Vondell's Zoos

[Kreek]

This is a beautiful zoo! You really put some thought in the guest areas. I guess fave uci birds for me are the peafowl.

[(Designer)Vondell]

i'm building again! :) just getting my downloads back in order and testing some of mine that haven't been released yet. wanted to get a small zoo to completion.

 

 

calling it Horsetail Island (Wildlife) Park, because I planted a lot of horsetail in it.

images are under Spoiler tags because they're compressed gifs, and folks with slower connections may want to load them one at a time. they're about 1 to 3MB each.

let me know if this works.

 

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entrance path leads to low paved area surrounding a deep Baiji enclosure planted along its edges and trimmed by Genki's brick fences that I ended up using throughout the park.

 

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moving north, from the entrance, the Aviary and the food court. I use the Developer Menu buildings in several roles in this park. One of them is to plausibly tie the food court buildings into a cohesive structure. I think it looks nice! the fancy stand buildings have the same window textures as the developer buildings.

 

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moving northeast, a sort of Victorian hedge garden with small pools, a duck pond, covered trellises and Crystal Palace pterodactyl statues. this is the path to an open walkway above the giant tortoise enclosure. also visible to the south: the central saltwater crocodile enclosure.

 

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to the north, the only other two tanks at Horsetail Island Park. a single giant octopus to the left, and a pair of Lion's Mane jellies to the right. a central wooden walkway allows for a close look and an opportunity to rest away from the rest of the park. a lot of the groundcover plants in this area are configured path tiles, so guests are free to walk on them directly up to the tanks. the rest of the tortoise enclosure is also visible here, as well as a second backlot area. can you tell I like the Developer Menu objects a lot?

 

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moving southeast from the tortoises, the back of the park is built around a thylacine enclosure. I got a lot of mileage out of the vanilla wooden slat exhibit fences in this area. always remember you can use exhibit fences for decoration too, as long as you're careful not to enclose anything completely with them. and what are a few empty exhibits between friends, anyway. there's one at the far right of this picture around one of those wooden shelters that I can open or close based on how many shelters the thylacines need at the moment.

 

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rotating one click counterclockwise, another view of the thylacine enclosure showing how it shares a viewing area on the left with the tortoises to its west and the duck pond / garden and primate house to its south. a lot of the foliage from the thylacine enclosure is from the No Grass, Please pack (the tall tree ferns, the soft tree ferns, the cycadeoidea shrub in the gardens) or my own (cattails, switchgrass, algae, hopefully coming soon to our downloads). the cave shelters are RDingFT's. Genki & Fern's vine fences get a lot of use in my landscaping in this park too, especially in this area.

 

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to the east, flamingoes and amethyst rocks, and a wooden/brick viewing area. also featured: double-restroom-shelter-vending area.

 

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the southeast side of the park, a restaurant and outside eating/sitting area.

 

that's the park! here's some bonus shots:

 

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(detail.) the parking meter from the Developer Menu makes a convincing quarter binocular viewer. guests don't use it of course, but c'est la vie.

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(detail.) i love backlots!

 

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wide shot.

 

Custom Content used:

• Super Hack
• Jay's Developer Menu Hack
• Zootan's Decorative Fences
• ZZ & Cricket's Ground Cover Path Pack
• Genki's Brick Themed Fences
• Genki & Fern's Vine Fences
• Genki & Jane's Beach Paths Combined
• Genki's Gazebo Observation Areas
• Genki's Trails & Edge Paths
• Genki's Wooden Paths
• Genki's Ornamental Grasses
• Genki's Amethyst Rocks
• Fern's Decorative Marine Mania Foliage
• Willie T's Invisible Fence
• BRandi's Rose Trellis (I'm not sure where this is hosted anymore?)
• P.Rex's "No Grass, Please" (foliage, crystal palace pterodactyl statues)
• RDingFT's Cave Shelters
• ZA Glass tank walls (surely this is hosted somewhere, but I can't find it.)
• Taz's Thylacine
• Taz's Baiji
• Vondell's Aldabra Giant Tortoise
• Vondell's Paved Path
• Vondell's Cattails (unreleased)
• Vondell's Switchgrass (unreleased)
• Vondell's Green Algae (unreleased)
• Vondell's Gorilla Statue (unreleased)
• Vondell's Orang Statue (unreleased)

[(Designer)Z.Z.]

Way cool, very nice zoo!

 

And you used the groundcover paths! :BEAM:

 

[HeatherL]

This is awesome!  Casey's glass tank walls were at Zoo Admin.  I can send them if anyone wants them. 

