Let's Build a Zoo News

Before I get into Zoo of the Year, don't forget it's the STEAM AWARDS! Make sure you vote for your favourites, and if you've been ADDICTED to Let's Build a Zoo, give it a nomination for Game of the Year!



[h3]Since Let's Build a Zoo's launch we've been OVERWHELMED by some truly amazing zoos that the community have been building! From one of my local zoos to Middle Earth, we've seen some incredible designs - it's been wild watching them fill up our Discord!
[/h3]

So we decided, why not celebrate all these amazing masterpieces? If you've got a pretty zoo, a well laid out zoo, a themed zoo or a zoo that you're proud of, we want to see it!!



Here's how it'll work:

1. Either post screenshots of your zoo to the Share your Zoo Steam Forum (here) or in #zoo-of-the-year on Discord (found here)

2. Vote on your favourite zoos by giving them the THUMBS UP on Discord or on Steam!

3. After December 20th, the Let's Build a Zoo team will pick their favourite zoos, using community voting as a guide for which ones you like best.

4. On December 22, we'll announce the 3 best zoos of 2021.

All three winners will receive a game key for a friend so everyone can get involved in the festive spirit, and the BEST ZOO OF 2021 will receive a $100 Steam Gift Card, to spend on whichever games they like over Christmas!

If you've had a GREAT idea for a zoo, now is a great time to start building!!

You have until the 20th of December!

You can also encourage people to vote on your creations - while the decision lies with the devs, it'll definitely help your chances!

Good luck, we can't wait to see what you're working on!

Don’t let Let’s Build A Zoo's appearance fool you. It has the gorgeous pixel art and presentation of a classic tycoon game, as well as all the simulation aspects you’d ever want. But buried under that business management exterior is a game equally interested in exploring moral choices, and one that leaves me thankful it pauses before I have to make a decision.

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Hey folks, and welcome to UPDATE 2! This has been a really important one for the team, with a focus on stability and squashing the bugs you've all been finding!

As always, thank you for chatting to us in the forums and over on Discord, and for all your reviews! If you haven't left one yet, please consider doing so, they help us out a massive amount!

[h3]AS AN IMPORTANT NOTE: As part of this update, we have had to reset your config file. If you have made any changes there, you will need to go back to the file and make them again (after running the game)[/h3]

Right, on to the fun bit - here's what's changed for UPDATE 2!!



[h2]Quality Of Life[/h2]

• Stopped research reminder if you have unlocked all research - your building will no longer ping you every day!
  
• Made the research reminder pop out only when you have enough points to actually unlock something in the grid
  
• Moved the animal release hub pop up to be a blocking message, so the game will never auto-cancel it when something more important happens
  
• Added a clearer differentiation between previously unlocked items and locked items when viewing a category in the research grid - hopefully, this should be easier for you to see now!
  
• Added clearer feedback when you cannot afford research but are trying to click to unlock it
  
• Added blue tick in research to help highlight things the player can currently afford
  
• Added text to undertaker UI to show their current task - these folks should be easier to follow now
  
• We also made undertakers react to dead animals transferred from facilities on that day, previously the list didn't update properly, so they would only collect them the next day.
  
• Added Tasmania onto the world map (hello Tasmania!)
  
• Revised Undertaker code for when you press the “Call undertaker” button, to make the system more reliable
  
• Added option to abort babies when turning “contraception all” on, to help make the contraception system easier to understand - this should mean you stop getting extra, surprise babies!
  
• Added “NoFlashingLights” to the config.text, if set to t for true - unlocking research will shake the camera less, and result in fewer white flashes on the screen
  
• Added additional screen resolution (2560x1280) to windowed mode options
  
• Made the breeding UI species select slightly clearer by making animals that have stars also darken out if you do not have any breeding pairs - this was more confusing in the pen specific view where you could see an animal lit up even if it wasn't in that pen
  
• Added new pop-ups to make it clearer why zookeepers are blocked - hopefully, this should help you work out where your problems are if you have any!
  
• Added system that highlights the keeper who is blocked, and the location they are trying to reach for further clarity
  
• Optimized code for building when paused - customers will now only try and recheck their paths when the game speed is unpaused which makes the game slightly smoother for larger zoos
  
• Added the ability to turn off all customer pop up UI vai the config.txt file
  

[h2]Stability / Bugs[/h2]

• Fixed a memory leak that was leading to multiple crashes in the game - if you've been dropping us some crash reports, it would be great to know if they're now fixed!
  
• Fixed pathfinding nullreference crash - this should be another big one to help get your games stable!
  
• Fixed crash from using floor paintbrush out of bounds
  
• Fixed bug where Lettuce was being used by the pizza shop, making the 14day order system not work as intended - if you've been having tortoise problems, this should now be sorted for you!
  
