Lydiah Moon
Community Manager
Hayo Zookeepers!
It's nearly time for the Planet Zoo: Tropical Pack and we hope you're as excited as we are! But, before that, we're back with another Developer Journal to give you a peek behind the scenes at how we make Planet Zoo, the game you all know and love
We have a range of Developers here for you today to speak about two of our new animals - the Fossa and the Sloth - and how they went about tackling their unique movement styles. So, let's give a warm welcome to Kai, Lelio, Kyron, Arron, and Kilian!
Hayo folks! Lovely to have you all here. There are a lot of you this time, so can you introduce yourselves and tell us a little about what you do at Frontier?
Kilian: Hi, Iām Kilian, and I work as a Game Designer on Planet Zoo. My tasks focus on the animals and systems. That means I do research into the species weāre working on for each pack, share my findings with the wider team, and then feed them into the simulation. This includes writing the Zoopedia, researching best practices for husbandry and enrichments, and balancing animal behaviours. When it comes to systems design, this means I scope out new features such as Guided Tours, Exhibit Population Management, and even 1.13ās new Animal Sociality - I also act as a point of contact for the team during their development for any questions they may have regarding these things.
Arron: Hey! Iām Arron and I am one of the Gameplay Programmers working on the exhibits for Planet Zoo.
Kai: Hi there, Kai Cheng from Animation, Iāve been working on Planet Zoo animals for a good long time now and every packās just as big of a joy as the last one.
Lelio: Hi, I'm Lelio, I'm a Senior Animator who joined Frontier 4 years ago. I'm proud to have been able to work on the original game, all the way up to the Tropical Pack!
Kyron: Hello! My name is Kyron and Iām a Senior Rigger on the Planet Zoo team. As a member of the rigging team, I create skeletons and work very closely with the animation team to create setups to deform those skeletons for our talented animators to use.
So, to kick us off, what is it about the Sloth and the Fossa specifically that made their animations more challenging?
Arron: The main challenge for me was considering how to deal with the potentially very long animations that we could end up with given the slow-moving nature of the Sloths. Having super long animations can be a little taxing, so we had to find a way to separate them into smaller, more manageable chunks which would be easier to handle.
Kai: I was in charge of animation for the Sloths and basically got to drive implementation. Together with the team, we scoped out how we wanted the Sloth to move!
In terms of animation, one of the trickiest things to tackle was the speed of the animal. I got to work and we quickly discovered that they were more nimble than we gave them credit for - at times, anyway! We kept an eye on the pacing of things like the speed at which they climb forward and transitions between frames - the team and I really wanted to make sure there wasnāt one slow blink out of place!
We also had to ensure we were getting the personality of the animal right, as we know the Sloth tends to stay very still at times, whether it's taking long naps or contemplating the meaning of the universe. The Sloth really takes its time to defend its namesake (the word "Sloth" literally means laziness!). We sought out all of the references we could find and were able to pick out a nice variety of little quirks and unique behaviours to break up the animalās stillness, keeping our easy-going friend fun to watch.
For the Fossa, we took to observing the animals and discovered that it was sort of a beast of its own; neither wild cat nor large weasel. Instead, it was an interesting hybrid of both! Due to this, a lot of the work we did regarding the way it walks or runs had to be vetted by our team, and we were very particular about things, from small details like the rising of the shoulders or the speed of its gait, down to the movement of the paws of the animal. The Fossa was truly a fascinating creature to study, through and through!
Kyron: The Sloth was quite challenging as they have so many interesting movements that we needed to be sure our animators could recreate using our rigs. This meant that we had quite a lot of back and forth between the animation and rigging teams where we were pushing the rigs as much as we could to hit these movements realistically.
One of the biggest challenges we ran into was making it so that our Sloths could be as flexible as they are in reality. We would quite often work between the animation, rigging, and character art teams, revisiting each element to find solutions to allow even more flexibility when we needed it, and I think we did a good job with this!
Lelio: I worked on the Fossa, which I think is a beautiful animal, with a lot of small characteristics that make it what it is. It's smaller than most big cats, so is quicker and more responsive. It's a predator, so it has an aggressive nature, but is incredibly cute too! It was tricky to find the right balance but I think we pulled it off.
