Let's say we have 10k square meters habitat, but then we fill it with rocks so it looks more natural and generally far better. then we put an animal and what? 5k square meters vanished cause of gargantuic hitboxes of everything. there's even water plant from savannah biome ( i dont know the name) which has hitboxes too, even though its just a plant easy to walk through. What makes me salty the most are the rocks, which are "unpassable" even if they're like 20 centimeters over ground. this happens mostly with animals that have no jump or climb mechanics, but it doesnt matter if even warthog could just walk over this rock. also, terrain built entire of rocks seems unpassable too, even for bears, which is weird too.
Hitboxes destroy creativity
- Thread starter Barje
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I agree. I end up decorating less than planned almost each time I plan a new habitat in relatively more cramped sections of my zoos. When you make properly decorated habitats, you need to make it 2 or 3 times larger than the base habitat gate figure. There are three contributing factors that could be revised:
- Animal space requirements: Which is the most obvious one. No need to go into too much detail. The smallest and largest habitat animals seem to suffer the most from this.
- Animal hitboxes: The new hitboxes shrink habitat space even more.
- Plant hitboxes: As you've mentioned some plants could have their hitboxes removed entirely.
Couldn't agree more as well as many others, as you can see in the topic I made quite a while ago, after they decided to change the hitboxes to the absurdly large things we have to deal with now...
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Feel free to add your two cents there as well because this is still a huge problem when it comes to building and general gameplay and didn't fix any of the things it supposedly did, even made them worse in some cases. So the more people comment the better and hopefully Frontier will listen and revisit this issue again after all.
Please make animal hitboxes smaller
Like the title says: please make the hitboxes fit the actual size of the animals. As you can see in the screens below it's really frustrating when you wanna build a somewhat realistic zoo with backstage areas and shelters only to realize later that the animals can't walk through arches and...
Feel free to add your two cents there as well because this is still a huge problem when it comes to building and general gameplay and didn't fix any of the things it supposedly did, even made them worse in some cases. So the more people comment the better and hopefully Frontier will listen and revisit this issue again after all.
I will just offer my opinion here, but I will admit this is not my area of expertise. My understanding is that there many complaints within this platform and many others about animals walking thru everything and anything. It really did take most of the realism away from the game. I do agree that the current hit boxes of certain animals, are too large, however I do believe that they have stated already that there is nothing that can be done with what they currently have to work with. They have also stated that they will continue searching for a solution, it is the best they can do.
As far as creating extremely detailed and realistic animal habitats, it is certainly more than possible with the current format, you might have to push creativity a bit further, but it is far from unattainable. As you have mentioned rocks and foliage being the problem, I did design an exhibit a while back, somewhat unrealistic in size and scope, but the idea and purpose was to test traversable areas in Planet Zoo for all animals. The design follows the concept of a thematic animal park I have been planning on building. Every single animal with the exception of the African and Asian Elephants were able to move completely around the exhibit, I did have to make some alterations for the Giraffes, Hippos etc, but it was nothing major. In short, after my short experiment ended I honestly can not see how this is such a recurring issue for so many.
As far as creating extremely detailed and realistic animal habitats, it is certainly more than possible with the current format, you might have to push creativity a bit further, but it is far from unattainable. As you have mentioned rocks and foliage being the problem, I did design an exhibit a while back, somewhat unrealistic in size and scope, but the idea and purpose was to test traversable areas in Planet Zoo for all animals. The design follows the concept of a thematic animal park I have been planning on building. Every single animal with the exception of the African and Asian Elephants were able to move completely around the exhibit, I did have to make some alterations for the Giraffes, Hippos etc, but it was nothing major. In short, after my short experiment ended I honestly can not see how this is such a recurring issue for so many.
Personally I don't have an issue with rocks and foliage, my biggest complaint is with animal shelters. I play without animal welfare turned on so spacing isn't such an issue for me (IMO it's the best way to build realistically), but I hate that I have to make shelters and doorways so large for some of the animals.
When was this? I think they changed the hitboxes several times.
Even if the test still applies, the issue isn't really whether animals can traverse such spaces but the loss of habitat space when large animal hitboxes cause the navigable space to shrink when interacting with habitat items like toys, shelter, barriers, foliage and rocks. In the end your animals' space needs are calculated according to this navigable space and not the overall size of the habitat itself. This is why animals end up needing habitats much larger than the values listed in the Zoopedia.
Actually a lot of the complaints about animals walking and floating through stuff, barrier especially, came afte the update with the huge hitboxes, and personally I got way more problems like this now in my zoos as well than I did at release, same goes for "escaped" animals that are actually still very much INSIDE their habitats...Performance didn't get any better either, neither did the issue where animals got stuck, actually happens more often now as well since they go inside an area which they can reach as a baby but can't get out anymore as an adult, which obviously wouldn't happen as often if the hitboxes for adults were smaller as well. Not to mention the fact that you loose half the habitat space when decorating, like others already said.
And talking about realism: when animals can't walk over rocks that are barely over ground-level or go inside/through ground covers like high grass or bushes that takes away the realism for me 'cause most animals would actually go in there to hide or simply walk through/over it if the grass/rock was in the way. Same goes for the fact that I have to build gates and doors that are 2-3 times the size of the animal for them to be able to walk through which frankly makes building even semi-realistic backstage areas for any kind of animal a pain or even close to impossible. Not saying you can't build it at all, but building realistic habitats that are acutally usable by the animals simply isn't in the cards with the way the hitboxes are right now, because while you can make it look realistic the scale you need to build it on to make it traversable for the animals definitely isn't, and whatever you build ends up being way oversized.
Performance has improved after a few updates. My oldest (day 1) zoo became decently playable again, the lag was awful at times. I even increased the visitor cap a while ago.
Escaping animals was sometimes an issue (but only with the oldest zoos?). I just replaced the barrier to another type and switched it back. Almost every time it fixed it. (for me at least)
Ofc I can't say if the increase in hitboxes was the reason for better performance but judging from my oldest zoo situation in January/February and now, there's an overall improvement.
They did say bring back or introduce issues. Maybe if they switched it back it will cause a lot of new issues.
Higher CPU load = can't check it because I didn't check my CPU performance before that specific update
Longer load times = not sure but I think it loads a bit faster
potential crashes = a lot of people complained about crashes etc., those topics only rarely popup - so I think it's fair to say it improved
Common escaping through walls = Did improve, then I saw an increase but like I mentioned only with my older zoos and working on my barrier fixed it (at least for me)
Boxing of animals getting stuck too close to object = boxing was a day 1 issue (wasn't that much bothered by it - still annoying). This never happens anymore
And introducing massive/repeated clipping with almost every object = It says introduce so that would be a new bug/issue for players
It has been addressed, so I think it's something we need to accept. Personally I don't like it. But if people are able to play the game, there's a "greater good" vibe to this.
HeatherG
Volunteer Moderator
We have a couple of threads with this topic. This is the most recent one if you would like to continue the conversation there. Thanks!
Closing as a duplicate.
forums.frontier.co.uk
Closing as a duplicate.
Making the hitbox of all animals smaller
i have a problem like al of us and thats that the hitbox of the animals are ridiculous for example a lion need a opening as big as that for an elephant and even that size isnt big enough for the elephant frontier need to chance this i can't make realistic enclosures
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