Mod Animals

[Fossa]

You know, I fear that Frontier becomes hooked on animals made by modders, and for that reason won't include animals that are modded by random people... Like there is a Maned Wolf and Moose mod, so maybe frontier thinks, now I don't have to create it anymore.

Let me tell you this frontier, please create the animals you like and don't let modders take away those animals, I think modding is great and all, but the animals have a lot of bugs and behave 100% the same as the one they are modded from...

So I really hope Frontier doesn't look at mods and just adds the already modded animals to the game, sorry, I'm not a fan of mod animals, in Zoo Tycoon the mod animals were buggy at best...

 

[Bearcat9948]

I promise you they aren't worried about making animals that are already made by the community. Like, the most recent upload to the Nexus is a leopard standalone, but if they want to make a leopard, they're not going to not just because there's one out there.

Prior to the SE Asian Animals pack, there was a binturong, proboscis monkey, babirusa and clouded leopard mod, yet we still are going to get all of those animals, and they will be much higher quality. Plus, most modders discontinue their mods if they are animals that get officially announced. Like, there was a jaguar mod before the SA pack that is discontinued, and all of those animal mods I just mentioned were discontinued the day the SE Asia pack was announced.

 

[LN]

I'd rather have animals developed by Frontier and optimized for the game, instead of one made by a modder, no matter how good the mod is.

 

[Fossa]

If the mod is good it is only the looks, the behavior is just 100% copy of other already existing animals, no modder can be that good to create entire new behavior into this game. Yes, the Zoo Tycoon modded Grey Fox could climb trees, but it looked horrible.

 

[NZFanatic]

I'd rather have animals developed by Frontier and optimized for the game, instead of one made by a modder, no matter how good the mod is.

Honestly the mods are never that good. I watched a reveal video on YT just yesterday with some of the "top mods" and all of them looked janky as hell. The Zoopedia entries were filled with spelling errors, the icon images didn't fit the template properly, the textures looked sub-par, and the most egregious offence was that many of the modded animals considered highly-rated didn't even have different shapes or sizes from the animals they were based on, just different colours.

 

[Antmar97]

Well the modding community is relatively young, give modders time to improve and i think we'll see optimal animals with obvious limitations. Even if the animals for now are not Frontier quality i prefer to have the modded ones insted of not having them at all. Just think about the Zt2 modding scene. At the start we had horrible swapped colors animal clones, but later the modders have changed the game completely with remakes and beautiful new animals.

 

[NZFanatic]

Well the modding community is relatively young, give modders time to improve and i think we'll see optimal animals with obvious limitations. Even if the animals for now are not Frontier quality i prefer have the modded ones insted of not having them at all. Just think about the Zt2 modding scene. At the start we had horrible swapped colors animal clones, but later the modders have changed the game completely with remakes and beautiful new animals.

Honestly until modders can create their own animations I don't think they'll ever be up to scratch. IIRC, even at their peak ZT2 modders still struggled with that aspect and relied on pre-existing animations (less noticeable in ZT2 since a lot of different species relied on recycled animation sets even in an official capacity, but in PZ even the Arctic wolf has a couple of specific animations compared to the generic Timber wolf).

 

[Fossa]

Well the modding community is relatively young, give modders time to improve and i think we'll see optimal animals with obvious limitations. Even if the animals for now are not Frontier quality i prefer have the modded ones insted of not having them at all. Just think about the Zt2 modding scene. At the start we had horrible swapped colors animal clones, but later the modders have changed the game completely with remakes and beautiful new animals.

This is not my point though, I just hope frontier doesn't make decisions on already known modded animals, like the Maned Wolf and Moose, I hope they ignore modders for now, and that modders begin modding when the developers are ready done with the game, then I don't mind if they make new animals, but for now i just fear frontier might be lazy with some already modded animals, ones that are my favorites.

 

[Antmar97]

Don't worry if Frontier decide to release a dlc pack with that animal they'll do anyway, with mod or without mod. Like @Bearcat9948 said there were some modded animals before the official dlc release, but Frontier ignored them, so no reason to worry, and i hope to see your favorites animals too in the game one day.

 

[Markiz]

Honestly until modders can create their own animations I don't think they'll ever be up to scratch. IIRC, even at their peak ZT2 modders still struggled with that aspect and relied on pre-existing animations (less noticeable in ZT2 since a lot of different species relied on recycled animation sets even in an official capacity, but in PZ even the Arctic wolf has a couple of specific animations compared to the generic Timber wolf).

Aside from lord HENDRIX of course. His animations game was on another level

 

[Antmar97]

I'm not in the right position to speak about animation and all tecnical process, because i've never been a modder in both games, but even Zt2 had custom animations (I remember the snakes one from Hendrix if i'm not wrong). So i think one day we may see custom animals from scratch..who knows

 

[Swjosdotschka]

My bigger fear as someone who supports mods is, that all modders move over to PK.

But I can assure you, Frontier doesn't give a poop about what animals modders created already. There will always be people who don't want to have mods in their games. And even me, mod-cheerleader, prefer official animals.
Plus, I'm pretty sure we will eventually see PZ on consoles and they can't use mods, so Frontier wants to cater them as well. And they will not make console exclusive animals.

 

[SanRazo618]

Honestly until modders can create their own animations I don't think they'll ever be up to scratch. IIRC, even at their peak ZT2 modders still struggled with that aspect and relied on pre-existing animations (less noticeable in ZT2 since a lot of different species relied on recycled animation sets even in an official capacity, but in PZ even the Arctic wolf has a couple of specific animations compared to the generic Timber wolf).

