No Grass, Please!

[(Designer)Vondell]

Glad to be helping with the project! :)

(I do want to note that none of the other scenery in that screenshot was made by me other than the paved path; the Sequoia, wooden fence, and all the rocks are downloads available on Tek that I happen to have in my game for the zoo contest that's going on.)

 

Shouldn't the ingame Horsetails reach farther back than that? I know the Horsetail family is very old, although paleobiology gets a little blurry about exactly what horsetail families would've existed in what time periods. I just know Horsetails are a stereotypically-ancient lineage. Probably at least Carboniferous? I'm no expert though.

[P.Rex]

Thanks for clearing that up. I'll fix it.

 

Regarding the horsetails- I've just triple checked... the genus Equisetum (modern horsetail) is indeed from the late Jurassic, but the class Equisetopsida apparently goes as far back as the Devonian. *shrugs* we'll just say the in-game one is Equisetum and the ones you made are earlier ones, shall we.

 

EDIT: Here is something else I came up with during the day:

 

 

!!!!THIS IS NOT A REAL SCREENSHOT!!!!

This is my concept for a steel-reinforced glass terrarium. Obviously it still needs a lot of fine-tuning. The terrarium walls would function like any other zoo fence, creating a normal exhibit, while the ceiling piece would just be a neutral object that does not affect guests or animals in any way. Its purpose is purely aesthetic.

The terrarium is completely sealed from the outside world, and thus is ideal for housing animals that require unique atmospheric conditions, such as the giant arthropods of the Carboniferous period. It would also be ideal as an aviary for large pterosaurs.

 

To whoever wants to make this fence: it would be best to make the bars a little thinner than I have here, and maybe change their color if the silver is too distracting.

[Fern]

Have you looked at catfish's avairy pieces which you use with the invisible fence.

Functional Aviary Cage by Catfish

[P.Rex]

I'm familiar with these, though I'd rather have a completely new terrarium set instead of using the aviary set, for two reasons:

1. I don't want to use invisible fences. I'd like to have the gameplay remain as simple and intuitive as possible and also have all the required files in a single ZTD directory to make installation and removal easy.

2. The aviary walls are too short. The terrarium walls have to be very tall (about 3x the height of the tallest Dinosaur Digs fence) so it would be taller than the tallest tree (Vondell's Black Tree Fern) and also give an illusion that large pterosaurs have a lot of room to fly in.

[P.Rex]

Been playing around with Spinosaurus lately:



Modified from the JPOG Spinosaurus, made to resemble the 2014 restoration. At first I wanted to go for a green-and-yellow color scheme resembling the Blue Fang Spinosaurus, but eventually I've decided the standard JPOG skin (with slight adjustments) looks better.



!!!NOT A REAL SCREENSHOT!!!
Testing what the new Spinosaurus would look like in-game.

[(Designer)Vondell]

Nice! If you get to animating that I'll send over my (still WIP) Blender setup for rendering out ZT animations. The way the game handles swimming animations for tanks (which I assume you'd want since all animals that can swim in water terrain can also swim in tanks) is a lot more complex than regular animations and I haven't quite figured it out yet or really even tried. There's different animations for the above-water bits, below-water bits, and shadows of each frame that have to be rendered separately. I'm hoping with the new version of APE that folks are working on that's coming out soon i'll be able to explore the marine mania animations a little bit further to see what makes them tick.

 

Which interpretation are you going for? The recently accepted reconstruction by Ibrahim et al (2014) [x] [x] looks quite different than the traditional image, with very reduced hind limbs that suggest an animal much more at home in the water than on land:

 

 

But of course no team has access to the straight truth and like all paleontology work it's still up for interpretation. I would think an animal like this might have an exhibit set up with a land/water ratio similar to the saltwater crocodile's (with Aquatic as the designated habitat like the crocodile's) and maybe a heavier emphasis on dirt as an analogue for the mud present at the water's edge. But that's just me spitballing!

[(Professor Emeritus)Professor Paul]

I do wonder about that reconstruction. It puts me in mind of a bodybuilder who has developed his torso but not his legs. It definitely seems top heavy. True, they are positing a partly aquatic lifestyle for Spinosaurus, but there is also evidence that they were able to compete with theropods like Carcharodontosaurus for carrion . I can't help but to think that the hind legs belong to perhaps a younger specimen, or maybe even another theropod.

 

Not beyond the bounds of possibility. After all, Apatosaurus was given a Camarasaurus skull for years!

[P.Rex]

Personally I do not accept Ibrahim's restoration as-is since, as Professor Paul was right to notice, we still don't know enough on where these scrawny hind legs came from. It was most likely a younger specimen if not a different animal entirely, not to mention on the skeletal you posted the hind leg bones are significantly thinner than the front limbs. There's no way these things could support an adult Spinosaurus' weight without crumbling like sandstone, and the hand anatomy pretty much rules out quadrupedalism. Barring further evidence in Ibrahim's favor, I guess I'll go with the slightly later restoration which has larger hind limbs, though still shorter compared to other large theropods.

 

I'll be more than interested in your Blender setup, I'm really curious to see how you do things and it might even help me solve a problem with my own renders. That said, if you want to animate the Spino (or any of the animals I made for Carnivores) yourself, I wouldn't object. Though it might be early because we still need the new APE version that can handle dinosaurs and marine animals. I agree that Spino should be made tank-worthy, maybe we'll make some prehistoric aquatic animals too eventually.

 

Do you have any data on Spinosaurus' habitat, as in soil conditions, water salinity and local flora? Couldn't find a lot myself, so the habitat I built for it is mostly guesswork (then again, so is paleontology). I want to make sure it's as correct as I can possibly make it.

 

So far, the animals I originally made for Carnivores (and would like to eventually adapt for ZT) are:

 

Deinotherium

 

 

Daemonosaurus (edited from a Dilophosaurus model by JenDOS_RUS)

 

 

Dodo

 

 

Entelodon

 

 

Paraceratherium

 

 

Yutyrannus

 

 

Gorgonops

 

 

Estemmenosuchus

 

 

Desmatosuchus

 

 

Synthetoceras

 

 

Diplodocus

 

 

And the fictional dinosaur hybrid from Jurassic World, Indominus Rex (might add this in as a bonus animal)

 

[(Professor Emeritus)Professor Paul]

I wondered when someone would try that one.

[(Designer)Vondell]

Love those models! You've got a knack for keeping the poly count low that I haven't mastered yet. I haven't thought about Paraceratherium in a long time, it'd be a really lovely addition to ZT.

 

And yeah, the Ibrahim et al Spinosaurus reconstruction is very hard to swallow. I wasn't on board until Mark Witton and Greg Paul relaxed their opposition to it. Lacking any further confirmation either way It makes sense to be cautious in the meantime, I was just curious about whether you'd seen that or not.