VNDragon's ZT1 Projects

[(Admin)Cricket]

I haven't experienced that one before.  If you want, you can send your file along with the description to me in a PM.  I will then upload it for you.

[VNDragonV2]

On 6/17/2020 at 4:37 PM, Cricket said:

I haven't experienced that one before.  If you want, you can send your file along with the description to me in a PM.  I will then upload it for you.

 

Hi Cricket, I already sent you the file two days ago. Let me know if you didn't get the PM.

[(Admin)Cricket]

1 hour ago, VNDragonV2 said:

 

Hi Cricket, I already sent you the file two days ago. Let me know if you didn't get the PM.

 

I received it :)  Am in the process of getting it checked out. 

[VNDragonV2]

Update: It appears that I should streamline my file a bit before I can have it approved for downloads. I will try to have it done sometime next week.

Also, it appears there is another interesting hack from P. Rex that flew under my radar! He apparently has a mod that revert the Triceratops back to the large version in the original Zoo Tycoon! I will be incorporating this hack into the file.
https://www.gamepressure.com/download.asp?ID=64480

[VNDragonV2]

So the DD Combined Hack v1.1 was uploaded on the database couple days ago and is pending approval from the staff. I will post a detailed release note once it is approved! I have got some feedback from a friend about updating the prey-predator interaction of the dinosaurs as well, so you guys can expect a v1.2 soon.

 

Meanwhile, I started building a mountain zoo today and realized a lot of Borsato's alpine animals are not compatible with one another and with Blue Fang's animals. I'm a big fan of multiple species exhibits so it was a bummer to find this out. I'm planning to make a quick patch to address this compatibility issue based on the animals' actual geographic range.

 

Here is the planned list so far based on 4 different geographical regions:

 

1. The Rockies:

- Borsato's Mountain Sheep

- Bighorn Sheep

Both animals don't seem to be on exactly friendly term in real life. Although their terrain preference will be similar, they will remain neutral to each other. 

https://www.earthtouchnews.com/natural-world/animal-behaviour/when-it-comes-to-hoofed-supremacy-on-the-slopes-mountain-goats-outswagger-bighorns/

 

2. Western Himalayas:

- Ibex

- Markhor

- Borsato's Marco Polo Sheep

The Ibex's favorite foliage is the Himalayan Pine Tree, indicating that it should be treated as an Asiatic Ibex.

 

3. Eastern Himalayas - Tibetan Plateau:

- Borsato's Chinese Pangolin

- Borsato's Chiru

- Borsato's Wild Yak

The Chiru and the Wild Yak should be quite comfortable with each other. The pangolin, by virtue of being a non-ungulate and shy, solitary animal, will only have a small compatibility bonus when put in the same enclosure with the other two. 

 

4. European Alpine:

- Borsato's European Mouflon

- Borsato's Chaimos

There should be at least 1 European/Alpine Ibex somewhere in Tek's download database. I'm contemplating on adding that Ibex in as well.

 

That's it for now. This should be a short project unlike the first one. Let me know if you have any other suggestions.

 

[VNDragonV2]

So umh, it appears that coding the animal compatibility value isn't as straightforward as I was hoping it would.. Especially between BF's and user-made animals.

But I got the first screenshot from the Western Himalayan artiodactyls. The Marco Polo sheep's terrain preference is halfway between the Ibex and the Markhor so it fits right in with any present markhor - ibex mixed exhibit.

[Fern]

From Jay: There wasn't enough information to know what type of compatibility problems VNDragon is having. There are a lot of considerations concerning compatibility. But overall, there is animal compatibility and there is exhibit compatibility. Animal compatibility is at 3 levels: family, genus, and subspecies (although these are in ZT's terms rather than real life terms). The [cCompatibleAnimals] section can contain cFamily IDs, cGenus IDs, animal dll IDs, or animal APE IDs (although not all APE IDs work in this section). To see if some other animal is compatible with the current animal, one has to see if the cFamily, cGenus, dll ID, or APE ID of the other animal are in the current animal's [cCompatibleAnimals] section. If more than one of these are in the [cCompatibleAnimals] section, the values associated with them have to be added together. If the sum is greater than 0, the other animal is liked by the current animal. If the sum is less than 0, the other animal is disliked by the current animal. If the sum is 0 or none of those four things of the other animal are in the current animal's [cCompatibleAnimals] section, then the current animal is indifferent to the other animal. Ideally, compatible animals should be indifferent to one another. Blue Fang did not configure this section in the most flexible way for their animals. They often made animals dislike certain cFamily and cGenus settings, then countered those values by an equal amount for specific animal dll IDs. That makes Blue Fang animals tend to dislike user made animals. For example, their zebra, an Odd-toed ungulate, is configured to dislike Even-toed ungulates. It would have been better if it was configured to be indifferent to Even-toed ungulates. Blue Fang's way of configuring often makes user made animals dislike themselves if the configuration is not changed. I corrected this problem in APExp 3.2 for those animals that had this problem. I often did this by countering cFamily values with cGenus values instead of animal dll ID values. But I intentionally did not go further than this, since it should be up to each designer what adjustments should be made for other animal compatibility.