Na there were whole new rigs made like bats and actual theropods. The animations were top notch

 

[Bearcat9948]

Honestly until modders can create their own animations I don't think they'll ever be up to scratch. IIRC, even at their peak ZT2 modders still struggled with that aspect and relied on pre-existing animations (less noticeable in ZT2 since a lot of different species relied on recycled animation sets even in an official capacity, but in PZ even the Arctic wolf has a couple of specific animations compared to the generic Timber wolf).

It just depends. There is an amateur modder that has created a red wolf standalone and a Mexican gray wolf standalone. Both are subspecies of gray wolf that don't require unique animations, just some very slight edits to the model and ofc new skin coloration. It's not even necessary to mess with the texturing. It really just depends on the type of animal you're looking to make and what type of rig you're basing it on.

Like, I don't want to use any shark mods because they're currently based on caiman models and the animations suffer because of that. I'm guessing that's more the type of thing you're talking about here.

My thing with mods is I will always prefer official animals, but it's so great to have them in order to fill in niche spots. Like, imagine how ****ed off people would be if Frontier made a North America pack and either the Mexican or red wolf were included in it. Much better to let someone mod it in than to waste their time making an official one.

 

[Firestar97]

I don't think it would make Sense to not create a Animal because of Mods. As far as I know there wasn't a Way found yet to make modded Animals usable in Franchise-Mode. I think many People would prefer official Animals because of this Fact

 

[Antmar97]

My bigger fear as someone who supports mods is, that all modders move over to PK.

After seeing some videos of the alpha i'm starting to have this fear too, Pk has already an improved path system, better construction and terrain tools, everything looks so easy and less time consuming to build, and even the developers are mod friendly. I think that the only thing who can carry PZ over Pk is the presence of Animals over Dinosaurs. My big dream would be the porting of all PZ animals to PK to have the ultimate Zoo sim game

 

[Swjosdotschka]

After seeing some videos of the alpha i'm starting to have this fear too, Pk has already an improved path system, better construction and terrain tools, everything looks so easy and less time consuming to build, and even the developers are mod friendly. I think that the only thing who can carry PZ over Pk is the presence of Animals over Dinosaurs. My big dream would be the porting of all PZ animals to PK to have the ultimate Zoo sim game

They will eventually mod in real animals because it is mod friendly. to me, however, being dependent on mods alone is the same as being dependend on developers alone. Not an option.

Spoiler: Chrm

The building and path system of PK is actually that superior, that I stopped watching PK content after the first day, to not get frustrated with PZ. I'll give PK content another try, just... not now.

 

[NL_Mutso]

My thing with mods is I will always prefer official animals, but it's so great to have them in order to fill in niche spots. Like, imagine how ed off people would be if Frontier made a North America pack and either the Mexican or red wolf were included in it. Much better to let someone mod it in than to waste their time making an official one.

That's a big difference in modding, but going for the subspecies is maybe the best the thing to do. They look pretty good overall.
The earlier provided examples; binturong, proboscis monkey, babirusa and clouded leopard - sry for the modder but they look bad.
And some other new species as well, the red fox is just horrible.
But the moose and Przewalski's horse look good, if you ignore the sounds/behaviour etc.. (which you should do atm)

I just hope frontier doesn't make decisions on already known modded animals, like the Maned Wolf and Moose,

Agree, don't think Frontier should look too much at modded animals. Subspecies/clones could be a reason to look at them.
We'll see what happens with upcoming DLC. This DLC release is close to the new species modding, imo too soon to tell.

My bigger fear as someone who supports mods is, that all modders move over to PK

Who knows how long it will take for people to make modding for PK. Or when they will create their first DLC
Early access is not the best time to start modding imo. Who knows how much versions you'll have to fix on 1 dino before the game becomes an official release (let's be fair - EA is a guessing game). I'm not sure a modder is waiting to fix their previous works over and over.

After seeing some videos of the alpha i'm starting to have this fear too, Pk has already an improved path system, better construction and terrain tools, everything looks so easy and less time consuming to build, and even the developers are mod friendly

It's clear they looked at PZ/PC and improved their system, which a lot of games do. (stardew valley did the same with harvest moon and TemTem somewhat with pokemon).
I'm not sure if this alpha thing is the smart thing to do. It's not the biggest community and atm. a lot of people want to play the beta version of this game.
That's not a possibility - first opportunity is EA and that could take 4-6 months. (estimated release EA = Q3). Are they able to keep their potential audience interested in the meanwhile?
(the six species in the game look great for an alpha version of the game !)

 

[Antmar97]

They clearly had a look on Pz (even the loading screen is the same lol), but they took the problems that Pz has and fixed them in the alpha, and we don't know if we will ever be able to see these improvements in Pz. This already makes Pk a better game from the building prospective. Speaking of their audience i don't think they'll make better numbers than Pz, but i can already see a lot of players (Builders and dino lovers) migrate to Pk and others (like me) probably will switch between the two games.
Yeah they did a very good job with the six species and with the alpha in general, good presentation of the game.

 

[NL_Mutso]

and we don't know if we will ever be able to see these improvements in Pz

There's a nice comment in the update 1.5 thread. "Just because other games do something doesn't mean every game should do it the same way".
I think they settle with this building system (maybe some minor improvements) but a next Planet game or Frontier building game will overhaul/upgrade their PZ building.
From the start I thought the water terraforming is far superior in PK, especially when you adjust an existing habitat in PZ - you run into different issues.

Speaking of their audience i don't think they'll make better numbers than Pz, but i can already see a lot of players (Builders and dino lovers) migrate to Pk and others (like me) probably will switch between the two games.

There has to be some interest in dinos or extinct animals to keep building and playing.
The biggest issue I see are people who are interested now - can't build along with these YT videos.
And it took them a while to get to this alpha stage, curious to see what EA stage will be.