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Hiiii this wasn't the Dinosaur Dig related download I was expecting to post, but big things have happened!! A user by horse14t has bought many different beta and marketing discs for Zoo Tycoon 1 and 2 over the years, and last month she stumbled upon a disc for sale for a marketing beta of Dinosaur Digs. Me and a bunch of other users in a server it was posted to went through the files and found some incredible stuff!! While much of the game is close to the final product, a few things stand out. The big one is an earlier design for the iguanodon, more closely resembling the WWD design, as well as a much larger deinosuchus (sadly unfinished). Some objects and scenery are a little different in design too, as well as the insectivore food more closely resembling a worm pile, and a lot of stats seem to be altered from the retail version as well. I took the opportunity to seperate some of the more obvious and interesting things into their own standalone pack that you can use alongside the vanilla DD stuff without overwriting one another. Huge, huge thank you to horse14t for buying these discs!! We have found so much cool stuff for these games alone just from their efforts. <3 Included is: Beta iguanodon seperated entirely from the vanilla iguanodon, complete with young and adult sprites, and adoption icon, list icon and plaque. I used the beta iguanodon ai file so there are potentially some stat and price changes, but the two are compatible terrain, rock and foliage percent wise. The vanilla iguanodon will complain about incompatible animals, but both can reach 100% suitability with one another regardless. When the beta version of the iguanodon escapes and is picked up or crated, it will use the beta version of the large dinosaur box! Earlier versions of the rex and raptor skeleton are included. Vanilla DD seems to actually use icons that match these sprites more in the final game. Bigger versions of the tar pit and lava pit are included. The beta ai files for these had them not be deletable, so maybe they were dev objects? Regardless, they have been turned into scenery and can also be deleted lol. There's also an alternate version of the smaller volcano that's constantly smoking which has been isolated. Since I didn't want to overwrite the vanilla insectivore food sprites and making new foods isn't feasible at the moment, I decided to turn the beta insectivore food into three different scenery pieces. Lots and lots of wormies! I made younger guests enjoy them more too. I have made two versions by request, the first version makes it so that the beta and retail iguanodon are basically one and the same, just different internally and in graphics, and maybe one or two stats. They are meant to be the same type of animal, really. The second version renames the beta iguanodon to Dakotadon, oweing to the fact the beta iggy design is taking after Walking with Dinosaurs's north american iguanodon design, which has since been reclassified to Dakotadon. The Dakotadon has had their terrain and a few preferences changed just to differentiate it from Iguanodon, but it's not a very in-depth change. There's quite a few other things included in the marketing beta but I will probably be including them in the patch I was working on. When the patch comes out I will also probably make another version of these with more accurate terrain. I might try and see if the deinosuchus is also salveagable at some point. Anyway, enjoy! Link to normal version! Link to Dakotadon version!

