On the Inclusion of Birds
- Thread starter NZFanatic
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I'd like to see it, purely because you can't build a zoo in New Zealand without it. Granted I don't think it could be done justice without indoor lighting or some way to make a nocturnal house (yes, yes, the aardvark is nocturnal too, but it's not the same by any measure as far as zoos are concerned), but I'd accept its presence purely so I could build a New Zealand zoo.
There are indeed a lot of birds that would be great inclusions. Though they are common, I'd love to see the helmeted guinea fowl. They can really bring together an African savannah area. That and the grey crowned crane, or as you say, the maribou stork or shoebill.
Ironically the magpie goose was one of my favourite animals in the Zoo Tycoon Ultimate Animal Collection as well - it would be fun to see that make a return (though there are other Australian species I'd want first).
My dream expansion pack (as a NZ'er, but currently a traitor living in Sydney!) would be an NZ one, that also brought aviaries in! I'd expect to see at least 10 NZ birds to make it worthwhile though. I'm sure they could do kiwis, perhaps they could be an exhibit that is mostly darkened, but with a small viewing slot? Regardless, the kiwi is only one NZ bird. We have so many others that deserve attention too <3
Oh, and the Tuatara too. Please add them to exhibits
Oh, and the Tuatara too. Please add them to exhibits
I would love to see cranes (any and all species), storks, pelicans, and all types of waterfowl. We have ostrich, so emu, rhea and cassowary would also be great.
And I also love all types of hornbills. They may not need full flight animations for PZ. Maybe flapping wings while hoping from perch to perch would be cool.
Same for parrots. Oh so many parrot species .........
And I also love all types of hornbills. They may not need full flight animations for PZ. Maybe flapping wings while hoping from perch to perch would be cool.
Same for parrots. Oh so many parrot species .........
My dream expansion pack (as a NZ'er, but currently a traitor living in Sydney!) would be an NZ one, that also brought aviaries in! I'd expect to see at least 10 NZ birds to make it worthwhile though. I'm sure they could do kiwis, perhaps they could be an exhibit that is mostly darkened, but with a small viewing slot? Regardless, the kiwi is only one NZ bird. We have so many others that deserve attention too <3
Oh, and the Tuatara too. Please add them to exhibits
Honestly as far as NZ animals are concerned, simply including the Kiwi and the Tuatara would be enough to fudge a realistic New Zealand zoo. More would be great, but then we could all make lists too long to ever read about the animals we ideally want included, from any country or continent.
As someone from the ZT community; I must say that looped animations/flying from object x to y become(s) quite stale quite quickly. Birds are very cool animals, and only doing them in a quickest and "least-effort" way wouldn't really do them justice.
I can understand that Frontier went for the aviary in JWE, as let's face it; flying animals are very limited in the Jurassic franchise and the big focus lies on dinosaurs; I don't feel the same would work for a zoo game. I expect more a zoo game than that.
But hey, that's just my two cents.
I can understand that Frontier went for the aviary in JWE, as let's face it; flying animals are very limited in the Jurassic franchise and the big focus lies on dinosaurs; I don't feel the same would work for a zoo game. I expect more a zoo game than that.
But hey, that's just my two cents.
I see what your saying for sure but I think looped animations are the only way. And as long as there nicely done I’m ok with that. In order to be a complete zoo sim we need birds there’s no way around it. I know there were a few good bird makes in zt2 but the majority I remember didn’t really act,fly,or feel like real birds to me. Zt2 was great don’t get me wrong but animations we’re always a thing I was told sky’s the limit but let’s face it new animations took a long time and most designers today don’t have the time. I’m not a huge fan of looped animations but seems how every zoo has birds I’ll take it.
I think aviaries with looped animations would be the best way forward. I also think it would be best to start aviaries with medium-small birds that are often or only kept in single-species aviaries, to save on the challenges of making mixed-species aviaries. In that manner, they would be quite similar to the terraria in Planet Zoo. Even with birds primarily kept in single-species aviaries, there is still a very good choice of available species – medium-sized parrots, toucans, woodpeckers, corvids, small owls, falcons, large kingfishers or kookaburras, hummingbirds, shrikes, those songbirds too endangered or fragile to live in mixed aviaries and even bats would all fit.
