zoo tycoon 1 My new Africa Zoo Expansion is open! With an added extra surprise…

[Mugcake]

Last Post 

 

So as a lot has happened since the first post I made on this, I’ve spun this into its own thread since it’s so wildly different now 

 

To start off, I have some old WIP screenshots I did the same day as the last post. Should have shared them there before, but as I’m making a new thread for this bigger thing I thought I’d add them here 🙃

 

First off, I made a restaurant area with a fake “mini” exhibit. Its only purpose is to be scenic, and as such there’s an object on every tile. It’s a mix of desert, Savannah, and jungle features, along with some arctic bush to give it that dry look 🦣

 

 

You may have also spotted the second of my new viewing areas. A full series of pics below:

 

 

Moving on to the actual meat of this post, here’s the new, second Savannah diorama right before the animals were added. Unfortunately, most of this design had to be changed in order to fit their needs, but it gives a good sense of what I was going for:

 

 

And here it is with its first animals! The left shoulder exhibit houses hyena (who got so unhappy so fast that all their grass trees had to go), with African Wild Dogs on the right shoulder, and a joint Sable Antelope & Ostrich enclosure in the middle:

 

A zoomout of one of those closer pics:

 

 

Now, you may have noticed that there aren’t any crocs in these images. This is because I was busy getting them to eat the last of their meat in the old moat, for that surprise I mentioned in the title 

 

 

Once I did move them into the new moat, I put all but one baby one on the left island (in order to do the whole infinite meat exploit XP). This is what pretty much every croc from that smaller moat looks like when placed next to each other:

 

 

But forget the overcrowding for a sec, while I turn your attention to the reason I moved them…

 

 

I converted the whole old moat into a tank-moat, up to the exact same waterline (don’t ask me how I got the ladder to appear at that exact point, it took ages 🫠)

 

Of course, I had a good reason for doing this. I added something very different to crocodiles… :0 

 

 

HIPPOS! 
 

Yep! I have not only added Hyenas, Sable Antelope, Ostriches and Wild Dogs, but also the one savannah animal that can actually swim ^^
 

 

The long distance between islands of course is slightly more of an issue for hippos than crocs (at least in my mind). But that’s why I turned it into a tank, so that rather than them simply passing by-

 

 

They can stop off for a visit ^-^
 

Sorry for being so slow and dramatic with this reveal, I’m just so glad that it worked! I introduced a pair to either island, so that slowly they would swim across to meet each other. Here’s the other one:

 

 

The only real downside here is that they are less visible than the crocs would have been in the moat, given they blend pretty well into the tank walls:

 

 

But it’s worth it to see them going on a journey to see their neighbours! Habitat suitability is of course all over the place for them, but the tank ticks off their need for fresh water (alongside that already in the other enclosures), and overall they seem happy even when in an enclosure that isn’t tailored too much to them specifically:

 

 

I have lots more hippo images, but don’t wanna clog this one post up too much. Might post them in a comment below at some point though if people wanna see, have plenty of everything since I’m forever taking screenshots 😅

 

But the last hippo one I’ll share is of one of my hippos deciding to tuck in to the elephant’s lunch. All the enclosures, bar the Buffalo, have their food already stocked, and any keepers present will do so automatically in their presence:

 

 

This new setup has actually really benefited my side enclosures. Raising the hippo (formerly croc) islands up means the keepers can now exit those side exhibits, meaning I can now force one keeper to look after the hippos, buffalo and rhino 

 

Btw, has anyone else done a hippo enclosure with this kinda setup? I know land-tank hybrid exhibits for hippos have been done over and over, but I’m curious to see any earlier examples of people using this to create exhibit-hopping hippos 🏝🦛 

 

Either way, this post is already getting way too long. So to finish off, I’ll just drop some more of the new expansion pics I have, including the changing foliage and stuff when the Sables also got unhappy

 

[Fern]

39 minutes ago, Mugcake said:

The left shoulder exhibit houses hyena (who got so unhappy so fast that all their grass trees had to go),

There is a pack here are Tek of all the ingame foliage made neutral so they can go in  any exhibit without affecting suitability 

For the tank walls you  could try the ZA glass tanks which would blend into the habitat better. And for the hippos I take it you have set the tank floor to its minimum level?

Ladders are like gates. Click on the gate icon and then click where you want the ladder or gate to go. But yes sometimes placing can be a real pain.

[Mugcake]

16 minutes ago, Fern said:

There is a pack here are Tek of all the ingame foliage made neutral so they can go in  any exhibit without affecting suitability 

For the tank walls you  could try the ZA glass tanks which would blend into the habitat better. And for the hippos I take it you have set the tank floor to its minimum level?

Ladders are like gates. Click on the gate icon and then click where you want the ladder or gate to go. But yes sometimes placing can be a real pain.

