Hayo zookeepers!

We'd like to give a big thank you to all the PlanZo Fam who helped by sending their save files to us, and those who made Issue Tracker reports. Thanks to you, we've just released Update 1.2.2, which focuses on alleviating issues regarding animal thirst levels. You can read the Update Notes here:

Planet Zoo - 1.2.2 Update Notes

Animals

• Fixed animal thirst rate dropping 2x too fast; fixed in all difficulty modes.
  
• Fixed dehydration in line with starvation; animals won't die of dehydration if there is water available in the habitat, and won't cause dehydration notifications.
  
• Fixed broken eat animation on the juvenile Grizzly Bear.
  
• Fixed an issue where animals being boxed up under sprinklers and then moved would still (and always) think they're under the sprinkler.
  
• Fixed Female Capuchin Monkey performing an animation with cardboard box, but the enrichment box does not react.

Scenery

• Fixed a back face culling issue on the underside of Temple Stone Support Beams Rubble 01 and 02.

Terrain

• Added a new Terrain Edit toggle to game settings to allow previous terrain edits around enrichment items and barriers. Found in Options>Game>Global Settings>Disable Animal
• Navigation Terrain Constraints. This comes with a warning as this can potentially cause problems with the animal navigation.

UI

• [Franchise] Fixed an issue where Genealogy will no longer display Mate entry if mate is removed from zoo.
  
• Fixed inconsistency with Content Pack filtering for nature assets.
  
• Fixed not being able to release animals born in zoo to the wild due to adoption restrictions.
  
• Fixed incorrect units displayed for areas above 1000 m2 in relevant info panels.

Stability

• General stability fixes!

Known Issues

• The team continues to investigate reported issues regarding habitat cleanliness and will have an update shortly.
  
• The team continues to investigate food and drink points being incorrectly marked as inaccessible in rare circumstances; the impact of this is mitigated by fixes in animals.

We are still working on getting the habitat cleanliness issue fixed, and would appreciate if any players who are experiencing this issue could email their save files to community@frontier.co.uk. The team would like to thank you for your patience on this issue, and are aiming to have a fix out asap!

Hayo zookeepers!

Thanks for all your incredible support yesterday as we launched Update 1.2 and the South America Pack! We've had some great feedback, both positive and constructive. With that being said, we've now released Update 1.2.1.

Please read the Update Notes here:

Stability

• Fixed an issue with an incorrect DLC popup and subsequent crash when clicking it from loading saves that have existed from beta/release. Some assets thought not to have been released had been cleaned up and needed further tweaks to work.
  
• Fixed a crash accessing genealogy screen for animals not in your own park.
  
• Fixed a crash calculating the shelter map.
  
• Fixed a rare crash accessing the object browser.
  
• Fixed a rare background crash updating ride power consumption.
  
• Fixed a rare crash opening the inspector's report.

We've been getting reports of animals and Staff not moving around in habitats. This is mostly apparent in large habitats. Please load up Planet Zoo and leave it on pause, and allow the navigable area to generate. You'll only need to do this once, the game will remember the navigable area on your next save. The larger the habitats in your zoos, the longer you should leave it. We recommend 30 minutes for any habitat over 50,000m2.

Known Issues

• Animals are getting thirsty twice as fast as normal. Placing a permanent water source (lake or water pipe) will help to alleviate this while we work on a fix.
  
• Animals aren't going to water sources to drink. We believe this is possibly caused by the navigation issue below and are continuing to investigate.
  
• Navigation mesh for large zoos and habitats is taking a long time to generate. If your animals and staff inside habitats aren't moving and standing on the spot then the navigation mesh will still be generating; pausing the game and leaving the navigation to generate will fix this, save as soon as it's complete to avoid needing to do this again. This issue affects every zoo.

Please keep updating us on any pesky bugs you come across; make sure you use the Issue Tracker!

Hayo Zookeepers!

Join us as we go on an exciting tropical adventure that will have you and your guests filled with wonder! We're thrilled to announce that Planet Zoo: South America Pack and Update 1.2 have now launched, and are available to play!



Update 1.2 is available free to all players and will be adding a variety of ways to help you enjoy your Planet Zoo experience even more! This update includes new Difficulty Settings, so that you can cater the way you play. You'll also be able to see the genealogy of your animals so you trace their parents, offspring, siblings and mates, making it easier to see how your animals are related! Furthermore, the team have made changes to Guest Happiness and Keeper behaviour, by introducing a variety of changes that will make it easier for you to satisfy your guests and your animals' needs. Also: GLASS PANELS! Read more about these new additions (and more!) here.

