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Real life has been busy so not much progress on the above works -- my designs always skid a little on the last hump before release, because I keep wanting to run more tests! ...and as I smooth the process of making and recoloring animals, I get more ambitious. A quick project from the other day here... a Giraffe Pack! In the AZA, there were at one point three giraffe programs: Reticulated giraffe, Baringo giraffe, and Masai giraffe. It was later found the Reticulated and Baringo giraffes had been hybridized and so they form the majority of giraffe in zoos here. The Masai giraffe has a separate program but does not breed as well; it is also included in Zoo Tycoon 2. I still wanted all three species represented ingame, so I made Baringo and Masai as new species. As far as I know, no designer has ever made a Masai giraffe before for this game. After talking with a zt2 designer, Jorge Gabriel, I also made West African, Thorncroft's and Angolan giraffes. Right now, all five giraffe types use the same stats. I intend to tweak them but I do need to research a little the best way to do so. I am open to ideas or suggestions.

hahahaha you are a great influence I bet all of us are a bit weird I mean who still plays this game out a previous century....

I must admit, I prefer more to make real animals than made-up. Maybe after I finish converting real animals made for ZT2? Yep. Similar pack like other ungulates packs I released before. But I am out of donkeys this time. Here is a little preview why I´ve postponed releasing it: I have a question. Which species (or subspecies) of giraffe is ingame ZT giraffe? According to ZT wiki it is northern giraffe, but I am not 100 % sure.

It's an impala

Like I mentioned in the topic where I introduced myself, I became interested in the .zoo file format that Zoo Tycoon 1 uses. This was right after implementing support for reading several binary formats that RCT uses. And so I set about investigating the format, with the goals of 1) hacking the saves and doing interesting stuff that the game does not normally allow, and 2) import the landscape into OpenRCT2. Today, the focus is on the former. ZT1 does not include a map editor, and while you can enter developer mode to move the zoo walls a bit further towards the edge, you cannot increase the visible space and actually make your map bigger. So you’re basically stuck with a few standard sizes like 75×75 or 150×150. Or are you? The map size is actually saved in the .zoo file, as you can see when looking at via a hex editor: Now, just modifying this value will result in a crash. This is expected - the terrain data is saved in a continuous stream of mapSizeX × mapSizeY elements. So a 75×75 map contains 5625 elements, while a 150×150 map contains 22500 elements. For 233×233, we need 54289. Since I started with the Large Grassy Zoo map, which is 150×150, that thus means 54289 - 22500 = 31789 additional elements, inserted at the correct place. Note how quickly this number increases compared to map size - that’s exponential growth for you. This is not just me showing off maths though - it means quickly increasing memory usage. The map size is saved using a 32-bit integer, which has a theoretical maximum of about 2.1 billion (or 4.2 billion in certain circumstances). In practice though, testing with different map sizes has shown that 233×233 is the maximum that ZT1 will load. Anything bigger and it will freeze while attempting to load. But then, having a 233×233 map is still quite an improvement from 150×150, is it not? Here is a screenshot. You can see the original borders of the Large Grassy Zoo map and the zoo wall continuing: Zoo Tycoon 1’s extreme zoom makes it difficult to get an oversight of the size. But here is a neat trick to measure map size: use a dirt path, which costs $10 per tile and just divide by 10: (In this example, I built the path outside the zoo walls using dev mode, but even if you build it within your zoo it should be easy to see that this map is indeed 233×233.) Now, I’m sure you’re keen to try it out yourself. Well, for the low, low price of €49,95... nah, just kidding. Here it is. enlarged5c.zoo

I just can't... Cricket and I made this ridiculous one with a giant roll of TP on top.

Thought I'd share some of my zoos I've developed since I started playing classic Zoo Tycoon earlier this week. Also, to be honest I try to approach my designs for exhibits and environments with a "natural" feeling, which is why they might look a bit different from the standards programmed for the actual animals. But in all, I just wanted to show some realistic immersion. Here's my first zoo, the Lebanon National Park Zoo. This nice little zoo features a forest trail adorn with foliage, as well as guest essentials such as picnic stations, a reptile house, amphibian house, a two-story inn with dining services and a gift shop and plenty of fun little attractions for both kids and adults alike. The residential animals are listed below, and I've tagged those I was able to snap a clear shot in my snapshots from their habitats. White-Shoulder Ibis (Pseudibis davisoni) Eurasian Spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia) Humboldt Penguin (Spheniscus humboldti) Malayan Porcupine (Hystrix brachyura) Eastern Imperial Eagle (Aquila heliaca) Eurasian Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo) Mountain Paca (Cuniculus taczanowskii) Black Tamarin (Saguinus ursulus) Cotton-Top Tamarin (Saguinus oedipus) Maned Wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) African Civet (Civettictis civetta) Indian Peafowl (Pavo cristatus) Rhesus Macaque (Macaca mulatta) Mountain Gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) Himalayan Black Bear (Ursus thibetanus laniger) North American River Otter (Lontra canadensis) Common (Harbor) Seal (Phoca vitulina)

You are absolutely incredible. So many people are going to go nuts over this, and I can't wait to see what I can learn from your notes!

Haha don't worry about it--I was just being cheeky (and half serious). You should only design what you love to make! You're brilliant at what you do already 😎👍 Nice giraffe! Sadly, my giraffe knowledge continues to be lacking today.

Sorry @fountain. I am a terrible influence on this community.

Years ago I had a rant in the general discussion(?) about how much I hated the happy toilet on top of the Fancy Restroom. I guess I could live with an animal version especially if it could pant like a happy dog, while it occasionally "runs" toward the exhibit fence "greet" visitors or belch after "eating" like the literal organic toilets on Lexx AKA Tales from a Parallel Universe TV series (which helped to fuel the Lexx interstellar spaceship). OMG my brain just said, "Toilet bunnies." Bad brain! Down! And mind your words! Jeesh! --I did not expect this with short-term memory loss. I'm living "Golden Girls here."

We've had some strange exhibit animals, but a walking, audibly flushing toilet...

I LOVE stuff like this! 😂 Now if someone can animate that toilet and make it adoptable...I bet it would pair well with JohnV's trashcan with feet.

Thanks everyone, I appreciate the encouragement. I love to build zoos, but it takes me so very long to complete even one exhibit. I want it to be just perfect, so items go in and items come out.... and on and on and on. The 3 month format at least gives me a fighting chance of getting it completed.

I haven't seen them yet to be honest Not yet downloaded as I am busy with other things and now with the contest it could take some time They look fine from where Im sitting and hopefully at some point I will give you feedpack on your pretty parrots

Thanks for the tip! Had to look up the falloff tool and it looks like it could have saved me a lot of work haha. And yes, so true about the topology, it's rough. I did it by hand using the shrink wrap tool but man, it took me hours and when it came to connecting the limbs, I just had to get creative when things didn't exactly line up. I'm going model it from the beginning one more time and I'll try to get the snout, ears, and topology right this time. I don't have to, but I think it's fun seeing it get better. I'd like to release my models as a resource in case anyone wanted to use them for anything, so got to make them presentable! Going to drive back home this week so I'll probably update again some time in June.