Hello! Long time no see - I have been playing some Zoo Tycoon 1 again the last few days and wanted to share what I have come up with! Last year when I played ZT1 I had this idea for elevated vantage points for guests that go into the exhibit (My other post Little City Zoo) and the idea worked quite well in my opinion. For some reason I never really thought much about using "natural barriers" for my zoos to use less obstrusive fencing around the habitats for the animals, a few days ago I suddenly had the idea to do this in ZT1, use water, rocks and whatnot in conjunction with low fences that many animals normally are able to jump over, this is what I cam up with: EDIT: The screenshots seem to be super small in this thread, I uploaded them to imgur where they are a bit bigger so you might look at details a bit better: https://imgur.com/a/Z4dHZU4 This is an overview of the whole zoo, it's a medium grasslands map, no money or guest name cheats were used, just a few decorative mods. While building I kinda also got the idea to thematically divide the areas a bit. The grizzly exhibit was the first exhibit I built, I was experimenting with the barriers a bit and since they can jump and swim it was kinda hard to create an exhibit where they couldn't escape all the time. I put elevated vantage points in the back and tried making them look like they are part of a rock-like mountain, some slightly raised points hidden by plants and on each side I used low fences with rocks so that it kinda looks like a river that has a natural rock-barrier running through it: This is the serow exhibit, the fencing in combination with the roofing reminded me a bit of hunter's perches in forests, so I used this look for the elevated lookouts and used low fences for the water barriers. Since they can't swim it was much easier to contain them here. The bison exhibit - I used the ranger / hunter perch look for the elevated views again and the low fence for the water, I also lowered one "watchpoint", made it advance into the exhibit and hid the barriers in bushes and (modded) grass. I liked the look of it - kinda like you would sneak through the bushes like a hunter to get as close to the prey as you can. This is a wolf exhibit, I was able to cut off escape ways with water here again and "pierced" the exhibit barrier with slightly elevated viewpoints into their forest. Since the serow exhibit had some hills in it that I used for the elevated lookouts I extended these hills outside of the exhibit and made the japanese garden building into a little "mountain monastery": Siberian tigers exhibit, used rock fences for a little mountain where the guests can look down as well as slightly lowered and elevated vantage points and water barriers: With the pandas I had another idea - why not try to use the rock walls and roofings to create a little cave that goes through one of their exhibit mountains and leads to a vantage point inside their exhibit: I used the same technique for the snow leopard exhibit, just a few more times because they need more mountains in their enclosure: This is the savanna area - I must admit I am kinda proud of this one haha. The bridge "walls" are modded obviously but it could have been done without them as well, the large rock-walls are normally not accessible to the player but I used a mod that adds developer mode items for the player to use. The exhibits here have multiple species in them, I wanted this area to feel like being on a safari through the large open savanna. Water barriers with low fences and the "bridges" made for really great ways to hide obstrusive fences. There are elephants, giraffes, rhinos, buffalos, zebras, ostriches, gazelles and wildebeests. Other side of it with leopards and cheetas. All animals have green habitability ratings: Right next to the savanna I was experimenting a bit... tried building some kind of harbour with a ship where stalls are in lol. There are sea lions and manatees but I am not that happy with the area, might going to reconstruct everything there: The last corner of the zoo has some tropical animals in it, bengal tigers, okapis, tapirs etc. The center of this area I tried to make look a bit like a village "marketplace": I must say I had a lot of fun with this zoo, it was quite challanging at times - let's just say there were a few... "incidents" with tigers and bears that were in places where they were not supposed to be (can I blame them though? Hotdogs right next to the exhibit probably smell great...). As you might see from the exhibits my "techniques" have gotten a bit better over time (grizzly exhibit was the first I build, savanna one of the last). two exhibits I forgot to take screenshots of but they aren't that special (moose and horses) and use the same techniques as the other exhibits anyway.

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.

Alriiiiiiight I felt like finally dipping my toes in here. I already made a Brachiosaurus mod a few days ago but the file is still pending approval.

Been a hot minute, eh? Here's some stuff sitting in my kitchen, I've got a LOT of things at varying stages of completion...

School is basically over so had time to touch this project again. Improvements to wing morphology (i was just uh...??...wingin' it last time):

Spring gift for you all: Better late than never, Bug Mayhem mini pack now available in the link at my signature: Contents: Meganeura Pulmonoscorpius Archaeopteris Water placeable foliage Compatible with Khaydar's Arthropleura Animal sounds from Pokemon games. Hope you enjoy them!

2-in-1, featuring one of my favorite theropods and one of my favorite thyreophorans. Tuojiangosaurus and Monolophosaurus! They share the same exhibit requirements and they're neutral to each other so they can actually share the same enclosure, but Monolophosaurus will eat eggs, so keep that in mind. Jurassic One-Tuo.ztd

Going to postpone my remaining Halloween mods for the Fall and move onto making animals. We'll see how this goes. Feets are hard