• Fixed crash where singular pieces of trash would have an incorrect location
  
• Fixed rare crash with Selected Animal UI
  
• Fixed issue where animal poop would sometimes be uncollectable due to a mismatched Pen ID
  
• Fixed possible unreported crash with factory smoke
  
• Fixed Bacon Factory Achievement
  
• Changed windows process display name
  
• Added the correct mouseover highlight color to the research grid for the “Infinite CRISPR buildings” research entry
  
• Fixed a bug where clicking on pen > animals, the list of animals was still showing animals that had already been picked up by the undertaker
  
• Fixed the quantum upgrade not taking effect until you close and open the game again
  
• Fixed black strip rendering on the side of the screen in world map view
  
• Added camera scrolling to the world map, so that players in ultra-widescreen can still scroll to all of the zoo icons
  
• Some text headings had a scaling bug where they would always overrun the box length in any language at certain resolutions, these have been fixed!
  
• Entered previously missing text for the Recycling Worker and Furnace Worker when viewed in the collection screen
  
• Fixed layout for shop recipe row for different resolutions
  
• Fixed issue where animals in the nursery might not get contraception applied correctly when they return to the pen
  
• Fixed Research counter issue, not tallying correctly after adding new research items to the game
  
• Applied a fix to employees getting stuck in enclosure gate if you move the pen when they are walking to it
  
• Fixed a specific crash - If an animal is about to give birth, hold the breeding building in 'move' and it will crash at the moment of giving birth
  
• Fixed financial table rendering the wrong values for donations, building rebates (after researching this bonus) and atm commissions
  
• Fixed building costs for pens being recorded into the infrastructure category and not in animal pens in the financial table
  
• Fixed firing employee during probation not counting to number of people fired - hence not getting achievement
  
• Handled orphaned animals when destroying nursery when a mother is pregnant - now aborts them and removes properly
  
• Made it impossible to dismiss the employee resignation popup (no close button) by clicking out of the panel. This could eventually lead to a crash, so you should be safe now!
  
• Fixed a crash relating to viewing breeding windows
  
• Fixed Kaiju and Pip's quests not unlocking correctly. (This will also now allow you to obtain the kaiju achievement)
  
• Made notification for water not show a red warning sign for robot animal pens
  
• Clarified text on completing some quests, that would say “A new task will be available” when you actually have to wait a number of days for the next quest to unlock
  
• Fixed “farmer blocked” notification sometimes firing at the wrong time
  
• Stopped ticket price too cheap notification, when the ticket price is already at max (y'all running EXPENSIVE ZOOS!)
  
• Ensured customers will always enter the park when the ticket price is free (unless there are protestors making them decide not to go in)
  
• Fixed bug where the “business person bus” would result in inaccurate customer numbers reporting - these folks are now having to sign in like everyone else!
  
• Fixed issue with paintbrush not always painting correctly
  
• Fixed bug where old paintbrush for the floor would still show when switching between floor types
  
• Fixed that sometimes the data of the building you are moving to be overwritten, which would lead to a crash
  
• Fixed game always launching in safe mode on a fresh new game even when no display issues were found
  
• Fixed reset to the default button in keybindings immediately applying default keybinds even if player cancels afterwards
  
• Fixed another issue with zookeepers getting blocked when trying to get animal excrement due to a Pen ID mismatch. This is only fixed upon reloading a save after the data error has happened.
  

WHEW, that was a lot! Thanks again for reading, and let us know if you run into issues - we're still reading through all your feedback too, thank you to everyone who has been writing to us!

Cheers and we'll see you in the next update!

Springloaded & No More Robots xoxoxo

Hey everyone! Time for a mini-update from me to keep you all up to date with what's coming next, and a cool thing you might not have seen!!

First off though, thank you so much to everyone who left such nice comments about our FIRST UPDATE! It was a MASSIVE effort from the team and we're so glad it's improved the experience for so many of you! If you haven't read the changes already, you can read about them HERE - I really recommend giving them a read, there's a lot that's changed!

In the same vein, thank you to everyone who has reviewed the game too! We've hit OVER 500 REVIEWS which is INCREDIBLE! We're so grateful to everyone who leaves reviews, they help us keep Steam's attention and keep growing!



So, our first update is out, what comes next?

