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Utilities / Re: lang-DTH.dll
« Last post by Yellowrose on January 23, 24, 01:24:09 AM »Updated January 23, 2020 to correct some spacing and spelling errors and to change some of the wording in a couple of the messages.
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2
Utilities / Re: lang-DTH.dll
« Last post by Yellowrose on December 08, 08, 05:08:47 AM »Updated December 7th 2019 to add some new messages.
3
Tutorials / Re: Rotation Fix using Zoot 1.1
« Last post by Yellowrose on August 14, 37, 08:37:51 AM »With this part of testing done it's time to open up Zoot and do our rotation fix.
When you open Zoot for the first time you will first see an introductry screen just click ok to move on. You should now get a navigation window. This should open a blank Zoot window so use the top menu to click File/Open. In the new window that pops up Navigate to where you have your projects folder and make sure the project folder is at the top of Zoot in the "Look In" window and you only have 2 other folders showing in the large content window as in the screen below. at the bottom use the drop down arrow to the left of the save button and make sure "All Files" is selected and then click Open
when your file opens you will see a list with your objects folder, your scenery folder, & any other files you may have in the folder
To the left of the 2 folders you will see a "+" sign click the one beside the objects folder to expand it. Then the + sign beside the Numbered folder to expand it and lastly click the + sign beside the idle folder to expand it and your zoot window should look like this.
I won't be explaining all the tool options in zoot as with this tutorial we are more focused on doing a rotation fix but Zoot has many toold we can make sue of for Zoo Tycoon project creation.
The first thing we do for this rotation fix is look in the list of files that are now showing with the idle folder expanded. We click on the SE image icon
Now you notice the SE image is now displayed in the large window to the right of the file list. You'll also notice all the tool icons in the top tool menu are all lit up they are no longed greyed out.
To do our rotation positioning for the SE view of our project we click the rotation tool icon. Looks like a green star located 5th icon from the left the first icon being a folder icon.
Clicking this Green Star instructs Zoot to open a new window with a grid similar to the screen below. Because I have previously used zoot for a project my window shows a larger grid yours may only show a single grid square. I will address this in a minute.
there are a few tool setting here to take note of. at the top we have footprint x and footprint y as you increase or decrease the number in these 2 boxes the number of grid squares in the large window changes to show more grid squares or less grid squares depending on the foot print of your project. the window to the right of these lets you set a zoom level from 1 - 5 so you can zoom in close to get an accurate placement or your object. At the bottom left we have 4 direction arrows for up/down/left/right. We will use these arrows to position our project on the grid. This is especially useful when moving large objects in zoot as clicking on your image and dragging it into position doesn't always have the outcome we want. So it is a good practice to always use the arrows to position your image on the grid. to the right of the arrows is out save button. "Save to file and close window" once we have our project positioned for this view this is the save button we will use to save our adjustment. Be careful not to hit the Cancel button as you will have to redo your adjustment from scratch.
The first step in doing a rotation fix is setting the size of your footprint. This is done at the top of this new window. Change whatever numbers show in the footprint x and footprint y windows to 2 by using the up/down arrows to the right of the number in the box or click in the box and enter a 2. for both footprints. You'll notice when I changed the 2 footprint settings to 2 the number of grid squares compared to my previous screen has decreased to only 1 grid square. Each grid square also has a single center pixel indicated and we are going to use this center pixel as our position for the tulip.
Now use the zoom setting and set it to 5 so we get a good close up view of our grid square and our project for exact placement. Make note that even though we set the footprint to footprintx = 1 and footprinty = 1 in our ucs file we still use a footprint size in zoot at 2 for both. This will position our file in the middle of our 1/4 square needed. I know confused me at first to but it works as you will see in final in game testing. Another thing to I would like to draw your attention to is the Current Offsets setting to the right of the zoom setting. while we can't adjust these, make note of the numbers in this offset as they will help us with our other 3 views as we move on. Mine records the position of my tulip at 8 x 25 and in the image you can see for the SE view the positioning of my tulip is right on and needs no adjustment. So time to save this and move onto the next view for adjustment.
When you click the save button you will get a confirmation message so we are going to click yes. This will save our settings we just adjusted and close the rotation setting window and take us back to the first window to select our next view image.
Back on the view selection screen I next move to the SW view, select the view on the left and click the green star to open the settings window to adjust the SW view settings. I adjusted the positioning of the windows so you could see I have the SW view selected. Zoot saves your previous setting for the footprint so there is no need to do that adjustment again and as you can see from the screen my tulip is again positioned in the same position as my SE view and the current offsets setting in the top right is the same so again I don't need to make any adjustments. If yours are different you should now move your SW view to the same offset settings by clicking the move arrows at the bottom of the zoot window so your image moves to the same position as the SE view was in. This is where that Current offsets setting comes in handy. as you move your project with the move arrows you'll see that these offsets change so you want the offsets set the same as the SE view in this case 8 x 25. So all I need do is click the save button so the settings are saved and close the settings window and return to my image selection window.
Now I'll move on to the NW image. Select the NW image and click the green star to open the settings window. As you can see again I don't need to make any adjustment the positioning of the image remained the same and the Current offsets are 8 x 25 so just save and close window and move on to the next image.
Now for the last of our images the NE View. Select the image from the list on the left and click the green star to open the settings window. Again a perfect positioning so no adjustment was needed. Believe it or not this is the first file I have ever done that didn't need a single adjustment....lol...I'll have to add another Zoot tutorial to this section that maybe will show a file that needs positioning. I'll make sure it is a tutorial that also features one of the other tools for use with Zoo Tycoon images.
