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African lion

Rumours of my departure have been exaggerated. Been taking a break from posting as I felt there was little I could add to the conversation, plus a lot of other stuff needed to be attended to.

Thank you very much !! You've been a great help, Fern. I appreciate it :) When I loaded back into the game the first thing I did was check my awards. I had the silver + gold plaques for exhibit design. Silver I understood, got that right away with the first exhibit. Gold would track with the amount of money I got (and it's what I recall getting, anyway). Now I just wonder what triggered it. Looking at the quetzals and watching them for a short bit showed that their suitability was at 98 most of the time (sometimes dropping to 97). They're the only animals that could have triggered it at the time. Hm. Interesting. Some searching shows that the gold exhibit award is given at 99+ for an exhibit. I guess it's not impossible? With our funds, nyctosauruses were acquired. For some reason our staff were dead-set on not giving any kind of care to one of the two eggs until it was deathly sick and about ready to hatch. Repeatedly leading them to this egg and pointing at it did not sway them to care for it. Here is an image taken of one very stubborn scientist, specifically assigned to this one exhibit, wandering off and ignoring the miserable egg. What are we paying you people for?! You can have your break five minutes from now! An entire flock would be nice, and it's what I want, but I'm learning responsibility and not buying a bunch immediately. Which, given how much our scientists seem to hate these things, might be for the best. Creating their exhibit took several months. Thankfully we are at a large enough scale now that the zoo can actually turn a steady profit, so while this exhibit took some time to complete, the last half of construction was easily funded. Here's a quick image, early on, of the very early stages of an expansion. There's the path for the viewing area for the future exhibit location, and a path now heading further north. The entire place looks a bit barren in this photo. This is due to a number of factors.. the clearing of the forest for exhibits, the lack of heavy landscaping... it'll get better with time. Our money hit five digits for the first time in almost a year during this minor construction. It's amazing what one can accomplish when you aren't spending several thousand on fencing. ... in June we had nearly $18k, and by July we almost had $5k. It's not a big deal like it probably would have been the year before. We're a lot more stable in year two than in the opening year. Now we can actually build things and make the cost back a month later. This is even with multiple scientists, a maintenance worker, and $500 being spent on marketing every single month. This is about the point that money became less of a constant worry for us. During this time, waiting for a bit of extra cash to build up, our team took some notes. Animals were in great condition, happy, and always fed. Guests were pleased with the experience overall, but not as happy as they could be. A not-insubstantial number of ratings and reviews were telling us that there just weren't a lot of activities, or general appeal, for kids. They were not enjoying this park as much as the adults. I took insult to this. What kid doesn't want to see giant flying reptiles?! I know I would have wanted to see an entire small zoo of previously-extinct flying reptiles when I was a kid. But I guess nowadays resurrecting animals that have been dead for millions of years just isn't that cool with the youth. We caved to the public anyway and built a small miniature fair, if fairs only had ring toss and a single gift shop selling plush dinosaurs. The fountain was to make the place more lively and pleasant to look at. It was a success, making guests a bit happier. It wasn't a huge change, but more of the children seemed to be enjoying themselves, and everything was turning a profit, so nobody had complaints. With money in hand, a whole bunch of sand was tossed into an exhibit and two pteranodon eggs finally added. To my personal relief, the