Sea-Life Center DLC

splinter_head

S
I know it's a bit of a long shot but a thought I had was that as a UK company, you could help spread the word of the conservation efforts of the Sea-Life center by teaming up on a DLC.

Not only would it satisfy people's want for aquatic animals and scenery, but it would also limit the animals that are included to small animals like Fish, Penguins and Seals (no whales / dolphins / etc)

There are already some incredible things being done with underwater walkways, but this would add something special to the Zoos
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
While I would love to see the inclusion of aquaria, seals/sea lions, and penguins, there are constraints. Supposedly it's more difficult to include these features than it is to get the climbing frames to work.

My theory is that it's to do with space calculation and traversible area. If an animal spends most of its time underwater, how does the game calculate space? At the moment, space is calculated on a two dimensional axis (land surface and water surface and climbing surface), but including underwater space would add the need to calculate three-dimensions (left-to-right, but also up-to-down). Basically the game would need to constantly calculate depth as well as surface, and transition from depth to surface when the animal is on land.

I believe this would require an overhaul of the way water works in the game, which is a massive undertaking. I'm not saying it's impossible, and I have no doubt it's something Frontier knows we all want and is probably experimenting with, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
 

ChicagoZohan

C
NZFanatic said:
While I would love to see the inclusion of aquaria, seals/sea lions, and penguins, there are constraints. Supposedly it's more difficult to include these features than it is to get the climbing frames to work.

My theory is that it's to do with space calculation and traversible area. If an animal spends most of its time underwater, how does the game calculate space? At the moment, space is calculated on a two dimensional axis (land surface and water surface and climbing surface), but including underwater space would add the need to calculate three-dimensions (left-to-right, but also up-to-down). Basically the game would need to constantly calculate depth as well as surface, and transition from depth to surface when the animal is on land.

I believe this would require an overhaul of the way water works in the game, which is a massive undertaking. I'm not saying it's impossible, and I have no doubt it's something Frontier knows we all want and is probably experimenting with, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
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Height is already tracked. Build an exhibit, cut it in half with walls with a gap in the middle, and put a bar at human head height to block off tall animals bit not short. Check the habitat heat map for a giraffe and an aadvark.
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
ChicagoZohan said:
Height is already tracked. Build an exhibit, cut it in half with walls with a gap in the middle, and put a bar at human head height to block off tall animals bit not short. Check the habitat heat map for a giraffe and an aadvark.
Click to expand...

That isn't calculating height for space, it's calculating height for hitboxes, which is entirely different. It doesn't count towards traversible area as a whole, it counts towards an obstacle.
 

ChicagoZohan

C
NZFanatic said:
That isn't calculating height for space, it's calculating height for hitboxes, which is entirely different. It doesn't count towards traversible area as a whole, it counts towards an obstacle.
Click to expand...
Sure, but all you need to do is say that a (for example) dolphin needs two things. First, they need 10,000 sq feet (again, for example, not saying this is right for a dolphin). This means the dolphin needs 10,000 sq feet of water it can access. But, a dolphin can only access water that's 5 feet deep (example, etc).

Then, as a separate need (maybe in the slot that is used for water for land animals, since water animals will need the entire exhibit to be water and total space will match water space) you add a new thing called "depth", and for a dolphin that might be 30 feet.

What this would mean is that for a dolphin to be happy, they need a habitat that's got at least 10,000 sq feet of accessible area (and water less than 5 feet deep is not accessible to a dolphin) as well as a spot that's at least 30 feet deep.

Now, you could push an edge case to make a ridiculous looking exhibit the dolphins are happy with, like a 5 foot deep pool with one very deep hole in the middle. But we can build ridiculous looking chimp habitats that chimps are perfectly happy with in the game, too, so that part doesnt bother me too much.
 

felinora99

F
ChicagoZohan said:
Sure, but all you need to do is say that a (for example) dolphin needs two things. First, they need 10,000 sq feet (again, for example, not saying this is right for a dolphin). This means the dolphin needs 10,000 sq feet of water it can access. But, a dolphin can only access water that's 5 feet deep (example, etc).

Then, as a separate need (maybe in the slot that is used for water for land animals, since water animals will need the entire exhibit to be water and total space will match water space) you add a new thing called "depth", and for a dolphin that might be 30 feet.

What this would mean is that for a dolphin to be happy, they need a habitat that's got at least 10,000 sq feet of accessible area (and water less than 5 feet deep is not accessible to a dolphin) as well as a spot that's at least 30 feet deep.

Now, you could push an edge case to make a ridiculous looking exhibit the dolphins are happy with, like a 5 foot deep pool with one very deep hole in the middle. But we can build ridiculous looking chimp habitats that chimps are perfectly happy with in the game, too, so that part doesnt bother me too much.
Click to expand...
The issue is to calculate the way the animal move I think more than the habitat ? A dolphin would have 3D opportunitues, which means way much more direction than a zebra on land. And no one wants a dolphin that only stays at a particular height in the water, so it makes more movement opportunity. When a zebra swim, it stays on the same height (head out of water) so it's easier.

