Planet zoo should work with the modders ?

[Willyphua]

Hi everyone , Hi Dear planet zoo team member , crews , staff and admin


here is my suggestion .

i would like to suggest some of the Following


1. I hope and wish that planet zoo can work with some private Modders with more animal packs ... there are many modder that are very expert and making animal which are many of our Wishlist animal . i was shocked and happy to see that are so many animal that i like in some modding website . or can come out with carnivore packs , herbivore packs with 10 animals per pack

2. More realistic biome floor such as we can paint our habitats using biome brush tool like in zootycoon 2 eg ,Rainforest map / trees and floor , savannah , desert biome

3. More realistic zoo keeper , vets and cleaner behavior such as when there are dangerous animal in the habitats , the zookeeper will not enter the habitats to clean up the habitat. i believe in real life zoo no zookeeper will enter the habitat to cleanup the habitats where there are Tiger , Lion ,Jauguar , Leopard , Wolves , Big bears , Hyenas are inside the habitat . i hope there will be a slider that we can choose to turn on and turn off zookeeper access into the individual habitat.

4. Realistic Thunder , Lightning , Thunderstorm and heavy rain / snow .

soon to be update with more

 

[Kolikokoli]

1. This is not how it works.
2. This is not Zoo tycoon. It's a different engine.
3. Although it is more realistic as you say, I can't imagine how it would work in PZ. I can imagine if animals would be boxed with keeper inside but keepers go in habitats all the time so animals would be boxed all the time.
4. I would appreciate weather overhaul. I just hate that it snows in summer. Due to this I have weather turned off.

 

[Willyphua]

1. This is not how it works.
2. This is not Zoo tycoon. It's a different engine.
3. Although it is more realistic as you say, I can't imagine how it would work in PZ. I can imagine if animals would be boxed with keeper inside but keepers go in habitats all the time so animals would be boxed all the time.
4. I would appreciate weather overhaul. I just hate that it snows in summer. Due to this I have weather turned off.

3. maybe we will need to build a holding areas / dens/off exhibit area in order to have this option to turn on or off ... with sliding door . i believe in zoo real life the dangerous animal are usually confined and led to their off exhibit sleeping area via sliding door when the zoo is close .


i saw some player have build a dens/off exhibit for their animal . more realistic imho

 

[Kolikokoli]

3. maybe we will need to build a holding areas / dens/off exhibit area in order to have this option to turn on or off ... with sliding door . i believe in zoo real life the dangerous animal are usually confined and led to their off exhibit sleeping area via sliding door when the zoo is close .


i saw some player have build a dens/off exhibit for their animal . more realistic imho

can't imagine the size of that thing based on animals height boxes and land requirements. I do build backstage areas, where I imagine animals would be locked in during maintanance of their habitats, but I keep it open so it does not make animals unhappy.

 

[shirandhak]

3. More realistic zoo keeper , vets and cleaner behavior such as when there are dangerous animal in the habitats , the zookeeper will not enter the habitats to clean up the habitat. i believe in real life zoo no zookeeper will enter the habitat to cleanup the habitats where there are Tiger , Lion ,Jauguar , Leopard , Wolves , Big bears , Hyenas are inside the habitat . i hope there will be a slider that we can choose to turn on and turn off zookeeper access into the individual habitat.

3. The behaviour of keepers may be unrealistic ingame now, but it is consequently so: In RL no keeper uses a vaccuum cleaner to clean away the poo (and what about the nonexistent pee, by the way?) And no keeper in RL does a 3 m high jump in the air, if there is nothing to do. No vet or caretaker carries an elephant in a 30 cm box around the zoo in RL.
So ingame they go into habitats of dangerous animals? So what? No use to demand realistic behaviour of the staff in only one aspect, is it?

 

[Willyphua]

3. The behaviour of keepers may be unrealistic ingame now, but it is consequently so: In RL no keeper uses a vaccuum cleaner to clean away the poo (and what about the nonexistent pee, by the way?) And no keeper in RL does a 3 m high jump in the air, if there is nothing to do. No vet or caretaker carries an elephant in a 30 cm box around the zoo in RL.
So ingame they go into habitats of dangerous animals? So what? No use to demand realistic behaviour of the staff in only one aspect, is it?

I am not demanding . I am only just suggesting . Since planet zoo when they first started this game . They say everything will be as realistic as possible to real life . So this is my own thoughts . I am not hard forcing them to accept it btw .

