More realistic habitat climate control mechanics; seasonal habitats

[ChrisGauthier]

As someone who loves creating realistic zoos, one thing that bugs me is that to make a suitable habitat for the animals temperature wise, I have to use a completely unrealistic degree (no pun intended) of climate control for the whole habitat. In reality, outdoor climate control is simply impossible (or if it is possible, I'm sure it's way more expensive than most zoos (if any) can afford), so they have indoor habitats where animals are kept during seasons that do not have suitable temperatures for them.

So I have a two-part suggestion.

1. Make heaters and coolers have a much more realistic level of efficacy outdoors. The game already has a mechanism of detecting "areas in shelter" that will be at a less extreme temperature than other areas; I myself would be totally fine with the game simply reusing that mechanism to determine which areas are indoors/outdoors for this system.

2. Implement a habitat system where the player can choose to set all the animals in a particular habitat to be automatically moved to another designated adjacent habitat (or maybe habitat section) depending on the season (and maybe can also set the two transition dates, since different animals have different thresholds for what's too hot or cold), and it is up to the player to make one of the habitats (or habitat sections) indoors with an appropriately climate-controlled environment. EDIT: See my second post in this thread to see modifications for this system after @Roxxsmom pointed some things out to me.

Of course, this whole system would be an option, probably turned off by default, since otherwise it would probably break the functionality of existing zoos and maybe even make following the particular goals/constraints of a career/franchise zoo impossible (although I pretty much only play in sandbox, so I wouldn't know).

 

[Roxxsmom]

I think a real issue with the temperature dynamics is that there is a necessary disconnect between the large-scale time passage in the game versus shorter term time passage (such as the time it takes an animal to finish a meal or move across its habitat). Either the passage of time in the game would be too slow to have animals reproducing, growing up etc. (and for money to accrue at a reasonable rate) without days and days of play time, or the animals and guests would all be zipping around far too fast to enjoy them.

There aren't real seasons in the game, and the weather events are always too short in duration for a realistic "getting the animals under shelter" animation to play out.

So when one realistically creates a habitat with both indoor and outdoor areas, when the weather gets cold (or hot) for a period of large-scale game time, the animal can't move to a heated or cooled shelter area quickly enough to avoid the welfare trigger. This becomes a particular problem when the animal is eating when the weather changes. Same dynamic for guest stress dynamics. In that minute of animation it takes for an animal to finish its meal, hours or more of "Game time" have passed, and the game tracks the animal as having been too close to the noisy guests for much longer than the time it took to complete its meal.

I have seen some zoos set up outdoor areas for some animals with heat lamps or heated rocks, or to have a corner of an outdoor area that is cooler and may even have some snow for them to play in. But you're right that heating or cooling an entire outdoor enclosure would likely be prohibitively expensive. But without the ability for realistic seasons in the game, I don't know how to avoid them in some situations.

For instance, I don't know what else to do to create snowy areas for animals that need a certain amount of snow cover, though, and would generally be kept outdoors, such as reindeer. IRL, reindeer in zoos and in nature don't have snow on the ground year round. But if they don't have some snow in the game, they are less happy. Even in a taiga biome, the temps are not cold enough for landscaped snow to show on the ground most of the time (and snowy areas are so ugly when the temp is too high for snow). I'll admit to also using the coolers to experiment with a snow capped mountain effect in one of the new mountainous maps. This isn't because a zoo would ever do this on a large scale (unless they own an adjacent ski area, perhaps), but because I am trying to emulate the dynamic where higher elevations tend to be colder in real life, and the only way to do that is with the chillers. I am basically pretending the chillers aren't there and the snow is there naturally.

It is possible to adjust the area of effect for the coolers and heaters to be smaller than the default, however, so one can make a heater that only heats the shelter itself and not the space around it.

 

[ChrisGauthier]

I think a real issue with the temperature dynamics is that there is a necessary disconnect between the large-scale time passage in the game versus shorter term time passage (such as the time it takes an animal to finish a meal or move across its habitat). Either the passage of time in the game would be too slow to have animals reproducing, growing up etc. (and for money to accrue at a reasonable rate) without days and days of play time, or the animals and guests would all be zipping around far too fast to enjoy them.

There aren't real seasons in the game, and the weather events are always too short in duration for a realistic "getting the animals under shelter" animation to play out.

