Animal Antics

[Firehawke]

Very cool...good luck!!!

[jbl89]

So, a small update. I honestly haven't done anything lately. I've had a very hectic period at work. I did look for a local classes on Blender, but it seems like there are hardly any. So I'll have to learn things from YouTube. I've mastered the very basic modelling, as you can see; but now I'll need to learn how to animate. If I ever make more stuff, it will be things I can easily recycle, e.g. tigers, elephants, bears. Probably kind of why Taz made a lot of seals (although she probably just liked them too). You've seen my animals. The Mola Mola can't be recycled a lot due to its uncommon shape, the Dingo could easily be altered to a fox, wolf, dog ...

 

I've also compiled a database which includes every line in every file (.cfg, .ai). I hope it might help to discover new things. I actually did spot some unusual keys for buildings, but I'm not entirely sure about their effect etc. It should help me document some stuff, and maybe find out more about how certain stuff works *exactly*.

 

The rest of the work has mostly been "theoretical". I have some concepts in my head to improve the concepts I have for the shows for non-marine animals. It would make the first part of the illusion flawless. The only 'show stopper' remains at the end of shows, where animals are actually programmed (and I think it's hardcoded) to dive immediately, at any place they are in the show tank, when the show ends. I also have an idea for that, but I'm afraid it might end in booing; although I might still have a trick up my sleeve (needs experimenting).

 

I also have an idea I still need to test (maybe I'll do it with dummy graphics, as I did with the shows), which would allow some sort of Safari-experience (especially combined with an invisible fence). I've got a few alternatives in mind, or even a few variations (going from Mini-Jeeps, quads, to guests sitting on e.g. an elephant [or donkey!]). The guests would be 'generalized', e.g. they'd be in the car, or in one of those things you can put on elephants (not sure what it's called). Related to the Western theme, it could even be a chariot. Although: the smaller the better.

 

Related to that concept, I also have an idea for elephants to play soccer (free roaming) in their exhibits. (or other animals doing similar stuff). Now, combine some things I mentioned: 'general' models (e.g. elephants). Recycle. Example: if I did make a basic elephant animal, based on one of the existing graphics, I could e.g. make a new toy (animal enrichment) for the African Elephant. Like a soccer ball, for in its exhibit. I could also use that model to create different animations, for show tricks. And - need to verify this: I think I might easily be able to change the model a bit, and recycle all animations to make them work for the Asian Elephant as well.

 

Another example: Polar Bear, Asian Bear, Black Bear, Grizzly Bear.... => one main model (with alterations) might help to create new animations for all these animals. They could all share a new toy. At least that's the idea.

 

That's why I also started considering animal enrichment as a theme. Wouldn't it be nice to have new toys? Pumpkins to eat, fake prey animals which are actually "attacked", maybe a feeding trough, cones, balls?

 

Keep in mind, like I said, I'm a total noob when it comes to graphics, and it's all self study. It's one of the many spare time projects. While I would love to accomplish all these things, and I'm sure most of them can be accomplished, they do require a lot of time. That's why i've also considered an alternate approach to this project: focus on the things which are easily possible to do. The perfect suitability ratings, making the animals by Taz even more professional and fully compatible with other animals, fixing some typos and inconsistencies in the official files, recycling the beta stuff. Adding some awards, cheats related to the new animals too. It might show me if there's actually any general interest in ZT1 left, and make me more motivated/passionate about this project.

 

Also, if anyone does want to help, and does have the necessary experience/knowledge/time to chip in on this project and also create brand new animations (from a 3D program, e.g. Blender or 3D Studio Max or anything...).... such a person would be very welcome, and I'd be happy to help on the more technical side / ZT1-"programming".

 

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Update December 18th: unfortunately the safari-concept isn't working properly at the moment. There's only a very brief information and the guest disappears again, contrary to when he is in the water. Will look into it if I can figure something out.

[jbl89]

No new things so far. I've done some work, like updated all the icons and created proper list icons for Taz' animals. I've also altered a few more official animals to reach 100% suitability, and I defined some rules for myself how to tweak them: as close to the original cTreePref and cRockPref as possible, and when one small stone or tree is missing, it shouldn't be 100%. My Excel-file for calculating the suitability has been really helpful, as well as a database I've generated based on all .AI, .cfg and some other official ZT1 files.

 

For graphics, I'm actually very happy to see that one of the members here, Vondell, whose work I admire greatly, has chosen the exact same path I was trying to figure out. I hope he releases his Blender files for his tortoise, so I can learn a lot about how to render new animals (you've seen some of my models, except for tweaking the Dingo a little bit, no changes were done).

 

Now, the bad news: I tried a few experiments... unless I use another optical illusion where water would be covered with a platform (similar to what I'm planning for shows for land animals), the Safari experience won't be possible. It seems that once guests get out on the back of a building (think swim shack), they walk away as soon as they enter land. I've seen some bizarre behavior: one person entering the building, exiting at the back (as expected), and then no one else enters. I also don't have animations yet. So I used stand-in animations (Asian Elephant walking). This triggered another unexpected and unwanted consequence: some colors of the elephant were automatically replaced by guests. Might be a good thing if you get that color replacement in the right spots, but so far, no one's managed to create things with color replacement possibilities.

 

So if I'm stuck there.... except if I'd use an illusion.... and since I was interested about color replacement years ago, but no one has done it yet....

