Looking for advanced help with an escape point problem

[sturmovik]

I just came back to the game after being away for a month, and two large and previously stable habitats seem to have overnight developed a permanent escape point problem.

What you see in this image is a large, two-level Lion habitat. The upper level is on the roof of the main building in this exhibit complex. The lower level (inner circle) is inside the building, connected by a climbing structure. The gate is on the upper level. Also, it should be noted that the entire complex is surrounded by a different and larger exhibit. This habitat worked normally when first built, but now suddenly every point where the climbing structure touches the lower level counts as an escape point. As soon as the lions pass directly above those points they count as escaped. I've tried the usual tricks of deleting/undeleting pieces, building new structures, reloading the save and rebooting the game with no effect.

Since coming back to the game yesterday I haven't made any changes to this exhibit or any adjoining areas which could have changed this. Weirdest thing is, the identical gorilla exhibit just off-camera to the left began misbehaving the same way at the same time. Has one of the updates since I last played potentially caused this? Is the zoo file possible corrupted? Any other ideas would be welcome, as I'm reluctant to continue with this build until this is resolved.

Thanks, everyone!

 

[iloveyourzoos]

I'm not sure if this is the same problem (so sorry if this doesn't help), but I've noticed that sometimes animals get marked as escaped if they are too high above the ground or too low below it, even if they are in the middle of an enclosure. If you're using null barriers, I've found that you can sometimes fix this by raising the null barrier height (or lowering it to go deeper below ground). I had this happen in my South East Asian zoo, where my sunbears were getting marked as escaped when they climbed, despite being in the middle of an island and nowhere near the barrier that was actually on the other side of the river. By raising the null barrier up higher, it stopped them escaping for me. If it's the opposite, where they're escaping because they're too low, nearly every barrier can be sunk further into the ground

Good luck!

 

[Firestar97]

The Africa Pack Update caused some Problems. My Wildebeest were escaping all the Time and my Jaguars couldn't use their Indoor Pond anymore. Might have something to do with it.

Can you provide more Screenshots from different Angles with and without Heatmap? Might help to find a Solution

 

[Neviren]

I would agree with @iloveyourzoos. You state that when your lions pass directly above those points they count as escaped. This happens to all my animals that climb too high in a tree even if it's in the middle of the habitat, just like this one:

Planet Zoo Funny Screenshots

I don't know how you guys would caption this, but it seems to me that they are gossiping about the mechanic behind !!

forums.frontier.co.uk

This is just another bug that needs to be fixed and there's really nothing you can do about it except maybe post the problem to the Issue Tracker. There's nothing wrong with your save but you may have to stick to one-level habitats only until it's fixed.

 

[sturmovik]

Thanks, everyone. I'll post more screenshots when possible, but I have to use printscreen-paint which limits me to one shot each time I load the game. Regarding the too-high problem, does anyone know what the rough maximum height is? Next time I play I'll try adding a floating piece of earth (or several) and see if connecting these with climbable materials changes anything; if not, I'll bite the bullet and connect the whole thing with continuous terrain.

I'll post further updates here, and thanks again everyone!

 

[sturmovik]

Sorry to take so long to reply. Had to spend a couple days away from the game. Here's what's happened.

The too-high-above-the-ground thing does seem to be one of the problems; simply adding more terrain below the supports of the climbing structures eliminated the escape points that were showing there. Having fixed that problem, however, I've discovered a second and unrelated problem which I think is unique to the design of my zoo. If you look at the photo, you can see a larger habitat (or at least its lake) in the background of the lower level. This habitat wraps all the way around the lower level and, since it is the older of the two habitats, the game naturally considers all the traversable space within it as part of that habitat (even though it is entirely disconnected from the lion habitat in question here. Now, when a lion going down reaches a certain point the game thinks it just phased from one habitat to the other and counts it as escaped, even with no escape points showing. This didn't used to happen before the last patch; it's just another problem.

However, I think I've found a workaround. The precise point at which the game "switches" from one habitat to the other can be determined by trying to move a lion within its habitat. Above the point in question the information panel will show that the lion is going to habitat 11 (lions); below, it will show it as going to habitat 3 (other one). Further, I've discovered that if I alter the terrain in some way, the game will recalculate traversable area and assign that area to the correct habitat; ground previously assigned to habitat 3 will transfer to habitat 11 as soon as it is altered. I've marked the point where the "border" currently is with a rock in the photo (and, yes, the area around the rock is traversable to the lower level; I know it looks like it isn't).

So, one problem solved, another encountered but possibly solved. I may have to redo the whole hill, but I knew starting off that this build concept would push the game's limits. I will try to post more pics after this but, again, I'm limited to one each time I play. Thanks again for your advice, and I hope this helps someone in future.

 

[sturmovik]

Update: Didn't work, and I think I know why. The terrain-alteration technique I previously mentioned just wouldn't work below a certain level- no matter how many different variants I tried, what I did with terrain and barriers and such, it just refused to become the other habitat.

I didn't figure out why until immediately after quitting the game to post this update. As previously mentioned, this entire building is wholly surrounded by a wide, open-style savannah habitat. This outer habitat is set in a deep depression, to avoid the need for visible barriers. The outer habitat's null barriers run around the top of the depression. I thought I took a screenshot of this before quitting, but apparently I didn't; sorry about that. I think what's happening is that the lion habitat upper level is wholly above the barriers of the outer habitat, and the point at which the terrain keeps "transitioning" is the level of the outer barrier.

As I write this it occurs to me that I could just raise the outer barrier 20 meters or so and see what effect that has. It's amazing how you always think of a new idea or two as soon as you disengage from the problem for a few minutes.

I know this thread is now way off the original topic; thanks for tolerating this ongoing experiment. If I can't work this out in the next few sessions I'll just turn the lower level into its own separate habitat; I think this should still work. Thanks again!