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[LegoLord]

_{Frankly I'm amazed there isn't already a thread about this.}

I just picked this game back up yesterday after going more than a few years without touching.  I have forgotten how much fun it is.
If you don't know what it is, basically you pick a location to start a zoo, a starting amount of cash, and then start building.  But you have to work to increase your zoo fame and funds to get the rarer animals and more advanced facilities.  You have to keep your guests and animals happy, so that you not only get profit from admissions fees but donations as well.  The ways to get more money are fairly flexible, from the aforementioned donations to altering prices of admissions and concessions to manipulate guest's spending.  You can get periodic challenges in challenge mode, have unrestricted building in free play mode, or go for specific victory goals in scenario mode.

The last is what I dived right back into the moment I finished going over the tutorials; and a tough scenario to boot.  I've got to make a five-star zoo with only endangered animals in the exhibits.  Amazingly, I'm doing better with it than any other scenario zoo I've done before.  That's not saying much though, since I'm constantly under $5,000 in funds, and I keep getting told that my board of directors bought an endangered animal without telling me.  Still having a blast with it, though; already at three stars, and the fame from releasing animals to the wild is maxed out.   To top it off, I'll soon have enough money saved up to get a black rhinoceros; I'm sure that'll get more guests interested in my zoo.

So this seemed like the sort of game people who like dwarf fortress would like, and I thought it would be cool to talk about and see who else plays it.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

I vaguely remember that. It was ok, I guess. I remember that I played the original as a kid, but not really anything about it other than the absurd environment tweaking where animals would flip shit if there was the slightest slope more than they wanted, which in many cases meant at all. I believe that was absent from the second, but I don't think I ever played more than one game in it before growing bored with it.

[Thexor]

I vaguely remember playing that game, years ago.

I remember that one patch where visitors lined up by the hundreds for water fountains. That was hilarious, especially since they'd get incredibly annoyed and bored, but they wouldn't leave the queue until they'd reached the fountain. Watch two hundred (literally!) people lining up for one water fountain, all of them at the lowest possible happiness! Sadly, they patched that bug out shortly thereafter.

I also remember that zookeeper AI was absolutely pathetic. It seemed like they'd randomly wander their specified area, only bothering to clean a pen if they happened to find themselves inside it. And I don't remember them ever patching that out. 

[Nilocy]

The only thing that sticks in my mind from it is the intro music. I honestly cannot get it outta my head for about 4 years.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

I also remember that zookeeper AI was absolutely pathetic. It seemed like they'd randomly wander their specified area, only bothering to clean a pen if they happened to find themselves inside it. And I don't remember them ever patching that out. 

If you're talking about the original: you had to explicitly assign them to given exhibits in order for them to go to them. I think, it's all kind of fuzzy and mashed up with Roller Coaster Tycoon in my head, but since that didn't have pens of animals...

[Phantom]

In one of the new roller coaster tycoons that also mashed it up with zoo tycoon.

I do have Zoo Tycoon 2, but I don't feel like playing it.

I'm just gonna drown people in the original roller coaster tycoon.

[LegoLord]

Hrm.

I was kind of hoping someone around here new anything about designing new animals.  Oh well.

[CJ1145]

There used to be an awesome database called zooadmin or something that had tons of Zoo Tycoon stuff. Sadly, I don't think it exists anymore. I used to love the game, but my damned Vista comp refuses to play it. Same with Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2, and several other awesome games.

[Thexor]

There used to be an awesome database called zooadmin or something that had tons of Zoo Tycoon stuff. Sadly, I don't think it exists anymore. I used to love the game, but my damned Vista comp refuses to play it. Same with Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2, and several other awesome games.

That sucks. I used to have Vista, and it ran KotoR 1/2 quite happily. (KotoR 2 ran only after I copied the sound engine from KotoR 1!)

But I'm 100% certain that the pathetic AI was in Zoo Tycoon 2 - in fact, I vividly remember this because I'd played the original and the AI was superior. Of course, since I was much younger, it's possible I just didn't know how to manipulate the AI properly... but I'd assign the zookeepers a pen, and they'd spend half their time wandering in circles on the paths outside.

[Cheeetar]

I remember Zoo Tycoon. Half of the time I played was turning the entire zoo into a gigantic polar habitat with guests into it and then releasing penguins and polar bears into it.

[Asehujiko]

I only played the original and i only remembering cheating on animals that want cliffs by sinking the edges of their enclosure and saving money by buying the cheapest, most rickety fences available.

Also, fucking pandas that want half the map to themselves, get enraged over there being ONE rock too many or ONE tile of their favorite type of forest floor missing, are hideously expensive, never breed(and if they ever do the cub now wants a couple hundred tiles of extra territory), require massive amounts of terraforming to meet their wonky demands for flat ground, slopes, cliffs and high cliffs, need an unique shelter that is also damn expensive and is researched much later then the animals themselves and best of all are so shy that they get agoraphobia if there's more then 3 people looking at them(even if they are hidden in the far side of their domain) and if one as much as frowns, the animal protection goes all "YOU MONSTER!" until you spend another hour of micromanaging that particular one back to happiness or just sell them because selling only one makes the other go sad too.

Let's just say that i never completed that panda specific missions.

[LegoLord]

. . . Yeah, I think I remember that.  But it wasn't just pandas, it was everything big that need tremendous space.  Definitely one of the things that makes the sequel better, that habitats aren't quite so rigid in their requirements.