Ask ZT1 design questions here

[Lemurcat]

Hi! I've just returned to ZT after a 10 or so year "vacation" from it.

Back then I really didn't get all the creative options possible or consider that I could maybe even make my own objects. (Why that was a mystery to me is especially funny in light of the fact that my comp at the time almost crashed because of all the user created objects. But of course, that was 4 or 7 computers ago.)

Anyhow I've just started messing with APE and even though I've found several terrific tutorials on getting started with it, I'm the kind of geek that wants to know everything about everything and how each variable works.

Most tutorials just focus on the most important options. Sadly I don't speak more than a couple words of German so I can't question the maker's themselves.

Obviously I realize that listing every single feature might be a challenge. I'll be very happy for short dribbles of information.

Here are a couple of my more pressing questions:

1) How do you tell what a critter's most liked foliage is?
The original animals aren't always coded to tell you that. For instance camels like 4 palms much better than one quiver tree, so I'm told. I'm hoping user made animals are more honest about that.

For instance I went into APE and found that one animal wants 3 thorn acacia or 4 eucalyptus. Does that mean that thorn acacia satisfies it more or that eucalyptus does. Or that I should provide some of both?

2) What the heck is "mimic"? Just wondering about what that means makes me crazy.

3) Is it possible to get a personal use copy of Fern's fantastic program that prints out the "perfect" exhibit? Including fav foliage and proper exhibit size? Just to print to notepad or something for my own use.

[fern]

The program I use was made by Jay specifically to create forum posts so it includes the formatting for the post but there is an animal checker over at ZKL which was created for designers.

[Jay]

I've just started messing with APE and even though I've found several terrific tutorials on getting started with it, I'm the kind of geek that wants to know everything about everything and how each variable works.

Most tutorials just focus on the most important options.

Welcome to ZTCDD.

APE has a lot of problems. Once all of the graphics are loaded using APE, one should then use a text editor (such as WordPad, which is better than Notepad) to change the ".uca" (for animals) or ".ucs" (for foliage, rocks, and scenery) file that was created by APE. So, rather than tutorials on APE, it is better to look at guides concerning the ".uca" and ".ucs" files. The most important guides for editing ".ucs" files are the ones created by fern at DG:
http://www.ztcdd.org/DG/index.php?topic=3954.0

The most important guide for editing ".uca" files is the one created by Sundance at ZKL:
http://www.lunamanar.com/zklounge/viewtopic.php?t=116

We know more now than when those guides were created, but those guides cover what is needed for most ".ucs" and ".uca" files. I use those guides whenever I change or review ".ucs" and ".uca" files. It is true that those guides do not cover everything. But for many of the things they do not cover, we would just be guessing, since no one from Blue Fang (the creators of ZT) explained things.

Sadly I don't speak more than a couple words of German so I can't question the maker's themselves.

I assume you are talking about APExp, which was created by Catman. The APE program itself was created by Blue Fang for the original ZT. APExp is still the same APE program, with the same problems. Catman just added more configuration to show many of the things that were added in the ZT expansions. I used to use APExp, but do not any more. Since it uses the same APE program, the extra configuration can confuse the APE program, even when APE is used instead of APExp. So now I use APE instead of APExp, and then edit the ".ucs" and ".uca" files manually. There are other ways to get to the things that were added in the ZT expansions (although not as easily as using APExp). Even for graphics, I usually will use the Zoot program instead of APE, even though that is more difficult to use than APE. Zoot is available at DG:
http://www.ztcdd.org/DG/index.php?topic=4773.msg18197#msg18197

Here are a couple of my more pressing questions:

1) How do you tell what a critter's most liked foliage is?
The original animals aren't always coded to tell you that. For instance camels like 4 palms much better than one quiver tree, so I'm told. I'm hoping user made animals are more honest about that.

For instance I went into APE and found that one animal wants 3 thorn acacia or 4 eucalyptus. Does that mean that thorn acacia satisfies it more or that eucalyptus does. Or that I should provide some of both?

