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Hey everyone! So I've decided to do a new extension to my Africa Zoo, the one I mentioned/linked to in my post about the moat bug/oversight, and wanted to share the first bits of it here :) I'm using my first side extension as a base for it, and constructing it along mostly the same lines, although certain areas may be different. For example, I have a revamped, slightly more ambitious version of my elephant fountain complex, with a less specific fountain in the middle and a broader geographical expanse of foliage: I've also done the Savannah garden again, but this time with trees that are more appropriate to the giraffes adjacent to it, just to tie it together. Also went with a more vegetation-heavy version of one of the heightened viewing areas next to it: Otherwise the build is fairly minimum right now. Mostly just mirroring it's neighbour on the other side: Definitely looking forward to work on it some more soon! I'm going to go with the same crocodile-moat design as before, even if it does make the inner-enclosures unviewable to guests, since the aesthetic of it is just too good to pass on (plus I'm planning on turning the plaza moat into something else and need the crocs out ) Everything beforehand is all on Reddit and Discord, so here's my WIP and Grand Opening posts from there. I'll definitely be making more posts here in future, just pretty new to it so XP Also, here's some miscellaneous screenshots from this newest build, mostly just different angles:

Totally coincidental that you guys were just posting in here and I happened to check back in today after one of my notorious extended breaks. I'm glad to see that my Drive folder is still working! Those Gorilla and Orangutan statues were my very first 3D modeled ZT mods, more than a decade ago now. It tickles me to see someone actually want to use them. I'm glad I thought to put them on the Drive, I definitely no longer have the original files myself. Hope all is well everyone.

Hey Vondell, it's great seeing you again! Yes, this project among others have been going through it now that a few are a part of my capstone, which is essentially me proving I know what I'm doing. Never imagined my hobby would determine whether I graduate or not yet here we are lol. Thanks for the interest in the archival project; I'd love to add your stuff. I should be done with my current queue within the next month and can make it a focus in April if that works! I'd be happy to help with screenshots and descriptions as well, just let me know.

Aaaa I completely forgot to reply here since I posted the method over on Discord but yes! VNDragon is completely right lol. It's a little finicky at times especially if you want to keep your tanks since I tend to accidently overwrite older tanks while building but it's super fun to mess around with.

I can attest that your statues are still well-used and well-regarded

You’re honestly super talented, I saw your aquarium sets and they were even cooler! I’m particularly interested in using the gorilla because I’m hoping to one day try to do a London Zoo build in ZTCC, and it’s a perfect stand in for the Guy statue

Selous Mongoose. this is my springhare pen

So to test out Serpyderpy's new freshwater mod and tank terrain change trick, as well as various freshwater fish mods, I made some ambitious flooded forest tanks yesterday. It was well received on Discord and inspired some other builds, so I thought why not share it here too? My dlupdate folder is a mess right now since aside from these attempts, I'm playing without user-made items for the PANDA contest. The map is barebone and just full of tanks for testing various MM animals. 1. Amazon basin This was V1 before the game crashed prematurely (still unsure of the cause). I salvaged a bit of it from an earlier save and then built a V2 below with some extra land for the tapirs, capybaras, otters, crocodilians, and anaconda. V2 is still my most ambitious tank so far with a very dense number of Hawkkeye's cichlids and piranhas - in fact, I cannot load the save file again without cutting down on the number of animals in this tank. I lost count but I would not be surprised if the total animal count surpasses 100. At this number of animal exhibit compatibility is nigh impossible, but if you cut down to ~10 species it should be achievable. Vegetation also started out very dense - and I love that, but I reduced it eventually to view the animals more easily. And honestly, they look even better in videos when you can see all the critters buzzing around. 2025-02-10 15-09-41.mp4 2. Mekong delta I am more mindful of vegetation this time around - no Amazonian giant water lillies, no swamp cypress, etc. There are also fewer fishes from this region available ingame compared to the Amazon, so I managed to keep most of them happy. There is no land portion like V2 Amazonia tank, but I recognize that this region has a loaded stack of tankable Zoo Tycoon animals (tapirs, Asian elephant, tigers, saltwater crocodile, etc) that can work should I ever do a land segment. 2025-02-10 15-05-31.mp4 The next flooded forest I want to make will be the North American Everglades. I also have an idea of making Jane's neutral rainforest foliage to be tank-placeable in future iterations (unless someone here knows of an underwater rainforest mod). If you think there are specific foliage, rocks, or tank-placeable scenery items that I should throw in, feel free to share them here.

Fine by me :)

It's great to see you Vondell. Please catch us up on what's been happening with you, when you get a chance. (I'm still personally starstruck by the Route 66 caddies)

I'm catching up on everything I've missed. You guys have been busy! I would be happy to work with you guys at some point to host the ZT1 CC from my Drive folder, just in case anything ever happens to it. Some of the files are not hosted officially here at Tek for one reason or another. I'd be happy to do the work of generating screenshots and descriptions for submission myself, although it may take me some time. But if the question ever comes up for any reason, if I haven't had a chance to submit them myself by the time you all are through your current queue, you guys have my blessing in perpetuity to archive any of my files that are available on my Drive. (Only bit of additional permission I'd want to clear would be @jbl89 for our Red Panda, since it was a collab between the two of us.)

That is fascinating. I'm gonna have to try that out. Between that trick and the natural freshwater mod, that gives tanks a lot more potential aesthetically. Very cool.

So this has been discussed in a few scattered threads between here and Discord servers, but here is a short rundown. You can check my flooded forest thread for more context. - Tank terrain is controlled by tank.cfg (or tankS? gotta double check) in config.ztd. The game will read the config once when it loads, so it cannot be changed midgame at the moment. - There are separate values for show and regular tanks. - Can you get multiple tank terrains in a single map? Yes, even if you have to save and load the zoo every time you change the terrain value. Old tanks will *not* update their terrain until you replace a tank wall or merge tanks. - You dont even need to package your modified tank.cfg into a .ztd for the game to read it. I just leave the file bare in my dlupdate folder. - Turns out there was another modder who already discovered tank.cfg decades ago on Zoo Admin and even made a whole program for people to tweak it. Of course for most of us these days it is faster to open tank.cfg with a text editor, but the program interface was probably appreciated for less tech-savyy folks who don't want to mess with game files.

Hello! Those low rails on the steps are part of Jane and Genki's beach paths set. The rails are part of the inclined paths, but all the paths are great. Fern was correct that the brown fence is the one from Zootan's set.

If the author is self-hosting their files on cloud services like Google Drive or Megaupload (or whatever they are called now), look for the link in the profile or signature.

Thanks Heather! Sorry if that was already in this thread somewhere, I never know where to find these things 🫠

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kQEvBUi9AWb13BibJFNxQDhl_1gRU-JP

Looking for Testers The OpenZT project will soon be releasing regular pre-alpha builds of the PANDA mod loader and OpenZT itself. We're looking for testers with Windows 10 or 11 to help stress test features and report bugs. Your feedback will help us: ensure our builds work seamlessly for everyone when we fully release later this Spring improve our documentation to address new user concerns establish a feedback loop to shape future releases I will be posting an announcement in the upcoming week with more details in the OpenZT server. If this sounds interesting to you, please join our Discord!: https://discord.gg/ATqFYVsjkc