Work in progress visualisation of the Sloth during production; not final.
Wow, that does sound difficult! Let's take a look at the Sloth first. They're known for their slow speeds, which is part of why they ended up working better as Walkthrough Exhibit animals. Can you tell us a bit about how you tested this and reached this conclusion?
Kilian: The slowest habitat species in Planet Zoo are our two Giant Tortoises which, compared to the Sloth, are world-class sprinters. During prior development, these two animals frequently had issues getting to food sources in time, so we took what we learned from that and used it to steer investigation into Sloths as habitat animals.
Sloths are so incredibly slow that the need-driven simulation struggles with their speed. Even with generous tweaks to slow their hunger, thirst, sleep, and enrichment needs, they would still spend most of their time slowly trekking to need-based activity goals (i.e. a food or water bowl, or a sleeping spot). Due to the way such goals are selected by the simulation, that would also mean a Sloth would inevitably end up spending a lot of time on the ground.
Both these points ā activity levels and unavoidable non-arboreal navigation ā concluded with the decision to make the Sloths a nice home in the Walkthrough Exhibit. We felt they were much more suited to showcase this animalās unique and slow spin on life in the trees. Exhibits forego need-driven behaviour in favour of letting us show off animals that are more static, whilst staying true to and showing off more realistic behaviours - plus it can really highlight certain animations youād have a hard time spotting in a habitat, such as the Sloths unique way of drinking water while hanging upside down!
Kai: As Kilian said, we learnt from research very quickly that the animal would rarely traverse to the ground unless it was to perform specific behaviours. From here, we explored how we could represent it as an Exhibit animal instead. I worked closely with coding and modelling to see if it was possible to get them to move around from place to place and we were able to come up with something closely based on the systems of previous Exhibit animals.
And how did you go about tackling their movement once it was decided they would be a Walkthrough Exhibit? What were the biggest challenges?
Arron: Given that we had to separate out the animations, we needed a way to have them match up whilst still allowing the Sloths to move around the Exhibit. This was a challenge as the existing Exhibit movement system didn't permit this, so we needed to design a new way for them to move. To solve this, we integrated a new movement system into the old one which allowed us to let the Sloth traverse from one side of the exhibit to the other seamlessly.
Kai: In terms of animation, the transitional animations between the frames were very complex in terms of animating and implementation. I had to work very closely with the other departments to get it working.
A great deal of it was watching references of our Sloth friends getting from one place to another and expressing that in art form, all whilst still adhering to the set that our modelling team had built for them, and considering how it would all be programmed. The whole thing was a tightrope act that involved a great deal of risk, but I feel like we did a good job on that front! I'm really proud of what the team managed to achieve, and I think players will be really happy with the result once they see it in action.
Congrats on making it work - from what I've seen, it looks incredible! What's your personal favourite animation for the Sloth?
Kilian: Honestly, Iāll be over here quietly nerding out over how nice the transition between the climbing beams along the Slothās movement route looks. Seriously, all the kudos to Kai for that one! Other than that, I enjoy the Sloths hanging out in front of the heat lamps. Itās a real mood.
Kai: I worked on almost all of them, safe to say the transitions were some of my proudest work. It was often tricky to get right, but something about trying to plan which limb went first and when watching the frames go by as I worked out how the animal would get across was mesmerising. Truly my favourite without a doubt.
Arron: My favourite animation has to be the really cool transition animations where they move from one beam to another.
Kyron: My favourite animation is when our Sloth is in the hanging chair. They look so relaxed and itās so fun just watching them sit there and laze around.
Work in progress of the Fossa's animation; not indicative of final gameplay.
Now to look at the Fossa! Can you tell us a bit about how you tackled its locomotion, meaning the way they move, and what the biggest challenges were?
Lelio: The Fossa moves like a big cat but it is, in fact, not even a feline. The leg structure is slightly different compared to the cats, so the way they plant their feet sometimes is closer to a plantigrade than a digitigrade. (Note - for those who don't know, this is to do with how the foot is placed on the ground! Plantigrade means the creature walks with the soles of its feet, such as humans, whereas digitigrade means it only walks on its toes, like cats!).
