Rotation Fix using Zoot 1.1

[Yellowrose]

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

[Yellowrose]

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 "_"