Particle's Projects

[(Designer)Z.Z.]

"it had the best paint program ever"

 

It certainly did. I often wish I knew a programmer who could duplicate it for me.

 

A critter feeding station would be cool. It would only need to be one tile in size, basically a small gumball machine filled with cracked corn, guests stick a quarter in and get a handful, then bend down to feed a squirrel or a raccoon or something.

The bend down graphics are already in game, when guests bend down to see inside exhibits.

So maybe it could work like the food carts work, guests walk up to it, use the machine, bend down to feed a critter, then continue on down the path.

[(Designer)Particle]

Ok, my exacto blades are whirling and slicing.  Here's how this could work, first you set up the terrain like this:

Then you make a scenery piece like this:

And then you drop that in and it looks like this:

[(Designer)VeganCannibalism]

28 minutes ago, Particle said:

Ok, my exacto blades are whirling and slicing.  Here's how this could work, first you set up the terrain like this:

Then you make a scenery piece like this:

And then you drop that in and it looks like this:

WHOA! You were able to sling out something that looks that good, that fast?! Yep, I'm pretty sure you're a wizard. :D

[(Designer)Z.Z.]

Well that looks cool :)

[(Admin)Savannahjan]

Playing catch-up again and VC, I have that jaw drop feeling myself.  Good gravy, what in the world?  This is the stuff of ZT fantasy!    It's really just amazing what you are cooking up in that Particle CloudChamber of a mind of your's.   After 20 years, new conecpts and ideas, it's so much fun to see all this.

 

My observation re the tram.  First, the concept is fabulous.  Have you ever used Jane's tram?  I don't still have it and I couldn't find it in or downloads, maybe I missed it. 

 

EDIT:  Found it; Heather had uploaded it.  (Thank you, Heather!)  Updated the file to include a zip of the .ztd.  Has now been approved.

 

So I'm looking at those towers where the track meets at right angels, and yet again, my OCD is kicking in.  Could there be elongated tower pieces in more of an "S" curve or circle shape to accomodate room for the trams to turn those corners?

 

I would also love an open Gondola ride.  I made a .ztd of the boat for the Waterways club zoo, but it turned out way too large, might shrink that down a bit and see what you think.

 

 

[(Designer)Particle]

3 hours ago, Savannahjan said:

So I'm looking at those towers where the track meets at right angels, and yet again, my OCD is kicking in.  Could there be elongated tower pieces in more of an "S" curve or circle shape to accomodate room for the trams to turn those corners?

 

I would also love an open Gondola ride.  I made a .ztd of the boat for the Waterways club zoo, but it turned out way too large, might shrink that down a bit and see what you think.

Regarding the towers, yes we can do different size towers no problem.  In fact the way I'm looking at is that if I can do the pieces with the animations, then other designers can make whatever towers they want to fit those pieces.  So in fact, you could do your own set of towers to look however you want.  The only reason I showed the whole thing in 2 pieces is just to point out how simple this idea is from concept to completion.  After you have the basic version, you could spend the next 10 years doing other pieces to add to the tram, because this is all meant to be building blocks instead of one big piece of scenery that doesn't allow you to customize it at all.

 

I would love to see your boat.  :)  The thing about the animated pieces, if you have enclosed vehicles, then the whole thing is actually really simple to do, these animations aren't even as hard as doing an animal, if you think about it.  It is just a boat moving in a straight line, with maybe some water affects at the bow to make it look realistic.  So maybe we could do a whole bunch of them.  :)

 

I'm at least a month away from even starting this project right now.  But the reason I wanted to talk about it was to get feedback and ideas before I even start, and so we have lots of time to discuss this.  I'm already getting lots of fun feedback from everyone.  So that is awesome!

[(Designer)Particle]

 A couple of things I'd like to say real quick and then we can get back to talking about the fun projects again... First of all I'm putting together a little list of bugs for the UI, so far I have 2 things that are relatively small issues.  For example, because I moved things around on panels so much a few times I ended up with buttons that are a little bit covered up by text elements.   I will elevate all buttons on panels that are around text objects by one level to fix this.  At the moment though it really doesn't break the game or anything, it is just for me an annoyance because all parts of a button should work like a button.  Also, Jay notified of some issues he found, so if anyone else finds something that doesn't look right or behave like you are used to, then please let me know.  I aim to fully update the UI several times as we go, depending on what needs fixing, because I realize that with a mod like that you can't just let it stay broken for long.

 

Ok, now the second thing is I'm still working on my pack of colorswap items.  I don't want it to take too long, but I'm still adding things to this pack, and remember I just started doing these items less than 2 weeks ago, so I'm still getting the hang of it.  One that I did early on was the trashcan and I really wanted to try it again to see if I could do a better job than the first time around.  Trashcans are sort of a pain in the butt though, because you also have to do the graphics for half full and totally full, and that means you have to do some trash .  A few hours in on the second version of the trashcan and it really hit me how funny it was that I was spending all this time trying to get teeny tiny little bits of trash to look right.  When I finished the second version I actually thought I had done a better job, but at normal view, the thing is so tiny, you can't even see the difference in what I did.  That's what makes these little things so fun and challenging is that where you place every pixel is important.

 

Also in MM there was a trashcan graphic that they left in the game that looked like this:

 

Most of you have probably seen it before, djpluffs made a trashcan using these graphics at one point.  I saw them one day when just looking through the objects ztd and thought I would like to try to do a colorswap version of it.  But I ended up changing some things, so now it looks a little different, and the top is not the same, (although it is sort of hard to see that unless there is garbage showing), but here is how both of my colorswap trashcans look in game now, this is at full zoom:

 

Here is at normal view:

 

That is all I'm going to do for trashcans for now.  Maybe for ever.  lol.  I made a list of what I have for this pack, and what I still want, and so I'd say I'm getting closer, but there is still a few items that are perfect for this set that I have to do.  Also I was experimenting with the idea of putting a bathroom in this set, but I am not going to do that.  Instead after I get this set done, I'm going to do a set of 4 buildings, all with colorswapping and hopefully fun working animations.  My list of projects is obviously getting bigger every day but I'm going to try not to get too distracted until this little pack is done because I really want all of you to have these fun items.  It is one thing to look at them in screenshots, and a whole other thing to put them in your zoo and play with the colors.

[(Designer)Z.Z.]

Those look great :)

[VNDragonV2]

Oh I LOVE it, seems easier to use than even the sky tram we currently have.

I haven't given this much thought, but my wild wish for zoo tycoon would be the ability to add water on slopes! 

[YoungerPrinceLothric]

Having a working tram for this game would be incredible.