The extinction zoos saga

[cadaverine]

Thank you very much !! You've been a great help, Fern. I appreciate it :)

When I loaded back into the game the first thing I did was check my awards. I had the silver + gold plaques for exhibit design. Silver I understood, got that right away with the first exhibit. Gold would track with the amount of money I got (and it's what I recall getting, anyway).

 

Now I just wonder what triggered it. Looking at the quetzals and watching them for a short bit showed that their suitability was at 98 most of the time (sometimes dropping to 97). They're the only animals that could have triggered it at the time. Hm. Interesting. Some searching shows that the gold exhibit award is given at 99+ for an exhibit. I guess it's not impossible?

 

 

With our funds, nyctosauruses were acquired. For some reason our staff were dead-set on not giving any kind of care to one of the two eggs until it was deathly sick and about ready to hatch. Repeatedly leading them to this egg and pointing at it did not sway them to care for it. Here is an image taken of one very stubborn scientist, specifically assigned to this one exhibit, wandering off and ignoring the miserable egg. What are we paying you people for?! You can have your break five minutes from now!

 

An entire flock would be nice, and it's what I want, but I'm learning responsibility and not buying a bunch immediately. Which, given how much our scientists seem to hate these things, might be for the best.

 

 

Creating their exhibit took several months. Thankfully we are at a large enough scale now that the zoo can actually turn a steady profit, so while this exhibit took some time to complete, the last half of construction was easily funded.

 

 

Here's a quick image, early on, of the very early stages of an expansion. There's the path for the viewing area for the future exhibit location, and a path now heading further north.

 

The entire place looks a bit barren in this photo. This is due to a number of factors.. the clearing of the forest for exhibits, the lack of heavy landscaping... it'll get better with time.

 

Our money hit five digits for the first time in almost a year during this minor construction. It's amazing what one can accomplish when you aren't spending several thousand on fencing.

 

 

 

... in June we had nearly $18k, and by July we almost had $5k. It's not a big deal like it probably would have been the year before. We're a lot more stable in year two than in the opening year. Now we can actually build things and make the cost back a month later. This is even with multiple scientists, a maintenance worker, and $500 being spent on marketing every single month.

 

This is about the point that money became less of a constant worry for us.

 

 

During this time, waiting for a bit of extra cash to build up, our team took some notes. Animals were in great condition, happy, and always fed. Guests were pleased with the experience overall, but not as happy as they could be. A not-insubstantial number of ratings and reviews were telling us that there just weren't a lot of activities, or general appeal, for kids. They were not enjoying this park as much as the adults.

 

I took insult to this. What kid doesn't want to see giant flying reptiles?! I know I would have wanted to see an entire small zoo of previously-extinct flying reptiles when I was a kid. But I guess nowadays resurrecting animals that have been dead for millions of years just isn't that cool with the youth.

 

We caved to the public anyway and built a small miniature fair, if fairs only had ring toss and a single gift shop selling plush dinosaurs. The fountain was to make the place more lively and pleasant to look at.

 

It was a success, making guests a bit happier. It wasn't a huge change, but more of the children seemed to be enjoying themselves, and everything was turning a profit, so nobody had complaints.

 

 

With money in hand, a whole bunch of sand was tossed into an exhibit and two pteranodon eggs finally added. To my personal relief, the scientists were perfectly fine with taking care of these two eggs.

 

 

Here two new things are visible. One: the completed exhibit, with the newly-hatched pteranodons exploring their new home. The other: the pterosaur aviary and a bunch of trees.

 

The aviary permanently houses our dimorphodons for guests to look at and enjoy.

 

 

The aviary was not the only thing added, however. Here is a more expansive look at the front of the zoo, replanted and with new gardens. The blank space by the aviary will likely be converted into something in the future, but for now, a couple trees will do the "make it look less like a mountainous wasteland" job just fine.

 

 

The pathway was opened and expanded to the edge of the island. Terrain was flattened out so a new restaurant, slide, and fountain could be tucked amongst the cliffs. Most of the original terrain here was kept; despite my somewhat unintentional, ongoing deforestation project, I do actually want to try to keep some of the natural landscape intact.

 

While there was little reason for guests to wander this way, having no exhibits yet, there was a little something for them if they did.

 

By this point it was nearing the end of year 2. Time flies, doesn't it? But the team couldn't rest just yet. We had more pterosaurs to exhibit, and $55k to use. The next two were already decided: azhdarco and hatzegopteryx.

 

 

This small exhibit will be housing the azhdarcos. Fun fact: the "azhdar" refers to a mythological serpent somewhat like a dragon. This same word is used for the rest of the azhdarchids.

 

My wyvern comment was justified, even ignoring the fact that quetzalcoatlus is also named for a serpent entity. These are dragons to me.

 

Anyway..

 

 

Here is their finished exhibit. While it isn't perfect, the idea here is to "extend" one exhibit's terrain into the other, while giving each pterosaur species some space from each other in the form of separate exhibits. The exact waterline is hard to see at all photographed angles, but they're meant to roughly flow into each other.

 

It's now officially year three.

 

 

Construction on the final exhibit was started and completed. These will hold hatzegopteryxes, which are not a small pterosaur, so they were allocated the rest of this corner.

 

Like all previous eggs save for the one nyctosaurus, they were well-cared for. Did that one scientist have a personal vendetta or something?

 

 

Here is an image taken at an alternative view. This is an aside to show off just how much beautifying needs to be done. That should be the next major project undertaken, I feel, not another exhibit. We have the money, but the zoo is seriously lacking in... uh... greenery, in most developed areas that aren't an exhibit. Trees, flowers, water, fountains, interesting rocks, anything.