With all 4 images in the idle folder complete and all settings for rotations adjusted if needed just close off the zoot window it's now time to turn our file back into a ztd file and do a final in game test.
With zoot closed off if not already open navigate to your projects folder. In My folder I have the the zip file we used to extract the objects & scenery folders and a copy of the original ztd file we made. We no longer need these 2 file so they can be deleted. Draw a box around both files so both files are highlighted. Right click on one of the highlighted files and select delete.
When the confirmation message pops up click yes to delete the 2 files which now leaves us with our image file, our icon file, the objects folder, and the scenery folder.
For the ztd file process I am going to be using 7zip as my compression program to make my ztd file. This is one of the best programs as it allows you to set compression to a max setting for a smaller end result file size. I am also going to be using a tool made by Jay called Shrink which maybe not so much with the tulip but helps to make the final ztd file even smaller in file size. You can get all of Jay's ZT Utility files from Zookeepers Lounge. They all come with very easy to follow instructions for installation. So to make our ZTD file start by selecting the objects folder with it highlighted hold down the Ctrl key and select the scenery folder so both folders are highlighted. Right click and select 7zip and then "Add to Archive" from the list.
After selecting 7zip/Add to Archive from the list a new window will open for 7zip. I have indicated in red where you make changes in 7zip for our zip file.
When adding a name for your file it is important "Not" to have spaces between the words of your name as some servers do not react well to spaces or to special characters with the excptions of a hyphen "-" or an underscore "_"
When you open Zoot for the first time you will first see an introductry screen just click ok to move on. You should now get a navigation window. This should open a blank Zoot window so use the top menu to click File/Open. In the new window that pops up Navigate to where you have your projects folder and make sure the project folder is at the top of Zoot in the "Look In" window and you only have 2 other folders showing in the large content window as in the screen below. at the bottom use the drop down arrow to the left of the save button and make sure "All Files" is selected and then click Open
when your file opens you will see a list with your objects folder, your scenery folder, & any other files you may have in the folder
To the left of the 2 folders you will see a "+" sign click the one beside the objects folder to expand it. Then the + sign beside the Numbered folder to expand it and lastly click the + sign beside the idle folder to expand it and your zoot window should look like this.
I won't be explaining all the tool options in zoot as with this tutorial we are more focused on doing a rotation fix but Zoot has many toold we can make sue of for Zoo Tycoon project creation.
The first thing we do for this rotation fix is look in the list of files that are now showing with the idle folder expanded. We click on the SE image icon
Now you notice the SE image is now displayed in the large window to the right of the file list. You'll also notice all the tool icons in the top tool menu are all lit up they are no longed greyed out.
To do our rotation positioning for the SE view of our project we click the rotation tool icon. Looks like a green star located 5th icon from the left the first icon being a folder icon.
Clicking this Green Star instructs Zoot to open a new window with a grid similar to the screen below. Because I have previously used zoot for a project my window shows a larger grid yours may only show a single grid square. I will address this in a minute.
there are a few tool setting here to take note of. at the top we have footprint x and footprint y as you increase or decrease the number in these 2 boxes the number of grid squares in the large window changes to show more grid squares or less grid squares depending on the foot print of your project. the window to the right of these lets you set a zoom level from 1 - 5 so you can zoom in close to get an accurate placement or your object. At the bottom left we have 4 direction arrows for up/down/left/right. We will use these arrows to position our project on the grid. This is especially useful when moving large objects in zoot as clicking on your image and dragging it into position doesn't always have the outcome we want. So it is a good practice to always use the arrows to position your image on the grid. to the right of the arrows is out save button. "Save to file and close window" once we have our project positioned for this view this is the save button we will use to save our adjustment. Be careful not to hit the Cancel button as you will have to redo your adjustment from scratch.
The first step in doing a rotation fix is setting the size of your footprint. This is done at the top of this new window. Change whatever numbers show in the footprint x and footprint y windows to 2 by using the up/down arrows to the right of the number in the box or click in the box and enter a 2. for both footprints. You'll notice when I changed the 2 footprint settings to 2 the number of grid squares compared to my previous screen has decreased to only 1 grid square. Each grid square also has a single center pixel indicated and we are going to use this center pixel as our position for the tulip.
Now use the zoom setting and set it to 5 so we get a good close up view of our grid square and our project for exact placement. Make note that even though we set the footprint to footprintx = 1 and footprinty = 1 in our ucs file we still use a footprint size in zoot at 2 for both. This will position our file in the middle of our 1/4 square needed. I know confused me at first to but it works as you will see in final in game testing. Another thing to I would like to draw your attention to is the Current Offsets setting to the right of the zoom setting. while we can't adjust these, make note of the numbers in this offset as they will help us with our other 3 views as we move on. Mine records the position of my tulip at 8 x 25 and in the image you can see for the SE view the positioning of my tulip is right on and needs no adjustment. So time to save this and move onto the next view for adjustment.
When you click the save button you will get a confirmation message so we are going to click yes. This will save our settings we just adjusted and close the rotation setting window and take us back to the first window to select our next view image.
Back on the view selection screen I next move to the SW view, select the view on the left and click the green star to open the settings window to adjust the SW view settings. I adjusted the positioning of the windows so you could see I have the SW view selected. Zoot saves your previous setting for the footprint so there is no need to do that adjustment again and as you can see from the screen my tulip is again positioned in the same position as my SE view and the current offsets setting in the top right is the same so again I don't need to make any adjustments. If yours are different you should now move your SW view to the same offset settings by clicking the move arrows at the bottom of the zoot window so your image moves to the same position as the SE view was in. This is where that Current offsets setting comes in handy. as you move your project with the move arrows you'll see that these offsets change so you want the offsets set the same as the SE view in this case 8 x 25. So all I need do is click the save button so the settings are saved and close the settings window and return to my image selection window.