 

Any chance your algae, switchgrass, and cattails will be released?

[(Trustee)ZooGrammy]

Fantastic!   I snagged several pictures.   There is a lot there to study.  I love your detail. 

[pukkie]

You have some building skills there Vondell.

What a good looking zoo and I loved to see the Pternadon thingie is that like the gorilla and orangutan statues an unreleased item?

 

Love your use of foliage absulutely fabulous

[(Designer)Vondell]

pukkie, actually, those statues are available as bonus items bundled with P.Rex's "No Grass Please" realistic Dinosaur Digs pack along with some special prehistoric exhibit foliage. They're based on the world's first sculptures of ancient reptiles, by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins in the 1850s for London's Crystal Palace gardens. I think P.Rex included them as a testament to how far our understanding of prehistoric animals has come in 150 years. (turns out most of these animals looked nothing like the statues!)

 

 

 

and thanks for the kind words, everybody! Heather, as far as the Cattails, Algae, and Switchgrass go, I'll have to ask about that. I'm not sure if they've been tested yet or not. I've got them packed up and ready to go once I get the OK. I know there's some downloads of mine we're hoping to release a little later in the year, but I'm not sure which ones are ready yet and which ones still need tweaking. I haven't been around much to plan till just recently.

 

I also wanted to stop by this thread to post a couple shots of a small zoo I made to grab a bunch of screenshots of the newly released Red Panda. it's based on Caddienoah's Urbanville Wildlife Park workbench.

 

 

 

lots of Genki's brick decorations as usual, also wanted to see if I could find an interesting way to use Toodlepops' Panda Research Buildings for the first time. if there's anything else in here that catches your eye let me know and I'll track it down for ya.

 

( if you haven't seen yet, the Red Panda has finally been officially released and you can grab it here: http://zootekphoenix.com/forums/files/file/3401-red-panda-by-vondell/ )

 

 

 

[(Trustee)ZooGrammy]

Vondell,  I believe that you are the most creative Zoo Tycoon player of anyone I have seen.  Your use of the downloads is so unique.   Thank you so much for sharing. 

[(Admin)Savannahjan]

Just catching up to your new projects, Vondell.  Your zoo is amazing, such detail, so many interesting elements.  I agree with ZG, you are a Zoo Master my friend.  It is so nice to see you here and enthusiastic about ZT.  Can't wait to play with the Red Panda. 

[(Designer)Vondell]

Thanks for the kind words everybody! Tooling around with another small zoo based on one of the default MM maps.

Highlights from this one:

 

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The brick central structure, not sure what to call it; it's an eating area and a gateway to the main area of the zoo, and it's got a playground, and it's bordered by covered walkways that overlook four exhibits; Ibex, Bighorn, Black Bear, Gray Wolf, clockwise from left. Area gets a little crowded with traffic, but what can you do. That entryway behind the playground is a restaurant. The two vendor stalls out front are food and drink stands. The central area connects to the outside loop through arches to the left and right of the entry. The left side of the loop connects to a dirt path heading down a steep hill ...

 

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To the northwest corner of the park, where guests can kayak around a large waterfall cliff. There's a tall, thin tank straddling the corner with a pair of Atlantic Sawfish in it, visible either from the Kayaks or from a looped walking bridge (these are my steel bridge assets).

 

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Reverse view of that area. From this angle the Bighorn and Ibex exhibits are visible, on the steep faces of the hills to the left and right. Kayaking guests can get right up close to the Bighorns as they come down to drink. Non-kayaking guests can see them from above, from a little observation path built into the hillside from the access path. Can see the black bears from over there too. The big cliff thing and the lake around it were already a part of the default map, and I knew I wanted to keep it and put a Kayak rental down there. I think it's pretty scenic.

 

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It's a small map, so that's actually pretty much everything. I left an area out front between the entrance and the brick commons that I'm building out with educational zoo buildings and a carousel, ring toss, etc; away from the animal sanctuary part of the park. For another day maybe.

 

It's a wonder what kinds of unique uses you can still find for something as simple as the boat rental. Ever since I remembered you don't have to fence them off with buoy fences I've had an itch to include kayaking routes in my parks. One day I'd like to try a large map with a river canyon that's meant to be seen mostly from kayaks -- food for thought, maybe! Till then I just like doing these small zoos to play with different ideas. Those brick fortified walls have me thinking now, too ...

 

As always, I'm happy to track down any downloads anyone wants identified. I think the only unreleased ones in this map are my switchgrass, cattails and my steel bridge set. I should be submitting all three sometime soon, I just haven't gotten around to double-checking all the files yet. Cheers!