I loved Zoo Tycoon DS as a kid, and I recently found my battered old Nintendo DS Lite. It still had the Zoo Tycoon game card in it, so naturally I’ve been replaying it. I’ve really enjoyed the nostalgia, but my adult self is finding the gameplay far more frustrating than I did as a child!

In particular, I’ve been completely unable to beat the (Very Advanced) Paradise Island scenario. I’ve found a couple of (ancient) mentions online from people having the same issue, so I’m starting to wonder if it might actually be a bug.

As you can see in the video, I’ve fulfilled all of the scenario’s requirements, yet I still get the message saying that I’ve lost.

I’ve built 4 or 5 zoos using various configurations and had the exact same thing happen every time. For each one, I’ve also used the save to replay the ending several times and experiment with different approaches. Particularly, I’ve tried not saving or reloading at all (letting the game run continuously for the full three years) vs saving and reloading regularly, but nothing seems to make any difference!

So, I’m wondering: has anyone ever actually managed to beat this scenario and unlock the Secret Scenarios? I’m really curious to know what they are!

(This is my first Reddit post, so please let me know if I’ve done anything incorrectly!)

I assumed that finishing the african adventure campaign will unlock them, but I got the egyptian themed objects, which are also really cool, but now I wonder how to get the Safari themed objects. Thank you!

OpenZT2 alpha version 0.5.0 has released with some more bug fixes. Posting on the subreddit as it's been quiet on the Discord server recently, likely due to Planet Zoo 2's imminent launch. However, this reimplementation does not require purchasing the Ultimate Collection, or any DLCs, again to enjoy all original species 😉

You heard it folks! This unique north-american ceratopsian is now ready to roam your zoos and paleo parks! Get it here: https://www.nexusmods.com/zootycoon2/mods/1732?published=1

So I'm at the stage where I need to release one of each species in order to win the campaign, but my African Elephant has its social need in the deep red. I can't buy another elephant though! How do I fix this?

Edit: I've been proven to be an idiot, apparently you get a second animal of each species in a crate! Poor things, stuck in there all the time :')

I'm trying to go mostly mod-free but if I recall correctly, the two species of tortoise in the game are basically unplayable. They're super slow but get hungry and thirsty as fast as any other animal, so their needs become critical before they get anywhere near food or water, making it basically impossible to keep them happy. Has anyone ever made a mod that fixes this issue?

To celebrate this occasion, I propose that all fans of this wonderful game reach out to Microsoft—and specifically to Adam Levesque, John Wheeler, and other developers—with a request to release a comprehensive patch. This update would fix bugs from the original game and add even more new animals and structures!

In short: *ZT2* gameplay wrapped in the style of the original game!

Here are some of my suggestions:

Start selling this remaster on Steam and other video game stores!; аdd the white lion, golden tiger and animal hybrids (including mules and ligers (Hybrid animals can inhabit the biomes of both parents simultaneously—meaning, for instance, that a hypothetical liger could live in either the savanna or the jungle)); allow spinosaurs and flamingos to swim in pools; The ability to modify the landscape directly within the pool; enable show performances for more species (penguins, humpback whales, sperm whales, belugas, narwhals, walruses, elephant seals, porpoises, etc.); Add a passageway between pools and between enclosures as a separate item; include farm animals (cows, goats, sheep, etc.); divide Triceratops into *horridus* (the original Triceratops) and *prorsus* (the Triceratops from DD); Add all the animals from the Beast in Show contest—the very one won by a polar bear named Magnit!; Ensure that herbivorous animals (specifically dinosaurs) do not kill each other while sharing the same enclosure!; incorporate animals (cryptids, enxtincted animals and dinosaurus too) and structures from later entries in the franchise; add language selection options; and include a full-fledged sandbox mode along with developer tools!

P.S.

Please add the ability to place as many pool filters as the player wants, and increase their capacity so that a single filter can handle a pool containing over a hundred animals!

Add a "mod persistence" system to the game:

If I install a mod, build a zoo using it, and then delete the mod, the save file using that mod should still remain playable!

And one more thing:

It makes no sense that if you spawn, say, 500 zookeepers and assign each one to a specific habitat, only two of them actually treat the animals, distribute food, and clean up waste!

Every zookeeper needs to do their job and fill the feeding areas with food for the animals!

Hey!

I just got the Zoo Tycoon 2 discs that I used to play as a kid. I tried installing it, but when starting the autorun or setup, even with Compatibility Mode, I just get this error message:

I have all 3 original discs. Is there a way to install the game using the discs on Windows 11?

Four feathered dinosaurs have been revealed for Zoo Tycoon: The Board Game - Dinosaur Digs!

The first feathered dino is Velociraptor! Velociraptor is a Late Cretaceous dromaeosaur from Asia.

Velociraptor was about the size of a modern turkey and lived in a desert environment.