Personally, I was responsible for creating the run cycle. We decided to shape it more as a trot rather than a full run, as we thought it would help to infuse character into the animal. It has been great fun to work on!
Thank you so much! And what is your personal favourite animation on the Fossa?
Kilian: The run cycle. It's a really unique animation that captures this strange animalās body and movement really well, and it is so enjoyable to watch it trot along the undergrowth before leaping up the next tree.
Lelio: I really enjoyed working on the run/trot to make it as close as possible to the source material, but it's difficult to choose a favourite animation - the work of the team has been fantastic from every point of view! Every animation has a mixture of predatory moves and incredible cuteness. I hope you'll enjoy it!
It definitely seems like a lot of love and attention has gone into these animals! I can't wait to see them in-game, they're going to be so fun to watch. One last question before you all head off - aside from these animals, what are you most excited about from the Tropical Pack?
Kilian: Shoutout to the art team for creating a really versatile and detailed scenery set. I canāt wait to incorporate a nice temple area in my zoo, and I canāt recommend the modular animal statues enough - theyāre really fun to play around with!
Arron: I am always excited to see the new Scenario that gets released. Itās always fun getting to see what the other developers do with the Pack when creating a zoo and/or blueprints. I can't wait to see what people make!
Kai: The Architecture, it's truly breathtaking stuff.
Lelio: The Lar Gibbon is such a strange animal, I'm really looking forward to seeing what the player thinks of it. It has a very strange way of locomoting on land but, in contrast, is incredibly fast and smooth when brachiating.
Kyron: Iām most excited for the Lar Gibbons and their brachiation. They were really fun to work on and a lot of effort has gone into making them feel unique, so being able to see the final result of all that effort is amazing!
And that's it for another Developer Journal! Everyone give a huge thanks below to all of our wonderful Devs who gave us their time for this, and for giving us such a great insight into the steps that bring our new animal friends to life
The new Planet Zoo: Tropical Pack will be launching tomorrow, 4 April, and you can wishlist it now on Steam. Remember to also join us at 2pm BST for a special launch livestream where we'll be fundraising for charity! All money will go to our friends at Chester Zoo to support their amazing conservation efforts, and we'll have a whole range of fun for you including special guests, forfeits, giveaways, and more. You can tune in at Twitch or Youtube. See you there!
It's nearly time for the Planet Zoo: Tropical Pack and we hope you're as excited as we are! But, before that, we're back with another Developer Journal to give you a peek behind the scenes at how we make Planet Zoo, the game you all know and love
We have a range of Developers here for you today to speak about two of our new animals - the Fossa and the Sloth - and how they went about tackling their unique movement styles. So, let's give a warm welcome to Kai, Lelio, Kyron, Arron, and Kilian!
Hayo folks! Lovely to have you all here. There are a lot of you this time, so can you introduce yourselves and tell us a little about what you do at Frontier?
Kilian: Hi, Iām Kilian, and I work as a Game Designer on Planet Zoo. My tasks focus on the animals and systems. That means I do research into the species weāre working on for each pack, share my findings with the wider team, and then feed them into the simulation. This includes writing the Zoopedia, researching best practices for husbandry and enrichments, and balancing animal behaviours. When it comes to systems design, this means I scope out new features such as Guided Tours, Exhibit Population Management, and even 1.13ās new Animal Sociality - I also act as a point of contact for the team during their development for any questions they may have regarding these things.
Arron: Hey! Iām Arron and I am one of the Gameplay Programmers working on the exhibits for Planet Zoo.
Kai: Hi there, Kai Cheng from Animation, Iāve been working on Planet Zoo animals for a good long time now and every packās just as big of a joy as the last one.
Lelio: Hi, I'm Lelio, I'm a Senior Animator who joined Frontier 4 years ago. I'm proud to have been able to work on the original game, all the way up to the Tropical Pack!
Kyron: Hello! My name is Kyron and Iām a Senior Rigger on the Planet Zoo team. As a member of the rigging team, I create skeletons and work very closely with the animation team to create setups to deform those skeletons for our talented animators to use.