Now I'll move on to the NW image. Select the NW image and click the green star to open the settings window. As you can see again I don't need to make any adjustment the positioning of the image remained the same and the Current offsets are 8 x 25 so just save and close window and move on to the next image.
Now for the last of our images the NE View. Select the image from the list on the left and click the green star to open the settings window. Again a perfect positioning so no adjustment was needed. Believe it or not this is the first file I have ever done that didn't need a single adjustment....lol...I'll have to add another Zoot tutorial to this section that maybe will show a file that needs positioning. I'll make sure it is a tutorial that also features one of the other tools for use with Zoo Tycoon images.
With all 4 images in the idle folder complete and all settings for rotations adjusted if needed just close off the zoot window it's now time to turn our file back into a ztd file and do a final in game test.
With zoot closed off if not already open navigate to your projects folder. In My folder I have the the zip file we used to extract the objects & scenery folders and a copy of the original ztd file we made. We no longer need these 2 file so they can be deleted. Draw a box around both files so both files are highlighted. Right click on one of the highlighted files and select delete.
When the confirmation message pops up click yes to delete the 2 files which now leaves us with our image file, our icon file, the objects folder, and the scenery folder.
For the ztd file process I am going to be using 7zip as my compression program to make my ztd file. This is one of the best programs as it allows you to set compression to a max setting for a smaller end result file size. I am also going to be using a tool made by Jay called Shrink which maybe not so much with the tulip but helps to make the final ztd file even smaller in file size. You can get all of Jay's ZT Utility files from Zookeepers Lounge. They all come with very easy to follow instructions for installation. So to make our ZTD file start by selecting the objects folder with it highlighted hold down the Ctrl key and select the scenery folder so both folders are highlighted. Right click and select 7zip and then "Add to Archive" from the list.
After selecting 7zip/Add to Archive from the list a new window will open for 7zip. I have indicated in red where you make changes in 7zip for our zip file.
When adding a name for your file it is important "Not" to have spaces between the words of your name as some servers do not react well to spaces or to special characters with the excptions of a hyphen "-" or an underscore "_"
4
Tutorials / Rotation Fix using Zoot 1.1
« Last post by Yellowrose on August 14, 45, 07:45:34 AM »Now that you have created your first ZTD file you will need to do a rotation fix so when you use your file in Zoo tycoon it will rotate properly when the map is rotated in the game. This is done with Zoot. This is the easiest way to do a rotation fix.
Before I get into showing you how to use Zoot here are a few screens to show why a rotation fix is needed for all files.
Take your new ZTD file and install it in game using copy/paste to add the file to your dlupdate folder.
Start up Zoo Tycoon and Open a blank in game map
I just went with the first map in the list Dinosaur Digs: Basic Map(Small)
move the view so you have a decent area to see and locate the concrete path in the path purchase menu and place a surround a single square of terrain with 2 rows of concrete path.
now open the foliage purchase menu and locate your new file in the menu and place it in the terrain square surrounded by the path.
now with your item placed use the +/- signs to zoom in close and start to rotate the map taking note of your item and where it places itself as you make each map rotation. With my tulip it really didn't move off the terrain but I will still do a rotation adjustment with it. Your result might show your file moving onto a piece of the path.
The reason we do a rotation fix is so that when the map is rotated for all 4 directions our file doesn't move from where we placed it and it should only move with the map as the map is rotated but does not move from the spot we placed it in when we first placed it on the terrain.
South East view is the default view in the purchase menu before an item is rotated in the purchase menu. When testing a rotation or new file I make sure to never rotate the purchase menu so the default is always used.
In the case of my tulip the SE default places my tulip in the bottom of the square. I then go to the map rotate arrows and use the right hand arrow to rotate the map until my tulip is back in the original bottom position I started with. I'm not sure what the rotation views are when I do this my only concern at this point is did my file move off the terrain onto the path when I rotated the map or did my file move at all on the terrain tile when I rotated the map.as you can see from the following 4 screens my file doesn't look like it moved. Pay close attention to rotation #3. The positioning is actually off center of what it should be so this file does need a small adjustment in zoot.
Rotation #1
Rotation #2
Rotation #3
Rotation #4 - brings us back to the starting position before rotating the map
Before I get into showing you how to use Zoot here are a few screens to show why a rotation fix is needed for all files.
Take your new ZTD file and install it in game using copy/paste to add the file to your dlupdate folder.
Start up Zoo Tycoon and Open a blank in game map
I just went with the first map in the list Dinosaur Digs: Basic Map(Small)
move the view so you have a decent area to see and locate the concrete path in the path purchase menu and place a surround a single square of terrain with 2 rows of concrete path.
now open the foliage purchase menu and locate your new file in the menu and place it in the terrain square surrounded by the path.
now with your item placed use the +/- signs to zoom in close and start to rotate the map taking note of your item and where it places itself as you make each map rotation. With my tulip it really didn't move off the terrain but I will still do a rotation adjustment with it. Your result might show your file moving onto a piece of the path.
The reason we do a rotation fix is so that when the map is rotated for all 4 directions our file doesn't move from where we placed it and it should only move with the map as the map is rotated but does not move from the spot we placed it in when we first placed it on the terrain.
South East view is the default view in the purchase menu before an item is rotated in the purchase menu. When testing a rotation or new file I make sure to never rotate the purchase menu so the default is always used.