Exhibit compatibility involves terrain percentages, rock percentage, foliage percentage, elevation percentage, as well as no dislikes for common habitat, shelter, or toy values. If all of this is identical for two animals, then the two animals have perfect exhibit compatibility. But Blue Fang did not expect perfect exhibit compatibility for a mixed species exhibit, even for their animals. That is why the exhibit suitability is represented by a colored bar in ZT. As long as that exhibit suitability bar is green for both animals, the two animals are considered to be exhibit compatible, even though the Zookeeper Recommendations could recommend changes.

 

[VNDragonV2]

@Fern and Jay: Thanks for another detailed response again guys. I do intend to elaborate more on this coding issue later when I have some time, but I can say a big part of the problem stems from the "not all APE IDs work in the [cCompatibleAnimals] section".

[VNDragonV2]

@Fern So I finally got some time to elaborate on what obstacles I'm having at the moment.

 

So first off, Jay has confirmed that not all APE IDs work in the [cCompatibleAnimals] section. Is there an underlying mechanism that determines which number works then? And for those that don't work, is there a way to fix those IDs? Or is using other IDs (cGenus, Species IDs, etc) the only possible way to circumvent the issue?

 

Below are the APE IDs of Borsato's mountain animals that have been confirmed to be either working or not working in the compatibility section.

Working:
14B3C040 - Wild Yak
44DE5057 - Chamois
A6653B81 - Chiru

Not working:

5415C047 - European Mouflon
8242B04D - Chinese Pangolin

 

Second, can BF's animals recognize APE IDs as well? So far it seems to me that APE IDs can only work between user-made animals. For BF's animals, I currently just set them to be neutral towards some cGenus values to obtain my desired outcome.

[Fern]

I don't mind doing this but you know you can always join the Download Directory and ask him yourself. Link is in my signature.

From Jay:

Quote

Jay has confirmed that not all APE IDs work in the [cCompatibleAnimals] section. Is there an underlying mechanism that determines which number works then?

I believe ZT looks at the first 3 characters of IDs in the [cCompatibleAnimals] section. If all 3 of those characters are digits, then ZT believes it is not an APE ID or user made internal name, and possibly believes it is a dll ID. So for an APE ID to work in this section, at least one of the first 3 characters of the APE ID has to be a letter. For the [cSuitableObjects] section, I believe ZT looks at the first 5 characters of IDs. If all 5 of those characters are digits, then ZT believes it is not an APE ID or user made internal name. For cPrey settings, I believe ZT expects the settings to be dll IDs of specific animals.
 

Quote

And for those that don't work, is there a way to fix those IDs? Or is using other IDs (cGenus, Species IDs, etc) the only possible way to circumvent the issue?

As far as I know, there is no way to make ZT recognize those IDs as APE IDs. It is possible to use APExp 3.2 to make a new animal with a different APE ID from an existing user made animal ztd, which does not take much effort to do. But saved zoos with the older APE ID would not know that the newer APE ID is a replacement for the older APE ID. In any case, the preferred approach is to use only cGenus and cFamily IDs in the [cCompatibleAnimals] section whenever possible. That way if a new animal is made in the future, the existing animal can dislike, like, or be indifferent to the new animal without having to change the existing animal's configuration.
 

Quote

Second, can BF's animals recognize APE IDs as well? So far it seems to me that APE IDs can only work between user-made animals. For BF's animals, I currently just set them to be neutral towards some cGenus values to obtain my desired outcome.

I believe the above would work the same whether it is a BF animal or a user made animal. But again, it would be best to have the BF animals be neutral for certain cGenus or cFamily values. That way those BF animals would also be neutral to animals made in the future that are similar.