When looking in the Compatibility section in APE or looking in the ".uca" file via a text editor, the numbers do not say how much of a specific foliage the animal wants. Those numbers say how much they effect an animal's happiness, relative to one another. But other factors have to be taken into account as well. One of those things is the area taken up by the object. For example, in the camel's configuration, the relative happiness of the Palm Tree is 3 and the relative happiness of the Quiver Tree is 10. But the Quiver Tree tree takes a full tile while 4 of the Palm Tree can fit in a tile. So 1 tile of Quiver Tree gives the relative happiness of 10, but 1 tile filled with the Palm Tree gives the relative happiness of 12 (3 times 4). Another factor taken into account is the habitat of the foliage, since an animal often likes some habitats better than other habitats. But the Palm Tree and the Quiver Tree are both for the Desert habitat. In the case of the Thorn Acacia Tree and the Eucalyptus Tree, they both take the same space and are for the same habitat. So if the Eucalyptus has a relative happiness value of 4 and the Thorn Acacia has a relative happiness of 3, the animal would like the Eucalyptus more.

2) What the heck is "mimic"? Just wondering about what that means makes me crazy.

That is one where we would just be guessing, although I have a reasonable guess, based on what I know about the various ZT program versions. Basically, the mimic settings in the animal configuration are not used by the current ZT program versions. The ZT beta program did recognize those settings. But when ZT was officially released, the settings were changed from animal settings to guest settings. In both the beta and the original ZT, there were guest animations called "mimic" that look like the guests are pounding their chests. When DD came out, an additional related setting was added for guests and another animation was added that has guests look like they are roaring. So, based on all of that, I suspect the original idea was that guests would imitate the animals and the animals would get happier when the guests did. But since the guest animations were limited, the mimic animations just became something that the guests did at random and they probably no longer affect animal happiness when the guests do those animations.

3) Is it possible to get a personal use copy of Fern's fantastic program that prints out the "perfect" exhibit? Including fav foliage and proper exhibit size? Just to print to notepad or something for my own use.

Those programs are not showing "proper exhibit size". They are showing minimum exhibit size for an animal. The idea is that if the minimum size is used for each exhibit, then the zoo can have more exhibits and show more animal species. As fern mentioned, there is a an earlier version of that program called the Animal Configuration Checker that is available at ZKL:
http://www.lunamanar.com/zklounge/viewtopic.php?t=1203

Being an older program, that does not run on 64-bit computers, although I have a version of it that does. Also, that program does not do as much as the program that fern uses. For example, it does not take habitat into account when determining which foliage or rocks to use for an animal's exhibit, while the program that fern uses does. There are some things that neither program currently take into account. For example, although they show a preferred shelter, that is from an animal happiness perspective. But many of the in-game shelters cannot actually be used by user made animals without using something like a hack. So sometimes it is better to use a concrete shelter or wood shelter instead of what is shown by the programs. At some point, I should release the program that fern uses, even if it does not do everything I would like.

[Lemurcat]

Thank you both for the info, and wow, Jay, thanks much for the detailed explanation. Fascinating and helpful stuff!

I didn't realize that habitat is taken into account when you figure out foliage. Good to know.

LOL the info about mimic is funny. I'm going to have to watch my guests more closely now. Thus far I'm only noticed them pointing or jumping up and down when they're especially happy. I wonder if I've missed other more subtle emotes.

Off to download Zoot and read more about .uca files!

[dr rick]

I have just accidentally written this reply to a very old post, but I might as well leave it here!!!

...getting the animals to walk, trot and run at the right speed is a question of getting the forward speed (set in the uca file in [m/Characteristics/Integers] as things like cFastRate = 66, cMediumRate = 46, cSlowRate = 13 (from one of my wolves), correctly aligned with the run, trot and walk animations - for this particular animal the run animations have fewest frames (9 frames, animation rate 83 ms in zoot), trot rather more (12 frames, animation rate 83 ms) and walk, the most (21 frames, 83 ms) so you can see that it is the number of frames that is used to control how fast it seems to be moving.  83 ms gives a convincing animation, much slower than that starts to look clunky.

If you have the same number of frames for run, trot and walk (say, in this case 9 frames for each, then you would need to lengthen the animation time for trot (to about 110 ms to give the same overal time for each step as with my original animal) and lengthen it some more for walk (to about 193 ms), but that would give you less convincing animation for the trot and walk animations.

[T'ni]

re: Foliage
scenery/other vs scenery/foliage

is there a reason why just about all UCfoliage is in /other and not /foliage ? if there's no good reason why not, i think i'm going to put any i make in /foliage since it seems to work ok in game.