In the case of my tulip the SE default places my tulip in the bottom of the square. I then go to the map rotate arrows and use the right hand arrow to rotate the map until my tulip is back in the original bottom position I started with. I'm not sure what the rotation views are when I do this my only concern at this point is did my file move off the terrain onto the path when I rotated the map or did my file move at all on the terrain tile when I rotated the map.as you can see from the following 4 screens my file doesn't look like it moved. Pay close attention to rotation #3. The positioning is actually off center of what it should be so this file does need a small adjustment in zoot.
Rotation #1
Rotation #2
Rotation #3
Rotation #4 - brings us back to the starting position before rotating the map
5
Tutorials / Combining ZTD Files
« Last post by Yellowrose on August 12, 55, 12:55:47 PM »The question "How do I combine ZTD files into 1 ZTD so I don't go over the 350 file limit for Zoo Tycoon?" is a very frequently asked question. There are a few print tutorials that can be viewed on community forums but some people find them hard to follow. So with that in mind I took to Youtube and made a video tutorial I hope you will find easy to follow. It can be paused and then restarted as you move through all the steps to combine ZTD files.
This may seem like a long way to accomplish a combined file and it is, but I wanted to be sure I showed you all the steps. As you do more and more combined files you will find quicker shortcuts to use. I know I have but thought they would do more to confuse a beginner then to help so I did it the long way for the video.
I hope you enjoy watching and following and good luck with your file combining.
This may seem like a long way to accomplish a combined file and it is, but I wanted to be sure I showed you all the steps. As you do more and more combined files you will find quicker shortcuts to use. I know I have but thought they would do more to confuse a beginner then to help so I did it the long way for the video.
I hope you enjoy watching and following and good luck with your file combining.
6
Tutorials / Re: A Simple Flower
« Last post by Yellowrose on August 12, 52, 07:52:02 AM »Now that we have extensions visible it's time to move on to extracting our ZTD file so we can edit the ucs file and do some file clean up before moving on to rotations.
The first thing we need to do is to rename our ZTD file and change the extension from ZTD to Zip. the easiest way to do this is to right click on your ZTD file and select Rename.
As you can see when you click rename only the filemane is highlighted not the extension
So you need to click to the right of the "D" in the extension .ZTD
now just backspace out the "D" and the "T" and type in ip and hit Enter. Once you hit the enter key you will get a message like this
We want to change it and it won't hurt the file so just click yes.
We now have a zip file that can be extracted so we have the contents of the ZTD file to work with for our file cleaning and editing.
To open the zip file you can use a compression program such as 7zip or winzip or winrar. I have all 3 but you can also right click on the zip file and select "extract File here" in this screen you will see the winrar icons as at one time I always used winrar so it is associated with zip files.
With the file extracted we now have 2 new folders in our projects folder an objects folder and a scenery folder. We'll work with the objects folder first and do some file clean up.
Open the objects folder by either double clicking the folder or by expanding the file tree off to the left.
Inside the objects folder is a numbered folder this number represents the internal APE filename for your project. ZT will use this number ID with relation to your creation.
Open this numbered folder - we have 5 folders named idle, ne, nw, se, sw, and 2 files i.pal & willow.pal
We'll now work from the file tree on the left to make the next step a little faster
So in the tree to the left click on the idle folder to see it's contents. What we are looking for is to be sure we have 4 .pal files in this folder in addition to 4 files named for each of the 4 directions NE, NW, SE, & SW and an idle.ani file. We aren't going to do anything with these files just need to make sure we have 9 files in the folder. In this case we do.
next we are going to click on each of the direction folders 1 by 1 and make sure each folder has an "n" file, an N.pal file and an .ani file I have checked all 4 folders and we have all the needed files.
So now we click on the numbered folder in the file tree to the left again. You'll notice as above in the screen the first time we opened this number folder we have 2 additional files. An i.pal and a willow.pal. These 2 files represent the base object we used for our creation in this instance they represent the Globe Willow Tree. We have all the files we need in the idle and 4 direction folders so it is safe to delete these 2 files.
We now have a fairly clean file. Time to move on to the scenery folder. Inside the scenery folder there is a subfolder called other. Inside the other folder you'll find the ucs file. Navigate to the ucs file. You'll notice the ucs filename is the same as the numbered folder we have in the objects folder. Right click on the ucs file and choose open with. When the program selection window opens locate notepad or wordpad and choose one of them to open the file. To make it easier for me to show you what can be removed and where to make necessary changes I am just going to copy/paste my ucs file here. You'll find it just below the screenshot. I did the screenshot to show how there is a space at the top of page. This space will be deleted in our editing but there was no other way to show it was there.
Any lines that can be deleted will be colored Blue and any changes that need to be made will be colored Red changes made will be colored green.
if there is any blank space at the very top of your ucs file it needs to be removed so click in front of the starting bracket with the number and backspace so the brackets and number are at the very top of your ucs file. Sometimes if you have opened your file in ape to make any adjustments APE will add empty brackets at the top of your ucs like this
[]
- make sure you delete these empty brackets so your file begins with your bracketed APE ID number
[]
[0FFA5030]
[Icon]
Icon = objects/0FFA5030/SE/SE
Icon = objects/0FFA5030/SW/SW nothing needs changing or adjusting in this section
Icon = objects/0FFA5030/NW/NW
Icon = objects/0FFA5030/NE/NE
[Member]
foliage
habitatfoliage we are not going to use this tulip for an animal habitat this line can be removed
zoofoliage
[Characteristics/Integers]
cAutoRotate = 1 this line is more personal preference I'm not a fan so I remove it.
