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Zookini 1.0.0

Particle
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About This File

1) What is zookini?

Zookini is a launcher program for zoo tycoon 1.  What zookini does is it edits the zoo.ini file, which is a file that zoo tycoon 1 reads at load time, and where it stores many of your game settings, including the video and sound options.

 

2) How do I install it?

Put zookini in it's own folder anywhere on your hard drive.  Run it.

 

3) Why edit zoo.ini?

The reason I made this program is because there are some very cool things you can do with the zoo.ini that you cannot do in the game option screen inside the game.  The first thing is that you can set the screensize to other sizes than the 3 that are available in game, including widescreen options for modern monitors.  The zookini program looks at your windows video options, decides which screensizes that are available are ok to use with zoo tycoon, and then puts them in a dropdown list for you to select.  Also, if you choose windowed mode, it only shows you the screensizes that will work with windowed mode.

 

Other things zookini does:
-  Video options like updaterate for smoother graphics.
-  Sound Options like volume, and menu volume, as well as actually allowing you to change the theme song.
-  Edit the boot path so you can add your own mod folders.
-  Skip the startup movies.
-  Change the maximum guests allowed in a zoo.
-  Change the startup cash and maximum cash for freeform mode to up to 2 billion+ dollars.

 

4) Sounds complicated?

I made this program as easy to use as possible.  The first thing it will do is try to automatically find your zoo.ini file.  If it is in your zoo tycoon install folder in program files (which it usually is) it should find it just fine.  If however you have installed the game in another place, or if when you installed it, it did not have admin permissions, then it may be that you will have to search for the zoo.ini file on your own.  If that is the case, just click on Load zoo.ini and navigate to the folder where your zoo.ini is located.  (The usual places for this is in your user folder: localappdata).  Once it finds the zoo.ini file, Zookini first makes a backup of your zoo.ini file and names it zoo.ini.original.  This file is never overwritten by zookini.  If you ever feel like you just want to start over with this original zoo.ini file, then you can click the Full zoo.ini Reset Button, and it will copy that zoo.ini.original to zoo.ini for you.  Also, if you do ever save changes, then it will make a backup of the last zoo.ini file you had called zoo.ini.undo, which you can restore by hitting the Undo Last Save button.  These 2 backups make it incredibly safe to edit your zoo.ini file without any risk.  Also, there is error checking on all the input fields, to keep you from entering bad values that aren't allowed by the game, but if it somehow did happen, the game would still launch just fine (it would just replace the bad values with default values).  I promise that this is a very safe and easy program to use, so don't be afraid to give it a try.  :)

 

5)  What is Drawrate, and Updaterate?

You don't really need to change the DrawRate( which is basically max fps) unless you have a monitor that allows for a very high refresh rate, but it won't hurt anything to do it.  UpdateRate is how many times per second the game updates the graphics. Try changing the UpdateRate to 30 or even 60 if your computer is fairly fast, and you'll notice that the animations/graphics in the game are super smooth!

 

6) Why does my starting cash look funny?

When you change the starting cash or any cash options, it will look a little funny when you get to the freeform mode select screen but don't worry, when you go into the map, you'll see the actual cash amounts.  Try setting the starting cash and maximum cash to 2,000,000,000 if you want to start out with a ton of money.

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VNDragonV2

VNDragonV2

Posted

Unfortunately, the game seems to recognize only the sound files in sounds.ztd. I even loaded the original mainmenu.wav (after extracting it from sounds.ztd) and it still didn't work.

Particle

Particle

Posted

hmm... i forgot to mention how the sound files work... my bad.  Zoo tycoon will only play sound files if they are .wav format and are inside the zoo tycoon folder somewhere.  So you have to put the .wav files somewhere in the zoo tycoon folder.  (I made a folder called sounds in my zoo tycoon folder and put them in there).  Then use zookinii to change the theme song to one of those files.

 

Also if you need some good wav files to use for testing out the mainmenu theme song, here is a zip file with all 5 of the theme songs from ZT2 and the expansions.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=16xE0eZY6Mjxkq47FwLFtvNm6ZdszjhyU

 

I'm sorry I forgot to mention this in the instructions above, I hope you didn't waste too much time trying to get it to work.  Sorry!

  • Like 1
VNDragonV2

VNDragonV2

Posted

6 hours ago, Particle said:

hmm... i forgot to mention how the sound files work... my bad.  Zoo tycoon will only play sound files if they are .wav format and are inside the zoo tycoon folder somewhere.  So you have to put the .wav files somewhere in the zoo tycoon folder.  (I made a folder called sounds in my zoo tycoon folder and put them in there).  Then use zookinii to change the theme song to one of those files.

 

Also if you need some good wav files to use for testing out the mainmenu theme song, here is a zip file with all 5 of the theme songs from ZT2 and the expansions.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=16xE0eZY6Mjxkq47FwLFtvNm6ZdszjhyU

 

I'm sorry I forgot to mention this in the instructions above, I hope you didn't waste too much time trying to get it to work.  Sorry!

 

Hi, thanks for replying.

 

You actually wouldn't need to mention it because you already coded so that an error pops up whenever someone (like me) tries to load a .wav file outside of the Zoo Tycoon folder (IMG1). So yeah, unfortunately this doesn't solve my solution. I even decided to replicate what you did and created a "sounds" subfolder and put the .wav files you shared, along with the original ZT theme (IMG2). Zookini can load the files but the theme doesn't play in the game (the loading screen is silent).

All other features work by the way. 

IMG1.jpg

IMG2.jpg

VNDragonV2

VNDragonV2

Posted

UPDATE: I figure it out.

The bug seems to stem from the fact that Zookini tries to write the entire path into the .ini file, including the path that leads to the Zoo Tycoon folder.

For example, in the screenshot attached here, Zookini tried to write the full path but stopped short at "Complete Collection\sounds\ZT2_AA_Theme.wav" due to the program's text limit. The moment I fixed it to "sounds\ZT2_AA_Theme.wav" the theme loads just fine.

 

img3.jpg

Particle

Particle

Posted

Thanks for letting me know that, I'll take a look at it.

  • Like 1
Guest weevilsnoot

Guest weevilsnoot

Posted

I always run everything I download through Virustotal before I open it.. why does the .exe file come up as malicious from three different security vendors? 

Hypertor

Hypertor

Posted

My game completely ignores all the configuration done through that (volume, resolution, skipping the intros, cash...), even when I lauch the game through it.

 

Any suggestions on why this may be happening? T__T

Iquon

Iquon

Posted

Game did not register me editing the Max-guest Limit, everything else I already edited myself already :D Well, thanks for making this, the other stuff sure still is helpful! :)

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