As Jeff gazes upon his photos, he realizes that they're all corrupted. Huh. That's not good. Well, after these initial images for the first year, the rest will not, in fact, be a corrupted mess. I didn't want to trash all the progress shots -- I can't exactly go back in time to take them again-- so alas we will have to deal. I'll try and make them clearer. This was supposed to be a relatively simple thing D: I want to try actually making something zoo-like, since usually I play scenarios and just slap some paths and exhibits wherever. It may not look good, but it gets the job done. I'm not playing a scenario, though, I want to do freeform. So it may not be perfect, but I'd like to try actually making actual zoos with particular focus -- in this case, a set of small zoos of extinct animals. Right now it's only one, but we'll move on to other zoos as I deem them completed. Anyway! Moving on! Into character. Finding funding -- and space -- for a dinosaur zoo is rough, if you weren't aware. Especially if reviving extinct animals is a known practice and not just the work of science fiction novels. Thankfully, we got a small plot of mostly-empty jungle and $20,000 from a kind, public benefactor. One caveat, though -- they didn't want any kind of negative public image reflecting on them if a spinosaurus or some other large theropod managed to escape and eat people. So... we are only allowed, quote, "only small dinosaurs." Very helpful. First order of business: new paths and some kind of amenities. One* amenity. At this point it was determined that we would be getting incisivosaurus -- they are definitely small, and not likely to break out of an exhibit or chew on guests. Plus they are rainforest creatures, so that's one way to cut costs. Basic frame of the exhibit is built, plus a raised viewing platform. Two eggs and a scientist to care for said eggs. At this point, we were running low on money and only had a few thousand to our name. They hatched, and the exhibit was created. The corrupted images make it hard to tell, but they ARE in there. At some point we added another for a total of three. We also fired the scientist because we simply couldn't afford to pay them $1000 a month. The second those eggs hatched, they were gone. Money was very, very tight. We earned some more and even managed to get, at one point, back up to our starting $20,000. Of course the incisivosaurs couldn't just be ignored, but by that point we could buy a compost building to help with paying the scientists. We also built a newsstand for zoo and dinosaur info, though I confess I have no idea when that was added. With a somewhat stable amount of money, the second exhibit was planned out. This would be another member of oviraptorosauria... oviraptor. I assumed rock fencing would be enough to keep them in, as oviraptor species are not exactly large. This would, later, prove to be a bad idea. For now, though, everything seemed to be fine. Oviraptors -- a pair -- hatched. The exhibit was built. Thankfully they are rather low maintenance and don't want a thousand plants. We had to build the exhibit in stages, fence and terrain before pausing to wait to get cash... then the oviraptors, then all their required items when they hatched. Anyway, at this point I wanted a change of pace. I was tired of making oviraptorosaur exhibits. I begged. I cried. I pleaded with our benefactor to please let us put some kind of modern bird in. They're dinosaurs! Everyone knows birds are related to dinosaurs and that's an oft-repeated fact, but they are quite literally therapods in dinosauria. Dinosaurs aren't extinct, technically! Let us show the public this -- these birdlike dinosaurs alongside modern ones! I eventually got them to agree. We could have turkeys. :/ And only turkeys. Honestly I think some family member had birds they didn't want anymore. Whatever the reason, I disappointedly accepted this and made a turkey-aviary. I wanted some kind of bird of prey, but whatever, fine I guess. Except right after accepting the four turkeys, the oviraptors clawed out of the solid rock and into the zoo. That was not pleasant. That led to emergency fence-reinforcements, dinosaur capturing, and guest-soothing. With a grand total of $8 left in the bank. That was mostly because I didn't notice we had run so low on funds. Isn't that kind of person who you want running YOUR zoo? :D Finally, though, here's where I am now (isn't color beautiful?). This is the second year of the zoo, with $2000. This might not seem like a lot, but honestly, the zoo has been sitting at the $4k--$8k mark for most of its operation. The turkeys will get foliage soon, and we can start planning some non-exhibit areas. Maybe a garden? Or some other kind of entertainment? Hm... maybe I'll spend some time just landscaping the area. It's looking a bit bare.

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.

Can't believe I've been working on this for a year lol. Here's another teaser. Development is moving pretty quickly now.

Smoke animation finished. I think just a vendor and this is done, then I'll work on my eyeball monster animal.

WE ARE SO BACK Giganotosaurus.ztd

Started a new garden today. For now, no downloads, seeing what I can do with default.

Still needs rigging and animations so no posing yet. I think in most animations it will tend to have its wings folded and will only fly when it uses its toys or gets excited (wing flap). I might be in the minority that thinks most flying animal mods look a bit odd otherwise, but mainly I'm concerned about the footprint clipping at full wingspan. I'm eager to work on the baby griffins. I imagine them as pudgier, rounder like a chick and kitty, and no wings.

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.