cFootprintX = 1
cFootprintY = 1
cHabitat = 9411 - you would not find tulips in an animal exhibit animals would trample them so this needs to be changed to 9414
cHeight = 3 change to cHeight = 1 our flower sits relatively low to the ground so needs to be changed
cHelpID = 7028
cLocation = 9618 our cHabitat will be set to 9414 so this line can be deleted
cNameID = 19000
cPurchaseCost = 75
cUseNumbersInName = 0
cUsesTreeRubble = 1 this is also I feel personal preference do you want your creations to turn to rubble when trampled? if yes
leave this line as is in No change it to cUsesTreeRubble = 0
[Animations] - we don't have any annimation to our file so this section we leave alone
idle = idle
[EstheticBonus]
v = 9503
v = 20
v = 9504
v = 20
v = 9505 - This we adjusted in the General Characteristics in APE so no need make any changes here
v = 20
v = 9506
v = 20
[defaultLCID] - this is very important so it doesn't crash non english versions of zoo tycoon
LCID = 1033 if this section does not contain 1033 then you didn't reset the language in Ape make sure the number is 1033
[Global]
Type = 0FFA5030 - this we leave alone no need to change anything
[1033]
cGeneralInfoFileName = objects/0FFA5030/texts/1033.txt - again as with above the number in this line must match with LCID and needs to be 1033
cLongHelp = Purchase a Tutorial Red Tulip. Guests will enjoy seeing the pretty tulips decorating your zoo.
cName = Tutorial Red Tulip
cTheString = the Tutorial Red Tulip
NOTE: in your cLongHelp, cName, & cTheString lines above make sure you correct any spelling and grammer and delete any blank lines below the line cTheString by using backsapce so your cursor is at the end of the cTheString line. with everything complete click File/Save to save your editied ucs file.
here is my edited and saved ucs file
Our file is cleaned up and with the above our ucs is complete and saved we are now ready to move on to zoot and do our rotation fixes.
The first thing we need to do is to rename our ZTD file and change the extension from ZTD to Zip. the easiest way to do this is to right click on your ZTD file and select Rename.
As you can see when you click rename only the filemane is highlighted not the extension
So you need to click to the right of the "D" in the extension .ZTD
now just backspace out the "D" and the "T" and type in ip and hit Enter. Once you hit the enter key you will get a message like this
We want to change it and it won't hurt the file so just click yes.
We now have a zip file that can be extracted so we have the contents of the ZTD file to work with for our file cleaning and editing.
To open the zip file you can use a compression program such as 7zip or winzip or winrar. I have all 3 but you can also right click on the zip file and select "extract File here" in this screen you will see the winrar icons as at one time I always used winrar so it is associated with zip files.
With the file extracted we now have 2 new folders in our projects folder an objects folder and a scenery folder. We'll work with the objects folder first and do some file clean up.
Open the objects folder by either double clicking the folder or by expanding the file tree off to the left.
Inside the objects folder is a numbered folder this number represents the internal APE filename for your project. ZT will use this number ID with relation to your creation.
Open this numbered folder - we have 5 folders named idle, ne, nw, se, sw, and 2 files i.pal & willow.pal
We'll now work from the file tree on the left to make the next step a little faster
So in the tree to the left click on the idle folder to see it's contents. What we are looking for is to be sure we have 4 .pal files in this folder in addition to 4 files named for each of the 4 directions NE, NW, SE, & SW and an idle.ani file. We aren't going to do anything with these files just need to make sure we have 9 files in the folder. In this case we do.
next we are going to click on each of the direction folders 1 by 1 and make sure each folder has an "n" file, an N.pal file and an .ani file I have checked all 4 folders and we have all the needed files.
So now we click on the numbered folder in the file tree to the left again. You'll notice as above in the screen the first time we opened this number folder we have 2 additional files. An i.pal and a willow.pal. These 2 files represent the base object we used for our creation in this instance they represent the Globe Willow Tree. We have all the files we need in the idle and 4 direction folders so it is safe to delete these 2 files.
We now have a fairly clean file. Time to move on to the scenery folder. Inside the scenery folder there is a subfolder called other. Inside the other folder you'll find the ucs file. Navigate to the ucs file. You'll notice the ucs filename is the same as the numbered folder we have in the objects folder. Right click on the ucs file and choose open with. When the program selection window opens locate notepad or wordpad and choose one of them to open the file. To make it easier for me to show you what can be removed and where to make necessary changes I am just going to copy/paste my ucs file here. You'll find it just below the screenshot. I did the screenshot to show how there is a space at the top of page. This space will be deleted in our editing but there was no other way to show it was there.
Any lines that can be deleted will be colored Blue and any changes that need to be made will be colored Red changes made will be colored green.
if there is any blank space at the very top of your ucs file it needs to be removed so click in front of the starting bracket with the number and backspace so the brackets and number are at the very top of your ucs file. Sometimes if you have opened your file in ape to make any adjustments APE will add empty brackets at the top of your ucs like this
[]
- make sure you delete these empty brackets so your file begins with your bracketed APE ID number
[]
[0FFA5030]
[Icon]
Icon = objects/0FFA5030/SE/SE
Icon = objects/0FFA5030/SW/SW nothing needs changing or adjusting in this section
Icon = objects/0FFA5030/NW/NW
Icon = objects/0FFA5030/NE/NE
[Member]
foliage
habitatfoliage we are not going to use this tulip for an animal habitat this line can be removed
zoofoliage
[Characteristics/Integers]
cAutoRotate = 1 this line is more personal preference I'm not a fan so I remove it.