Here's a copy of a post I did on ZTDD:

 

I was actually in the mood to experiment with some stuff. Using ZOOT and a Hex editor, and using a few basic images, I managed to find out a lot of stuff already. I think I understand how a single frame is drawn, how it copes with transparent pixels, with width/height, with offsets, with animation speeds, how it refers to the .PAL-file. I mostly documented the stuff in a Word file, with some examples. I'll see when I find the time and when I'm the mood to try to piece something together that reads/writes those files. Once I figure that out, it should be a small step to the animated versions.

The only part of programming I've actually done, is a .NET program which reads a palette file and displays all colors inside.

With that little program, I checked some files of the restaurant:
- restrant.pal: contains 256 colors.
- color.pal: contains 232 colors. They are identically the same as all the first colors in restrant.pal, except for color index 0: black in restrant.pal, pink in color.pal (the kind of pink you'd use for transparency, although it might be a coïncidence).
- 1.pal: pink + 16 colors (the ones which were NOT in color.pal ) = the ones we can replace? (mostly black, blue)
- 2.pal: pink + 8 colors (the ones which were NOT in color.pal ) = the other ones we can replace? (shades of grey)

Possible conclusion: the colors which can be replaced, are better placed at the end of the original object palette file - although this might not be a requirement.
cr_color = color.pal = colors which are to be left untouched.
cr_part1 = 1.pal = colors for a first color replacement option
cr_part2 = 2.pal = colors for a second color replacement option

So basically, with this information, all we need is a tool which makes it easy for us to determine which colors may be replaced.
One thing we will have to keep in mind (just a stream of thoughts right now): the 1.pal with 16 colors would most likely need to refer to a palette like "blue16.pal", the second one with 8 colors would need to refer to "blue8.pal". I'm assuming the color replacement happens in the same order. E.g. color #0 in 1.pal is replaced by color #0 in blue16.pal.

This would also mean that you can use a maximum of 16 colors + another maximum of 16 colors (assuming you have to chose between 8 or 16 at this point) which can be recolored!


I hope this is a useful contribution. * Hoping to get credit for things of which you could replace the color, eventually, be it by this basic summary or by developing a little program himself *

 

[jbl89]

It's been a long time since I updated this post. It was a very ambitious plan, and I still want to continue working on it. But there's been some major changes for me at work, and I'm currently having to make sure everything keeps running smoothly. My colleague left, I'm the only person. There were a lot of changes lately, I still have to finish quite some stuff my colleague had started to change but didn't have time to finish.

 

Anyhow, basic summary, I haven't been in the mood a lot to work on the expansion pack. There were a few more small changes, not worth mentioning. One side-project should be available soon: ZT Studio. But only as a very early beta (yet it works well and has most features I wanted). More about that in a separate post. I'll tweak it a bit more, but then it's not a priority anymore. It should become a useful tool though.

 

As for this project: I still want to make it happen, and I still need a lot to learn about Blender and animating. It's very time consuming, especially the first time, for a non-graphic person. I'm far better at programming and configuring. For the last 3 months, I had to focus all of my learning energy at work, so no progress in the 3D designing area. When it comes to new graphics, I'm thinking in about 3 steps:

* create a very simple object, experiment with Vondell's findings. This should make it easier to port things from Blender to ZT1.

* finish the Dingo. As for different animations, I'll probably take the Mexican Wolf or African Wild Dog as an example. I'd like to add something new for the exhibit as well. Maybe foliage (the sample object?), maybe a new shelter, maybe a toy or enrichment - ideas with pictures are welcome!

* finish the Ocean Sun Fish. That's currently unexplored territory. AFAIK, Only Taz created brand new marine animals with proper surface animations? That's another thing which will make it more challenging and complicated, although I do have an idea how it should work (theoretically).

 

In between, I'll also keep tweaking the smaller things: 100% suitability for each animal - but a bit more challenging for some animals, since I'm trying to make it so that if you even miss one simple rock or tree, you'd get only 99%. The Gray Wolf and Arctic Wolf will also be able to swim (I remember a hack for it, but couldn't find a Marine Mania version). Also looking into the same thing for the Mexican Wolf. Some beta items will reappear. Some stuff in official files will be fixed. And so on.

[pukkie]

Sounds all wonderful to me and I hope you will succeed Good luck with your projects

[(Admin)Savannahjan]

Hope things are going well; it is hard sometimes to work in the fun projects when real life is so demanding. I am very interested in your work on the sun fish especially and the studio app.

[jbl89]

About the Ocean Sunfish: Despite looking the most fun to me as well, it's also the most difficult one.

 

I really need to master basic graphic skills first. I'm generally a quick learner, but I'm not very creative, to be honest. I think it will take quite some time [although I still need a lot of time off this year] before I'll have time again for that kind of project.

 

As for ZT Studio, I hope you enjoy it's basic feature range. I think it will be a bit more for pro users, as in: batch converting ZT1 <=> PNG files. It can render and create graphics which were previously not available through APE nor Zoot. And there's the option to view 2 graphics at once as a combination (object: toy idle/used + animal: using the toy). Plus reordering of the color palette in an easier way. If the game hadn't been that old, I'd probably would have continued working on ZT Studio to make it an APE replacement. Really not a fond of APE nor its updated versions which have been released so far.