 

 

While waiting for one set of eggs to hatch, the nyctosaurs had their own! This is excellent. The quetzals had been the only ones breeding up until this point.

 

And, thankfully, the scientists were directly observed caring for these eggs and not just ignoring them as they had previously done.

 

 

Back to the hatzegopteryx, here is the completed exhibit. We discovered they really, really liked rocks and plants. We hope they end up staying this small, as unlikely as that is, because any large adult creature navigating this safely... or at all... feels unlikely.

 

The transitional design between each exhibit turned out nicely, though. It really does look like one land mass broken up into pieces.

 

Also, in this photo, the grown azhdarcos can be seen.

 

 

Here is a distant aerial photo of the entire zoo as it currently exists. It's certainly different from the previous zoo, but I don't think it'll look bad, when all is said and done. I particularly like the chain of pteranodon -> azhdarco -> hatzegopteryx exhibits.

 

The tupandactylus area looks smaller by the day. I think a minor expansion that way is in order, since none of that space is going to be used for anything anyway, and they really look like they could use it. That and general landscaping, obviously. There are a lot of empty areas throughout the zoo.

 

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it is 1:30am it is BEDTIME forgive me for any nonsense or errors. I usually post these late/early for me, but this is really pushing it.

[Fern]

This is what we have in an unfinalised post in the back at DD. The work is done by Jay.

The numbers in parentheses are the dll messages that would be shown if these were scenario goals instead of awards. I used those messages as a base for how I worded these goals.

original ZT:

Best Zoo - Silver Trophy
(17102) Achieve a zoo rating of 90.

Best Zoo - Gold Trophy
(17102) Achieve a zoo rating of 95. Cash bonus is considered a donation.

Diverse Species - Silver Plaque
(17106) Exhibit at least 10 different animal species.

Diverse Species - Gold Plaque
(17106) Exhibit at least 30 different animal species. Cash bonus is considered a donation.

Excellence in Exhibit Design - Silver Plaque
(17600) Earn an exhibit suitability rating of at least 90 for 1 exhibit.

Excellence in Exhibit Design - Gold Plaque
(17600) Earn an exhibit suitability rating of at least 99 for 1 exhibit. Cash bonus is considered a donation.

Highest Customer Satisfaction - Blue Ribbon
(17101) Achieve an average guest happiness rating of 95. Cash bonus is considered a donation.

Highest Quality Exhibits - Silver Certificate
(17600) Earn an exhibit suitability rating of at least 80 for 10 exhibits.

Highest Quality Exhibits - Gold Certificate
(17600) Earn an exhibit suitability rating of at least 85 for 25 exhibits. Cash bonus is considered a donation.

Most Popular Zoo - Silver Certificate
(17103) Record 500 guests in the zoo.

Most Popular Zoo - Gold Certificate
(17103) Record 1000 guests in the zoo. Cash bonus is considered a donation.

Quality Animal Care - Blue Ribbon
(17100) Achieve an average animal happiness rating of 98 after month 6. Cash bonus is considered a donation.


DD:

Complete Ice Age Zoo - Gold Mammoth
(17605) Earn an exhibit suitability rating of at least 80 for 4 Ice Age (cEra 9623) exhibits.

Complete Jurassic Zoo - Gold Stegosaurus
(17605) Earn an exhibit suitability rating of at least 80 for 7 Jurassic (cEra 9621) exhibits.

Excellence in Dinosaur Exhibit Design - Gold Cup
(17601) Earn an exhibit suitability rating of at least 99 for 3 Dinosaur (cFamily 5216) exhibits.

Outstanding Animal Health Plaque
(17105) Number of sick animals: less than 0 after month 11 is a failed goal. Note: Award might not work because the goal indicates a failure rather than a success, and there cannot be less than 0 animals.

Quality Dinosaur Care - Blue Ribbon
(17601) Earn an exhibit suitability rating of at least 90 for 10 Dinosaur (cFamily 5216) exhibits. Cash bonus is considered a donation.

Tyrannosaurus rex Birth - Gold Rex
(17202) Match animal type and subtype - 1, Tyrannosaurus rex (cNameID 5085), "pregnant". Cash bonus is considered a donation. Note: Award might not work because there are no "pregnant" types of animals in ZT.

[cadaverine]

Well, disappeared from the thread for a little bit.
 

It’s July, which means it’s Art Fight season. I was planning on updating this after I finished a particular, very large art piece, yknow give myself a fun break after several days of work—but my computer has gone and died. Probably, at least, it’s stuck in a BIOS loop and nothing has gotten it out so I’ve written it off as dead. I don’t think it has an OS anymore. Suspicions say the drive is done for. 

 

So the art I’ve been working on a few days is gone (didn’t back it up. This is the one thing I’m upset about with the laptop’s death) as is, well, uh. Zoo tycoon. And those saves.

 

 We’ll just say that the pterosaur island suffered some kind of catastrophic, unforeseen failure. Like the flying animals escaped their open-air exhibits and wreaked havoc on everyone, and also managed to wipe all footage of the event :D

[Fern]

You might be able to rescue the data. I know when my computers have died I had someone (technician) copy all the data onto an external so I can salvage some things. Programs might not work but you can rescue info, zipz,  and pics etc. Also copying the lot is cheaper than saying I just want this or that.

[cadaverine]

Yeah, that’s my hope. Depends on what exactly when caput on the thing, of course, and I don’t want to go looking myself in case I break it further, so it’ll visit a tech on monday. Probably.

 

Either way it’s not a huge deal; I’ve been saving up for a new laptop and have the money, I’ve just been lazy about going out to get one. Almost everything was already backed up :p i think this was just A Sign that it was time.

[Truly_happy]

So sorry your computer died. Good thing you can get a new one.