Adam Levesque, Blue Fang Games CEO, Creative Director and Zoo Tycoon 2 Lead Designer, answers a few questions about himself and the Zoo Guest feature in Zoo Tycoon 2.
What are you responsible for?
Levesque: Too many things to list, but right now I’m focusing on balancing the animals and the game economy.
How’s a day in your life?
Levesque: I get up by 6:30 and get the kids off to school. I arrive at Blue Fang by 8 a.m., grab a quick coffee and breakfast, scan the daily news and jump right into work. The last few months I've been working with Shawn Stone (another designer at Blue Fang) on the animals in the game. This involves getting them into the game, adding new behaviors, and balancing the various values to make sure the animals are acting in a realistic manner.
The artificial intelligence (AI) engineers at Blue Fang (Mark Kolenski and Nathan Sitkoff) have created an incredibly powerful and flexible AI system. Of course, there is always a "gotcha." In this case, the system is heavily data driven, so it can take a while to learn and understand all of the AI's intricacies. But, once you do, there are some pretty neat and interesting behaviors you can make the animals perform. Just the other day I added in a behavior for the camels. If they are really angry or really happy, they might decide to "spit" on a guest. In this case, they walk over to the guest and spit. Of course, the guest won't like this (they will face the camel and shake their fist). However, other guests who see this will turn and laugh at the guest who was spit on. Kind of mean, I know, but it does make the behavior more interesting.
What can fans expect in terms of gameplay with Zoo Guest mode?
Levesque: The overhead camera is good for building and managing your zoo, but the Zoo Guest camera is great for really "experiencing" your zoo. It gives you a different perspective on what you've created.
You might think you've created the best exhibit in the world, but once you get down and see it in Zoo Guest mode, you might think differently. That line of trees you thought was cool might actually block the view into the exhibit. You might have placed the food and water containers in a location which is too far from the viewing area. These are things which you can miss if you stay in overhead mode.
I also think just walking around your zoo is a really fun experience. Maybe you've spent all your money and want to spend some time just enjoying what you've created. Zoo Guest mode gives you that ability.
What was the inspiration behind Zoo Guest mode?
Levesque: One of the things we heard over and over from the fans of Zoo Tycoon was that they wanted to get "closer" to the animals. Because Zoo Tycoon was 2D, getting closer meant the animals would get blurry. Making Zoo Tycoon 2 3D solved that problem. Of course, it wasn't enough just to "zoom" the camera closer, we had to actually get down and view the animals from the guests’ perspective. Once we could walk around the zoo, we were hooked.
How much did Zoo Guest mode influence the rest of the game's development?
Levesque: This feature had a big influence on the game, from both a gameplay and a technical perspective. On the gameplay issue, this one feature influenced the creation of two other key features in the game: Zookeeper mode and Photo Safari. We realized once you were walking around, you might want to actually "do something." To solve that problem we've given you a camera which you can use to take photos of your favorite animals, guests, and funny behaviors. These photos can be organized in a photo album and even traded with your friends. Another thing you can do in Zoo Guest mode is perform all the duties of the zookeeper (wash the animals, fill their food dishes, etc). These two features give you additional reasons to walk around your zoo.
On the technical side, the challenge was creating game assets (animals, objects, trees, etc.) which looked good from both the zoomed out camera and the close, first-person view. We had to do this while still keeping within the minimum system requirements.
What were some of the challenges to implement Zoo Guest mode?
Levesque: As mentioned above, the biggest challenge was working within the minimum system requirements. When you have a "fixed" camera, there are lots of little tricks you can use to increase the performance of the game. When you have multiple camera views (and in this case, the two extremes of overhead and first-person) many of these tricks can no longer be used.
Another interesting challenge was designing the basic movement controls for use in Zoo Guest mode. You would think this should be easy. Just use the standard first-person shooter controls (WASD moves forward, left, back, right and the mouse is used to move your view: mouse look). Great, except many of the people who really liked Zoo Tycoon have probably never played a first-person shooter (like Half Life). If you don't play those games a lot, the controls aren't so logical. We wanted to support those controls but we also wanted something a little more intuitive. After some back and forth, we settled on using the left mouse to move forward, while the mouse itself controls the view: mouse look. These two control methods should work for both groups of people.
What are a few things you've done in Zoo Guest mode while working on the game?
Levesque: Early in development we had a few interesting controls. One was a hovercraft which zoomed over the terrain. This was fun, especially when going over hills. We also had a key which would allow you to run and jump.
Other than that, I think it's just fun walking around the zoo and watching the various animals interact with the world (and each other). It really is like being in an actual zoo.