[fern]

Ape does everything scenery/other. If you change that you will make it less efficient for anyone who is wanting to combine files which is a necessary evil in this game since there is a limited amount of ztd allowed in the game.

[Jay]

In addition to fern's comments, the "Open an existing project" and "Import an existing project" in APE will not work if the ".ucs" file is in a "scenery/foliage" folder instead of in a "scenery/other" folder. So I recommend using "scenery/other" for foliage.

[T'ni]

@fern: isn't combining files just done by unzipping / rezipping them? i wasn't aware that you might use ape to do this.

@jay: ok, we got a stupid ape and i guess we're stuck with it.

thx

[Jay]

Fern's comments were 2 separate, unrelated comments. Although APE can be used to combine ".ztd" files, that is an inefficient way to do so. So that was not what fern was saying. Her first comment was saying that, when APE saves a ".ucs" file for foliage, rocks, or scenery, APE puts the ".ucs" file in the scenery/other folder. Her second comment was saying that combined ".ztd" files are less efficient if they contain both scenery/other and scenery/foliage folders. That would be more so for when people look inside combined ".ztd" files, since they would have to look in 2 folders instead of 1 to see everything that is inside that ".ztd". But it would also create a slightly larger ".ztd" file, since "foliage" is a longer word than "other".

[dr rick]

good gracious!  what a question!!! i have been designing for YEARS and i had not even noticed!!!!

i believe that i may be another stupid ape...

[T'ni]

so, instead of quibbling over 2 characters, i was wondering if i could save space by using a [AnimPath] section in a foliage file to redirect the graphics so i didn't have to recopy them when modifying a stock object.

i was also wondering if jay could confirm or deny that:
- user defined objects get sorted by UCN after other sort criteria like cHabitat, cLocation
- zt reads the .ztd files in the path order and doesn't overwrite anything it already has

too many questions, i know but

fern: should i just make swims, tankable, exhibit neutral the default for everything? there might be exceptions but why shouldn't anyone just put anything whereever they want to? i was already doing swims for everything and all the plants are exhibit neutral and now tankable. but i'd made the flower pots so they couldn't be tanked or go in exhibits but why can't they if someone wants? right??

also, i'm making some very tall trees and think that i should find out exactly how tall they are instead of just saying cHeight=2 . i notice they don't show quite right if they're in a tank and the edge is raised > 3.

[fern]

Jay has gone for the night.
You probably can't use the [AnimPath] section as that has to do with things like the difference between a building in use or empty.
Well there are somethings I would not make exhibit placeable ....... balloons for one as they would scare animals. Or anything else that would harm or scare an animal. Flowerbeds would be silly to add to an exhibit since in real life the animals would eat or destroy it. I like to keep an element of realism.

[dr rick]

jay and i have rather different views about tree heights!!  I'll let him explain his view as it is much more scientific and considered than mine!  I have made some very very tall trees at various times (in excess of 400 pixels for some of the rainforest and temperate broadleaf species like Mahogany, Dinizia, Tualang and Elm trees).  I have not been terribly consistent in my approach to the height because I have never been convinced that it makes any real difference to zt.  height = 1 means that the guests can see 'over' it I believe.  once you get to height = 2 or more, i have yet to be convinced it actually matters.  some of the later blue fang creations have very random heights (if I recall correctly the swamp cypress is an exmple - I can't remember now if it is 7 or 13 or indeed something else entirely  but i do recall it is different from all their earlier efforts which tended to be no more than 3.  I sometimes use height = 3 and sometimes height = 7 and probably sometimes other things altogether  for my really tall trees.  I'll see if i can find some and rport them here...

[T'ni]

can't see how to put a pic on here, so here's the link to it over there

Zoo Tycoon Unleashed (no longer exists)

when the tank depth gets > cHeight of the tree, it completely submerges.

about [animpath] ... grrr, lol. tried it last night and couldn't get it to work at all. one time it didn't crash for some reason, but it wasn't in the menu either.

i think the big problem with scenery having [animpath] is it seems to require:
subtype = path
and scenery doesn't have subtypes. i tried putting DefaultSubtype=p and putting p/ everywhere the subtype occurs in an animal file, but nada :(

in the meantime, i have an exhibit neutral FauxPineShrub, hehe