Particle's Projects

[YoungerPrinceLothric]

I LOVE pyramid roofs! I wish modders made them more often. I use the pyramid roofs from that build-your-own-aviary set almost exclusively.

[YoungerPrinceLothric]

At first glance, I thought those food tanks were trash cans, but food tanks is a much better idea! Would these act as 'scenery' objects in a herbivorous animal exhibit? Like the illusion that hay comes out of them for a horse or bison-like animal?

Edit: this talk of food tanks is making me think of all those real-life enrichment objects you find in zoos, like when big cats are given pumpkins to play with and rip apart. I may be thinking too far ahead though lol.

[(Designer)Particle]

28 minutes ago, YoungerPrinceLothric said:

At first glance, I thought those food tanks were trash cans, but food tanks is a much better idea! Would these act as 'scenery' objects in a herbivorous animal exhibit? Like the illusion that hay comes out of them for a horse or bison-like animal?

I would love to set up something like that.  The problem is that all the settings for which items are allowed in an animals exhibits are right in the animals ai file.  So to set that up it would be a hack.  i don't like that option.  There may be other ways to make it possible for existing animals, but what I could do for the future, is make any animals that I make, will come with things like this.  This would be a great example of something that would make a perfect toy for an animal.  Then when they interacted with the tank, it would have an animation of food coming out of it or something.  That is I think the best answer I can give without actually playing around with it, but I'm pretty sure that this is something every designer has come up against in zoo tycoon modding history.  Basically, you can't change the ai for the animals that exist without causing all sorts of conflict issues down the road.

 

There are certain things in the ai that are already there, that I could use the ID for and it would work ok, like for example... shelters.  I can make a shelter with the same ID as a concrete shelter, and then any animals that allows a concrete shelter would like mine.  But then the name of the item would be "concrete shelter" and that would be confusing if it was a food tank obviously.  So there may be ways to get around this, or tricks I can use to make it work, but until I figure those out, these would simply be scenery pieces that would go on the outside of your enclosure.

 

EDIT: There is one other obvious option that I will mention, just for fun.  I could at some point redo all the animals in the game to work with food tanks, which would be one giant hack that replaces all the ai in the game.  Another word for that would be "expansion".  That is something I've been thinking about from the minute I decided to make mods for this game.  But I'm not even close to ready to do something like that yet.  I mean, I just came up with my first food tank.  If you were to do something on that scale, you would want to include all sorts of upgrades, not just food tanks.  So something like that would be way way down the road, but it is fun to think about it!  Maybe in 2 or 3 years I will be ready to attempt something like that.  In my conversations with JBL, he made me realize that to try to do everything at once would be insane, and instead, just doing everything as packs or individual downloads would make more sense, until I get to the point where I would have enough content to start thinking about an expansion.  So that is where my head is right now, just make the content, and see what happens.

[(Designer)Particle]

51 minutes ago, YoungerPrinceLothric said:

Edit: this talk of food tanks is making me think of all those real-life enrichment objects you find in zoos, like when big cats are given pumpkins to play with and rip apart. I may be thinking too far ahead though lol.

I saw that video.  And no you're not thinking too far ahead.  You're basically talking about toys for animals.  Like I said... not easy to do for existing animals, but if anyone out there is making animals (I'm going to be doing one here shortly) then you should think about this ahead of time, and I think you will find that there are 3 or 4 toys per animal that would be easy to make.  For example, one where cats rip up pumpkins seems pretty simple.  They already have attack animations.  Also if you're going to make an animal, it typically would have an eating animation.  That could then be made to be animations for a feeding toy, like for eating from a trough or drinking from a water tank, with hardly any extra work.

 

Let's be real here, there are very few times in life when you are actually thinking too far ahead.  Thinking ahead is how great minds work!

[Fern]

Blue Fang did the toy interactions two different ways if I remember rightly. Jay could tell you which to look at to see the two ways they did that. I think the lions rocks were one way but I am not sure which is a good example of the other.

[YoungerPrinceLothric]

I can't wait to see what animals you come up with! I personally would like to see more deer and antelope-type animals. I know khaydar and borsato made some really amazing animal mods.

[(Designer)Particle]

2 hours ago, Fern said:

Blue Fang did the toy interactions two different ways if I remember rightly. Jay could tell you which to look at to see the two ways they did that. I think the lions rocks were one way but I am not sure which is a good example of the other.

I think the ice flow and the raft, but that is just a guess I haven't really looked at them yet.  No matter what way you do it, I think you have to add the toy to the animals ai or it won't work? 

 

Here is what I meant by "under roof":

[Fern]

7 minutes ago, Particle said:

I think the ice flow and the raft, but that is just a guess I haven't really looked at them yet.  No matter what way you do it, I think you have to add the toy to the animals ai or it won't work?

Yes it does need to be added to the animals ai

[HeatherL]

22 minutes ago, Particle said:

Here is what I meant by "under roof":

Very pretty.

[caddienoah]

I am so enjoying this thread...Particle you have added new life to ZT. I appreciate your work and that of  a the other newer designers!