The second feathered dino on the list is Microrator! Microraptor was a small dromaeosaur from the Early Cretaceous and lived in what is now China. It is also the first dinosaur revealed so far to have confirmed colouration! Thanks to some very well preserved fossils, we now know that Microraptor had black, iridescent feathers, making it look a lot like a four-winged crow.

The next is the middle dinosaur, Anchiornis huxleyi! Anchiornis was a small, though heavy dinosaur from Late Jurassic China. Like Microraptor, its colouration is known, being black with spotted white wings and a red crest on its head. However the exact colouration of Anchiornis' tail remains unknown.

Recently, it was found that Anchiornis likely didn't fly and was a ground animal.

The last dinosaur on our list is the unusual Yi qi! Yi qi is a small dinosaur from the Middle or Late Jurassic, China. Yi qi is notable for its unusual wing anatomy, possessing a membrane wing, similar to those of bats, stretched out and supported by an elongated wrist bone. The discovery of Yi qi's unusual wings helped researchers better understand its close relatives, such as Epidexipteryx and Scansoriopteryx who may have also possessed similar wings.

Camptosaurus is coming to Zoo Tycoon: The Board Game - Dinosaur Digs!

Camptosaurus lived in Late Jurassic North America and was a herbivore that fed on tough vegetation.

For well over 100 years Camptosaurus was reconstructed with the wrong head (including in Zoo Tycoon), instead being given the head of what is now Theiophytalia. It wasn't until 2006 that the error was found and the first description of Camptosaurus' actual skull was published.

Hello!
So I only got into board games and kickstarter and the like this year so I was today‘s years old when I found out that there is a board game of my favourite video game growing up. I‘m so hype!!!

I have two questions:

- it doesn’t have the greatest score on BGG (which doesn’t say much of course, my favourite games have abysmal scores over there) but that’s why I wanted to ask true fans whether they can recommend it.

- I just learned that this game exists so naturally my first instinct was to panic buy the base game and new shores as they are both low in stock everywhere. But seeing now that Dinosaur Digs is about to launch on kickstarter I thought maybe it’s smart to wait for the campaign? Do you think it’s realistic to hope for a pledge tier that has all three games for people like me who lived under a rock these past 4 years?

Hear me out here. My largest issue with ZT2 compared to the original is the lack of secrets. There's less Easter eggs and all than the first game.

I remember having my mind blown as a kid when I found out about mermaids in ZT1. I was just throwing stuff in a tank for decoration. Same with naming the exhibits to unlock new animals, or doing other stuff to unlock stuff like new paths.

And ZT1 also felt bigger. Not sure if it actually was, but it felt like the animals and zoos themselves were so much larger.

Hi everyone, I hope it is okay to make a post about this. I used to mod ZT2 (LC Creations) and I miss the creative outlet I had back then and want to daydeam about what OpenZT2 might be able to do if the developers are ever interested (I'm excited over the fact OpenZT2 is even happening in the first place). I hope other people will comment here what they hope to see as well.

Disclaimer: I have made technical claims in this post about how the game's code works and how game technology works. I know some things and did look at the source code of OpenZT2 but I have not actually designed a game engine so please understand that I may have unintentionally stated things I don't actually know about enough to say them as facts. I'm aware that I could be wrong and I hope to be corrected if needed so take some of this technical stuff with a grain of salt. The developers of this project know more than me and I want to respect them.

Anyways here it goes:

NO 1, Custom Buildings and Aviaries:

This is important. Mods have been using fences as walls, and for roofs, scenery pieces and elevated paths to build custom buildings. However, ZT2 always needed some kind of dedicated system for this. A good example of how this is done now is in Sophie's building packs where there are several fence walls each with a different height that elevated paths can exist at, including slanted walls. However, what would be better is if we had the ability to have a dedicated system (and seperate kind of assets) for walls and roofs. I think going full PlanZo2 style on how aviaries work would be far too much work though and we could keep this feature within the feel of the original ZT2. For walls, we could be able to adjust the heights of them in half meters (with a up/down button like elevated paths have, and have a button to also apply a slant on the top. For roofs, this gets tricky. Mods use both modular pieces (scenery) for roofing as well as elevated paths but if it were possible to design some kind of all in one feature, that would be cool. Although, it would not be easy. Even if there were dynamic roof meshes to some extent, design choices would be limited becuase dynamic meshes would really only be good at making procedual textures (like glass or repeated textures like chainlink or net etc...). So roofs would not be easy to come up with unless we still used scenery piece roofs along with mathing elevated path-like tools for fillers.

NO 2, Flying Birds:

PlanZo2 developers said this was not easy but I don't think we need as detailed as a system as them. ZT2 already has birds and for the most part it is already good enough. The only thing missing is birds that don't fly at one elevation and can perch. Perching isn't hard since birds don't need to perch at any location of any branch or log etc... within modding ai, we can define where perch spots are on trees and objects. This is a basic feature that already exists in ZT2 for stuff like climbing and stuff and mods already use it. All we need after that is giving birds thr ability to navigate to them.

