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I have been getting something new polished up and ready for submission ...

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:

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.

We are (very slowly) working on an open source re-implementation of the game called OpenZT: https://discord.gg/ATqFYVsjkc More info this Summer when we announce the project proper! :)

Sites are not free. And her daughter would have no interest in paying for a site for a game she has no interest in. The files are safe. Some of us were ready for this and made sure we had the files and info. It will take a while to upload them as they will have to be done one at a time. While we are at it we are going to fix some known problems. Tek has a downloads request thread so use it if you want a particular file

Aww that means so much to hear, thank you! I’ve actually taken the liberty of getting a few more of the hippo pics uploaded, so you can really see them in action 🦛 Here’s another view of the last pic I showed of them: And here’s the bits I should have really added in the post, the two of them finally meeting up They do this entirely of their own accord, and I swear sometimes they even follow each other in and out of the different exhibits (although that’s almost certainly just coincidence, I don’t think that behaviour is actually coded 😅) But yeah this is probably the best thing I have ever done in anything! I actually assumed it probably wouldn’t work, but their general hardiness and the extent to which a tank will connect with a land exhibit means it all just falls into place The only thing that isn’t clear is whether they’ll still be able to breed like this, since they’re technically in and out of different enclosures all the time. But even if they can’t, it’s still just awesome having them around

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.

Selous Mongoose. this is my springhare pen

Foliage Of Israel Pack by ChirpyNytowl (Cricket and nana_nytowl_beth) has been updated. Updated by Cricket on March 5, 2025: The Cypress Oak Tree was missing. It was added to the singles folder and the combined .ztd file. Big thank you to Beth for noticing that!

Botanical Garden Pack by Sundance has been updated and reloaded. Updated March 1, 2025 through March 4, 2025 by Cricket and Jay: Some files were renamed to remove personal notes. Files were "cleaned up" (unneeded files and configuration lines were removed, a few typos corrected, animation speeds made consistent, etc). Order for 2 pond views were corrected. Use ZT's extra frame format for the pond and botanical garden to make them smaller. Use better compression method to enhance the graphics and other files. These are just highlights of what was updated. When you click on the Download this file button, you will see two files. One includes the actual pack. One includes a text file with all of the specific update notes.

From Jay: None of those "Have All" ".ztd" files are hacks. So they are compatible with everything in CC and MM, including the SuperHack by Jordan.

Thank you both! Submission is pending testing/approval here at Tek but it is also my first release over at ZooBerry if anyone wants to grab it from there in the meantime (it's also on my Drive folder).

If you have any files that you want loaded first just ask. If they do not need updating we will release them. Most of the early buildings are getting updated if they have not been already.

Thanks to Tek's help, you can find all of ZA's ZT2 mods at ZooBerry: https://www.zooberry.org/archives/zooadmin/ Tek will be covering the ZT1 side of things.

Before Yellowrose passed, she asked that the ZA files be hosted here at Tek. We migrated to a larger server so we have the space for this. Fern and Jay have every file that was hosted at ZA. They are fixing the files and scenarios that need fixed. Once fixed, Fern and Jan and I will make sure they are all uploaded here.

Last Post So as a lot has happened since the first post I made on this, I’ve spun this into its own thread since it’s so wildly different now To start off, I have some old WIP screenshots I did the same day as the last post. Should have shared them there before, but as I’m making a new thread for this bigger thing I thought I’d add them here 🙃 First off, I made a restaurant area with a fake “mini” exhibit. Its only purpose is to be scenic, and as such there’s an object on every tile. It’s a mix of desert, Savannah, and jungle features, along with some arctic bush to give it that dry look 🦣 You may have also spotted the second of my new viewing areas. A full series of pics below: Moving on to the actual meat of this post, here’s the new, second Savannah diorama right before the animals were added. Unfortunately, most of this design had to be changed in order to fit their needs, but it gives a good sense of what I was going for: And here it is with its first animals! The left shoulder exhibit houses hyena (who got so unhappy so fast that all their grass trees had to go), with African Wild Dogs on the right shoulder, and a joint Sable Antelope & Ostrich enclosure in the middle: A zoomout of one of those closer pics: Now, you may have noticed that there aren’t any crocs in these images. This is because I was busy getting them to eat the last of their meat in the old moat, for that surprise I mentioned in the title Once I did move them into the new moat, I put all but one baby one on the left island (in order to do the whole infinite meat exploit XP). This is what pretty much every croc from that smaller moat looks like when placed next to each other: But forget the overcrowding for a sec, while I turn your attention to the reason I moved them… I converted the whole old moat into a tank-moat, up to the exact same waterline (don’t ask me how I got the ladder to appear at that exact point, it took ages 🫠) Of course, I had a good reason for doing this. I added something very different to crocodiles… :0 HIPPOS! Yep! I have not only added Hyenas, Sable Antelope, Ostriches and Wild Dogs, but also the one savannah animal that can actually swim ^^ The long distance between islands of course is slightly more of an issue for hippos than crocs (at least in my mind). But that’s why I turned it into a tank, so that rather than them simply passing by- They can stop off for a visit ^-^ Sorry for being so slow and dramatic with this reveal, I’m just so glad that it worked! I introduced a pair to either island, so that slowly they would swim across to meet each other. Here’s the other one: The only real downside here is that they are less visible than the crocs would have been in the moat, given they blend pretty well into the tank walls: But it’s worth it to see them going on a journey to see their neighbours! Habitat suitability is of course all over the place for them, but the tank ticks off their need for fresh water (alongside that already in the other enclosures), and overall they seem happy even when in an enclosure that isn’t tailored too much to them specifically: I have lots more hippo images, but don’t wanna clog this one post up too much. Might post them in a comment below at some point though if people wanna see, have plenty of everything since I’m forever taking screenshots 😅 But the last hippo one I’ll share is of one of my hippos deciding to tuck in to the elephant’s lunch. All the enclosures, bar the Buffalo, have their food already stocked, and any keepers present will do so automatically in their presence: This new setup has actually really benefited my side enclosures. Raising the hippo (formerly croc) islands up means the keepers can now exit those side exhibits, meaning I can now force one keeper to look after the hippos, buffalo and rhino Btw, has anyone else done a hippo enclosure with this kinda setup? I know land-tank hybrid exhibits for hippos have been done over and over, but I’m curious to see any earlier examples of people using this to create exhibit-hopping hippos 🏝🦛 Either way, this post is already getting way too long. So to finish off, I’ll just drop some more of the new expansion pics I have, including the changing foliage and stuff when the Sables also got unhappy