I hope they can make it, but I wonder if it would be too heavy for most PC and thus unsellable even if they managed to do it. I think it needs a lot of work and research for them, which is costful.. But I still hope xD
 

splinter_head

S
So the joy of doing the Sea Life Center as a DLC, is that you can limit the animals that are included.
The Sea-Life focusses on smaller land and water dwelling animals like Penguins, Seals, Sea Lions which could all be done with habitats (theoretically in the current engine) - a bit like crocs and gharials. But also exhibits for fish / jellyfish / starfish which I don't think would need much re-work to use an alternative of the current exhibit buildings.
 

ChicagoZohan

C
felinora99 said:
The issue is to calculate the way the animal move I think more than the habitat ? A dolphin would have 3D opportunitues, which means way much more direction than a zebra on land. And no one wants a dolphin that only stays at a particular height in the water, so it makes more movement opportunity. When a zebra swim, it stays on the same height (head out of water) so it's easier.

I hope they can make it, but I wonder if it would be too heavy for most PC and thus unsellable even if they managed to do it. I think it needs a lot of work and research for them, which is costful.. But I still hope xD
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So if you say that a dolphin needs a block 5 feet high to swim in, if the water is deeper than 5 feet, that block can move up and down. Zoo Tycoon 2 managed it years ago, I'm sure Planet Zoo can as well.
 

LN

LN
I still see no issues in regards of movement calculations.

What I do find funny is that everybody takes a Dolphin as example (because of the amount of space it needs apparantly), while the OP explicitly said no dolphins/whales.
Because of that, I support this request.
 

onk

onk
I mentioned it somewhere else, but I go for the option of an expanded exhibit-system.
Maybe up to 4x3 fields in size, with round corners, maybe higher. They have to implement some fixed animation cycles …and even this animations could be , at least partly, shared between the different fish-types.
It’s something different than requested…but on the other hand it’s easier to implement.
 

Kaan

Kaan
Maybe it could be a water facility, a sanctuary scenario, set up on a map completely covered with water, rehabilitating animals, sea lions, dolphins and many more animals.
In this way it is also suitable for the message. each animal can be added to this game without any problem in the protection message, the important thing is how they are handled in the game.
 

Kaan

Kaan
I do not think that sea animals will have a problem in calculating movement for PZ. because they did it in ZT2, consider the possibilities of that time. but if we consider the animal quality and animations of PZ, can be difficult for PZ.
Another thing that might be a problem is that, optimization. ZT2 had serious optimization problems. Especially as the number of water tanks increased, FPS was falling down.
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
To those saying that they don't think the calculations would be a problem, this is specifically the problem the devs talked about during a Q&A. I can't remember exactly where but I think it was on Reddit. A user asked about underwater swimming for animals already present in the game, such as the polar bear or crocodile, and the response was that getting it to work is more difficult than it was to get the climbing equipment to work. Which was surprising to hear, but you can't really argue with the devs.
 

Kaan

Kaan
There must be a technology that will facilitate the work of developers for aquatic animals.
frankly, I can even say that water physics are insufficient for such a game, it could have been better. Sufficient only for land animals, however, in the case of aquatic animals, I think the current water physics are insufficient. Even in the ZT2, water waves were forming in the tanks, it didn't look like a flat field, but serious optimization problems appeared.
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
Kaan said:
There must be a technology that will facilitate the work of developers for aquatic animals.
frankly, I can even say that water physics are insufficient for such a game, it could have been better. Sufficient only for land animals, however, in the case of aquatic animals, I think the current water physics are insufficient. Even in the ZT2, water waves were forming in the tanks, it didn't look like a flat field, but serious optimization problems appeared.
Click to expand...

Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't think it's impossible, and I'm sure since the demand is there that Frontier has been or will be looking into it. The Cobra Engine is supposedly pretty versatile. I just wanted to make the point that it's (apparently) a lot more difficult than many of us assumed it would be.
 

Kaan

Kaan
NZFanatic said:
Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't think it's impossible, and I'm sure since the demand is there that Frontier has been or will be looking into it. The Cobra Engine is supposedly pretty versatile. I just wanted to make the point that it's (apparently) a lot more difficult than many of us assumed it would be.
Click to expand...
hmm, I can understand. Yeah it's definitely hard.
I believe Frontier can be successful, but to this day we have never seen aquatic animals in any game. For example, although there is a lot of demand for JWE for sea dinosaurs, there is nothing.
It was as if I had heard that they had updated the Cobra game engine before. I think they said they were updating the water system in particular, but I don't know how it can benefit aquatic animals. but I suppose this was just an update to make the water look better.
 
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