Steven Serafino, Senior Game Designer at Blue Fang Games, answers a few questions about the Biome Brush feature in Zoo Tycoon 2.

What are you responsible for?

Serafino: User interface design and implementation, various systems design, and the sound design.

How’s a day in your life?

Serafino: A designer is spending a ton of time in Microsoft Word and Excel creating spreadsheets and specifications for the game engineers and artists to use. For me, the fun part is learning about the subject matter in question, in this case animals. The last four years I have gained more knowledge about animals and where they come from than I would like to admit.

What is the Biome Brush?

Serafino: A biome is a major regional or global biotic community, such as a grassland or desert, characterized chiefly by the dominant forms of plant life and prevailing climate. Within Zoo Tycoon 2, a biome is a logical collection and distribution of tile set surfaces, ambient ground cover, functional flora (trees, etc.), slope, and water. Got that? Basically, it is the natural environment in which the animal lives.

The Biome Brush in Zoo Tycoon 2 is a powerful tool that makes creating habitats and themed areas far more accessible. The biome brush is made up of five key elements: Terrain, Terrain Cover, Foliage, Slope, and Water.

When creating an exhibit, the player selects the biome that is best suited for the animal being added to the zoo and begins to literally paint the landscape. The game automatically places the plants, trees, water, etc. so that the environments look natural. This makes building exhibits much faster and accessible for players who prefer to focus on other activities in the game, such as park management. The key benefits of the Biome Brush are that it’s accessible, easy to use, every exhibit is unique, and it’s easier to match terrain and foliage to animals' natural habitat so that novices can more easily create lush environments.

Of course, players can still build exhibits manually and place each plant, rock and tree exactly where they want it. Any biome element can be individually selected and placed like in Zoo Tycoon. This allows the player to tailor the exhibit or area in the zoo to their particular liking.

What was the inspiration behind the Biome Brush?

Serafino: One of the issues discussed at our design meeting was, "How can I make my zoo look different than your zoo, and how can I make each zoo look unique?" We wanted to increase the creative freedom allowed by the game without making the game more difficult to play. With the Biome Brush, we believe we have been successful in doing this and we are excited to see what Zoo fans create with these tools.

In short, the Biome Brush removes a lot of the guesswork related to building an exhibit for animals and mitigates the frustration some users had in trying to match up many iconic representations of terrain, foliage, slope, etc. to make animals happy. This tool allows you to "paint" all of the necessary elements that make up an animal's natural habitat without any of the frustration evident in a relatively empty trial-and-error mechanic.

Lastly, note that the Biome Brush isn't "optimal" … you still have to do problem solving and strategizing in order to meet an animal's needs to the highest degree; however, for the casual gamer, it works just fine.

During development, what was the most creative use of the Biome Brush?

Serafino: There are several, but the one that stands out the most was when I was at Microsoft attending a usability study for Zoo Tycoon 2 with our Test Lead, Andrew Binder. He mentioned that he was playing around with the Biome Brush and had made a complete zoo. I was very interested in seeing what someone more removed from the feature could accomplish, so I asked to see it. When Andrew loaded the game I was floored by some of the landscaping and creativity he used to decorate the zoo. He had done things I had never seen or thought of before. This was a good early indication that the tools in Zoo Tycoon 2 provide players with a whole new level of creative freedom.

How will the Biome Brush affect gameplay?

Serafino: We believe the Biome Brush will have a huge impact on gameplay simply because of how easy it is to use. Gamers of all ages will be able to create lush environments simply by pointing and clicking. Anyone will be able to make attractive habitats that differ from one zoo to the next, and also differ from one person to another.