A fresh new day, fresh new dinosaurs. Caudipteryxes are snugly tucked away in their new pit exhibit, which right now resembles a flat empty plains area. That's fine; they'll get more when they hatch. We won't know what they like and react well to until then, after all! And there's the exhibit -- mostly finished, as some things will be refined at a later date. That isn't important, though. All in all, I am pleased with this -- it's a rather nice place. It also seems like I'm unintentionally doing an oviraptorosaur biome tour -- the plan is to do protarchaeopteryx next when it comes time for that, so hopefully that trend kind of continues. I think it's a creature of the rainforest, alas. The turkeys continue to haunt me. There were a few new additions to old exhibits, to set up stronger populations (and because we all have no idea how long these creatures live, or if they will breed). Two chirostenotes were added... ... As well as two new oviraptors. This seemed logical to me. We've had them for a while and they don't seem especially keen on making more oviraptors, so we will have to do the work instead. But this peaceful silence was not to last. While I quietly puttered away at my own projects, easy and content, I ignored most of the messages my staff desperately sent my way. I hired a new scientist when it seemed necessary and restructured so that the other two focused on two exhibits each, with the new hire wandering around as needed. More maintenance workers, with the food court getting more traction and the other staff busy fixing fences... it was simply necessary. I headed to the front of the zoo. Hm. That's a lot of turkeys. ... "You know what? Not my problem," it said, the man who was meant to be running a zoo. "It'll be fine." The zookeeper looks at me with desperate eyes, begging for some kind of assistance with the fifty-odd birds surrounding them. I pretend I can't see. Anywayyy, construction time!! We're adding some things behind the incisivosaurus exhibit. We have to move this way, and it feels like a decent enough central point to do so. We now also have a gift shop after three years. Up until this point, people have been taking home zoo magazines and informative pamphlets on dinosaur revival as souvenirs. With some negotiation, I managed to convince our good friends the Unnamed Mystery Investor (UMI) to let us have another modern bird. Again nothing too raptorial, as we got golden pheasants. Still, they are quite beautiful birds, so I won't complain about them. A secondary aviary -- this time, you can actually walk into it -- has been constructed, right across from the incisivosaurus backend and against the zoo wall. I think I'll build pit exhibits on either side of it, but we'll see how that ends up. .... do you guys hear something? .... yeah, I bet it's overcrowded, Wild Turkey 56 (why did we name it that). Frankly it's probably time to deal with these guys, this is absolutely some kind of animal rights issue. I am amazed that we've managed to fit over 60 birds in here (I think we were at 61?) with nobody saying anything about it, or the birds actually being unhappy. Looking at the logged list of animals, we have about 80 and most of them are turkeys. There's also the golden pheasants which are already multiplying -- honestly I should just keep on top of that. So commences The Great Bird Sale of July, Year 3. This is after. That looks so much nicer. I named a lot of them beautiful things, like all the zoo creatures, so it was hard to choose who to keep. I didn't mention this but I've been naming all the animals; the chirostenotes are, as an example, all named after various peppers. It would break my heard to decide if I should sell Carolina Reaper or Jalapeno. This is why I decided to keep some of the most important birds, like AGONY, Horse3, and Thanksgiving. I just couldn't let them go. And this is where we end it for today. Not a lot done, and it's not quite the end of the year, but I feel like this is a perfectly good spot to relax for a while. I think the protarchaeopteryx exhibit will go in that northwest corner. Maybe not filling all of it, but it seems like a nice empty spot for another oviraptorosaur!! Give it up for oviraptorosaursia, which is full of small feathered birdlike guys! I think this is the last one, but there may be one other hiding away somewhere I have yet to notice on our lengthy list of potential animals. While the images likely do not show it well, decorative foliage (and fencing) has been added to the other side of the zoo -- it just isn't trees.

Here's hoping! I managed to get most of it rigged up (I forgot to rig one tentacle but I need to take a break so I'll fix it later lol). Good thing about Blender is that a lot of people use it, so finding guides on how to do stuff has been easy enough so far! It's been fun figuring out how to put this guy together and animate it, so hopefully soon I'll be able to get some sprites going!

Something else has gotten a rather...sizeable rework. This one's a doozy so I'm not uploading it here, it's in my drive.

First new mod in a while, wheeee! It's a Highland biome animal, but really consider it more like a montane forest, I dunno. AlbertosaurusL77.ztd

Some animals of Pliocene Peru. Animals: Thalassocnus, Spheniscus Megaramphus, Piscogavialis All compatible with Zarawatto´s Pelagornis. Enjoy! Piscogavialis.ZTD spheniscus megaramphus.ztd thalassocnus.ztd

just a small bump to say that the pilot whale has been released. It required both the show framework and lang file to work

Here are some screens of my Cats & Dogs zoo sponsored by our beloved Z.Z. in March of 2024. Missing her this evening.

