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In Which TigerAnne Plays Planet Zoo!
Hi peeps! This is TigerAnne (but don't worry, Raelynn will be back soon), and that little cutie is a baby African Wild Dog. They were the first species I put into my park, and steal my heart they promptly did.
I'm pretty bad at coming up with names for pets, which is how we end up with Hank and Blenda. My original dogs were all named after Starbloom characters. This is Liranda. She had fairly good genes, and lived to almost 19 years of age. No other AWD has beaten that record yet!
Here we have Tallie. :D She was Liranda's daughter (duh?) and had a brother named Shane. Both of them missed their chance to have puppies of their own, because they stayed with Liranda and Elvin. (What else would I name Liranda's mate? I guess I could have called him Ian, but it didn't seem like such a canine name.) The game is coded so that only Alphas will have offspring - thank goodness - and by the time Liranda and Elvin passed on, their offspring were already too old to be fertile.
What I didn't know yet, was that you can send animals to the adoption center, and they'll be frozen in time! I discovered that by accident when I removed an Alpha zebra so another one could breed. They didn't have to age that much! But I have saves from many different periodes of the park's 60 or so years in existence, so I can go back in time and start a whole alternate reality for them.
That's Falcon. He was really cute with that dark mask on his face. I feel like it gives the dogs a milder expression, while the "raccoon goggles" markings give them a mischievous look.
This is also Falcon, when he was older.
The surviving line of dogs was completely unintended. I started with two breeding pairs, the second being Zarinda and Brice. I don't have any pictures of them, because at the time the whole park was just a test, and they didn't live very long. This is their daughter Brianna. She had terrible genes, and I didn't really want to breed her at all. I took her off contraceptives because I thought she was too old to conceive. Nope. She and her mate (Ajani?) had triplets - Jango, Sierra and Briellen. IIRC she died from old age right after they matured.
She died in the drinking fountain, poor Brianna! While she was alive, she slept with her head in it on at least one occasion, too.
Guests were offended.
Briellen.
Jango and Sierra. Poor puppers, their pens were so empty and dull!
Daryl was Briellen's mate. Around this point I get forgetful about who was whose puppies. I think both Briellen and Jango had offspring, because I decided to see if I could improve their genetics through better mates. This was last week though, and I'll have to go consult my previous saves in case anyone is that level of interested. x)
(I'm looking through them. Briellen and Daryl had twins I named Kevin and Logan. I couldn't tell them apart, they had almost identical coat patterns. After Briellen died, they moved with Daryl over to another pen and got a few adopted packmates.)
The one in the foreground here is Olana. She was Jango's mate. Sierra's in the back. Her genetics were the worst of the lot, so she was on birth control her whole life.
This is Derex, who was a very big guy. He was Jango and Olana's son. His brother Jonathan is still in storage in the trade centre!
Hang in there, other animals are coming!
Derex' mate was Nuria. She's on the left, with the half brown half white tail. They had two sets of twins. First they had Natasha and Bronn. Bronn's on the right in the picture. Natasha went into storage, because she had improved genetics and was breeding material. Later on they had Starling and Hawk.
Here's Starling, right before her original death! She's alive and well in an older save, though. x)
Bronn was also a fairly big boy.
I think Hawk was bigger, though. Hawk's on the right, Nuria on the left.
After that whole family died from old age (RIP), I brought Natasha out of stasis and set her up as the new Alpha lady boss. Natasha is the big dog on the right. The smaller one is her daughter Ayla. (Just Ayla, not Tani.) Apparently this is the only picture I have of Natasha.
Her mate was called Mattias, after a Scheiler spouse. x)
Their first litter was Brett and Kai, who you see here, and Zahara who was in the first picture. They all got put in storage the moment they grew to adulthood.
Natasha had another litter soon after. This time it was three females. On the left is Omani, on the right is Adele. Ayla was the third sister. This litter didn't have as good genes for lifespan as the first, so they stayed with their parents to form their pack. Natasha and Mattias have passed on now, and the sisters are elderly.
I think Kai will be the next Alpha, and I have a mate picked out for him. He's also the only one of his species that I've seen braving the bridge. (Maybe they just really like swimming, and don't see any point in it.)
I'll just leave you with this pretty face, before we head over to see other animals. He wasn't angry, he was just playing with a toy, LOL!
Here are other animals! The savannah animals have always been one of my favourite habitats, since back when I played the original Zoo Tycoon. There are so many species that can coexist in that biome, and I like making huge enclosures for them to mingle in. The baby zebra is Wambo. He was the one I put in storage and discovered that he'd stopped aging!
His mother's name was Sitembile, which was the name the game assigned to her. I released her into the wild when he grew up. I started with one male and two female zebras. The father's name was Hamishi, IIRC. He had one son with each of the females, and was also released when Wambo won the Alpha status. Zebras fight SO. MUCH.
This is the other one. He was "amelanistic" which I think means that he was albino? I'm not completely sure, because he had some markings, and his eyes were blue instead of red. My initial reaction when I saw him was "Wait, is that a ghost?!" His name was Spoopa, because.
He pretty much glowed in the dark, too. His mother stayed in the park with him. Her name was Morowa.
While Wambo was Alpha, he had one daughter with his mate Mesi. Her name is Akini. She's a "Gold Badge" animal, meaning that her genetics are great. Currently, she's languishing in the storage along with her dad. x) Mesi has passed away.