cFootprintX = 1
cFootprintY = 1
cHabitat = 9411 - you would not find tulips in an animal exhibit animals would trample them so this needs to be changed to 9414
cHeight = 3 change to cHeight = 1 our flower sits relatively low to the ground so needs to be changed
cHelpID = 7028
cLocation = 9618 our cHabitat will be set to 9414 so this line can be deleted
cNameID = 19000
cPurchaseCost = 75
cUseNumbersInName = 0
cUsesTreeRubble = 1 this is also I feel personal preference do you want your creations to turn to rubble when trampled? if yes
leave this line as is in No change it to cUsesTreeRubble = 0
[Animations] - we don't have any annimation to our file so this section we leave alone
idle = idle
[EstheticBonus]
v = 9503
v = 20
v = 9504
v = 20
v = 9505 - This we adjusted in the General Characteristics in APE so no need make any changes here
v = 20
v = 9506
v = 20
[defaultLCID] - this is very important so it doesn't crash non english versions of zoo tycoon
LCID = 1033 if this section does not contain 1033 then you didn't reset the language in Ape make sure the number is 1033
[Global]
Type = 0FFA5030 - this we leave alone no need to change anything
[1033]
cGeneralInfoFileName = objects/0FFA5030/texts/1033.txt - again as with above the number in this line must match with LCID and needs to be 1033
cLongHelp = Purchase a Tutorial Red Tulip. Guests will enjoy seeing the pretty tulips decorating your zoo.
cName = Tutorial Red Tulip
cTheString = the Tutorial Red Tulip
NOTE: in your cLongHelp, cName, & cTheString lines above make sure you correct any spelling and grammer and delete any blank lines below the line cTheString by using backsapce so your cursor is at the end of the cTheString line. with everything complete click File/Save to save your editied ucs file.
here is my edited and saved ucs file
Our file is cleaned up and with the above our ucs is complete and saved we are now ready to move on to zoot and do our rotation fixes.
7
Tutorials / Re: A Simple Flower
« Last post by Yellowrose on August 12, 16, 03:16:52 AM »If you do not see the .ZTD extension as in the last screenshot you will need to make the extensions visible. Open the windows control panel and click on folder options. I use windows 7 professional and I'm not sure how this would be displayed in Windows 10.
You'll see this additional window open with 3 tabs at the top.
Click on the "View" tab and look in the list for "Hide extensions for known file types" if there is a check in the box to the left of this click it to remove the check mark and then click apply and ok to close it out and close control panel. Navigate back to your projects folder and you should now see the .ZTD extension for your file. Seeing these extension is important for being able to change the extension so we can extract the ZTD file contents.
You'll see this additional window open with 3 tabs at the top.
Click on the "View" tab and look in the list for "Hide extensions for known file types" if there is a check in the box to the left of this click it to remove the check mark and then click apply and ok to close it out and close control panel. Navigate back to your projects folder and you should now see the .ZTD extension for your file. Seeing these extension is important for being able to change the extension so we can extract the ZTD file contents.
8
Tutorials / Re: A Simple Flower
« Last post by Yellowrose on August 12, 38, 12:38:42 AM »I am hoping by now you also have downloaded and installed APE 3.2. This is the version of APE I currently use for all of my creations so lets get started and open APE
We want to create a new item from scratch so select the top icon on the right side
Select the new button at the top left
Then click on the scenery folder in the right hand window
We can now see all the items available in the scenery section. Use the scroll bar on the right side and you can scroll through to see everything available as a base for a creation.
Because our tulip has a 1/4 tile(1x1) footprint and we want it to be seen in the foliage purchase menu we look for something in the this scenery menu that has the same footprint and shows in the foliage purchase menu. I have chosen the Globe Willow Tree.
Click the image of the Globe Willow Tree and you'll notice we now have a new button available just below the selection window. "Create". Click this create button.
APE switches the screen to the General characteristics for your creation. There are also other buttons we will be using as we move forward these are located on the left side under the original selection window. We will get to those as we progress but for now we will concentrate on the General character entries.
At the top is cost - adjust the price of your tulip to 75
the next 2 rows width & length deal with your footprint. Because we chose a base file with the same footprint we need there is no need to adjust this it is already set to 1x1.
But to explain how footprints work in ZT here is something to help you understand then a little better.
The bottom section of the General characteristics page deal with the Aesthetic Values which are how much a guest will like the creation when it is placed in a zoo. By default these are all set to 0 so I usually adjust them to the max setting of 20. This can be accomplished in 3 ways. Clicking on the slider bar and moving your mouse until the amount in the right window says 20. clicking in the amount window and entering the number 20 or using the tiny up arrow at the top right beside the number 20. In my image here I have only done the man do this same thing for the 3 remaining guests woman girl and boy so all 4 have a setting of 20.
With our General Characteristics complete it's time to add our images. Look to the left and click on the button "Icons_Images"
We now have a new APE page with 2 rows of images. The top row is for our purchase menu icons and the bottom row for our tulip image.
So beginning with the top row start to replace the Globe Willow images with the Icon images we made for our tulip. Click the folder icon above the first image in the top row.
a browse window will open so navigate to the folder you have your project images saved in. and click on your icon image
Now just click open and the first icon image is replaced
Repeat this process until all 4 icon images are replaced in the top row of images.
Now we just repeat this same process for the project image in the bottom row. Click the folder above the NE image in the bottom row and navigate to your projects folder again this time select your project image
as you can see now our project image has replaced the first image of the Globe Willow in the bottom row
Just repeat for the remaining 3 images
now it's time to move on to the descriptive text page. Click on the Descriptive Text button to the left.
The descriptive Text page opens
Before going any further look this page over.
The first thing we are going to do and "The Most Important" is set the language. As you can see in my screen above this setting defaults to "Brazil". Use the dropdown arrow at the end of this line and select English as the language.
With English set as the language move down and adjust the lines for Name, Phrase, & Tooltip. Leave the large description box empty as when text is added to this section it creates a text file which when we save the final step adds to your ztd file size. Your tooltip should have a bit of a description in it's content as mine does.