I have recently released some new animals over on Zooberry, one is a giant camel in collaboration with Buffzoo and the other is a green anaconda, in celebration of 2025 being the year of the snake! I hope you enjoy them! Link to the Giant Camel! Link to the Green Anaconda!

Haven't posted in a while but I have been mostly on-and-off with the ever growing patch and a few other projects which have been posted over on Zooberry. One of which was a Halloween pack made with a few other designers (which is admittedly a little late posting it here) and an Ussuri dhole, which was mostly made as a test for importing animations from Frontier games. Also forgot to mention I updated the DD Marketing Beta pack with a few changes that were suggested, and it should be reflected both in my signature link as well as a mirror download uploaded on Zooberry again. All of these can be found in my signature but most of my downloads will also be uploaded to Zooberry as well from here on out. Link to the Halloween Pack. Link to the Dhole. Marketing Beta pack mirror link. The patch is sort of dragging itself along. I keep getting swept up in ideas, though the bulk of it is really done. More recently I have been slowly chipping away at attempting to give Dinosaur Digs its own restaurant, though cobbling together the model and render for it is slow going, and I have recently figured out how to make new habitats for the adoption panel, so a few dinosaurs have been moved over to that. I have given this new biome (Temperate Rainforest) foliage and things to go with it, so it feels more fleshed out and not tacked on. No new terrain but, with a similar situation to the unused scrub habitat, I feel like if the vibes and overall aesthetic of a habitat can be matched with the in-game terrain then it's fair game. A few dinosaurs have also been given dimorphism and some other details, too. Here's how Temperate Rainforest currently looks in game, with some candidates moved over, though I haven't edited their foliage pref icons yet because icons for the new habitat foliage haven't been made yet. The id used for it comes before savannah, so they will be at the top of the adoption panel. I thought this was less cursed than it being below all of the aquatic animals, though it still does look a little wierd. Oh well.

Yak

African elephant

White & bengal tigers

I considered giving it a pacifier but maybe that would’ve been a bit much.

Ok! I finally got a good model going I think! The creature has been adjusted and recolored nicely I feel, so now I just need to figure out rigging again lol. Certainly not rushing this guy. Still contemplating what other abominations I could make in order to have a weird monster zoo.

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.

It's the final part of this particular zoo, folks! I'm sending a list of planned zoos/themes off to the 'benefactor' for her to choose from. What she decides on will determine where the story heads in the future. For now... The small open space near the turkeys and incisivosaurs has been converted into a mononykus exhibit. It seems like a good place, and the scientists' information had me intrigued; they are classified as a desert creature, yet seem to enjoy a coniferous tree. The hopes I, personally, had when acquiring them were that their preferences would be for a biome not quite as an empty, sandy void like the oviraptors, for some visual variety in the exhibits. We all agreed this would be a good thing. More obvious variety in the small dinosaurs being showcased was always welcome. Luckily for me, my hopes were realized. The exhibit was constructed. More landscaping commenced, as tends to be the routine. Parts of the zoo seemed barren, even with the exhibits being charted out. We all concluded some guest entertainment would be much appreciated by them, so a dinosaur-themed golf course was created. While we don't have any stegosauruses, or even any members of stegosauria at all, it turns out "Chirostenotes Golfing" doesn't roll off the tongue like "Stego-Putt," so we had to compromise. A bit more construction for the future parkosaurus exhibit. We've had no extinct grasslands dinosaurs, so it seemed like a logical choice. It fills the decently-sized gap between the lepospondyl house (where we show some diplocauluses) and the nanosaurus/golf area. Planting grass is a much cheaper endeavor than dealing with deciduous anything. Anyway, dinosaurs were put into the exhibit. While I waited for them to hatch, I decided to grab a quick overhead photograph again to show off the zoo as it currently stands. At this moment, we were extremely close to finishing all of our exhibits. We had space for one more, and one more I will build. Once the parkosaurs are done with, obviously. I find it best to focus on one exhibit at a time, so that if anything comes up, it can be swiftly dealt with. Hatching did not take long, only about a month. Sadly they cared little for the grasslands plant I had readily available, so I asked for some research to be conducted. My hope was to find something they would prefer. For the time being, though, the exhibit was suitable, and could not be improved until research was finished. So the jeholosaurus area -- the final site to be constructed -- was made. Scientists and eggs are ready for the final exhibit. I'm not sure what I'll end up doing once I pass the zoo on, but the journey has been more enjoyable than anticipated. Maybe more dinosaurs should involve fewer giant murder-machines. I mean, doesn't every zoo with dinosaurs try and put allosauruses in at some point, typically? These dinosaurs took longer to hatch than anticipated, and to my surprise, they showed a fondness for rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. Of course, there are many rocks on planet Earth, and they aren't horribly difficult to get a hold of, but still. It came as a minor surprise. While this exhibit was finished, research on ancient flora had finished, and we found something the parkosauruses may appreciate more than the modern-day flora currently growing throughout their exhibit. My final self-appointed task was swapping out some of those broadleaf bushes for monkey puzzle trees. This was far superior in the eyes of the parkosaurs without a doubt; their behavior changed drastically for the better, and while they certainly were not discontent before, they were actually pleased now. They also started breeding almost immediately, which seems like a very positive thing, I would say. Well, the zoo is now out of my hands. Here are two final shots from above, showing off the whole zoo. I feel that the endeavor was, overall, successful. It's been five years, nearly six. The populations of all animals are growing. Animals are healthy and in good mood, and guests are also enjoying themselves. The park has a good reputation and 93 benefactors, the last time I checked. There is well over half a million in the bank. At some point we also surpassed the hatching of the 100th turkey.