The reason I put Wambo in storage was because I wanted Spoopa to be able to have a couple of babies, too. This is his first daughter, Benni. I was curious to see if his weirdly pale coat would be passed down. None of his children or grandchildren have had it so far, but the genes may still be there. If I have his parents on one of the old saves, I'll see if I can get them to have more offspring.
(Yay, I do! Time travel gooo!)
This little guy is Chuma. He was a black wildebeest. His mother was ancient, and died right in front of him soon after he was born. I felt so bad about that! He hung around as a tiny orphan for a long time. In his older age he got to be Alpha for a while, after his brother Ziko passed away, and he had at least one offspring.
Thompson gazelles are some of my favourite zoo-game animals. :D They were always my starter animal in Zoo Tycoon, along with the zebra who they can share their habitat with. In fact, they prefer being kept together. In the wild they're usually found in the same areas.
Those two are actually in the middle of their "mating ritual," which mostly consists of nuzzling and dancing. I'll just BE that person, and say that I'm actually kind of glad the developers didn't take the time and effort of coding realistic mating animations into the game, like the Wildlife Park franchise did. Yeah, I get that it's meant to be a somewhat educational game, and that children should know where babies really come from, etc. Wildlife Park isn't an American game, yadda yadda. I just feel like it's a little unnecessary to include realistic mating in a game that has as ass-end animation quality as Wildlife Park 2 does. x) (Pretty good animal models for its time, though.)
"I can flyyyyy!"
Lookit babby gazelle!
Most savannah animals love swimming. The guy in front is a springbok. It took me a while to be able to tell them apart from the gazelles, because their colouring is so similar.
No one loves swimming more than the warthogs!
They're practically amphibious!
The zebras come in second. There's always a zebra in the pond.
Sometimes animals die in the water, and they glitch into this "dead spider" position.
They died from old age, I promise!
PSA that warthog piglets are awfully cute.
The animals aren't programmed to interact directly with other species, other than to hunt or fight if two incompatible species are put together. It sure looks like the baby antelope is trying to burrow into the ostrich's feathers to stay warm, though. Don't worry, the shelter is heated to 35 degrees celsius. They're actually under a roof, it's just out of the frame.
Sometimes animals get injured or sick, and need to visit the vet.
You can see inside most of the NPC buildings. I love this poster in the vet surgery, and I hope someone's going to convert it for Sims 2! This game and Planet Coaster have their own "Simlish" language, called Planco. You can sort of understand it sometimes.
Rubus should always aim to stay clerf, as that makes them way more rapub.
Dr Montoya needs those posters in her office!
And I have many Sims who would love the chalk drawings!
Stuff breaks a lot.
And if it doesn't get fixed in time, or if a baby animal gets upset because it has wandered too far away from its friends, you get a visit from PETA! Yeah, no. They don't call them that, but they're very easy to upset! Fella Muupi!
We have aardvarks. :) I loved them in ZT2, but in PZ I haven't really "connected" with them yet. Howevz, I was really naughty yesterday, and got some expansion packs. Now the aardvarks have meerkats as their roomies, and I think that'll make me pay more attention to their enclosure.
We have giant tortoises. This isn't the Galapagos tortoise, it's another species that's from Africa. So far I've only put in African animals, plus a couple of South American frogs and a spooder.
I accidentally turned the tortoises' cave into a giant turtle statue, so I just kinda went and gave it googly eyes.
The tortoises had quads. Of course I couldn't resist, and their names are Leonardo, Raphael, Donatella and Michaela. Then they had triplets (facepalm!), but those three kept the names the game gave them. They're being released into the wild as soon as they grow up, in 20 years of game time. x)
Here's how you keep small animals and insects. In terrariums! Those are puff adders. Technically they're not an African species, but there aren't that many African terrarium animals, and I'm NOT putting in the giant snail! Gross!
Here's an animal I don't care much about in real life, but I love it in these games. Hyenas! Here's Frannie and Ray.
And their son, Bray. For some reason I always think of hyenas as superbly redneck animals, hence the names.
But I can't lie, they're kind of cute in this game.
Apparently, hyenas are some of the most intelligent animals on earth, and have problem-solving skills that can rival chimpanzees?! If they evolve an opposable thumb....!
I dug out a nice, cavernous tunnel system for them to hang out in. They spend a lot of the day in this horizontal position.
"HUE HUE HUE HUE!"
BTW, they occasionally swim!
And now all bets are off, because this cutie just arrived in the park.
That's all the zoo I have for now! Actually, no. I have way more pictures of the wild dogs, but I don't want you to hate them! TTFN, and Raelynn will suddenly post something.
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The graphics in this game are so nice! All except for the people, lol! But I love the lighting and the clouds and stuff.
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I've never seen lighting this magical in any game I've ever played. Maybe that's not all that surprising, since I haven't bought new games for several years. It truly rivals Iray! If the skydome could be converted to Sims 2....
I'm perfectly fine with the guests being cartoons. They were that way in Zoo Tycoon 2 as well. What does worry me just a little is that EA must surely have heard people say "I wish Sims 5 would look like Planet Zoo!" They'd take one look at the guests and say "Oh, this is the aesthetic they want for the Sims in 5. We can totally do that!"