Giving guest vision some TLC

ChrisGauthier

C
Guest vision (as in what guests can see or not see) really needs some TLC in my opinion. I'm always noticing guests seeming to be watching an animal when their view is clearly obstructed by scenery. I would think that this could be solved fairly easily by giving every building/scenery item a built-in opaque/semi-transparent/transparent value (fences already have this). Maybe this already exists, but if it does, it's in serious need of re-examination, because I'm always seeing guests observing animals through obviously opaque scenery.

Another improvement would be to add guest vision to the heatmap options. It could work by selecting a guest, and showing what they can see in blue. Of course vision would be limited to within a certain radius, and obstructions would simply be calculated by using opaque and semi-transparent objects' hit boxes.

A less central but just as welcome improvement would be adding binocular stands, which would greatly expand how far the guest can see. Of course, it would make sense to show what binoculars can see by selecting the binoculars; I don't know if it would make more sense for them to have their own heatmap category or simply be something that can also be selected in the guest vision heapmap.
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
Part of the problem is that the guests are part of the path system, and therefore separate from everything else (same reason as to why they'll pass through "solid" objects on paths). Animals can use building pieces and scenery/foliage to obscure visibility but guests generally don't. I'm not entirely sure how this can be fixed, as the objects you're talking about probably already have low transparency values, but they just aren't connected to the guests at all.
 

iloveyourzoos

I
I wondered about this when I saw the threads about the guests not being able to see through the new mesh pieces originally (which has now been fixed). I'm definitely not tech-savvy enough to know how it was done, but it did make me wonder. Up until the mesh, I accepted the in-game mechanics that barriers had transparency and opaqueness properties for guests but pieces didn't, even going so far as to "hide" opaque barriers inside walls (like insulation) if I wanted to make sure guests couldn't see through them. But if mesh can be created that can't be seen through, and then fixed so that they can be, couldn't we do the reverse and make it so that guests can't see through concrete, plaster, or rock pieces?

I'm sure there could be some complications, since some pieces have complex shapes, intentional windows in them, etc., and all pieces could be placed at heights or angles that may be difficult to calculate. Still others may set off debates about how transparent they should be (leaves of trees, for example). But the example of the mesh pieces makes me think that there must be some way to program opaqueness and guest vision into these pieces, and that the guest path must interact in some way in the guest visual calculations that is separate from the pathing and traversing calculations. (Since presumably guests could still walk through mesh pieces that had been placed on a path even before they could see through them).
 
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