Biome Mod

[AnarchCassius]

Updating the file. Plants are now less dense to test how low they can be and maintain the ecosystem in hopes of getting dynamic genes.

At base settings they are still rather dense and support large populations but if you cut Forest Density to 3 you should get a stable world with about 1/3 normal plants if my estimates are correct. I had to do it this way since I have to use integers in the biome ratios.

Oh and there is now Steppe Tundra.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/p1ah9 ... onment.zip

[AnarchCassius]

Oh boy, just did a fresh test.

You need to delete the Sea Ice biome folder in order to make the Scrub not appear as sulphuric wasteland.

[Sunconure11]

Aquatic animals evolved in my current save, probably due to your underwater biomes, if you added them. They literally graze out of the ocean.

These aren't the only animals that evolved to be aquatic grazers either. Now, if only there was a way we could get aquatic predators.

[AnarchCassius]

Interesting. I did a visual tweak on Reefs but no number changes. I removed Sea Ice (which might make freezing oceans nicer) but you'd have to have a very cold world for that be a big difference.

I know they can graze sea biomes but I've never seem them do so successfully. I did add some plants to the Rocky Shore biome and work with Marshes. This may be putting enough extra energy in the littoral zones to give them the push they need to stay at sea for long periods.

There are three primary overall effects I've noticed.

1) Scrub reclaims Desert and is turned claimed by Grassland or Savanna. Plant recovery is much faster than normal and they spread further but the forest as still have touble re-establishing. Base game also has that issue with fast enough animals though.

2) Carnivores are slightly more likely. Well meat favoring omnivores anyway. This is subtle and may be my imagination but it matches my hypothesis: Reducing effeciency on plants will reduce population booms because the excess goes to biomass, but the biomass can later be converted to real energy by something that eats the meat when the plant eater dies. So plant eating gets less immediate benefit than vanilla but some of that can be recovered by a meat eater later.

3) There are more small creatures. I did not expect this. They just started being more common. I almost never saw it before and now they evolve down in size almost as often as up. I'm thinking my more distributed and less dense plant arrangements make it easier for a handful of a species to survive. This may help with harsh condition adapation and small size is a way to adapt to less plant life being around since you'll eat less.

[Sunconure11]

For some reason, your custom plants don't show up for me. Is there a specific way I need to install it?

And why are shores in temperate areas blue?

[AnarchCassius]

Because they don't exist yet

There are currently only the existing 8 plants. I have Quasars unprocessed graphics for another tree and the files to do the processing. I can also probably import some public domain plants from Zoo Tycoon 2 mods (that community is gonna be a gold mine on several levels). I haven't yet because I'm hoping for Quasar to do the modular plants, in fact the latest version is a proof of concept for a low plant world.

I will probably put in some new plants to show off the potential of variety but my real goal will be when I can put them in piecemail.

Temperate shores blue? All the seas are blue, the shores are Beach, Marsh and Rocky. Marsh is the most temperate and plant filled but it's more of a green with a blue tint. Perhaps an error in shaders? I noticed my map has no shading now, though the plants still do. Not sure, must be another formating issue.

[Sunconure11]

If you try and take from the ZT community, if you can, try and ask for permission from the modders. I know none of them are copyrighted, but, still. Also, ZTV isn't really about Zoo Tycoon anymore, if you look there. They even have their downloads hosted on ZTHR.

[AnarchCassius]

Well a LOT of files are listed explicitly as released into the public domain and those are what I was refering to. Zeta Designs for example did several of her (their?) foliage packs as such.

I will probably be asking permission anyway A) to increase awareness of Species, B) to be polite and make contacts, C) they might have helpful info or unreleased files D) I may want to fix up the ZT2 code end of some things since I can. The PD aspect mostly comes in where the original author is no longer contactable. Ironically most of the PD authors ARE still active though

I mostly lurk around Gaia, Round Table and User Made Creations. I mine Northern Skies and the old author sites for files but those 3 seem to be where most of the activity. Frankly given how many of them are most interested in the animals than the zoo itself I'm thinking there should be some interest in Species there.

[Forgottenspore]

What are we using to mod this game someone points me in the right direction please....Or do we use Notepad++ and Open the files and edit them?

[Sunconure11]

Can you make a version for the latest version of Species? I get errors about the Bunya Pine not loading.