Feature Request: Habitat size while building

[Souldrake]

I will admit, I'm not sure how exactly this feature could be added easily. But one of the biggest problems I had with making habitats in the game is knowing how big I should make them for a given animal. It'd be nice to be able to get an idea on how big you need to make your habitat... while building it (as far as I know, you can only get this information from the animal itself *AFTER* you've bought it *AND* placed it whereas I prefer to build my habitat, then buy the animals >.>;)

Suggestion: In the zoopedia where you can find information on animal interactions and such, maybe add a colored tag for each animal for minimum/recommended habitat size: tiny / small / medium / large / etc. Then, as you're building a habitat barrier, you can check a box to highlight a colored overlay as to the area of your habitat in the color that it corresponds to. For example, maybe a "tiny" habitat is 50-100 square meters (pulling numbers out of my backside here, just for example) as I build my habitat, the game squares off where I'm building and highlights that area in red for "tiny". But as I increase the size beyond 100 square meters, it updates the estimated area and changes its color from red to orange indicating it is now "small" for the estimated area I'm enclosing. etc.

Or perhaps if it is too hard to do this via barriers, give us a sort of planning tool where we could put mock barriers up or even something like the lasso tool in Photoshop to draw an area up and get an estimate of size and what kind of animals are OK for that sized habitat via the same color coding methods, etc?

I dunno. Maybe I'm weird in wanting a feature like this.

[jcp011c2]

That's a pretty good idea. It seemed no matter how big I was making some habitats, the animals had welfare issues in regards to space. So I'd expand (by pausing and redesigning the barrier)...and still not enough room. I had one habitat that I thought was fairly large for the one tortoise I had, but not so.

And yeah we'll learn more and be able to judge better with practice, but having something in there in regards to space requirements would be good.

[MessiahofMelons]

Would be nice. I honestly cant judge distance at all in this gsme

[Glimra]

Actually, if you look in the Zoopedia under the tab "Natural Habitat" you can find minimum habitat requirements. A hippo for example wants at least 1004.0m2 in size and 1004.0m2 water. If you then select your habitat you will see how large it is under the tab "Terrain" and "Navigable area".

[Arandur87]

Originally posted by Glimra:

Actually, if you look in the Zoopedia under the tab "Natural Habitat" you can find minimum habitat requirements. A hippo for example wants at least 1004.0m2 in size and 1004.0m2 water. If you then select your habitat you will see how large it is under the tab "Terrain" and "Navigable area".

Adding to that, the amount of area needed to be content is raised per additional animal in the habitat.
My 4 Hippos for example want ~2800m² of land and ~2400m² of water (or something like that, cant remember exactly).

And for building and guessing how big your habitat is:

If you choose, let's say a 10m piece of fencing, you can easyly messure how big you are building. Clicking 4 times = 40m. If you do the same in the next direction, you have a 40*40=1600m² area fenced off.
After you're done, you can select the habitat walls and get info on the exact number.
It's really not that hard.

The color-coding and stuff you suggested may be great for some people but I think it wouldn't justify the work that had to be put in.

[Hogger]

Originally posted by Glimra:

Actually, if you look in the Zoopedia under the tab "Natural Habitat" you can find minimum habitat requirements. A hippo for example wants at least 1004.0m2 in size and 1004.0m2 water. If you then select your habitat you will see how large it is under the tab "Terrain" and "Navigable area".

Yes, you can pause the game, edit whatever you want and then resume the time to click on the animal and see if the water for m2 that you just add to your exhibit is enough on terrain tab

[Wh♂♂par]

I think a good way would be a simple pop-up number. You finish the last wall segment and a pop-up quickly and only briefly informs you about the current size. No need to click a cross, no need to click the enclosure. Could be done with water, too.