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After asking a lot of questions with multiple threads across the forum, I would like to showcase a bit on what I have been working on. I had no intention of becoming an actual ZT1 designer like I was with ZT2, but this project was borne out of my personal ingame need to unify multiple DD hacks and fill in some missing gaps. I like the idea of unifying conflicting hacks as a way to honor the many contributions of other ZT designers under the understanding that all ZT's user-created contents are now public content. Please let me know if any designers have given explicit request that their hacks are not to be tweaked by others. Anyhow, the topic title is quite self-explanatory already: this project aims to improve the overall realism and quality of DD's creatures ingame. A. The project incorporates elements from the following hacks by other designers 1. P. Rex's No Grass, Please!: This is the backbone of the project. I use P. Rex's hack as a base upon which I incorporate other hacks and make some changes on my own. In a sense, you can call this project "No Grass, Please! v1.6". If something isn't mentioned below you can assume that I kept that part from the hack unaltered. 2. Wolv12's Reality Hack: Some elements were taken to complement P. Rex's works. - Spinosaurus is a piscivore and can eat guests. - Macrauchenia can use regular shelters. - Meiolania can swim again based on Lichtig and Lucas (2018). https://zootycoonuncrated.jcink.net/index.php?showtopic=14 3. Borsato's DDvarPatch: fully incorporated. I might consider adding ui99.ztd + LANG--ZBorsato.dll into the download file as well for convenience. Borsato's and P. Rex's edits on the DD plants match one another quite well, but I give Borsato's works priority since he added the correct time periods for the plants. 4&5. Penguino's DD No Eggs Hack & Attractiveness Boost Hack: fully incorporated. I personally dislike the concept of purchasing eggs. However, in case other people don't want to lose their egg stage, there will be an alternative version without the no eggs hack. I'm also too lazy to copy Penguino's attractiveness value 1 by 1, so I will only use some of their files for reference and code my own attractiveness values. https://zooadmin.org/ZT1/index.php?topic=1092.0 https://zooadmin.org/ZT1/index.php?topic=1094.0 B. So what's new? - Not just Spinosaurus, other medium-large theropods and Smilodon now eat guests as well. I'm still debating on whether I should add this for Deinonychus (the original Velociraptor). - Spinosaurus consumes meat chow as an alternative food source. - Spinosaurus no longer gets eaten by a number of other carnivores, including T. rex. Of course, if someone can create a short-legged Spinosaurus the dynamics would be different. [WIP] - Visual makeover for the purchase icons. I usually dislike animal hacks with new habitat preferences because it messes up with the visual flow of the purchase menu. Updating icons for original animals proved tricky, but I have managed to figure it out how to do it without any game crashes after a night. So far I have made new icons for Ankylosaurus, Triceratops, and Styracosaurus: - Caudipteryx will now be a herbivore. The only gut content we have from the holotype indicates herbivory. The idea that it was omnivorous/insectivorous was mostly based on our early preconception that all non-avian theropods were carnivorous to some degree. However, full herbivory has been suggested as early as 2000, and given our current understanding that oviraptorosaurs were ancestrally herbivorous, this interpretation seems more likely. - Meiolania is now believed to have lived in a more coastal environment and occupied a similar niche to that of the extant Galapagos marine iguana (Lichtig & Lucas 2020). I will have to spend more time reading the paper to see how much do I agree with their interpretation. - Spinosaurus' habitat preference will receive some changes too. P. Rex's version seems too coastal with lots of sand and saltwater while both Kem Kem and Bahariya's formations preserve a more freshwater to brackish environment. I have not decided on the details yet, but it will be mainly based on a new Kem Kem monograph published recently (Ibrahim et al. 2020). - The trees in "No Grass Plz" will have updated geological period based on Borsato's hack. I haven't looked at how to do it yet but hopefully it's not too complicated. And I need to check if the trees with updated location would crash older save games before proceeding with this. C. Some iffy parts - If it isn't too time consuming, I would love to learn how to scale models. Dinosaur Digs have very weird scaling inconsistent with other animals in the franchise and even between dinosaurs. - Swimming Spinosaurus, that one curse that couldn't be dealt with until someone can make new swimming animation for the animal. This is way beyond both my current ability and my time budget so I'm just throwing it out here. However, I do have a fun version of Spinosaurus that can go into water and it can attack everything except for the 3 large whales + whale shark. It uses the run animation so it will still walk on water quite frequently (Jesus Spinosaurus anyone?). I don't think I will ever release this version but here are 2 screenshots of it submerged and standing on water. That's it for now, let me know what you think!