Build 1: The Entrance
Building the entrance to a zoo is always a process for me. I really struggle with it. This post is actually the third draft of my “first build” post. First I tried just planning out a vague lemur habitat (which I still quite like and am hanging onto for later) and in the second draft, I started with an entrance habitat (white faced capuchins) and worked backwards to build the rest of the entry plaza.
But I got stuck! It just wasn’t working for me. So I went totally back to square one and just started to draw. To just get some vague shapes out there. Plot out the space first, figure out what to put there later. I ended up with this:
Black is guest paths. Brown is buildings. Teal is habitat. Magenta is staff paths. This was a shape I was pretty happy with- a nice winding path leading to a large plaza, with two small habitats on the way. Next, I plotted it out in the game to get a sense of just how big these habitats would be.
The left habitat is 328 m2, the right is 304. Both pretty tiny! But appropriate for the kind of entrance I want. But what to put there? The small size is luckily pretty limiting, which helps the indecisiveness. I like an entrance species to not necessarily fit in with other areas of the zoo (the little penguin, for instance, is better for an Australian area). I like them to not be too complex.
I decided that one habitat would be a breeding pair of Galapagos giant tortoises (who will reproduce once and then be on contraceptives for 100 years), and the other would be a breeding pair of nine-banded armadillos. Boring? Maybe. But they’re small, reliable, and I’m not hard-set on including them in any themed areas.
I plunked down a bunch of staff buildings (and after doing so swapped over to an earlier franchise zoo to transfer some cash over to this new one) and then started to build out the habitats. I landed on a pretty simple fence design- 3m of glass with the african branches and african air plants. Neither of the animals I chose have very high barrier needs, which is nice. I decided to use temperate rocks to block out the other walls of the habitats. The big magenta blocks indicate where the entrance sign will go.
I did a little browsing on the web for armadillo habitats in PZ, and did a little browsing on Zoochat for real-life habitat examples. I saw a lot of branches and brush, which are really nice but a little challenging in the Planet Zoo engine (animals get really finicky in terms of plant coverage). I really liked the desert vibe, and a sand-heavy habitat would allow me to go a little light on planting, too. Armadillos are nice because you can use a burrow for hard shelter. I ALWAYS struggle with hard shelter requirements so this was really lovely. I ended up with this habitat:
Which I’m pretty happy with! Guests are already complaining about ticket prices (I should’ve closed the gate until the tortoises were there too) but visibility is good, the animals aren’t stressed, and everything is navigable. I’m really happy with it!
Next post will hopefully focus on the tortoise!