scientists were perfectly fine with taking care of these two eggs. Here two new things are visible. One: the completed exhibit, with the newly-hatched pteranodons exploring their new home. The other: the pterosaur aviary and a bunch of trees. The aviary permanently houses our dimorphodons for guests to look at and enjoy. The aviary was not the only thing added, however. Here is a more expansive look at the front of the zoo, replanted and with new gardens. The blank space by the aviary will likely be converted into something in the future, but for now, a couple trees will do the "make it look less like a mountainous wasteland" job just fine. The pathway was opened and expanded to the edge of the island. Terrain was flattened out so a new restaurant, slide, and fountain could be tucked amongst the cliffs. Most of the original terrain here was kept; despite my somewhat unintentional, ongoing deforestation project, I do actually want to try to keep some of the natural landscape intact. While there was little reason for guests to wander this way, having no exhibits yet, there was a little something for them if they did. By this point it was nearing the end of year 2. Time flies, doesn't it? But the team couldn't rest just yet. We had more pterosaurs to exhibit, and $55k to use. The next two were already decided: azhdarco and hatzegopteryx. This small exhibit will be housing the azhdarcos. Fun fact: the "azhdar" refers to a mythological serpent somewhat like a dragon. This same word is used for the rest of the azhdarchids. My wyvern comment was justified, even ignoring the fact that quetzalcoatlus is also named for a serpent entity. These are dragons to me. Anyway.. Here is their finished exhibit. While it isn't perfect, the idea here is to "extend" one exhibit's terrain into the other, while giving each pterosaur species some space from each other in the form of separate exhibits. The exact waterline is hard to see at all photographed angles, but they're meant to roughly flow into each other. It's now officially year three. Construction on the final exhibit was started and completed. These will hold hatzegopteryxes, which are not a small pterosaur, so they were allocated the rest of this corner. Like all previous eggs save for the one nyctosaurus, they were well-cared for. Did that one scientist have a personal vendetta or something? Here is an image taken at an alternative view. This is an aside to show off just how much beautifying needs to be done. That should be the next major project undertaken, I feel, not another exhibit. We have the money, but the zoo is seriously lacking in... uh... greenery, in most developed areas that aren't an exhibit. Trees, flowers, water, fountains, interesting rocks, anything. While waiting for one set of eggs to hatch, the nyctosaurs had their own! This is excellent. The quetzals had been the only ones breeding up until this point. And, thankfully, the scientists were directly observed caring for these eggs and not just ignoring them as they had previously done. Back to the hatzegopteryx, here is the completed exhibit. We discovered they really, really liked rocks and plants. We hope they end up staying this small, as unlikely as that is, because any large adult creature navigating this safely... or at all... feels unlikely. The transitional design between each exhibit turned out nicely, though. It really does look like one land mass broken up into pieces. Also, in this photo, the grown azhdarcos can be seen. Here is a distant aerial photo of the entire zoo as it currently exists. It's certainly different from the previous zoo, but I don't think it'll look bad, when all is said and done. I particularly like the chain of pteranodon -> azhdarco -> hatzegopteryx exhibits. The tupandactylus area looks smaller by the day. I think a minor expansion that way is in order, since none of that space is going to be used for anything anyway, and they really look like they could use it. That and general landscaping, obviously. There are a lot of empty areas throughout the zoo. ---------------- it is 1:30am it is BEDTIME forgive me for any nonsense or errors. I usually post these late/early for me, but this is really pushing it.