Yellowrose's daughter shut it down. Before Yellowrose passed, she asked that her files be hosted here at Tek. We are in the process of making this happen.

You can do either, but it might help everyone to keep up if it was all together. Either way is fine.

Soo funny to see them together like that Such a unique example in zoos I ever seen

I recorded a video tutorial that walks you through my zt1 graphics import plugin for krita: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE_woAG6no4

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

Spring Fling Pack by Brandi has been updated. Updated by Cricket on March 6, 2025: Spring Fling Flower Shoppe by Brandi was added to this pack. Notes for the Spring Fling Flower Shoppe: Here is the Spring Fling Flower Shoppe, selling everything you need for a beautiful home garden. Requires: LANG--fern-Tek.dll Updated February 11, 2023 by Jay to prevent it from unlocking more things than expected, to lower the sold item icons and to delete unnecessary configuration lines and file. This pack includes a combined ztd file and a folder of the individual files and the Spring Fling zoo map.

View File Botanical Garden Pack by Sundance Floral-themed building, path, pond, an arch and aquatic foliage. This pack contains a working Botanical Garden building, a garden path, several aquatic plants (which can be used on land as well), an arch to match the building, a koi pond garden and a flowering bush. Thanks to Colleen for the help with the building and for Devona letting me use her pond as a base. Includes a combined ztd file and a folder of the individual ztd files. If you are using the combined ztd, you will not need to have the separate ztds in your game. Requires Phoenix Lang dll dated July 5, 2009 or after. File was originally added on 07 July 2009 for all game versions. Updated: July 9, 2009 to include the separate Botanical Garden ztd, and to replace the .png image with a .jpg. Updated March 1, 2025 through March 4, 2025 by Cricket and Jay: Some files were renamed to remove personal notes. Files were "cleaned up" (unneeded files and configuration lines were removed, a few typos corrected, animation speeds made consistent, etc). Order for 2 pond views were corrected. Use ZT's extra frame format for the pond and botanical garden to make them smaller. Use better compression method to enhance the graphics and other files. These are just highlights of what was updated. When you click on the Download this file button, you will see two files. One includes the actual pack. One includes a text file with all of the specific update notes. Submitter Cricket Submitted 03/05/2025 Category Packs  

Nope. Nothing has changed. It was just time that Tek had it. Previously it was at ztuf and DG.

The curbs are level one height and can be seen over so who knows? Maybe on a level terrain area it might solve your guest eyesight problem? You would need to test that. These curbs are lower than the low rock wall.

There is a pack here are Tek of all the ingame foliage made neutral so they can go in any exhibit without affecting suitability For the tank walls you could try the ZA glass tanks which would blend into the habitat better. And for the hippos I take it you have set the tank floor to its minimum level? Ladders are like gates. Click on the gate icon and then click where you want the ladder or gate to go. But yes sometimes placing can be a real pain.

Thank you, thank you! I wanted to ask for one but thought you had so much already on your plate. This will help the technically illiterate to understand it so much better.

Made a mistake in the video. I'm using a dev build of the tool, which can now be found here: https://github.com/openztcc/APE.KritaTools/releases/tag/pr-v1.2.0

Your zoo looks so good!!!

It looks very nice to me Mugcake Love the elevated area in your zoo Very creative zoobuilding Love the green area around the fountain Looks absolutely pretty You got skills

And, as I found out since then, it was indeed a case of me having the path already without realizing. I have also been mad spamming Zootan's set since that post.

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

Thank you Cricket and thank you Jay for the update of this wonderful pack

Vined Arch Pack by Sundance has been updated. Updated by Cricket on March 1, 2025: A combined .ztd file was added to this pack at Pukkie's request. Single .ztd files were placed in a "Single Files" folder. Screenshot now shows both versions of each arch theme. Files were "cleaned up". (Unneeded .pal files and folders were removed, descriptions were enhanced for double-path arches, etc)