 

[NZFanatic]

I am not demanding . I am only just suggesting . Since planet zoo when they first started this game . They say everything will be as realistic as possible to real life . So this is my own thoughts . I am not hard forcing them to accept it btw .

Games have limitations. Compromises have to be made. The in-game time moves too quickly to allow for the kind of overhaul you're proposing; even if there was a mechanism to move dangerous animals out of the habitat whenever a keeper came by, this would be happening constantly, every few real-life minutes.

As for your first point about modders, Frontier will never work 'with' the modders. They don't support modding. There are several reasons for this, some of which are due to liability issues. If a mod breaks the game, and Frontier supports the modder, then suddenly it's Frontier's problem. On top of that, if they support mods, they have to tailor their updates to mod-capabilities. If they start 'hiring' modders to create content, then it also necessitates forming legally binding contracts, and negotiations with interested parties. Why do that when the hired team on-hand is already doing the job? And speaking of mods, quantity does not trump quality. The biggest thing with new species mods is that while they look nice, they aren't actually new animals, they're just cloned versions of old animals with a new model. No new sounds, no new animations, no integration into the game's modes. They're great if you don't mind deleting and reinstalling every three months, and if you are willing to ignore the gap in quality between official content and modded content, but in reality a baboon and a mandrill are very different, whereas the modded baboon is just a mandrill that looks like a baboon.

 

[Atiggerx33]

1. This is not how it works.
2. This is not Zoo tycoon. It's a different engine.
3. Although it is more realistic as you say, I can't imagine how it would work in PZ. I can imagine if animals would be boxed with keeper inside but keepers go in habitats all the time so animals would be boxed all the time.
4. I would appreciate weather overhaul. I just hate that it snows in summer. Due to this I have weather turned off.

I have honestly wondered why a game hasn't been crowd sourced. Basically the devs would write the code, and whatnot, give a list of assets they want (so as an example for PZ animals, themes and the assets [African theme: bench x2, bin x2, donation box, table x2, etc.]), release full mod tools and then let modders go to town. Hold contests where "create an African animal pack containing Species A, B, C, D, & E," if you enter the contest your created work is owned by Frontier and the winner gets paid appropriately for their work.

I think it would be a pretty cool experiment and I'm surprised a small indie dev hasn't tried it.

 

[Lelka]

I think it would be a pretty cool experiment and I'm surprised a small indie dev hasn't tried it.

I doubt Frontier Development is 'a small indie dev'...

 

[Doran]

I doubt Frontier Development is 'a small indie dev'...

Smol indie company cant find time for tapir

 

[Atiggerx33]

I doubt Frontier Development is 'a small indie dev'...

I wasn't trying to imply Frontier is! I meant it to mean that while I'm not overly surprised Frontier hasn't done this, being a decent sized studio, that I was surprised that a smaller indie studio hadn't tried it. They should be prepared to do the work themselves of course, but opening it up to a modding contest like that (with fans voting for which made it into the game) would be interesting; I'd love to see how something like that turned out.

 

[XT]

Open source ; because

a: making a game costs money, staff need to be paid. And copyright starts getting very muddled when you have a mix like this.

b ; Some modder somewhere might/would start fussing 'cause some people are paid and they aren't - this sort of volunteer/paid mix has eventually resulted in legal claims in the past (in the fanfic and fanart communities).

c ; Liability; some bad mod damages a person's computer (or they think it did) and they make the 'official' part of the game liable - or, an unethical person uses a mod download to dowload a virus.

And finally, there are quite a few games that have robust modding communities (Elder Scrolls, anyone) but even so, there is a clear divide between mods and official content.

 

[Frobacca]

I like the idea of more realistic keeping schedule, moving animals off exhibit or to a different holding but this would also be somewhat pointless with how time works in the game. In my experience a lot of places try and get everything done right before and after being open to make sure everything is on display. Cleaning outsides areas before and after opening and closing so that everything is on display as much as possible. This also happens DAILY in zoos not monthly. Also since it never really shows times of being closed and the park empty, you wouldn't see much. I also think that for majority of people playing this game it would not really be anything noticed, it would only amuse a small minority of players.

I agree with NZ, compromises have to be made and, as much as I would like to see this, I don't think this is something that NEEDs to be done.