Let's go! :D After the success of the last zoo, I had successfully proven my capabilities, and the fact that I could be definitely be trusted with more land and locations, if you ignored the brief oviraptor hiccup. Which was mostly ignored, hooray! We were given a snowy, forested island full of sheer cliff faces and long drops (and $35k). We were told that this location was deemed perfect for a zoo, particularly extinct flight-capable creatures. This immediately made me think of any number of flying reptiles, even though extinct birds exist. ...How do people even get here? How did we get here? The path into the zoo is literally just a cliff jutting out into the ocean... None of that is really important. I got rather excited, very quickly, at this idea. It took me only a few moments before I was throwing a quetzalcoatlus exhibit right into the center. This was very expensive, as one may have anticipated. The budgeting team was crying as once again promptly ate into most of our starting money, like I had with the first zoo, but I couldn't hear them. I was too enamored with my very expensive azhdarchids. I personally decided to name them AM and HAL 9000, and nobody was able to stop me before that became their official names. I've been told that it was a "poor idea" and "some kind of ill omen." Sure, we had to fire the scientist shortly after hatching because money was low, but. Counter-point: Those are wyverns. The quetzalcoatlus exhibit had been completed by February. Everything considered, things were actually going pretty well. It had only been a short few months and the quetzals were full-grown. The zoo had not yet seen a lot of decoration, somewhat unsurprisingly, I suppose. The entrance saw some attention, with a news stand added by the entrance, just like the last zoo. This contains updates on the zoo, recent paleontological discoveries, and of course a bunch of advertisements telling you that you should check out our mostly-oviraptorosaur zoo, you would love it and should totally do that. The small food court area -- which may or may not be permanent -- has had a minor addition with some flowerbeds and appropriate pterosaur statues that are, unfortunately, hidden from most angles. But they're there. Another path has been added, preparing for an expansion westward. The scientist has also been re-hired, to help us keep AM and HAL, well. Alive. The second exhibit was planned out. There would be two in this region, but it was logical to only construct one at a time. At the end of this path would be a restaurant for guests, but as there were no exhibits and no reason for people to head this way --something that would not stop them from running to the edge of the empty path to stare into the snow -- one would not yet be built. Though, shortly after this photo was taken, I cordoned the area off and decorated it a little, since I assumed it wouldn't be too long before we had that area up and running. This exhibit would, if all went according to our plan, host two tupandactyluses in the near future. It was June, and we only had one kind of pterosaur. I was getting a bit antsy. It wasn't a big deal though, really. I was slowly preparing an exhibit for the tupandactyls, which was not particularly eventful. ...Though not everything occurring in the park was boring. Surprisingly, the quetzals had laid an egg. Before anyone could say anything, I dubbed it Skynet. This was not a popular decision for some reason. I said that everyone was a party pooper and just didn't understand my beautiful and grand vision. There was an immediate bankruptcy on account of pterosaur purchasing. I affirm I had nothing to do with this, and the overnight manifestation of two tupandactylus eggs in an empty exhibit set aside for them was merely a strange coincidence. The start of November, while putting together the exhibit with what money I could scrounge up, had us suddenly gaining a sum of money from a generous mystery donator1. With the exhibit finally constructed, the restaurant was added nearby. This proved wildly profitable, to my surprise. Obviously, that had been the point, but I had not anticipated nearly a thousand in immediate profit. Most of the food court was kept, namely the pizzeria and the bathroom. With the addition of a restaurant, and seeing how very few guests liked buying soda at any price, and that building was oozing money, the drink stand was torn down. Reviews and questionnaires showed us that this action did not majorly impact average guest thirst. By the start of the second year, the tupans had grown into adulthood, and the third exhibit was constructed. The exhibit currently sits empty; it's likely that this will be the nyctosaurus area. This is planned to be an especially small zoo, even when compared to the previous, with only a handful of exhibits. But it still has a way to go before it becomes necessary to move on. I think some entertainment and decoration for guests might be in order for the near future. --------------- 1 I know where the money came from, but it baffles me a little. It was the award for having an animal in an exhibit of max suitability, yet I don't actually know what triggered it. I was busy outfitting the tupandactylus exhibit at the time with flora. They were still in the yellow, so it wasn't them, and I didn't touch the quetzal exhibit until after the award. The quetzals had 96-97 suitability at any given time, I'm guessing maybe on the amount of poop in an exhibit, but either way it varied a little. Is the trigger point for that award 98 or something? Also, I really like that these zarawatto-made pterosaurs can "fly" (technically, swim) over water. That's a neat detail.

Here is a preview for some of the fences I am hoping to work on. I don't think I will be doing all of these pictured, some were more experimental. The 'red rocks' were inspired by the exhibit area of the same name at the Saint Louis Zoo. The black chainlink fence is inspired to look like an aviary fence. I've also always wanted some dark colored concrete fences and a rock wall with glass instead of bars, although that is the most ambitious and difficult concept. I tried very hard to make my attempt resemble the ingame rock wall while still having a glass area closer to the plexiglass fence but it doesn't quite feel right.