Zookeeper's Lounge

Terrain types (if possible):

Swamp
Lava
Mud
Sulfur
Leafy

Any others?

I would love more terrain types! So far nobody has figured out how to make them. I have made a lava object that is a tile of molten lava, you can put them together to make it look like lava terrain but you can't put anything else on top of it.
Possible terrain types I'd like to see are peat, white coral sand, and black lava sand.

CatFish,
Those sand terrains would be awesome!

If terrain types could be added, it would probably be dangerous because it would probably require overriding Zoo Tycoon configuration files. But I think paths that look like terrain could be created that animals would not mind. Zoo Tycoon couldn't blend paths like it can terrain. But paths have an additional benefit. They curve at corners and would be circular if placed in a 2x2 area. That would make for some more interesting looking habitat.

I tried that too! My autumn foliage pack has an autumn leaf path that I hoped would work like a new terrain, and it does except that the animals don't like it. Setting it to a neutral habitat didn't matter, the animals still objected to it. It still looks nice for decorating the ground outside exhibits, though.

you can make a rock from it! then animals will like it.. or foilage afcourse..

Hi Jay,
2x2 path is a circle but what happens to it when you put fence around it?

One of these days I will try changing a path to make animals like it. (I love special projects.)

Sometimes a rock or foliage is good to use as "terrain". But it would need to be "terrain" that should look like rocks or foliage because the animals will walk behind it, in front of it, or through it. If it is a type of "terrain" that must look flat, allow animals to walk on top it, and allow objects to be placed on it, that is where I think the path would be useful (although finding trampled terrain would be a little more difficult).

A fence would behave as it does today. It does not curve. So a fence would be square or rectangular even around a circular path.

I have done some experiments with placing paths within exhibits. Specifically, I took Planet Kitty's Rainbow Path and changed the cHabitat from "Bad Habitat" to 9411 ("Many locations"). I then created a suitable zebra exhibit using the original Zoo Tycoon program and placed some of these paths in the exhibit. The zebras did not complain and neither their happiness nor the suitabiility changed when I added the paths.

I did notice 2 side effects of the paths. First, the zookeepers spend some extra time in the exhibits because they apparently have logic that goes "Oh, there's a path, let me see if it goes anywhere." It looks nice but has a slight negative because zookeepers can take longer to get to a task they need to do. (In my tests, zookeepers only would look for a task to do either if they just finished a task or if they are on the square outside the exhibit entrance.)

The second, more serious side effect is that the paths will distract the zookeepers if there are too many paths in the exhibit. Instead of doing the task, the zookeepers will sometimes walk along the paths in the exhibit and then leave the exhibit.

Based on these tests, I still believe that user created paths can be used as exhibit terrain, but they must be used judiciously/sparingly inside exhibits. They definitely will not work by filling an exhibit with paths.

I like Wally's idea of making the terrain out of rocks. Just make the rock take up 1/4 of a tile and make a picture really big. ((I don't know if this would work, though.))

Yes, the image of an item can be bigger than the "footprint" it takes. That is how the aviary cage download works. But it works better for a cage (where things are under the image) than for terrain (where things are above the image). It could be done, but when people use the item, there would be lots of rules they would have to follow. (The "rock" part of the image would have to be put in the upper half of a square tile. The rotations would have to be blank. So, if rotating the zoo has to look realistic, 4 of the images have to be placed covering the same area, 1 for each rotation.) So, I still prefer the path terrain approach.