Jack Griffin!

IMG_7402.jpg

Hey everyone! Thanks for letting us talk about the Arctic Pack, we're excited about it!

Jack:

Planet Zoo: Arctic Pack includes four new animals: the Polar Bear, Dall Sheep, Reindeer and Arctic Wolf, along with 200 new building, scenery and foliage pieces - we even have a set of festive scenery! We've also included over 20 new blueprints, including staff buildings, habitat shelters, nature scenery and sculptures. The building pieces were inspired by Nordic architecture, which has really given us the freedom to create unique, authentic feeling building pieces. We looked at wooden Norwegian houses and Scandinavian maritime heritage. We've tried to introduce this sea faring history in a subtle way through the kinds of shapes we used to design the scenery. You'll see throughout the pieces a lot of curved shapes, especially a curved triangle shape which we've incorporated to give the feeling of a ship. We've also looked at the types of materials used by these cultures, such as weathered wood which is a common material used in this set. We've brought in carved wood patterns often seen on and inside Scandinavian buildings to bring added interest to certain areas.

Chris:

We're also including new ice and snow assets, for you to build upon your frozen landscapes and make yourselves a winter wonderland. We really wanted the ice to look real, so we're using some fancy ice shaders using 3D surface tech to give the assets a real depth and shine. There's also a set of festive variants of the Black Spruce with lights and baubles to bring a bit of holiday cheer to your zoo.

Jack:

The most challenging part about the new assets was creating the first building that captured the look and feel that we wanted. We wanted a Nordic feeling with these buildings, that felt like they were lived in and had a history. We also needed to establish a clear language for the set where it was able to stand on its own and be clearly distinct from the already existing ones. With the curved triangle motif I mentioned earlier, we were able to use that to tie the whole set together with shapes and materials.

We also wanted to communicate the cold environment of the Arctic in the scenery pieces by weathering the walls through bleaching from the sun and snow, along with introducing cracks and layers of staining to wood to age it. For us, it was important to give the feeling of history to our scenery, to allow our players to create zoos with authentic buildings.


Chris:

As you mentioned communicating the cold environment, it's funny how development goes sometimes. We had a final review session to make sure all the assets were up to scratch and to try out building with some of the pieces. During this stage, I noticed that while we had a great selection of ice chunks, and the buildings were looking great, we'd overlooked an important feature of any frosty landscapes: Icicles!

Before we finalised work on the Arctic Pack, I managed to create a set of icicles and get them into the game. I think they really put a finishing touch on our icebound villages!


Jack:

The Arctic Pack will also introduce two new Scenarios which are based in Norway and Mexico. In Norway, you'll begin work in a sleepy coastal Norwegian village, where you'll meet our four new animals. This Scenario is based in a festive themed zoo where you'll have plenty of space to expand and become familiar with these new species. Next, in Mexico, you begin in a modern, big-budget zoo with several operational habitats. Here, managing and expanding this sprawling zoo with the new species will be a challenge as you'll be taking care of them in an environment that's quite alien to them.

I'm looking forward to seeing the players have the Polar Bear in their zoos, as they have a unique set of requirements which will be a great challenge for even the experienced players. They require vast areas of land, and I'm sure the community will find creative ways of working with these needs.


Chris:

Absolutely! As always, I'm really keen to see what our community manage to do, both with the tools we give them as well as their seemingly inexhaustible creativity!
 
Last edited:
Great read and am looking forward to the new snow assets as they should help with enclosures for those animals requiring that environment. (y)
 
Jack:

... With the curved triangle motif I mentioned earlier, we were able to use that to tie the whole set together with shapes and materials.

We also wanted to communicate the cold environment of the Arctic in the scenery pieces by weathering the walls through bleaching from the sun and snow, along with introducing cracks and layers of staining to wood to age it. For us, it was important to give the feeling of history to our scenery, to allow our players to create zoos with authentic buildings. ...

This alone makes me excited about the pack! (Well, okay, this and the Dale Sheep! ;) )
I really love the a little bit "worn down" look and certainly will find a good uses for it in my "Bavarian forest nature preserve".
 
PUMPED about this!! Can't wait to make Berk and the polar bear exhibit from my childhood zoo. Special props to Chris for making those icicles last minute, it's little touches like those that make the game special 💜
 
This has me even happier than I was before about the pack, though I'm mostly excited to see what I can do in terms of merging the existing building pieces with the new ones to create something entirely different! And don't even get me started on how adorable those baby polar bears look...

I'm curious, though: Do the building pieces all have ice/snow built onto them? Or will we be able to remove those (or is it something where we add the snow/icicles ourselves as separate building pieces)? That would be really awesome! Otherwise I can see their utility being a bit limited.
 
This has me even happier than I was before about the pack, though I'm mostly excited to see what I can do in terms of merging the existing building pieces with the new ones to create something entirely different! And don't even get me started on how adorable those baby polar bears look...

I'm curious, though: Do the building pieces all have ice/snow built onto them? Or will we be able to remove those (or is it something where we add the snow/icicles ourselves as separate building pieces)? That would be really awesome! Otherwise I can see their utility being a bit limited.

I think some of the pieces are going to be heavily themed and then there'll be lots of "general" pieces that are part of that theme but could be used for anything. Just like with the rest of the themes in the game.

I'm really excited for this! These dev journals are always so interesting to me because you get the peek behind the scenes.
 
Frontier, Arctic pack's the only pack without exhibit animals. Was it because of these?: No insects could ever live and adapt in the always/permanent cold regions like the Arctic. Weren't smaller rodents small enough to be exhibit ones? No offense but that could have been ideal for Arctic pack exhibit animals.
 
Frontier, Arctic pack's the only pack without exhibit animals. Was it because of these?: No insects could ever live and adapt in the always/permanent cold regions like the Arctic. Weren't smaller rodents small enough to be exhibit ones? No offense but that could have been ideal for Arctic pack exhibit animals.
I would really love something like a Lemming. But it was stated once that we probably won't get Exhibit Animals. I hope this will change now that we have more animated Exhibit Animals like the Diamondback Terrapin and the American Bullfrog. Also there's at least one Species of Insect that lives in such a cold Climate
 
The exhibit boxes have been reserved for smaller animals that mostly spend their time staying still in the same position for a longer amount of time. Which is why the limited set of looped animations work well for animals like snakes, lizards, frogs, insects, spiders, etc. The looping becomes almost unnoticeable because they move so little, which isn't a bad thing, given that in real life they stay quite still as well.

Which is the reason why they don't go for small mammals in exhibit boxes, because those are much more active. This will make the looped effect so much more noticeable, and it will be a lot more jarring than you probably realize.

So overall, I don't think it's a bad choice to limit the boxes to small ectotherms. Using any other more active animal would just come across as unnatural if you ask me.
 
I would really love something like a Lemming. But it was stated once that we probably won't get Exhibit Animals. I hope this will change now that we have more animated Exhibit Animals like the Diamondback Terrapin and the American Bullfrog. Also there's at least one Species of Insect that lives in such a cold Climate
And what's that species of Insect that lives in such a cold climate?
 
Top Bottom