VNDragon's ZT1 Projects

[VNDragonV2]

After asking a lot of questions with multiple threads across the forum, I would like to showcase a bit on what I have been working on. I had no intention of becoming an actual ZT1 designer like I was with ZT2, but this project was borne out of my personal ingame need to unify multiple DD hacks and fill in some missing gaps. I like the idea of unifying conflicting hacks as a way to honor the many contributions of other ZT designers under the understanding that all ZT's user-created contents are now public content. Please let me know if any designers have given explicit request that their hacks are not to be tweaked by others.   

 

Anyhow, the topic title is quite self-explanatory already: this project aims to improve the overall realism and quality of DD's creatures ingame.

 

A. The project incorporates elements from the following hacks by other designers

 

1. P. Rex's No Grass, Please!: This is the backbone of the project. I use P. Rex's hack as a base upon which I incorporate other hacks and make some changes on my own. In a sense, you can call this project "No Grass, Please! v1.6". If something isn't mentioned below you can assume that I kept that part from the hack unaltered.

2. Wolv12's Reality Hack: Some elements were taken to complement P. Rex's works.
- Spinosaurus is a piscivore and can eat guests.

- Macrauchenia can use regular shelters.

- Meiolania can swim again based on Lichtig and Lucas (2018).

https://zootycoonuncrated.jcink.net/index.php?showtopic=14

 

3. Borsato's DDvarPatch: fully incorporated. I might consider adding ui99.ztd + LANG--ZBorsato.dll into the download file as well for convenience. Borsato's and P. Rex's edits on the DD plants match one another quite well, but I give Borsato's works priority since he added the correct time periods for the plants.

 

4&5. Penguino's DD No Eggs Hack & Attractiveness Boost Hack: fully incorporated. I personally dislike the concept of purchasing eggs. However, in case other people don't want to lose their egg stage, there will be an alternative version without the no eggs hack. I'm also too lazy to copy Penguino's attractiveness value 1 by 1, so I will only use some of their files for reference and code my own attractiveness values.

https://zooadmin.org/ZT1/index.php?topic=1092.0

https://zooadmin.org/ZT1/index.php?topic=1094.0

 

B. So what's new?

- Not just Spinosaurus, other medium-large theropods and Smilodon now eat guests as well. I'm still debating on whether I should add this for Deinonychus (the original Velociraptor).

- Spinosaurus consumes meat chow as an alternative food source.

- Spinosaurus no longer gets eaten by a number of other carnivores, including T. rex. Of course, if someone can create a short-legged Spinosaurus the dynamics would be different.

 

[WIP]

- Visual makeover for the purchase icons. I usually dislike animal hacks with new habitat preferences because it messes up with the visual flow of the purchase menu. Updating icons for original animals proved tricky, but I have managed to figure it out how to do it without any game crashes after a night. So far I have made new icons for Ankylosaurus, Triceratops, and Styracosaurus: 

- Caudipteryx will now be a herbivore. The only gut content we have from the holotype indicates herbivory. The idea that it was omnivorous/insectivorous was mostly based on our early preconception that all non-avian theropods were carnivorous to some degree. However, full herbivory has been suggested as early as 2000, and given our current understanding that oviraptorosaurs were ancestrally herbivorous, this interpretation seems more likely. 

- Meiolania is now believed to have lived in a more coastal environment and occupied a similar niche to that of the extant Galapagos marine iguana (Lichtig & Lucas 2020). I will have to spend more time reading the paper to see how much do I agree with their interpretation.

- Spinosaurus' habitat preference will receive some changes too. P. Rex's version seems too coastal with lots of sand and saltwater while both Kem Kem and Bahariya's formations preserve a more freshwater to brackish environment. I have not decided on the details yet, but it will be mainly based on a new Kem Kem monograph published recently (Ibrahim et al. 2020). 

- The trees in "No Grass Plz" will have updated geological period based on Borsato's hack. I haven't looked at how to do it yet but hopefully it's not too complicated. And I need to check if the trees with updated location  would crash older save games before proceeding with this.

 

C. Some iffy parts

- If it isn't too time consuming, I would love to learn how to scale models. Dinosaur Digs have very weird scaling inconsistent with other animals in the franchise and even between dinosaurs. 

