How do I mod existing animals without creating copies?

[P.Rex]

One of the things that bothered me about Dinosaur Digs right from the beginning was the dinosaurs' strange habitat stats. E.g. some of the dinosaurs will tolerate only one species of plant in their exhibits (Allosaurus comes to mind), dinosaurs "wanting" grass in their exhibits, dinosaurs living in biomes that didn't even exist until the Eocene (savannah, grassland), dinosaurs from the same formation that want completely different biomes, etc. I realize that a lot of it was due to short-sightedness and lack of research on the developers' part, and I want to correct that. I want to modify some of the dinosaurs stats to bring the game up to speed with all the progress paleontologists have made since its release.

 

So my question is this: is there any way for me to change the dinosaurs' stats without creating entirely new copies of them? How do I go about it?

Also, since I want to completely change some of the dinosaurs' biomes, how do I give them new icons in the animal adoption menu?

[bonobo]

Ha! I've never thought about dinosaurs wanting grass in their exhibits before. That's hilarious! Good catch! I wonder if it's possible to add new biomes that would be the equivalent, pre-grass scrubland sort of things?

 

I'm sorry I can't help, I'm new to all of this (everything except playing) but I just wanted to say you raise good points and have good ideas, and that I'd download the changes in a heartbeat when you've figured it all out.

[P.Rex]

I figured it out, managed to mod the Giant Tortoise so it's no longer semi-aquatic, and instead of a frozen tundra its habitat of choice is now a rainforest with prehistoric jungle plants and Australian plants, similar to how its native habitat of New Caledonia may have looked like long ago. More progress soon.

 

EDIT: Finished the four Morrison Formation dinosaurs: Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, Camptosaurus and Stegosaurus. They now all have the same biome preferences. The game recognizes this biome as rainforest, though the environment I've designed for them is actually a lightly-forested Mossy Plain, similar to what we've seen on episode #2 of Walking With Dinosaurs. Stay tuned for more.

 

EDIT II: Kentrosaurus is done too, I gave it a swampy biome with plenty of horsetails and club mosses growing around the waterways, as its home in the Tendaguru Beds may have looked.