So, to kick us off, what is it about the Sloth and the Fossa specifically that made their animations more challenging?
Arron: The main challenge for me was considering how to deal with the potentially very long animations that we could end up with given the slow-moving nature of the Sloths. Having super long animations can be a little taxing, so we had to find a way to separate them into smaller, more manageable chunks which would be easier to handle.
Kai: I was in charge of animation for the Sloths and basically got to drive implementation. Together with the team, we scoped out how we wanted the Sloth to move!
In terms of animation, one of the trickiest things to tackle was the speed of the animal. I got to work and we quickly discovered that they were more nimble than we gave them credit for - at times, anyway! We kept an eye on the pacing of things like the speed at which they climb forward and transitions between frames - the team and I really wanted to make sure there wasnāt one slow blink out of place!
We also had to ensure we were getting the personality of the animal right, as we know the Sloth tends to stay very still at times, whether it's taking long naps or contemplating the meaning of the universe. The Sloth really takes its time to defend its namesake (the word "Sloth" literally means laziness!). We sought out all of the references we could find and were able to pick out a nice variety of little quirks and unique behaviours to break up the animalās stillness, keeping our easy-going friend fun to watch.
For the Fossa, we took to observing the animals and discovered that it was sort of a beast of its own; neither wild cat nor large weasel. Instead, it was an interesting hybrid of both! Due to this, a lot of the work we did regarding the way it walks or runs had to be vetted by our team, and we were very particular about things, from small details like the rising of the shoulders or the speed of its gait, down to the movement of the paws of the animal. The Fossa was truly a fascinating creature to study, through and through!
Kyron: The Sloth was quite challenging as they have so many interesting movements that we needed to be sure our animators could recreate using our rigs. This meant that we had quite a lot of back and forth between the animation and rigging teams where we were pushing the rigs as much as we could to hit these movements realistically.
One of the biggest challenges we ran into was making it so that our Sloths could be as flexible as they are in reality. We would quite often work between the animation, rigging, and character art teams, revisiting each element to find solutions to allow even more flexibility when we needed it, and I think we did a good job with this!
Lelio: I worked on the Fossa, which I think is a beautiful animal, with a lot of small characteristics that make it what it is. It's smaller than most big cats, so is quicker and more responsive. It's a predator, so it has an aggressive nature, but is incredibly cute too! It was tricky to find the right balance but I think we pulled it off.
Kilian: The slowest habitat species in Planet Zoo are our two Giant Tortoises which, compared to the Sloth, are world-class sprinters. During prior development, these two animals frequently had issues getting to food sources in time, so we took what we learned from that and used it to steer investigation into Sloths as habitat animals.
Sloths are so incredibly slow that the need-driven simulation struggles with their speed. Even with generous tweaks to slow their hunger, thirst, sleep, and enrichment needs, they would still spend most of their time slowly trekking to need-based activity goals (i.e. a food or water bowl, or a sleeping spot). Due to the way such goals are selected by the simulation, that would also mean a Sloth would inevitably end up spending a lot of time on the ground.
Both these points ā activity levels and unavoidable non-arboreal navigation ā concluded with the decision to make the Sloths a nice home in the Walkthrough Exhibit. We felt they were much more suited to showcase this animalās unique and slow spin on life in the trees. Exhibits forego need-driven behaviour in favour of letting us show off animals that are more static, whilst staying true to and showing off more realistic behaviours - plus it can really highlight certain animations youād have a hard time spotting in a habitat, such as the Sloths unique way of drinking water while hanging upside down!
Kai: As Kilian said, we learnt from research very quickly that the animal would rarely traverse to the ground unless it was to perform specific behaviours. From here, we explored how we could represent it as an Exhibit animal instead. I worked closely with coding and modelling to see if it was possible to get them to move around from place to place and we were able to come up with something closely based on the systems of previous Exhibit animals.
And how did you go about tackling their movement once it was decided they would be a Walkthrough Exhibit? What were the biggest challenges?
Arron: Given that we had to separate out the animations, we needed a way to have them match up whilst still allowing the Sloths to move around the Exhibit. This was a challenge as the existing Exhibit movement system didn't permit this, so we needed to design a new way for them to move. To solve this, we integrated a new movement system into the old one which allowed us to let the Sloth traverse from one side of the exhibit to the other seamlessly.
