I hacked a Zoo Tycoon 1 map to be 233×233

[Goosifer]

3 hours ago, jbl89 said:

Very nice job!

 

I wonder if it will be stable, or if people will run into other limitations (not just RAM° if they start filling all this room with different objects?

Unless these are memory limitations (I'm thinking not?), Blue Fang seemed to have placed hardcoded locks in a few areas of the game (menu items, number of files to load, etc).  I'd also be curious how far you can go in a "perfect" computer and if they placed other limits like those.

[Fern]

10 hours ago, jbl89 said:

I wonder if it will be stable, or if people will run into other limitations (not just RAM° if they start filling all this room with different objects?

Quite probably. I know Jan and I have problems with large maps when they start getting full. The game starts getting really slow because of the amount of animations working.

[Goosifer]

3 hours ago, Fern said:

Quite probably. I know Jan and I have problems with large maps when they start getting full. The game starts getting really slow because of the amount of animations working.

That's a hardware limitation like jbl suggested, and should vary from computer to computer. Still, it will be testament to Blue Fang's optimization skills if performance scales well on a modern decked-out computer. They seem to have placed other resource limits in the code that might affect performance as well, and that won't be the map's doing per se--I think that's what we're actually curious about. I know I am.

[Fern]

From Jay: I had ZT open that 233x233 zoo map and it did open. At some point I want to put nearly 66000 trash bins on that zoo map to see if ZT has any problems with it. The actual number I worry about is 65536, such as dll IDs wrapping around at that number. But it will take a long time to put that many trash bins on the zoo map. I did start, but probably did not do much.

You can let the person know that I am interested what he found concerning the format of zoo files so that I can enhance the Zoo Object List program I wrote.

[Gymnasiast]

I have uploaded my findings so far into Google Documents, so anyone interested can take a look: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w2NlAkmT3iTLBfcJNMU0a3j5YoQWIHc7MArm4_xrI3I/edit?usp=sharing

 

Hope it’s useful to Jay or anyone else interested in the format. I hope to have some time to do a little bit more investigation, especially with regards to show tanks (the presence of which currently means it’s much harder to manipulate a .zoo file for me).

[jbl89]

I wouldn't be too worried about RAM these days, if you're using a modern machine.

More about the format of the .zoo files, and technical limitations (tiny or small integers). But your document contains lot of info on this. Nice summary!

[johnztmaster]

This is an amazing discovery and I can't wait to see what can be done! I felt like  it was only a matter of time until someone finally cracked this mystery. :)

[RaspberryAntelope]

I made an account just to come here and say this is awesome, I've been hoping for something like this for years now!

 

Do you have an alternate location where we can download the .zoo file? The link in your original post seems to have expired now. I'd love to be able to play on the max map!

[Goosifer]

1 hour ago, RaspberryAntelope said:

I made an account just to come here and say this is awesome, I've been hoping for something like this for years now!

 

Do you have an alternate location where we can download the .zoo file? The link in your original post seems to have expired now. I'd love to be able to play on the max map!

 

Here it is on ZooBerry: https://www.zooberry.org/mods/zt1/maps/233x233-map/

[RaspberryAntelope]

35 minutes ago, Goosifer said:

 

Here it is on ZooBerry: https://www.zooberry.org/mods/zt1/maps/233x233-map/

Wonderful, thank you so much!