Another thing I would do that could make aviaries a more customisable feature. Like the terraria, an aviary comes pre-fabricated, with a series of perches that the bird flies between on a looped cycle. However, within the aviary there is a ‘flight-space’ – essentially the amount of air space a bird needs to be comfortable. This space can be filled with standard scenery such as plants but the happiness of the birds in an aviary drop if their aviary becomes too cluttered. This would vary among species – while a bird from dense forests (say, a Javan green magpie) would have a very low requirement for flight space and so could have an aviary full of plants, a species that lives in the open (such as a Southern grey shrike) has a very high requirement for flight space and so tolerates fewer plants in its enclosure. The aviary animals would have the same biome requirements as the larger enclosure animals, so plants from the correct habitat and continent would be used.
That is how I would personally like to see aviaries implemented, at least at first.
Another thing I would do that could make aviaries a more customisable feature. Like the terraria, an aviary comes pre-fabricated, with a series of perches that the bird flies between on a looped cycle. However, within the aviary there is a ‘flight-space’ – essentially the amount of air space a bird needs to be comfortable. This space can be filled with standard scenery such as plants but the happiness of the birds in an aviary drop if their aviary becomes too cluttered. This would vary among species – while a bird from dense forests (say, a Javan green magpie) would have a very low requirement for flight space and so could have an aviary full of plants, a species that lives in the open (such as a Southern grey shrike) has a very high requirement for flight space and so tolerates fewer plants in its enclosure. The aviary animals would have the same biome requirements as the larger enclosure animals, so plants from the correct habitat and continent would be used.
That is how I would personally like to see aviaries implemented, at least at first.
I wonder why though. I cannot see a reasoning why this is the only way to do it as people are claiming over and over again.
The game is already able to tell if the animal has a roof above its head (it uses it to check the hard shelter requirement), it is able to tell if it can navigate under the roof ( same as with the hard shelter) and animals are already able to interact with climbable items when there is already an animal on it. Heck, a possible solution is to set the hard shelter need to 100% and let the animal escape if it doesn't have that. Boom, you got your custom aviaries.
Terraria were a good choice; don't get me wrong. Looped animations work for these animals because the majority of the animals in the terraria are animals that, for the most part, don't move that often. But birds are highly active and do a lot more than just that. On top of that, terraria are in real life more often than not glass boxes, but this is absolutely not the case for aviaries. There are literally tons of different shapes, tons of different birds that act differently and are bigger or smaller, and tons of different aviaries that have multiple species.
I find it so utterly weird that people say "looped animations are the only way" or "looped animations are the best way", when we have a game that has made it possible for animals to climb and interact with custom made structures. You are seriously underestimating Frontier and their level of skill here, because the climbing feature in itself is one that Frontier in my eyes still does not get enough credit for. It is a fantastic feature that blows my mind every time an animal climbs a structure I made, and it is an extremely magnificent feature in the game. Acting as if Frontier cannot rise to the challenge when it comes to flying animals is really not giving them enough credit.
TL;DR: Looped animations are the easiest and fastest way, but are not by all means the only or best way to tackle flying animals. To assume that it is the best and only way, is to undercredit the skill level of the Frontier dev team and the mindset they had when making PZ.
You're looking at it far too simplistically.
Look at an aviary in a real zoo. What's in it? Huge amounts of foliage, infinite places for the birds to land, areas where more than bird will land next to one another, perches, feeder boxes, water features, rockwork, and so on. It's not a simple matter of "Roof Above Head, Don't Fly Past It." Frontier would have to do multiple things to make what you're proposing possible, and it doesn't just involve the AI of the animals either. How do you propose we build custom aviaries? Building pieces are not habitat fences and only exist on a right-angled grid. So they'd need to implement some insane new way to not only place a habitat barrier, but add a roof that corresponds to that barrier, with literally infinite amounts of variation.
Then they'd have to programme the birds to behave naturally. Flight occurs quickly, birds zoom from place to place, so they need to programme some way to prevent midair collisions without clipping through solid objects, because the latter takes away the immersion. Then they have to look at literally every scenery item in the game (and all future scenery items as they create them) and decide what parts what birds can land on, how many can land there, and how to stop two of the exact same bird landing on the exact same spot (another collision issue). Then they also have to decide how two birds on the same branch interact with regards to that branch, or whatever else they've landed on.