So when one realistically creates a habitat with both indoor and outdoor areas, when the weather gets cold (or hot) for a period of large-scale game time, the animal can't move to a heated or cooled shelter area quickly enough to avoid the welfare trigger. This becomes a particular problem when the animal is eating when the weather changes. Same dynamic for guest stress dynamics. In that minute of animation it takes for an animal to finish its meal, hours or more of "Game time" have passed, and the game tracks the animal as having been too close to the noisy guests for much longer than the time it took to complete its meal.

I have seen some zoos set up outdoor areas for some animals with heat lamps or heated rocks, or to have a corner of an outdoor area that is cooler and may even have some snow for them to play in. But you're right that heating or cooling an entire outdoor enclosure would likely be prohibitively expensive. But without the ability for realistic seasons in the game, I don't know how to avoid them in some situations.

For instance, I don't know what else to do to create snowy areas for animals that need a certain amount of snow cover, though, and would generally be kept outdoors, such as reindeer. IRL, reindeer in zoos and in nature don't have snow on the ground year round. But if they don't have some snow in the game, they are less happy. Even in a taiga biome, the temps are not cold enough for landscaped snow to show on the ground most of the time (and snowy areas are so ugly when the temp is too high for snow). I'll admit to also using the coolers to experiment with a snow capped mountain effect in one of the new mountainous maps. This isn't because a zoo would ever do this on a large scale (unless they own an adjacent ski area, perhaps), but because I am trying to emulate the dynamic where higher elevations tend to be colder in real life, and the only way to do that is with the chillers. I am basically pretending the chillers aren't there and the snow is there naturally.

It is possible to adjust the area of effect for the coolers and heaters to be smaller than the default, however, so one can make a heater that only heats the shelter itself and not the space around it.

You know, I never consciously realized that the actual seasonal weather changes are not tied to the calendar year in the game until you pointed that out; that is a very good point.

In that case then, maybe the player would choose a threshold temperature that animals should be transferred at (since the game's internal "weather clock" isn't exposed to the player). (Under the hood, the transfer wouldn't be triggered by the actual reaching of that temperature, since weather may have subtle fluctuations that would lead to chaotic transferring back and forth repeatedly; rather, it would be triggered based on when the weather clock reaches the time when the average temperature matches the one specified by the player, or maybe a little bit earlier so that the animal is already in the climate-controlled habitat by the time the temperature hits.)

Concerning the actual transfer animations, I wasn't imaging anything complex; I see no reason not to just use the existing system of the caretakers or vets carrying them in the little boxes, which would generally be fast enough if, as proposed above, the weather clock is used rather than the calendar clock, and especially if the habitats are adjacent, which I could get behind having as a requirement for linking the two habitats in this system. It would be even faster if this system came with a new, inter-habitat category of gate for just this purpose (there are already categories of gates other than "habitat gates" that can be added in addition to the habitat gate; namely, the guest gate and the vehicle gate); either that, or if the game allows "secondary habitat gates" (see my comment yesterday to another thread: Staff, Barriers, and Gates - Suggestions).

 

[Kolikokoli]

For instance, I don't know what else to do to create snowy areas for animals that need a certain amount of snow cover, though, and would generally be kept outdoors, such as reindeer. IRL, reindeer in zoos and in nature don't have snow on the ground year round. But if they don't have some snow in the game, they are less happy. Even in a taiga biome, the temps are not cold enough for landscaped snow to show on the ground most of the time (and snowy areas are so ugly when the temp is too high for snow). I'll admit to also using the coolers to experiment with a snow capped mountain effect in one of the new mountainous maps. This isn't because a zoo would ever do this on a large scale (unless they own an adjacent ski area, perhaps), but because I am trying to emulate the dynamic where higher elevations tend to be colder in real life, and the only way to do that is with the chillers. I am basically pretending the chillers aren't there and the snow is there naturally.

I usually make a "valley" where I put snow and some snow canons or something and act like the caretakers just took a bunch of snow and put it there as an enrichement.
With snow rocks I pretend they are "plastic" or cement or something.

And tropical animals - I just place heaters in the shelter (that I usually built kinda big) and they will come to hide there when they don't like the temperature outside.

I would appreciate more hidden heaters/coolers or possibility to cover more area with one.