Please readjust the hitbox of some animals!

OkapiJohn · Apr 30, 2020

It is not realistic at all that these bison can not pass through these arches! I have spent 2 hours building a super detailed stable just to discover that my animals can't get in.
Please reconsider to adjust the hitbox of many ruminants like bison or buffalos (or even every animal for similar situations) to pass through these arches.

NZFanatic · May 2, 2020

This is a subject that has come up extremely often. AFAIK the hitboxes used to be smaller but were made larger due to some animals clipping through things like trees and rocks while moving around their habitats. Then they were made larger again for some reason. I agree that they need to be brought back down again, though, both in terms of height and width.

OkapiJohn · May 2, 2020

They should make a compromise, or find different strategies to allow animals to navigate through open spaces and at the same time keep them away from clipping rocks and trees or other objects.

Firestar97 · May 2, 2020

If the Clipping was the Reason, they should just change it back. My Bears and Orangutans are climbing trough Walls anyway.

Nioell · May 2, 2020

Yeah, now they clip through stuff and each other but also can't use half the space in their habitat anymore -.-

Best thing would be an option to turn off animal collision with foliage and arches/doorways, that way everyone could decide for themselves what's more important to them. No clipping and tree barriers or animals that can actually use the whole habitat.

OkapiJohn · May 2, 2020

Nioell said:
Yeah, now they clip through stuff and each other but also can't use half the space in their habitat anymore -.-

Best thing would be an option to turn off animal collision with foliage and arches/doorways, that way everyone could decide for themselves what's more important to them. No clipping and tree barriers or animals that can actually use the whole habitat.

I prefer a readjust! Because I want both things.

Nioell · May 2, 2020

JPLusotitan said:
I prefer a readjust! Because I want both things.

Maybe readjust and an option to turn it off completely? I think I'd like that one best.

OkapiJohn · May 2, 2020

Nioell said:
Maybe readjust and an option to turn it off completely? I think I'd like that one best.

I believe it should be a matter of finding an intelligent solution for it. They are very skilled videogame designers. Maybe the overall system just needs improvement or extra programming solutions to please everyone. I just don't like the turn it off solution because it sounds lazy. They do it and the issue gets "fixed forever", while I want continuous improvements of that. Better and more intelligent animals.

Nat1984 · May 2, 2020

I’ve just had a nightmare with African elephants. Huge habitat and water, placed my rocks and plants/trees and it kept saying not enough space. Checked traversable area and there was hardly anywhere the elephants could use because of this. Had to make habitat really bare looking. Please sort this out.

Kolikokoli · May 2, 2020

I don't see why we need this. I mean, guests and staff walk through things constantly, so why to limit animals like that?

Jileha · May 2, 2020

As pretty much always, the user option to activate/deactivate or to resize the hitbox might be best. But I am not sure if that is feasible programming-wise.

I personally have no issues with the hitbox sizes, but rather use them to my advantage when creating natural barriers. The best plant is the papyrus. Visually very unobtrusive, but a good-sized hitbox area for most animals. Making the hitboxes smaller by default would force us to build natural barriers without any spaces between them, making them look less natural.

What also might happen with smaller hitboxes is that animals would get into tight areas and not be able to get out again because they don’t have enough space to turn around. This already happens once in a while, but smaller hitboxes would increase these events and might turn into an animal management nightmare.

NZFanatic · May 3, 2020

Jileha said:
What also might happen with smaller hitboxes is that animals would get into tight areas and not be able to get out again because they don’t have enough space to turn around. This already happens once in a while, but smaller hitboxes would increase these events and might turn into an animal management nightmare.

That's a good point, and reminds of something someone said the first time this became an issue. I believe it was specifically to do with crocodiles, and how the hitbox needs to be the same length as the crocodile from nose to tail to allow it to turn around.

Edit: However, I think in this case allowing some clipping would be okay, if it allowed animals to get out of tight spaces. In saying that, though, I also think that the boxing issues we all had in the past were to do with clipping as well, which might be why they increased the hit boxes in the first place; I noticed it a lot with my giraffes, which were clipping through a rock while using an enrichment feeder, and this caused them to wind up on top of the rock which was technically outside of their traversible area, with the end result being that they were boxed and auto-relocated to the habitat gate.