A lot of the focus for the first patch was Quality of Life, with some new features to help as well as some high priority fixes to make sure as many of you could get playing as soon as possible. Moving away from that, the hard work starts fixing up bugs and crashes to make the game more stable in the next update. We've been collecting up bug and crash reports (thank you to everyone who has reached out!) from the Discord and the Steam forums, have organised our databases and now the hard work starts getting things fixed up. The team have made an amazing effort already getting stuck in, and breaking up their work with some SECRETS (I want to drop hints so badly, but I've promised I'll keep them to myself. Bah.), so we're confident it'll be another cracker of a patch! We want to make sure it's as complete and stable as can be, so will be working on it for the next little bit - as soon as I have a complete list of what's fixed up and what's new I'll share it with you so you'll know what to expect!

In the meantime, we've been BLOWN AWAY by people's zoos - we've had SO many people sharing their zoos, we had to set up a whole channel over in the discord for them! It's been INCREDIBLE to watch people build - if you have a cool looking zoo don't hesitate to share them! Here are a couple of our favourites!

This amazing Day and Night Peacock mural WIP from @Zorboni



Zootylicious (WIP) from @ScreaMXIII



Middle Earth WIP from @WOINGS



This lovely natural zoo from @Famine



I ADORE these designs, and can't wait to see what everyone else comes up with - I was blown away by CIRCULAR enclosures last week, I wonder what I'll be surprised by this week!

I'll see you again soon with a list of what you can expect from our next patch - until then keep those reports coming in and keep sending those screenshots!

Lots of love

Springloaded & No More Robots xoxoxo

Hey everyone!

Can you believe we’ve been out almost a WEEK? It seems to have really flown by! With our first week coming to an end, don’t forget there’s only ONE DAY LEFT to pick up Let’s Build a Zoo with 10% OFF!

All through the last week the team have been hard at work on the first update, which is a mixture of Quality-of-Life improvements, bug fixes, new features and some experimental bits that we’ve been chatting to folks on the forums about!

Again, a massive thank you to everyone who has been helping, sending in crash reports, chatting to us and reviewing the game – we really do appreciate it!!



Here’s what’s new in UPDATE ONE, it's a big one:

[h2]Features:[/h2]

• You can now buy food for 14 days with a new research pack – Increase storeroom capacity to allow you to keep food for up to 14 days and a Fridge to keep perishables up to 14 days! These will seamlessly integrate with your storeroom once you have them unlocked.
  
  
• New Floor Types available in a new research pack
  
  
• New Fairy Light Tree available through research
  
  
• Added brush size for floor painting (use - & = to change the size). We know so many of you were looking for a way to paint bigger floors!
  
  
• Added 4 new songs to the game and adjusted the volume for 2 others.
  

[h2]Quality Of Life:[/h2]

• Changed breeding rates for many animals – now getting to all your genomes for trading should be MUCH easier!
  
  
• Reduced requirement for crossbreeding to 5 Genomes rather than all 10. You’ll only get Hybrids based on the animals you have discovered, so it’s still worth collecting all 10!
  
  
• Reduced trade requirements with many zoos, speeding up game progression. It’ll now be much easier to get to the animals you want, and you should find yourself getting ‘stuck’ much less!
  
  
• Added Donate / Euthanize selection system to enable multiple actions at once! We know this was another big one that was requested a lot – your populations should now be much easier to manage!
  
  
• Added “APPLY TO ALL” for shop settings – you’ll now be able to set all the currently built shops in your zoo at once with a checkbox!
  
  
• Made Contraception always visible, so it’s easier to adjust the setting (even while animals are pregnant). This should hopefully clear up some instances where contraception wouldn’t stick, too!
  
  
• Sped Up WASD movement around your zoos
  
  
• Added Gender to move/euthanize/donate panels – a few of you were looking to make female and male only pens or cut down on breeding stock, so you’ll have more information now to do so!
  
  
• After building a structure that requires an employee, the build menu returns to the most recently selected category, rather than going back to the first one, enclosures
  
  
• Menu icons jump onto the screen faster, so you waste less time waiting to build
  
  
• Added new shortcut to the build menu - using the “B key”
  
  
• Use Left Ctrl when building to toggle visibility on heat maps (Water/Bin and Collision) – save your eyes from the orange glow!
  
  
• Added text in animal UI for robots and hybrids to make it clearer that they do not breed.
  
  
• Added Quit Confirmation to QUIT screen, letting you know if you’ll lose data
  
  
• Added “NEW” icon for new employee variants - to help make collecting easier.
  
  
• Added Species in move / select UI - to make it easier to differentiate between animals.
  
  
• When looking at clone options in the CRISPR building, clones that can be used in trades will have an icon on them to help you.
  
  
• The mouseover info for “glue factory” was confusing - as it only showed a cow, while a donkey and horse are also valid animals for processing
  
  
• When viewing the Water and Bin heat maps, the customer icons do not show anymore, making it clearer to see.
  
