Creating Your Own Zt Objects

[Aussie Koala]

Those interested in learning how to make an object, either from an existing Zoo Tycoon image or any other game can follow this method.

I am using the polar bear as an example.

Things one needs for this tutorial:

APE installed
A graphics program like Paintshop Pro, Fireworks etc
Zip program- eg:Winzip

[Aussie Koala]

Step 1.
The first thing to do is to decide on what graphic you want to turn into an object for the game. You can use things already in the zoo tycoon game and modify them, or you may have another game that you can use the objects in. For example most of my objects are from the Sims game. The principle is the same as long as you can get screenshots of the objects for all the rotatations the Zoo Tycoon game uses.

(Bear in mind copyright may apply- as a rule original objects in a game are ok to copy but user created content is not. If unsure just email the creator for permission to use the graphics.)

Keep in mind that objects in Zoo tycoon need 4 rotations or views. SE NE NW & SW

In some cases the view is the same in all rotations, others in 2 and some all 4 views are required.

For this tutorial we will use the polar bear as our example as everyone should have that in their game 
Of course you can use any animal or object you wish.

The first thing to do is to load up Zoo Tycoon and make 4 screenshots of the polar bear from the 4 angles SE NE NW & SW.

To do this make a polar bear exhibit. Wait until the polar bear is in the pose you want for the statue and then pause the game.
As the polar bear is already on snow this helps as we are going to need to remove the background from the screenshots- and having a pure white background works best.
Try to make sure that all the background in your screenshot is the snow and there is nothing else in the way either.

You should now have 4 screenshots similar to this, 1 for the 4 directions you can rotate your screen.

I have named this one polarbearSE.png - as this is my polarbear facing SE.

[Aussie Koala]

Step 2.
We now need to cut the images of our polar bear from our screenshots.
I will start with the SE shot above.

The way I do this is to load the screenshot in my graphics program and use the marquee tool to select the image.

[Aussie Koala]

Step 3.[/color]
Press ctrl-c to cut the selected image from the screenshot, start a new file and then press ctrl-v to paste the selected image.

You should now have this:

[Aussie Koala]

Step 4.[/color]
We now need to get rid of the background (the snow) and make the background transparent.

To do this i use the magic wand tool, select anywhere in the background then hit Delete.

This should now get rid of the snow like this:

[Aussie Koala]

Step 5.[/color]
We now want to get rid of the excess canvas around the polar bear- of course how you do this (as well as some of the above steps) will depend on your graphic program.
In fireworks which I am using- you select from the top drop down menu

Modify, Canvas, Fit Canvas so now you have this:

[Aussie Koala]

Step 6.[/color]
To get our image to work with APE- we now need to change the background colour to something contrasting.
APE will then ensure only the polar bear shows up in Zoo Tycoon.

To do this I choose Modify, Canvas, Canvas Color-(Just change the background colour however you do it with your graphics program.)

For this I have chosen a bright green though any contrasting colour will work.

[Aussie Koala]

Follow the above steps for the other 3 rotations and then we will be ready to put our images into APE.

[Aussie Koala]

Step 7.[/color]
Start up APE.

Select Create A New Project, Scenery, then New.

You should now have another menu in the middle-

Select Scenery again from the middle menu.

[Aussie Koala]

Step 8.[/color]
Now to choose which scenery object you are going to base your object on.
When selecting it is a good idea to choose an object that has a footprint similar or exactly the same as your created object. It is not 100% important as you can edit it later but does make it easier when looking at how the rotation is working and for fixing the rotation later on.

For this example I am going to use the bighorn statue.

Double click on the bighorn statue.

Your screen should now look like this:

[Aussie Koala]

Step 9.[/color]

Under the General Heading you can set the following:

Cost: How much you want to pay for this object. For this example I set mine to 50

Member of: Which menu in ZT you want the object to show in. Leave this as scenery for this tutorial. As you can see if you were making some foliage or rocks you can change that there.

Width & Length This defiines the footprint of your object. Keep in mind that 1 grid square in Zoo Tycoon is 2 x 2. I have left this at 2 x 4 so our polar bear will take up 1 grid sqare in width and 2 grid squares in length.

Under the Aesthetic Bonus you can set the values for how attractive Men,, Women, Boys and Girls find your object. While it is fine to raise it some, I recommend not putting them all to the maximum. You want your guests to still like the other objects in your zoo

[Aussie Koala]

Step 10.[/color]
Now on the left hand side select the button that says Descriptive Text

This is fairly self explanatory. You can give your object a name here, plus any text description you want to show up in Zoo tycoon when the cursor is placed on it.

Just make sure the Language is set to English.

[Aussie Koala]

Step 11.[/color]
Now on the left hand side press the button that says Icon Images

You will see up the top the heading Icons. This is where you put the images you want to appear in the selection menu in Zoo Tycoon.
(Note: You can make backgrounds for your icons. Please see my separate tutorial on how to do this.)