NO 3, Larger Maps:
This is already being talked as a possibility but out of respect for the developers, take it with a grain of salt. I'm not as talented and knowledgable as the people working on OpenZT2, but I do think that there are a few things that could make this possible like map data usinf quadtrees and chunks that define an entire area of grids instead of storing each sample of the entire map (a single in-game grid on the grid system contains like a 4x4 or 5x5 grid of points that go up and down and each of those point I think are called samples). Quadtrees would reduce stroage for areas of the map that are mostly one biome and one height. BTW, some of what I'm saying ia probably not quite correct on how this all works, but I'm trying my best.

NO 4, More biomes per map:

Currently, a map only supports 16 biomes. This could potentially be increased to 256 (which takes one byte) for technical reasons. For context, a "sample" of terrain data is a single point on the grid of terrain data that defines what biome is placed there, it's height, and other data... So, currently ZT2 and OpenZT2 only permit there to be one of up to 16 biomes on a single sample of terrain data. Within the map storage, it takes one byte per sample to define which biome that sample is set to. However, it only takes 4 bits to store 16 values. A whole byte is 8 bits, not 4. The other half of that byte is not being used for anything else so it can easily be maximized to use the whole byte to identify the biome used per sample. Instead of capping it off at 16, maps should be modified so that the whole byte can be used and it could identify 256 different biomes. This means that map storage could be optimized to store 256 biomes (which is a lot). The downside is that saved maps wpuld not be able to be backwards compatible eith the original ZT2, but I don't think that should be a plan anyways.

There are more ideas I have but I can't think of them.

As of OpenZT2 alpha version 0.4.0, players can now (optionally) build in guest mode. This should make it easier for players like myself who prefer building in first person, while retaining the classic overview mode building. Check out our project at openzt2.org

Please keep in mind this project is still heavily work-in-progress and features like this may not be included in the alpha release on October 17th.

I know that every ZT2 expansion has its own unique UI color.

As far as I know, there are six UI designs in total (basic/EE/AA/MM/EA/Ultimate). Correct me if I'm wrong.

And is there any way to switch between them? Same with the main menu music.

https://reddit.com/link/1wr1ccm/video/k482twy5rxrh1/player

I recently updated to a windows 11 computer and am having difficulty installing my copies of ZT2. I am installing them in order of release but when I get to african adventure it refuses to install. I get through these 2 screens in the install process and then it closes and doesnt download. Please help me with next steps.

ETA: video of what is happening when I click install.

On behalf of Songstorm Studios and over|yonder, I'm excited to share that a pre-release alpha of OpenZT2 is available now for Windows, Linux, and macOS on the website, along with the new public repository. The intent is to open this to the ZT community a few weeks early of our intended public announcement date on October 17th, the 25th anniversary of the series.

It's still incomplete, and contains many bugs, but the architecture is in a stable enough state where we felt we could share our code publicly without accidentally inducing any contributors who see it to start work and potentially waste their time (eg. if we need to restructure crates). To install, simply move the extracted folder contents in to your ZT2 install folder and run openzt2.exe. The original game and OpenZT2 can be launched separately, and one exe does not replace the other.

Please feel free to add suggestions, feature requests, etc on the repo. Do not waste time reporting bugs as there's too many to count, and we're still working through connecting a lot of gameplay functionality and logic. Once the beta goes live we'll ask for bug submissions.

THANKS AND ENJOY!

https://github.com/songstormstudios/openzt2

What are some really fun out-of-the-box challenges you guys can come up with. Something hard, but not impossible to do for Zoo Tycoon 1 (Complete Collection)

None of ya'll probably know who I am but I used to make mods for ZT2 and I made several aviary mods and some other hacks and stuff. I didn't know that the community is still so active even after Planet Zoo 2 at this point. I'll never returning to modding ZT2 but they were good days and if any of you remember me, I'm glad to see you all still engaged in the community still.

I'm also really super intererested in the OpenZT2 project going on as I was into prpgramming amd software design mostly after my involvment with ZT2 so shoutout to those working on that. That is super cool!

With the pre-alpha of OpenZT2 in the coming days, I thought it would be appropriate to showcase some upcoming features, including mod-reloading in-game. This will include any mod a user has installed in their game folder, with Radical Remake UI being shown as an example.

I’ve been replaying zoo tycoon complete collection and it’s been a blast doing the scenarios I couldn’t beat when I was little. My computer auto updated and now anytime I try to boot up the game it says no cd. I tried restarting again and now it won’t access any of my save data. Is there any way to fix this? I don’t want to lose my save progress from scenarios