Until recently I’ve been mostly just reading and not participating, but after giving a couple very small contributions through discord, it made me want to contribute something more substantial. This lead me to float an idea that prompted me to remake a GitHub account and by extension, discourse.
The idea was to add some of New England’s smaller critters, just something to get my feet wet. The trouble came when I looked into what has already been added.
Most of my ideas for critters have already been done, from the American Mink to Woodchuck. Has every New England critter that needs to be here, already here? I went through a list of wildlife in the region, and most of them are already in-game, and the rest would probably feel too samey.
My question is this. Is there any critters I’ve not thought of that are out place per their absence, or should I come up with something else entirely?
Update: Turns out what we really needed was exotic animals and a better zoo.
If the swamps can get such a substantial revamp as they recently did I don’t see why the same can’t be done for other areas of the map. The game has yet to introduce any oceans or coastal regions, and I can’t say for sure if that’s even an idea the lead devs would like to pursue, but there’s always room for more creatures and mutants.
The zoo, hmm. That would certainly open up the catalogue of available animals. I wonder if there is space for more. Although I could add more varieties of zoo, oh, or maybe even a botanical garden. Those usually have all kinds of unusual exhibits. The one near me even has a lepidopterarium (butterfly exhibit).
Ah, but one thing at a time. For now I just want to wet my toes with a handful of animals for now.
Is there room to add a few more to the existing zoos?
Is the placement of animals in zoos done via “hard coding” it in the file that defines the building or is it handled with a map flag that spawns a number of duplicate instances from an exotic animal group?
In other words, are the animals in the zoo placed by hand, or is there a function that does it automatically?
I’m not very familiar with the inner workings, sorry if I ask any silly questions.
I’ve been told that zombie versions of the smaller critters is a no-go, on account of them being more annoying than anything. Zombie/mutant versions of some of the larger animals on the other hand is definitely something that appeals to me. I saw that someone added some new mutant varieties for the native animals just recently that are pretty cool.
The only problem with adding zombie/mutant versions of the more exotic animals is that I’ve no idea how I would place them in a way that made sense outside off a zoo. Oh, that gives me an idea for a variety of zoo that has already been thoroughly contaminated and zombified. Could even have one where there was some sciency things going on that would produce a mutant variety of zoo. Ah, but again I’m getting ahead of myself. That’ll be an idea for later (new buildings) if they haven’t been done already.
After poking at it a bit it looks like there is only a single zoo building with a few rotations, and the animals appear to all be manually placed. Definitely interested in better zoos. That’s something I’ll probably have a go at when I get around to seeing how adding new buildings works.
After having a look at the animals we have, and what’s in the zoo, wow. That’s an even better suggestion than I thought! Definitely could use some exotic creatures. I think that is just what I shall do.
I’m going to work on filling the zoo with exotic animals.
Thank you everyone for the suggestions!
oh man… if you’re gonna make a bigger, badder zoo… why not use the mall as a template for a literal big zoo? (i mean, you’d have to take the second floor off, but most of the mall buildings are already like small animal enclosure sized)
Well, for now I’m just going to worry about the animals and getting the zoo we do have repopulated.
But yes, I do want to redo the zoo, maybe even with a few different kinds. I was wondering how that would work, as all the zoos I’ve been to in real life (with the exception of one) were much bigger.
Mall sized on the other hand… that’s more like it! That’s a really good idea! When I get to it, using the mall as a kind of template sounds awesome! The way it looks, I’m probably going to be able to do the different versions of them as well. I’m thinking, intact (most common), zombified (where the blob has done it’s thing, less frequent), mutant (where science teams have been doing “sciency” things), and the least frequent, “something horrible happened here” (heavily damaged, no animals).
The different building states (zombie/mutant/ransacked) are just ideas though.
What I’m going to do is split this into manageable bits. I don’t want to have what’s going on with the guy who’s redoing faction camps right now to happen to me. (less headache for both me and the review team)
So… I think what I’ll do is just the animals first, and get them placed in the current zoo, then make the bigger, badder zoo.
I have no idea if they have these in the New England area, but I have seen them in the US South and Southwest as well as other countries - What about drive through animal parks/sanctuaries?
You could have free reign to include any number of animals like elk, buffalo, or ostriches. You could even go Tiger King with the park if you wanted. There could be pens or viewing areas, a veterinary building, employee buildings, gift shops, etc.
Make birds that can be seen on ground jump into the air if anything goes near them and once they move into another upward z-level they get removed from the game to simulate their flight being so fast.
A wider array of bird species is always welcome too.