Time to save our file as a ZTD. At the top left click on the Manage button.
When the manage button is clicked it takes us back to the very first screen when we first opened APE
Click on the bottom Icon "Save the current project"
A save window will open. At the top you should see the name of your project folder and an empty window at the bottom to enter your filename and below it a window that has Save as type: Zoo Tycoon User-created files (*ZTD) leave this as is. enter your filename in the window just above.
Enter your filename in the appropriate window.
Click Save. And close out APE we are finished with it.
Important Note Ape needs to be closed after each project. This is because every project needs a unique APE ID Number and the only way to obtain a different number for each project is to close out APE and reopen it for the next project. So for the remaining 7 tulip images I have I will have to make 7 Icon images, 7 project images and open APE 7 times to make each of the remaining 7 tulip colors for my complete project.
We are finished you have created your first ZTD file. "BUT" it's not ready to be put in game yet there is some further editing we need to do before we open zoot to fix rotations. Navigate to your projects folder and you will see your newly created ZTD file along with your project image and Icon image.
We want to create a new item from scratch so select the top icon on the right side
Select the new button at the top left
Then click on the scenery folder in the right hand window
We can now see all the items available in the scenery section. Use the scroll bar on the right side and you can scroll through to see everything available as a base for a creation.
Because our tulip has a 1/4 tile(1x1) footprint and we want it to be seen in the foliage purchase menu we look for something in the this scenery menu that has the same footprint and shows in the foliage purchase menu. I have chosen the Globe Willow Tree.
Click the image of the Globe Willow Tree and you'll notice we now have a new button available just below the selection window. "Create". Click this create button.
APE switches the screen to the General characteristics for your creation. There are also other buttons we will be using as we move forward these are located on the left side under the original selection window. We will get to those as we progress but for now we will concentrate on the General character entries.
At the top is cost - adjust the price of your tulip to 75
the next 2 rows width & length deal with your footprint. Because we chose a base file with the same footprint we need there is no need to adjust this it is already set to 1x1.
But to explain how footprints work in ZT here is something to help you understand then a little better.
The bottom section of the General characteristics page deal with the Aesthetic Values which are how much a guest will like the creation when it is placed in a zoo. By default these are all set to 0 so I usually adjust them to the max setting of 20. This can be accomplished in 3 ways. Clicking on the slider bar and moving your mouse until the amount in the right window says 20. clicking in the amount window and entering the number 20 or using the tiny up arrow at the top right beside the number 20. In my image here I have only done the man do this same thing for the 3 remaining guests woman girl and boy so all 4 have a setting of 20.
With our General Characteristics complete it's time to add our images. Look to the left and click on the button "Icons_Images"
We now have a new APE page with 2 rows of images. The top row is for our purchase menu icons and the bottom row for our tulip image.
So beginning with the top row start to replace the Globe Willow images with the Icon images we made for our tulip. Click the folder icon above the first image in the top row.
a browse window will open so navigate to the folder you have your project images saved in. and click on your icon image
Now just click open and the first icon image is replaced
Repeat this process until all 4 icon images are replaced in the top row of images.
Now we just repeat this same process for the project image in the bottom row. Click the folder above the NE image in the bottom row and navigate to your projects folder again this time select your project image
as you can see now our project image has replaced the first image of the Globe Willow in the bottom row
Just repeat for the remaining 3 images
now it's time to move on to the descriptive text page. Click on the Descriptive Text button to the left.
The descriptive Text page opens
Before going any further look this page over.
The first thing we are going to do and "The Most Important" is set the language. As you can see in my screen above this setting defaults to "Brazil". Use the dropdown arrow at the end of this line and select English as the language.
With English set as the language move down and adjust the lines for Name, Phrase, & Tooltip. Leave the large description box empty as when text is added to this section it creates a text file which when we save the final step adds to your ztd file size. Your tooltip should have a bit of a description in it's content as mine does.
Time to save our file as a ZTD. At the top left click on the Manage button.
When the manage button is clicked it takes us back to the very first screen when we first opened APE
Click on the bottom Icon "Save the current project"
A save window will open. At the top you should see the name of your project folder and an empty window at the bottom to enter your filename and below it a window that has Save as type: Zoo Tycoon User-created files (*ZTD) leave this as is. enter your filename in the window just above.
Enter your filename in the appropriate window.
Click Save. And close out APE we are finished with it.
Important Note Ape needs to be closed after each project. This is because every project needs a unique APE ID Number and the only way to obtain a different number for each project is to close out APE and reopen it for the next project. So for the remaining 7 tulip images I have I will have to make 7 Icon images, 7 project images and open APE 7 times to make each of the remaining 7 tulip colors for my complete project.
We are finished you have created your first ZTD file. "BUT" it's not ready to be put in game yet there is some further editing we need to do before we open zoot to fix rotations. Navigate to your projects folder and you will see your newly created ZTD file along with your project image and Icon image.
9
Tutorials / Re: A Simple Flower
« Last post by Yellowrose on August 11, 14, 09:14:11 PM »Now it's time to save our images. Hopefully you have made a project folder for your new creation. This is something I highly recommend as it makes it easy to find everything related to your creation all in one place. So if you haven't done this yet, open windows explorer and navigate to where you want to save your project images and make a new folder and name it. In my case I have a folder for tutorial images and then a sub folder for the red tulip so I will be saving my images to the Red Tulip folder and the sub folder TutorialRedTulip. When I make this folder I make sure there are no spaces in the folder name this will be explained later when we get to saving the file in APE and continuing with out project.
now just make sure your icon image is still the active image open by clicking the image preferably with just a select tool(the top most left side icon that looks like an arrow
in the top menu bar click File/Save As
Your save window will open so continue on by navigating to your projects folder. Make sure you have the proper file type selected with the drop down in the save window and you add in a file name using no spaces or special character with the exception of a hyphen or an underscore so your filename should resemble mine. TutorialRedTulip-Icon.png and click Save
Now that your icon is saved you can close off the icon image by clicking the red X to close it off and you will notice the little APE image we worked on previously is now the active image. Repeat the above process to save your ape image as a png file. I have named my image as TutorialRedTulip.png
With Windows Explorer navigate to your projects folder. You should now have 2 images. Your tulip image for APE and your purchase icon image.
