I've had the idea of a pack centred on nocturnal houses (or nocturamas) for a little while now, and with the official unveiling of meerkats now truly opening the floodgates for smaller mammals in Planet Zoo I think it's a good a time as any to post about it.
I've spent some time mulling over the potential of integrating time-related animal behaviour into the game, but have yet to come up with a good idea for how exactly it would work. While just making diurnal animals more active during the day and nocturnal animals more active at night seems fairly straightforward, it runs into problems such as when the game time skips between the closing and opening times of the zoos, potentially removing a significant portion or all of the time more nocturnal animals (most important for those too large to be kept in nocturnal houses) have to be active if kept outside. There's also the question of what would dictate the change in behaviour - if it was time alone, nocturnal animals would still go to sleep if kept in nocturnal houses, and so light level might be a better indicator. For now I think it's best just to ignore this functionality in-game entirely, but if you have any ideas as to how it could possibly be integrated, do tell!
With this in mind, the introduction of nocturnal houses would be entirely for aesthetic reasons - the nocturnal animals can be kept outside with all their needs fully satisfied, but for many of them it doesn't look natural or realistic and so you can build a facility to house them in. First and foremost, we need the ability to make the interior of buildings sufficiently dark during the day. I'm not sure if there's a shader constraint that stops this from happening, but it's fairly essential for a functioning nocturama. Aside from that, it's already possible to make a good-looking nocturnal house with the items we currently have, although a potential new lighting option could be introduced that shines low-intensity coloured light during the day and high-intensity white light at night to mimic the reversed day-night cycle present in nocturnal houses. These features would hopefully be added as a free update to allow you to build nocturamas for appropriate species already included in the game:
Coming alongside the update, of course, would be the release of a Nocturnal Animal Pack. Below is my optimal roster:
Given how neglected small mammals have been in the game so far, there is such a great variety of potential inclusions - all manner of marsupials, rodents, prosimians, small carnivorans and others - that you could easily have a drastically different list full of equally great choices. This is ignoring all the additional options that would open if this pack came after the implementation of flying animals. So what would your personal perfect nocturnal house roster be? I for example largely neglected Northern Hemisphere species (unintentionally mind you, just couldn't squeeze them into an already hard list), but I'm sure you North Americans and Europeans will fix that with your own takes
I've spent some time mulling over the potential of integrating time-related animal behaviour into the game, but have yet to come up with a good idea for how exactly it would work. While just making diurnal animals more active during the day and nocturnal animals more active at night seems fairly straightforward, it runs into problems such as when the game time skips between the closing and opening times of the zoos, potentially removing a significant portion or all of the time more nocturnal animals (most important for those too large to be kept in nocturnal houses) have to be active if kept outside. There's also the question of what would dictate the change in behaviour - if it was time alone, nocturnal animals would still go to sleep if kept in nocturnal houses, and so light level might be a better indicator. For now I think it's best just to ignore this functionality in-game entirely, but if you have any ideas as to how it could possibly be integrated, do tell!
With this in mind, the introduction of nocturnal houses would be entirely for aesthetic reasons - the nocturnal animals can be kept outside with all their needs fully satisfied, but for many of them it doesn't look natural or realistic and so you can build a facility to house them in. First and foremost, we need the ability to make the interior of buildings sufficiently dark during the day. I'm not sure if there's a shader constraint that stops this from happening, but it's fairly essential for a functioning nocturama. Aside from that, it's already possible to make a good-looking nocturnal house with the items we currently have, although a potential new lighting option could be introduced that shines low-intensity coloured light during the day and high-intensity white light at night to mimic the reversed day-night cycle present in nocturnal houses. These features would hopefully be added as a free update to allow you to build nocturamas for appropriate species already included in the game:
- Aardvark
- Binturong
- Chinese Pangolin
- Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman
- Fennec Fox
Coming alongside the update, of course, would be the release of a Nocturnal Animal Pack. Below is my optimal roster:
- Eastern Quoll - From what research I have done, the Eastern Quoll appears to be among the more commonly kept Australian mammals at least in European nocturnal houses (not sure how common they are in the USA), and this coupled with their uniqueness among the game's current roster and conservation significance would make them a great pick in my eyes.
- Greater Bilby - Contrasting with the quoll, bilbies are kept only in Australia with a recent attempt to bring them to European zoos unfortunately falling through. For me though there's no animal more synonymous with nocturnal houses than this icon of Australian conservation and therefore I can't help but save a space for it on my personal list.
- Nine-banded Armadillo - Any chance for an armadillo is a good chance, and the Nine-banded Armadillo appeals due to its extremely widespread distribution and varied habitat preferences.
- South African Springhare - A very distinctive hopping mammal representing the rodents in this pack. A porcupine, whether New World or Old World, would also be a great choice for a rodent representative, but I've decided to go with the more unorthodox option here.
- Aye Aye - There is a whole host of weird and wonderful "prosimian" primates that could potentially feature in a nocturnal pack, but for simplicity's sake I've gone what is undoubtedly the strangest of them all.
- Kinkajou - It was very hard to choose between this or a raccoon, and I went with the Kinkajou simply because it appears to be more common in captivity. In a perfect world we should have both.
- North Island Brown Kiwi - With the game's current functionality meaning owls, frogmouths and such aren't an option, a kiwi is undoubtedly the best bird to include in a nocturnal pack as well as being an amazing and much-needed animal in its own right.
- Tokay Gecko - Geckos are among the most conspicuous absences from the exhibit animal roster at the moment, and a nocturnal pack would be the perfect way to finally introduce them to the game. There is an enormous variety of species to choose from and so I've just chosen to go with the generic but large and iconic Tokay Gecko.
Given how neglected small mammals have been in the game so far, there is such a great variety of potential inclusions - all manner of marsupials, rodents, prosimians, small carnivorans and others - that you could easily have a drastically different list full of equally great choices. This is ignoring all the additional options that would open if this pack came after the implementation of flying animals. So what would your personal perfect nocturnal house roster be? I for example largely neglected Northern Hemisphere species (unintentionally mind you, just couldn't squeeze them into an already hard list), but I'm sure you North Americans and Europeans will fix that with your own takes
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