Ask ZT1 design questions here

[Eric]

That makes a lot of sense. I did find that counter used for guests in virtual memory some time last week, but it's not very useful to me alone, not yet sadly. It will be interesting if I can find the general class structure that is being used to instantiate the new guests, animals, etc and maybe then I can find what's concatenating the counter with a base string. I would have thought the counter and the base name would sit close in memory but does not appear so, or maybe I missed it.

I did not know there was a setting that turns this off though, that is super interesting. I'll have to take a closer look at the files.

Thank you for the information!

[vondell]

Hello all. I have a question for the knowledge base here that I have not been able to find info about elsewhere.

For context, I am working on a set of observation area / roof pieces.

I am curious about the config parameter cDrawsLate, which appears to be in the Dino Digs and Marine Mania observation area ucs files, but absent in the base game observation areas.

I was basing my new set on my Aquarium Set roof pieces, which carried this parameter over from the MM observation areas I based them on. But I realized I don't know what it's doing.

It sounds like it might have something to do with graphics layering, but testing it being off vs. being on so far I can't figure out what, and I can't find any reference to cDrawsLate in any of our config reference documents.

Thanks in advance!

[Jay]

I do not know what cDrawsLate does, but I have a guess. The zoo.exe program in the original ZT does not support cDrawsLate, but the zoo.exe program in DD does. DD updated the configuration of the observation areas that came in the original ZT so that they included cDrawsLate. Another thing added in DD was shadow animations for ambient birds that fly over the zoo, although ZT can create shadows for ambient birds without needing shadow animations. Maybe cDrawsLate tells ZT not to draw an ambient bird's shadow animation on the tile where the observation area is. If that is true, then ideally cDrawsLate should be in the configuration of all observation areas other than those that are made of see-through material such as glass. But I feel it is not a big deal if there are user made observation areas without that line, so it is not worth the effort to add it to things that were released already.