Thanks Fern! I (sometimes) enjoy the challenge of trying to keep the animals happy enough while pushing the boundaries, but I’ll definitely consider installing that patch if I choose to go purely for the aesthetic 

 

As for the tank ladder, it wouldn’t let me place it there for some reason? It is as shallow as it would go, but of course that means it’s one tile down too (in order to line up with the exhibits above). Being not exactly lined up like that probably prohibited me from manually placing the ladder there (even when the keeper walkway was changed from an exhibit to an open area), so I had to literally stack rocks against every other piece of inner tank fence to get it to put the ladder in that specific spot 

 

Either way though, that’s all done now. Might try changing the tank fencing like you suggest, or look at some of the modded ones on here. I actually have yet to download and use any mods with this install (except for the Sable Antelope, but I guess as it’s official it doesn’t really count), which I definitely wanna change as I go forward 

[Fern]

46 minutes ago, Mugcake said:

Thanks Fern! I (sometimes) enjoy the challenge of trying to keep the animals happy enough while pushing the boundaries, but I’ll definitely consider installing that patch if I choose to go purely for the aesthetic

It is not a patch. They are proper downloads with new ids so there are nno conflicts. Many here do not like hacks cos they often conflict with other hacks and files.

 

I think if I remember rightly the ladder has to have a tile either side of it. I did experiment with making very tiny tanks way back.

Another idea you could try is using Jay's cobblestone walls. https://www.ztcdd.org/DG/index.php?topic=5379.0

I am thinking about turning some of my curbs into exhibit fences as well. If I do that you could keep the water terrain level with the rest and use the curb to keep the crocs in.

[Fern]

From Jay: I created a White Half Curbs exhibit (and decorative) fence, which allows creating the illusion of guests walking through an exhibit. It also allows putting arches in exhibits without having animals walk through arch walls. The White Half Curbs download topic is at DG:

http://www.ztcdd.org/DG/index.php?topic=5377.0

An example where they are used to have guests appear to walk through an exhibit is in the Decorative Portal Gate And Decorative Reinforced Concrete And Glass Gate topic at DG:

http://www.ztcdd.org/DG/index.php?topic=5447.0

[Mugcake]

6 hours ago, Fern said:

From Jay: I created a White Half Curbs exhibit (and decorative) fence, which allows creating the illusion of guests walking through an exhibit. It also allows putting arches in exhibits without having animals walk through arch walls. The White Half Curbs download topic is at DG:

http://www.ztcdd.org/DG/index.php?topic=5377.0

An example where they are used to have guests appear to walk through an exhibit is in the Decorative Portal Gate And Decorative Reinforced Concrete And Glass Gate topic at DG:

http://www.ztcdd.org/DG/index.php?topic=5447.0

Hey Fern, was this meant to be posted here? It’s very interesting, I just don’t know what it has to do with my post particularly, although I certainly would like to put it to use in a zoo sometime 

 

EDIT: Sorry your first comment wasn’t loading in, so had no idea you said something before this!  

[Mugcake]

7 hours ago, Fern said:

It is not a patch. They are proper downloads with new ids so there are nno conflicts. Many here do not like hacks cos they often conflict with other hacks and files.

 

I think if I remember rightly the ladder has to have a tile either side of it. I did experiment with making very tiny tanks way back.

Another idea you could try is using Jay's cobblestone walls. https://www.ztcdd.org/DG/index.php?topic=5379.0

I am thinking about turning some of my curbs into exhibit fences as well. If I do that you could keep the water terrain level with the rest and use the curb to keep the crocs in.

Yeah I might try that sometime! As it is though I sorta like the lowered moat design when it comes to the crocs, I definitely will consider using it though with the less-dangerous creatures like flamingo (I know it wouldn’t make a difference in-game, but in my head it would just make no sense to see a croc swimming on-level with the other animals 😅

 

Also sorry for getting the comments mixed up, the site literally wasn’t showing me this one. So it looked like you’d just randomly dropped a comment on curbs, and I thought you’d meant it for a new downloads thread or something 

[Fern]

The curbs are level one height and can be seen over so who knows? Maybe on a level terrain area it might solve your guest eyesight problem? You would need to test that. These curbs are lower than the low rock wall.

[Mugcake]

17 minutes ago, Fern said:

The curbs are level one height and can be seen over so who knows? Maybe on a level terrain area it might solve your guest eyesight problem? You would need to test that. These curbs are lower than the low rock wall.

Oh yeah that might do it! I’ll certainly give it a try at some point, if it could make the inner exhibits visible it’d be perfect! 😊

[pukkie]

what an inspiring zoobuilder you are Mugcake

Hope you try one of our contests at some point

Or check out the clubs to build zoos together with other members

Thank you for sharing your pretty screenshots