Under that is Game Images. This is where you put the images you want to appear when you place them on the map in Zoo Tycoon.

We now need to replace the Bighorn statue images with the polar bear ones we made earlier.

[Aussie Koala]

Step 12.[/color]
Start at the top with the Icon.

The first one is NE. Select the NE folder icon and find your NE polar bear graphic. If you have named them NE. SE etc to begin with it makes this part a lot easier.

[Aussie Koala]

Step 13.[/color]
Now do the same for SE, SW and NW

and again for the Game Icons for all 4 so it then looks like the pic below.

[Aussie Koala]

Step 14.[/color]
Now hit Manage in the top left hand corner and select Save the Current Project

Name your file, for example polarbeartut- and APE saves it as a ZTD file.

You are now ready to put your ztd file in your updates folder and test your object.

[Aussie Koala]

Adding the animal to a statue base to make a statue or adding other features will make your download distinctive and unique.

You more than likely will need to rotation fix this.  Download Makhor for the easiest way to fix your rotations or see my rotation fix tutorial.



Your polar bear as is should look something like this in the game.

[Aussie Koala]

Here are some tips when creating objects- provided courtesty of Jay at ZK Lounge.

- When putting in the description, double checking grammar and spelling might be useful.
- Objects should be based on the same type of object (such as statue or flowerbed) so that the guest thought is appropriate.
- Since the most common problem with objects involves the language code, it is recommended to confirm that the ".ucs" file has "LCID = 1033" in a "[defaultLCID]" section and that the ".ucs" file also has a "[1033]" section.
- Often for user foliage, the ".ucs" file has both "habitatfoliage" and "cHabitat = 9414". This does not hurt anything, but they contradict one another. The first says the foliage has a habitat (ie, can be used in exhibits) while the second says it is "Bad Habitat". Either the ".ucs" file should not have "habitatfoliage" or the ".ucs" file should have "cHabitat = 9411", which means the foliage can be used in "Many" habitats. (It is also possible to give a specific habitat value.)
- If the ".ucs" file has any "[]" or blank lines at the top, these may be removed.
- Sometimes an object should be allowed on water. In this case,"cSwims = 1" and "cOnlySwims = 0" should be added to the "[Characteristics/Integers]" section in the ".ucs" file. For grass or shrub types of foliage that will be put in exhibits, "walkable = 1" should be added to the "[Characteristics/Integers]" section.
- Usually there will be the following 8 ".pal" files for user created objects in the ztd file: objects/xxxxxxxx/idle/NE.pal, objects/xxxxxxxx/idle/NW.pal, objects/xxxxxxxx/idle/SE.pal, objects/xxxxxxxx/idle/SW.pal, objects/xxxxxxxx/ne/N.pal, objects/xxxxxxxx/nw/N.pal, objects/xxxxxxxx/se/N.pal, and objects/xxxxxxxx/sw/N.pal. If some are there, but not all of them, then some of the views of the object or icon probably were not made or were not added via APE. If all 8 are there, then there are probably 2 other ".pal" files in the objects/xxxxxxxx folder from the original Zoo Tycoon object that can be removed. For example, if the new object is based on the Bighorn Statue, objects/xxxxxxxx/i.pal and objects/xxxxxxxx/statue5.pal can be removed.
- Ideally, the same color palette should be used for all 4 views of the object. In this case, all 4 ".pal" files in objects/xxxxxxxx/idle will be identical. If so, the 4 graphics files (ne, nw, se, sw) can be edited with some type of binary editor to make them all use the same ".pal" file and the other 3 ".pal" files can be removed. Similarly, if all 4 ".pal" files of the icon (objects/xxxxxxxx/xx/N.pal) are identical, the 4 icon graphics files (objects/xxxxxxxx/xx/n) can be edited with some type of binary editor to make them all use the same ".pal" file and the other 3 ".pal" files can be removed.
- The files can be taken out of the ".ztd" and a new ".ztd" files can be created that is more efficient. It is more efficient not to save folders in the ztd file. Only the files are important. For example, it is only necessary to save scenery/other/xxxxxxxx.ucs in the ".ztd" file and not "scenery" or "scenery/other". Also when creating the ztd file, a smaller file is created if maximum compression is used. However, it might not be obvious how to do either of these things with whatever program you are using to create the ".ztd" file.
- It is useful to check all 4 rotations in a zoo (especially to make sure the object is consistent as it is rotated) and to check all 4 icon rotations in the purchase menu.

[samemo]

i hope when they make an APE for zt2, it is that easy, probly wont be tho.

[casey]

To install APE, I created a separate folder  c:\ape. I then extracted all files to this folder.  

I did notice that in win98, APE takes a long time to start. I take a break and come back, rather than wait for it.

[zootycoonfan]

how do you change what guests say about your objects?

[flamethrower]

This is a tutorial, not a question/answer thread.  Please make a new topic if you need help with APE.

@Zootycoonfan: Guest Thoughts

[Yellowrose]

The images that go with this tutorila will be reposted when the downloads are completed.