Particle's Projects

[(Designer)Particle]

hello Caddienoah!  Thanks for the list, I love some of these ideas.  Let me just go over them real quick.

 

1.  I think in theory a train would be a little harder to do, because the length of the thing, basically.  Maybe a real short one like the disney train would be easy.  Like 3 cars and and engine.  We could do a lot more elaborate pieces if we want but what we're talking about is putting in the time to do those larger animations... especially if you want them to look nice and smooth like the rest of the animations in the game.

 

2. I just put submarine on my list.  I mean who wouldn't want that.

 

Spoiler

3. Bridges, or I guess you could say, "elevated paths":  So far no one has really figured it out.  So far.

 

Anytime you think of anything else let me know,  I like your thinking!

 

 

 

[Fern]

As long as guests cannot step off a cliff then we have a problem with a walkable bridge

Another problem with cliffs (straight up slopes) is you usually cannot get things to hang over the edges.

Okay my experience with fences says the thicker a fence is, the harder it is to rotate and get ZT to show properly. So for some time I have had this idea in mind but not the graphics skill to do it myself. Keep your straight fence and make scenery add-ons. Some time ago I had Rick make me a cut rock with this sort of thing in mind.

Cliffside Rock

Now take that and run with it and make waterfall rock edges, rocks that look like they are poking out of the waterfall part way up or at the base, etc. These could been done as quarter tiles and rotated right would seem to be part of the fence. I can't ask Rick to do graphics any more as he is just too unwell. But I think perhaps you and ZZ might have the graphics skills to pull this off.

[YoungerPrinceLothric]

For me, personally, as far as 'wish lists' go: more natural and muted-colored buildings and fences, especially brick and stone-textured. I'm not against the neon-colored items people have posted to this site over the years,but they were never my cup of tea. For example, I'm talking rust red. Dusty pinks and dark teals. Earth tones. More greys and blacks. I hope the images I posted below paint a clearer picture of what I mean.

Another thing I'd like to see is more gazebos! I don't mean this model exactly, but a piece of scenery/working building in this similar style: https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/exterior/other/summer-gazebo

[Fern]

It is a nice gazebo but it would need to be flat on the ground and minus a floor for people to walk through it. Sadly ZT is very restrictive on what guests can do. If you can come up with natural looking versions of the ones done by Yellowrose or the one CDL did that would be possible.

 

[Fern]

Another thought about doing various waterfall parts it that people can design their own version of waterfall for their zoo. A bit like the build your own castle. Only this would be build your own waterfall.

[HeatherL]

Fern, I really like the waterfall parts idea.

 

YoungerPrinceLothric- I just painted my bathroom in the wilderness color!    i prefer the more natural colors, too.

[(Designer)Z.Z.]

13 hours ago, Fern said:

But I think perhaps you and ZZ might have the graphics skills to pull this off

 

I am happy to help :)

 

12 hours ago, YoungerPrinceLothric said:

more natural and muted-color

 

Oh I agree. If there was a hack to change the in game color palette to more muted colors that would be awesome.

 

12 hours ago, YoungerPrinceLothric said:

a piece of scenery/working building in this similar style

 

Would you want guests to be able to walk under it, or have it just as a scenery piece?

 

 

[(Designer)Particle]

I think a muted palette hack would be a great idea and pretty easy to do.  I could probably do it in one or two nights.

 

I also like the idea of a modular waterfall set, but that sounds like a lot of work.  That would take me a few weeks at least.  Maybe I could start with a very small set.

 

Guests walking on the gazebo is basically going to be guests walking on an elevated path.  Which is why you haven't seen that before from any designers.  I really don't know if I can do anything about that, but I'm going to give it a try for fun at some point.  Obviously you could try for the illusion of guests walking on the gazebo, but if you do it with animations, then you have to figure out how to make that look realistic, and I'm not sure how you'd do it, because guests are completely randomized, and animations would not be.  That is why if I was going to do one right now, it would be without the floor, so it would be an observation area that looked like a gazebo.

 

These are fun things to talk about though for sure.  I love it.

[(Designer)Particle]

Sometimes I just need to mull it over in my head for a few minutes and then other times I need a cup of coffee.  This time it was both.

 

So the gazebo issue is that the guests won't walk on anything but what the game considers to be the ground.  But they will walk on the ground if you elevate it.  In this case we don't actually need an elevated path, or a "bridge", (or in other words, guests will not walk under the gazebo, and the gazebo is not actually off the ground), so this strategy here can get us a gazebo, please don't laugh at my example I did it in 2 minutes, and it is only to put it in everyone's head that a gazebo can actually be an observation area:

 

 

If we had a gazebo scenery piece that was 2x2 tiles, and fit into that spot where the 4 observation areas are in the picture, then you could see that you can elevate the ground under it to have guests walk around in it. 

 

That is a very simple example... but there is a lot of fun things you can do to still make the gazebo a circle, or an octagon shape, and still make it work, with the caveat being that guests would only be able to walk on the part that was full tiles, everything else would be an illusion.  Sort of like this, imagine that my big brown thing is the "floor" of the observation area, which would also be the part that would not be walkable, because the guests would just stick to the paths:

 

That is an ugly picture.  I'm actually chuckling now myself. So if you laugh at it that is ok!  I hope you all understand what I'm trying to illustrate here.  You're just going to have to use your imagination and insert a gazebo in there.  This would be a little difficult to make it look proper, because you would have to match a building to uneven terrain, and also rotate it to fit, but in the end, I think it would be a very nice feature in a zoo, and could be used not only for gazebos, but other types of observation areas and buildings where guests can walk on them or through them.

 

This one is a little less ugly:

 

The last few days I went through all of the colorswap items I had and fixed a few things I was unhappy with and put them all together into a single ztd.  So this pack should be ready soon.

[YoungerPrinceLothric]

Not going to lie, I was never that into the whole 'observation areas for gazebos' idea that's been done in the past, but I understand our options are limited.