Ah, thank you! I've been having a lot of fun with this zoo so far. Finally gives me an excuse to use all these extinct animals mods I've been hoarding. I wanted to play some more before another post, but I accidentally closed out of the game. Whoops! Posts come early I guess. At least I just saved beforehand. Ahem. With the oviraptor escape over and done with, things are uneventfully chugging along. Our money has returned quickly, thanks to the enthusiastic guests. With it, we were able to landscape a little -- not perfect, but a touch of greenery does a lot for the area and makes it look more complete. Even if it's only ferns and trees. I mean, we're in a jungle! It should feel more lush. And less... well, less like a flat plane with exhibits. More flowers were considered as an option and quickly discarded -- that made it feel too manicured. All the incisivosaurs gathered around the food. Nothing much is happening here, they're just so small and rarely congregate together that I had to snag a photo before they vanished into the rainforest grasses again. There's five -- four adopted, and one that was born. Of course, as fun as it is to look at small dinosaurs, we need to continue our expansion. An added viewing area for the oviraptors, and a food court. It'll be empty for some time, but talking to some guests has revealed that by the time they get over to this area they're hungry and thirsty. With expansions and more exhibits planned and underway, it really feels inevitable that this could potentially become a future problem area. Especially since the only place to get food, drink (and a bathroom but that's not important) is still that one rainforest restaurant. It has to be crowded by now. Though at this point it was determined that we should continue with the oviraptorosaurs. There's quite a few more, and while some of them are definitely larger in scale, the majority of them seem to be on the smaller side. While a zoo only filled with them is probably not viable, it's a fun idea to play with while we can. Maybe I can beg for another modern bird to fill the gaps. After lowering the ground for purely aesthetic reasons and building an equally low viewing area for them, the next oviraptorosaur was added: chirostenotes. I was not aware of how expensive deciduous ground was, which led to an awkward patch of rainforest right in the middle. It was quickly filled in, but the blunder was embarrassing on my part. When the money recovered somewhat, a second scientist was hired. While there are only two chirostenotes(es?) and two oviraptors, there are five incisivosaurs making a mess all the time. I am regularly notified at the exhibit having no food. But with a mostly stable budget, another thousand is no issue. ... make that six incisivosaurs. With a bonus peek at the rapidly-multiplying turkeys. While I lost count at some point, I do believe we are, in the present, up to about twenty of them. If they mind the increasingly small space, they haven't shown any signs of it. This angle also makes it easier to see the fencing that's been added to the path edges! It is year three. I guess I didn't pause to take any photos of the completed chirostenotes exhibit... oops. With a decent amount of money consistently coming in, though, my mind has been on expanding, and when I finished the last exhibit I went almost immediately to the next. When you have money, it turns out, it makes the whole dinosaur zoo thing much easier to manage. The next area under construction is what will be the caudipteryx exhibit. As you may have guessed, it is also a member of oviraptorosauria. It's in a bare-bones state, not even a full exhibit yet... but it's coming along. Construction will be finished soon for sure, seeing as how we presently have more than $2,000 to our name. Here is an overhead view of the entire zoo, where you can see the finished chirostenotes area, the soon-to-be fifth exhibit, and the current turkey horde. I suppose january is a fine enough place to stop for an update, but being briefly kicked out against my will to do so is certainly an irritant. The western side of the zoo will have greenery added sometime after the caudipteryx area is finished.