- Swimming Spinosaurus, that one curse that couldn't be dealt with until someone can make new swimming animation for the animal. This is way beyond both my current ability and my time budget so I'm just throwing it out here. However, I do have a fun version of Spinosaurus that can go into water and it can attack everything except for the 3 large whales + whale shark. It uses the run animation so it will still walk on water quite frequently (Jesus Spinosaurus anyone?). I don't think I will ever release this version but here are 2 screenshots of it submerged and standing on water.

 

That's it for now, let me know what you think!

 

 

[HeatherL]

I have often thought that something similar to this was needed.  Many people have made hacks to address ZT's reality errors, but the hacks are not necessarily compatible with each other.

I keep no grass,plz in my permanent dlupdate file.  The only thing I don't like about it is that the in-game water lily is no longer place-able on the surface of tanks.

I would prefer not to have Borsato's ui99.ztd or Lang--zborsato.dll incorporated.

I've often wanted to use the no egg hack, but could never get it to work.

Have you considered having the Spinosaurus walk in a shallow tank- half in/half out of the water?

Is the hack compatible with Particle's Zookini, bigger menus & bigger panels hacks?

 

 

[VNDragonV2]

Thanks for the feedback. This is my first time editing something in ZT so there are a number of things I'm still ignorant of. If you ask me what APE or Zoot do couple days ago I would have had no clue.

- I didn't know there was an issue with the water lily in the original No Grass Plz. I think I can fix that.

- As the case with the No Eggs hack, I can make multiple alternate version for people who don't want all features. I figure that having Borsato's ui & lang adds another layer of complexity that not everyone wants. 

- The "fun" Spino can dive and change its depth at will in a tank and there are 3 types of tank swimming in the code, so tweaking it into something like you suggested is probably possible. For regular water though it will just walk on the water surface.

- If you look at the first screenshot again (the visual update for the purchase icons), I'm actually using Particle's bigger purchase menu. ;) I'm using all 3 of them just fine.

- The No Eggs file on ZooAdmin has a zipping error, you have to extract and rezip the files for it to work. I made a thread recently to ask about it:

 

[VNDragonV2]

Update: all animals except for Spinosaurus have got their icons updated!

 

[VNDragonV2]

The hack is essentially finished! I'm still on the fence whether I should give the icon treatment for P. Rex's Steppe Bison, Tarpan, and Paracamelus, which are separate user-made animals but were included in No Grass Plz.

 

All animals have their icons revamped (Left: NoGrassPlz v1.5; Right: this hack)

 

The water lily bug is fixed. P. Rex used older foliage .ai files so it didn't have the new coding from Marine Mania, hence the tank incompatibility. Same thing happened with the horsetail and it is also fixed now. All NoGrassPlz and DD plants have updated geological age using Borsato's hack! 

 

Meiolania uses Wolv12's Reality version as a base with some tweaks. The most obvious change is that it uses saltwater to reflect its coastal habitat on Lord Howe island. It's also comfortable with hybrid exhibits, with marine foliage's preference identical to the green sea turtle.

 

Spinosaurus uses freshwater instead of saltwater now, for reasons stated above, and has a bit of rainforest terrain added to its preference. It also likes a wider array of foliage!

 

That's it! I will wait for a couple more days to see if there is any feedback before submitting it for downloads.

 

 

[HeatherL]

This looks great!

[Fern]

I think the water lily was fixed in CC to go in tanks and on water terrain. Same with the horsetail.

[VNDragonV2]

2 minutes ago, Fern said:

I think the water lily was fixed in CC to go in tanks and on water terrain. Same with the horsetail.

 

I can't determine if a file was from MM or CC. The updated files were in scenery4.ztd (lily) and scenery5.ztd (horsetail). Since MM's foliage is in scenery6.ztd I assume that the other two came with MM. 

[AnewZoocreator]

Now that's an ambitious project! Wow! To be honest, I knew from early on that there were no modern grasses in the time of dinosaurs - however, I tended to interpret "grassland terrain" more as "open terrain (which is not densely forested)" than as "terrain with Poales vegetation".

[VNDragonV2]

Update: I have been trying to submit my file to the database but I kept getting this "-200" error. Anyone know how to address this?