  
• Tweaked pathfinding so that NPCs find more natural paths to get where they’re going
  
  
• Adjusted Farmer Behaviour to make them clump together slightly less
  
  
• Fixed using Q & E to zoom
  
  
• Changed keybinds menu - removed the X close button, added a cancel button, and made done button start greyed-out to make it clearer when the keybinds are being applied or discarded
  

[h2]Bugs:[/h2]

• Robotimals no longer need food, water or space and cannot die.
  
  
• Fixed bug where resignations would still happen despite maximum pay (and added a threshold system for each employee!)
  
  
• We’ve made it impossible to put robotimals into battery farms
  
  
• Fixed donation on finance table dropdown displaying 100 times the value
  
  
• Fixed some of the Chinese localization text
  
  
• Fixed the yellow grass graphical error on the right hand side boundary (the UV coordinates were off by one pixel)
  
  
• The incinerator was not perfectly centered, now it is!
  
  
• Sprinklers now animate in animal enclosures
  
  
• When selecting “Move Building” the rotation is carried over from the building you are picking up
  
  
• Fixed LionCity achievement unlocking 1 trade earlier than it should
  
  
• Fixed some German text overruns.
  
  
• Fixed keybinding screen being too wide and going out of screen in some resolutions
  
  
• In the build select, sometimes the arrow cycle icon buttons did not respond correctly / could be clicked through. This should now be fixed!
  
  
• Changed message to “Place Gate” during edit pen (we’re still working on some other edit pen bugs you’ve been sending us, thank you!)
  
  
• Fixed storeroom scroll sometimes will have wrong offset.
  
  
• Stopped Hybrids from breeding
  
  
• Cannot see the bus spawn or leave the map any more.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where old placeholder UI would appear after performing specific actions in the nursery
  
  
• Fixed the corona virus critical choice displaying 0.05% instead of 5%
  
  
• Fixed crispr’s red dot from showing on the crispr building build bar not disappearing after you collect the crispr animals inside
  
  
• Customers would pay mascots even if they did not enter the park if your mascot was working close enough to the main entrance – this was definitely cheating!
  
  
• When editing a pen - water troughs would spawn arrows that would not go away until you reload the game. These should be fixed now!
  
  
• The song “Need More Animals” had the start of the song “Biodiversity” playing at the end. Ooops!
  
  
• Fixed a softlock when getting capys from forest fire critical choice at morality points of 5
  
  
• Mouse Response over animals on order sign
  
  
• Removed info button for life expectancy for Robots
  
  
• Fully randomized cripsr breed outcome (I know a few of you have been having some bad luck, hopefully this will fix that right up!)
  
  
• Fixed image on Pilot critical choice that was overlapping text
  
  
• When creating or editing a pen, you could switch build state (by clicking the category icons) which would break the game, this is now fixed
  
  
• Changed CO2 bar in end of week summary to always display positive number whether there's a net increase or decrease, since the colour of the bar already changes.
  
  
• We stopped old UI updating during play (that you couldn’t see, but it was there being a pain)
  
  
• Fixed issue where members of the public would have a maximum amount of $100 in their wallets. Owners of expensive zoos, rejoice!
  
  
• Fixed crash in applicant panel when you hire the last applicant on your list and go back
  
  
• Fixed issue where sometimes members of the public would buy tickets they could not afford
  

[h2]Stability:[/h2]

• Fixed rare crash on hunger notifications when tracking an animal that you have donated.
  
  
• Fixed bug where hunger notifications would not refresh after donating an animal
  
  
• Sometimes the header file can become corrupt - now if this happens, we rescan the save files for, and make a new header file. Unfortunately, some information is lost so we can resave the zoo. - The name of the zoo will switch to NA.
  
  
• Fixed rare crash when clicking on farm while zoning keepers
  
  
• Animal undertaker would crash sometimes, this should now be fixed
  
  
• Fixed crash when moving factories & recycling centres that were in specific manufacturing states.
  
  
• If the config file becomes corrupt - it will be regenerated.
  
  
• Super-Ultra-Wide monitors will automatically flip to safe mode for start-up (stopping crash)
  

[h2]Experimental[/h2]

• Using the config file - it is now possible to unlock the frame rate. - set UnlockFrameRate to t for true.
  
  
• Added overscaling option in config file to allow you to make the UI even bigger. This may lead to crashes / progression blocks on many resolutions so PLEASE BE CAREFUL if you are going to use this – it’s very experimental at this stage!!
  

That’s everything going into Update One! There’s a LOT there, but if you run into any problems please keep letting us know on the forums and in discord!

Don’t forget there’s only ONE DAY LEFT to grab the game at 10% OFF, and if you have been enjoying the game don’t forget to leave us a review, they help us no end!

See you in the forums,
Springloaded & No More Robots xoxoxo