Blender is certainly tough but I think I'm actually starting to get the hang of it? So have an update image of the abomination model!

New ungulates pack coming nicely. Yard with domestic yak and black-necked crane.

Guess who got a rework? DilophosaurusL77.ztd

Incase any of you are interested, we have finally cracked the animation format of cobra engine games (Planet Zoo, Jurassic World Evolution 2), so rendering their models to sprites is now feasible.

I finally managed to recover the shadows of my animals from UFO. I found that Yi qi and Titanis have the best animations I made so far... I can't say the same about my Tupandactylus, which is honestly disappointing... I'm not sure about fixing, full remake or just discard it... New version is already available: Previous version New version

Day 140: Here is animal that is made for the Aerial Animal Kids Zoo which is a family of Northern Bald Eagles with fir trees in their enclosure.

Just popping in to say that for the initial release of this hack I've decided to trim the fat down just to get the first version out. I was back and forth if I wanted to try and push for giving dinosaurs new foliage that better matches the formations that they lived in, but trying to reconstruct paleoflora is way more of a pain since visual reconstructions are rare and that'd be waaaaaay more work and could easily come in an update down the road. I need to finish up two buildings and do a few of the remaining plaques, and we should be good to go. Currently the initial release will have: completely redone terrain and foliage requirements for a lot of dinosaurs, courtesy of Incinerox's suggestions animations that were rendered and made but weren't set to play in the animals behaviour sets have been readded sounds that either weren't used or had a wrong path have been readded and fixed changes to certain scenarios to better match other changes that have been made elsewhere in the hack two whole new scenarios are included some new rocks, scenery, and buildings bunch of other little changes I can't remember right now There will be a full changelist text file included inside the download when it comes, eventually, documenting all the changes, credits. etc.

Additions of this week: Have a nice weekend! ??

Alright, I lied when I said the next release would wait... ...because I ended up finishing something completely different WHEEEEEEEE Inspired by Borsato's Raptor Patch, in which Velociraptor gets new sprites and the old sprites are repurposed for Deinonychus, I made a Tuna Patch, which gives the bluefin tuna new sprites and the old ones are repurposed for an albacore tuna! Disclaimer: Rotations and stuff is still a bit "jank", i.e. the submerged anims are all shifted downwards. I'll try to fix it when I have more time. Albacore and bluefin are both compatible with each other. I'm releasing all these files in my signature already and I'll drop it here too why not. Tuna Patch Lapis.ztd

Invisible fences easter egg has been submitted :D Will need EMU v1.1.0 to work. Here's Serpy's awesome walkthrough exhibit she built using it: On another note: - the Never Poor Hack has been updated to work on the latest version of EMU - the Perfect Zoo Hack will not work on EMU v1.1.0. I'm hoping to get it working again in a future version. If you enjoy it though, it works fine if you stick with EMU v1.0.1.

Some old animals I reworked, mostly ungulates. Animals and changes: Bearded Pig (made smaller, now it only has 2 babies), Yellow-Backed Duiker (made slightly smaller, animations more fluent), Zebra Duiker (made slightly bigger, animations more fluent), Abbot´s Duiker (made smaller), Roan Antelope (some animations were deformed, corrected), Peruvian Pelican (remade with different texture and model, I changed the texture of previous model slightly and remade it as Brown Pelican, to be released) Enjoy! peruvian pelican.ZTD Bearded Pig.ZTD roan antelope.ZTD abbots duiker.ZTD zebraduiker.ZTD yellowbackedduiker.ZTD