Nobody's saying it's impossible, and in fact, nobody's saying making aviaries glorified exhibits is the 'best way'. People just seem ready to accept that it's a practical way of doing it, and to be honest, for a lot of people, myself included, it's the preferred way purely from a zoo management perspective (and all those loaded bird animations will eat up the framerate considerably, but definitely less-so if the birds are on a looped animation). Aviaries are important to zoos, but not necessarily to a zoo game. I'd be a lot more content with them as big decorative set pieces than being forced into constructing some convoluted aviary every time I want to add birds, that I then have to manage with keepers, food and enrichment placement, breeding management, and so on.
Thanks, but as a professional developer, I'm perfectly aware of what I'm talking about and that I made a simplification to the solution, because well yeah, it would have taken me way too far if I went into detail. But again, literally the majority of what you've been talking about right now already exists in this game.
If an animal has a roof above its head, the game calculates if the animal is able to move underneath it. Animals already have a sense of height when it comes to their exhibits, so I still do not understand how you think this is not the basis to build custom aviaries? I might be missing something here; but if you look at it like you would code swimming this pretty much is the same way of working. Perhaps it's because I've already coded similar things before that I don't see the limitations or the "insanenness" you've implied here.
And about the second paragraph. Literally everything you just mentioned is already ingame today when it comes to climbing. Objects can be surfaces, objects can be climable, animals don't climb items simultaneously so that they're clipping into each other. Frontier already has the base for this in its game. I feel like you're ignoring that part here. From a programming standpoint, the difference is only in how the animal gets to the point, but other than that it is the same context. The limitations you seem to think are there, simply are not there.
Really, again, the climbing feature is much more complex than you seem to realize. It is one of the most amazing features I've ever seen in a game so far, and I will congratulate Frontier on this massive achievement every single time I get the chance to do that. It is a marvelous feat of programming and engineering, especially if you look at what the community has been doing in terms of climbing structures. It is insane how Frontier has done it so smoothely and in a environment where there are, and I'm quoting you here "with literally infinite amounts of variation".
So Frontier devs, if you're reading this; the achievements you made on the climbing mechanism are breathtaking, and me and my fellow colleagues are still in awe of how you've done this.
I read a few comments here that it was the "only way" and the "best way" though.
The comments are literally above mine.Now to your point, I understand your point of view though. But the same argument could have been made when it comes to the climbing structures no? You can make convoluted structures yourself, or use blueprints provided by the game itself. Frontier has catered to both types of users in the past, I'm sure that they can do it again when it comes to aviaries.
Anywho, I've given my two cents in this discussion. I'm going to leave it for what it is now. Feel free to quote this but don't expect an answer from me
Oh sure, the actual construction might be made easier with blueprints, but not the management, which is far more important, or the framerate. Already most people's zoos struggle when they get past a certain size, even on those who seem to be using the highest-end gaming PC's. Granted with every update this seems to improve, but never enough to keep up with demand. Throwing fully autonomous birds into the mix won't make this any better, but will certainly make it worse. Then it becomes a case, for some players at least, of choosing what you'd rather have in your zoo - big show-stopping habitat animals, or birds? You could do a mix, but less of each one than you might want.
Whereas you can pretty put down as many of the current exhibits as you please into a zoo without too much trouble. Yes, of course a big aviary-like exhibit will eat up more of the game's performance than the little boxes do at the moment, but it would still be less troublesome than a custom-built aviary full of free-flying birds. I also believe there are ways to still do walkthrough aviaries, too, while still making them exhibits, which is obviously important to a lot of people.
Then there are the other things I mentioned, too. How do we deal with baby birds, which can't be autonomous like baby mammals can? Leave them hidden and nestbound? Some kind of incubation building they get moved to at birth until they can be released into the habitat? What about flocks of birds that all fly together? We don't even have that for the big herd animals yet largely because of the hitboxes IIRC.
It all comes down to opinion in the end, but frankly the idea of plopping down an aviary, choosing a bird from a list, and letting the game do the rest appeals to me more than having to do all the extra work.
Same here.. I'd prefer proper mechanics for birds, especially the bigger birds but would accept looped animations.
Bigger birds could work the same as the flamingos.
You can use any kind of nest box for the rhinoceros hornbill as long as they have the materials needed to close themselves in.
I know but it would be awesome if it would be realistic instead of them breeding without something like this and just giving Birth on the Ground. A Update for Birds and Mammals would make it even better where Mammals drink Milk and some Birds feed their Offspring (and the juvenile Animal getting less hungry)
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