Kai: In terms of animation, the transitional animations between the frames were very complex in terms of animating and implementation. I had to work very closely with the other departments to get it working.
A great deal of it was watching references of our Sloth friends getting from one place to another and expressing that in art form, all whilst still adhering to the set that our modelling team had built for them, and considering how it would all be programmed. The whole thing was a tightrope act that involved a great deal of risk, but I feel like we did a good job on that front! I'm really proud of what the team managed to achieve, and I think players will be really happy with the result once they see it in action.
Congrats on making it work - from what I've seen, it looks incredible! What's your personal favourite animation for the Sloth?
Kilian: Honestly, Iāll be over here quietly nerding out over how nice the transition between the climbing beams along the Slothās movement route looks. Seriously, all the kudos to Kai for that one! Other than that, I enjoy the Sloths hanging out in front of the heat lamps. Itās a real mood.
Kai: I worked on almost all of them, safe to say the transitions were some of my proudest work. It was often tricky to get right, but something about trying to plan which limb went first and when watching the frames go by as I worked out how the animal would get across was mesmerising. Truly my favourite without a doubt.
Arron: My favourite animation has to be the really cool transition animations where they move from one beam to another.
Kyron: My favourite animation is when our Sloth is in the hanging chair. They look so relaxed and itās so fun just watching them sit there and laze around.
Lelio: The Fossa moves like a big cat but it is, in fact, not even a feline. The leg structure is slightly different compared to the cats, so the way they plant their feet sometimes is closer to a plantigrade than a digitigrade. (Note - for those who don't know, this is to do with how the foot is placed on the ground! Plantigrade means the creature walks with the soles of its feet, such as humans, whereas digitigrade means it only walks on its toes, like cats!).
Personally, I was responsible for creating the run cycle. We decided to shape it more as a trot rather than a full run, as we thought it would help to infuse character into the animal. It has been great fun to work on!
Thank you so much! And what is your personal favourite animation on the Fossa?
Kilian: The run cycle. It's a really unique animation that captures this strange animalās body and movement really well, and it is so enjoyable to watch it trot along the undergrowth before leaping up the next tree.
Lelio: I really enjoyed working on the run/trot to make it as close as possible to the source material, but it's difficult to choose a favourite animation - the work of the team has been fantastic from every point of view! Every animation has a mixture of predatory moves and incredible cuteness. I hope you'll enjoy it!
It definitely seems like a lot of love and attention has gone into these animals! I can't wait to see them in-game, they're going to be so fun to watch. One last question before you all head off - aside from these animals, what are you most excited about from the Tropical Pack?
Kilian: Shoutout to the art team for creating a really versatile and detailed scenery set. I canāt wait to incorporate a nice temple area in my zoo, and I canāt recommend the modular animal statues enough - theyāre really fun to play around with!
Arron: I am always excited to see the new Scenario that gets released. Itās always fun getting to see what the other developers do with the Pack when creating a zoo and/or blueprints. I can't wait to see what people make!
Kai: The Architecture, it's truly breathtaking stuff.
Lelio: The Lar Gibbon is such a strange animal, I'm really looking forward to seeing what the player thinks of it. It has a very strange way of locomoting on land but, in contrast, is incredibly fast and smooth when brachiating.
Kyron: Iām most excited for the Lar Gibbons and their brachiation. They were really fun to work on and a lot of effort has gone into making them feel unique, so being able to see the final result of all that effort is amazing!
And that's it for another Developer Journal! Everyone give a huge thanks below to all of our wonderful Devs who gave us their time for this, and for giving us such a great insight into the steps that bring our new animal friends to life
The new Planet Zoo: Tropical Pack will be launching tomorrow, 4 April, and you can wishlist it now on Steam. Remember to also join us at 2pm BST for a special launch livestream where we'll be fundraising for charity! All money will go to our friends at Chester Zoo to support their amazing conservation efforts, and we'll have a whole range of fun for you including special guests, forfeits, giveaways, and more. You can tune in at Twitch or Youtube. See you there!
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