Non-Zoo Wildlife

[Sir Artix]

Frontier has done a great job at helping us make our zoos feel alive, but I think they can go a little further at helping the zoo feel alive outside of habitats and exhibits.

What an experience it will be, with update 1.9's new updates, to walk around your zoo and find a squirrel sitting on a bench or running up a tree. To have birds come to pick up someone's left overs or to see a lizard run under a rock where you were about to step.

I propose that Frontier adds the ability to have free roaming animals that are not apart of your zoo to show that your zoo isn't just alive because you put animals there. Animals have always been around.

 

[coatifan]

Frontier has done a great job at helping us make our zoos feel alive, but I think they can go a little further at helping the zoo feel alive outside of habitats and exhibits.

What an experience it will be, with update 1.9's new updates, to walk around your zoo and find a squirrel sitting on a bench or running up a tree. To have birds come to pick up someone's left overs or to see a lizard run under a rock where you were about to step.

I propose that Frontier adds the ability to have free roaming animals that are not apart of your zoo to show that your zoo isn't just alive because you put animals there. Animals have always been around.

I'd love this. I think it'd be hard to implement them, but maybe as animated props/special effects? It'd be really cool.

 

[Sir Artix]

I'd love this. I think it'd be hard to implement them, but maybe as animated props/special effects? It'd be really cool.

That is a great idea! I was also thinking about why this would be hard to implement, but I think any movement towards this would be amazing.

 

[NZFanatic]

There's a little bit of history to this.

In Planet Coaster there were ambient pigeons flying around. I'm not sure what they did, if they landed on stuff or interacted with anything, but they were there. Planet Zoo exists on the same engine as Planet Coaster and apparently the flying and flocking animations exist in Planet Zoo's files. However, if I'm remembering this right, during a stream someone asked the PZ devs whether the pigeons would be implemented at all in the future, but they said no, because it would be a huge drain on performance considering how much of the game is already 'alive'.

So while it is a nice idea, unless they manage to massively improve the game's optimisation I don't think it will ever happen.

Best we can hope for is maybe some ubiquitous species like the mallard duck that we can put into lakes and ponds and parks with a null barrier.

 

[Sir Artix]

There's a little bit of history to this.

In Planet Coaster there were ambient pigeons flying around. I'm not sure what they did, if they landed on stuff or interacted with anything, but they were there. Planet Zoo exists on the same engine as Planet Coaster and apparently the flying and flocking animations exist in Planet Zoo's files. However, if I'm remembering this right, during a stream someone asked the PZ devs whether the pigeons would be implemented at all in the future, but they said no, because it would be a huge drain on performance considering how much of the game is already 'alive'.

So while it is a nice idea, unless they manage to massively improve the game's optimisation I don't think it will ever happen.

Best we can hope for is maybe some ubiquitous species like the mallard duck that we can put into lakes and ponds and parks with a null barrier.

I was a little worried about performance. I wasn’t sure how much it would actually big down the game.