Next begins APE assembly of our Tulip.
now just make sure your icon image is still the active image open by clicking the image preferably with just a select tool(the top most left side icon that looks like an arrow
in the top menu bar click File/Save As
Your save window will open so continue on by navigating to your projects folder. Make sure you have the proper file type selected with the drop down in the save window and you add in a file name using no spaces or special character with the exception of a hyphen or an underscore so your filename should resemble mine. TutorialRedTulip-Icon.png and click Save
Now that your icon is saved you can close off the icon image by clicking the red X to close it off and you will notice the little APE image we worked on previously is now the active image. Repeat the above process to save your ape image as a png file. I have named my image as TutorialRedTulip.png
With Windows Explorer navigate to your projects folder. You should now have 2 images. Your tulip image for APE and your purchase icon image.
Next begins APE assembly of our Tulip.
10
Tutorials / Re: A Simple Flower
« Last post by Yellowrose on August 11, 14, 08:14:47 PM »Our image is now ready for APE so we zoom out. if you have done as I did and zoomed a little closer by zoom by 1 twice follow the same zoom steps but select zoom out by 1 twice then zoom out by 5 twice so we are back to the base size we started with. with the zoom out it may look a little smaller but that's ok we won't be continuing with this anyway just follow the next steps to get your APE ready image.
Now we need to get most of the background deleted so the easiest way is to copy the layer and paste it as a new image. to do this make sure your flower layer is still your highlighted layer in the layer pallet and then in the top menu bar select Edit/copy
Then again in the top menu we select Edit but this time we are going to paste it as a new image so select Edit/Paste as new image.
and we now have our image for APE
Before we move on to APE and our file assembly we need to make a purchase menu icon that will show in the game purchase menu to do this there are a few ways you can make your own as I do or you can use one of the many icon packs available at Zoo Admin's ZT1 downloads site. They can be found in the Resources section of the forum under Designer Resourses.
I already have a lot of icons I have made available so I'll select the peach folder which has a number of different sized icons for use. but the ideal size for a purchase menu icon is 44x32 pixels.
I usually make mine bigger because APE has a great resizing algorythm built in so I will use the icon I have made sized a little bigger to 110 x 80 and use the tube tool to apply my image to the icon. I have opened my Icon image and as you can see it has a frame and the 4 corners are colored bright pink this pink in APE represents a transparency so the 4 corners will not show in the purchase menu of the game.
I selected the tube tool(indicated in red) and adjusted the size of the tube image in the preset settings at the top of the workspace(indicated in red). My size setting was 25. I then added a new layer to the icon(see adding a new layer in an earlier screen) and used the tube tool to paint my tulip image onto the new layer.
Now I have been working with this program since the late 1990's so I can pretty well get my tube image centered on the icon the first time. If you don't get it centered it's ok. If you look on the left side tool menu near the top you will see an icon that looks like cross hairs(indicated in red) select it and use this tool and left click somewhere in the flower part of the image to move that layer around on the icon so it is placed as close to the center of the icon as possible. now we are ready to complete the ticon. These 2 layers need to be merged together before we can save the icon image. To do this go to the top menu and select Layers/Merge/ merge visible.
Now we need to get most of the background deleted so the easiest way is to copy the layer and paste it as a new image. to do this make sure your flower layer is still your highlighted layer in the layer pallet and then in the top menu bar select Edit/copy
Then again in the top menu we select Edit but this time we are going to paste it as a new image so select Edit/Paste as new image.
and we now have our image for APE
Before we move on to APE and our file assembly we need to make a purchase menu icon that will show in the game purchase menu to do this there are a few ways you can make your own as I do or you can use one of the many icon packs available at Zoo Admin's ZT1 downloads site. They can be found in the Resources section of the forum under Designer Resourses.
I already have a lot of icons I have made available so I'll select the peach folder which has a number of different sized icons for use. but the ideal size for a purchase menu icon is 44x32 pixels.
I usually make mine bigger because APE has a great resizing algorythm built in so I will use the icon I have made sized a little bigger to 110 x 80 and use the tube tool to apply my image to the icon. I have opened my Icon image and as you can see it has a frame and the 4 corners are colored bright pink this pink in APE represents a transparency so the 4 corners will not show in the purchase menu of the game.
I selected the tube tool(indicated in red) and adjusted the size of the tube image in the preset settings at the top of the workspace(indicated in red). My size setting was 25. I then added a new layer to the icon(see adding a new layer in an earlier screen) and used the tube tool to paint my tulip image onto the new layer.
Now I have been working with this program since the late 1990's so I can pretty well get my tube image centered on the icon the first time. If you don't get it centered it's ok. If you look on the left side tool menu near the top you will see an icon that looks like cross hairs(indicated in red) select it and use this tool and left click somewhere in the flower part of the image to move that layer around on the icon so it is placed as close to the center of the icon as possible. now we are ready to complete the ticon. These 2 layers need to be merged together before we can save the icon image. To do this go to the top menu and select Layers/Merge/ merge visible.