Planet Zoo: South America Pack contains five new animals: Red-eyed Tree Frog, Giant Anteater, Capuchin Monkey, Llama and Jaguar! These beautiful additions to the roster will have guests racing to your zoo to catch a glimpse of them. But that's not all, this pack will also add over 250 new building and scenery pieces to your inventory, so you'll be able to build the jungle trek of your dreams, allowing your guests to visit places thought lost to nature centuries ago, or use the bamboo and thatched pieces to create a structure you'd see in many hot, arid locations around the world.



Planet Zoo: South America Pack is available to purchase for £7.99 ($9.99, €9.99) on Steam and the Frontier Store; please note that you will need to have Planet Zoo to play additional content.


This update contains many more bug fixes, updates and some new content.

Animals

• Animal social behaviour now occurs more frequently on all animals.
  
• Increased social interaction frequency for; Formosan Black Bear, Grizzly Bear, Himalayan Brown Bear and Giant Panda; Okapi and Plains Zebra; African Buffalo, American Bison and Common Warthog; Cheetah, Snow Leopard and West African Lion; Bonobos, Western Chimpanzees, Western Lowland Gorillas and Bornean Orangutans.
  
• Juvenile animals now require less food than adults. This is proportional to the difference in size (between 10% and 50%), depending on species.
  
• Fixed some animal weights that were incorrectly localised for US English (e.g. Reindeer).
  
• Made the Pronghorn Antelope more comfortable in snow and lower temperatures, as it covers their natural environment in winter.
  
• Added large ball and large snowball enrichment items to the Western Lowland Gorilla, Bornean Orangutan and Spotted Hyena research.
  
• Fixed confusing social requirements. Cheetahs and Western Lowland Gorillas match the overall population numbers with the numbers of each sex in mixed sex and single sex groups.
  
• Fixed missing enrichment tags for Grizzly Bear, West African Lion, Bongo, Timber Wolf.
  
• Navigable area in animal terrain tab renamed to Space to be consistent with animal welfare.
  
• Adjusted Biome information for exhibit animals to match information boards.
  
• Made Plains Zebra and Thomson's Gazelle compatible Species so they gain social enrichment.
  
• Added a sunbathe behaviour to Ring-tailed Lemurs, which only occurs when the weather is sunny.
  
• Animals will be prevented from dying of starvation if the keeper has placed food into the habitat before they die.
  
• Animals will now eat any food from their habitat that shares the same base food, as if it was level 1 quality food.
  
• Follow Parent and Follow Leader animal behaviours are now more effective whilst climbing.
  
• Only notify the player of hungry/starving animals if the keeper has not placed down food.
  
• Cheetah and both Wolf species now run faster during predation.
  
• Fixed an issue where calculating a purchased adult animals' initial size was very over-generous (but worked fine for player-bred animals).
  
• Animals now use different drinking offsets for water stations compared to lakes.
  
• Male/Female/Juveniles now specify different dung quantities/recurrence, instead of just size.
  
• Animals will no longer footplant on top of poo.
  
• Zoopedia updates:
  • Improved continents in Reindeer's Habitat in Zoopedia.
    
  • Fixes to Polar Bear, Reindeer and Dall Sheep Zoopedia text.
    
  • Improved consistency and quality of Barrier Requirement text in Zoopedia for all species.
    
  • Add information about the size of water boundaries for animals that can’t swim, e.g. Bonobos.
    
  • Zoopedia group sizes state that they exclude juveniles to improve clarity.
• Fixed a number of issues that caused animals to be randomly boxed.
  
• Fixed a number of issues that caused animals to fall into the floor or sky.
  
• Alpha status is now shown on the Animal List.
  
• Removed Polar Bears from the climbable enrichment tags as they do not climb.
  
• Habitat maps on reindeer education board and Zoopedia have been corrected.
  
• Animals now turn to bones once fully eaten.
  
• Added icon in the timeline window for animals joining a pack.
  
• Animals should only get bored of true 'toys' and not items that are essential to their habitat.
  
• Polar Bear now jumps.
  
• Fixed typo causing Bird Flu to be exceptionally aggressive in Pygmy Hippos and Thomson's Gazelles, bringing into line with other animals.
  
• Fixed Education Boards displaying biome information that is different to the biomes listed in the Zoopedia for animals.
  
• Fixed issue that caused animal to become deformed if entering into a fight while transitioning into an adult.

New Content

• New Glass Pieces
  
  • Expanded on the New World Glass Panels set with larger shapes.
    
  • Glass Panes for custom windows and frames.
    
  • Improved the naming of the glass/plastic panels for consistency and usability.
• 5 New Enrichment's
  • Tyre
    
  • Large Tyre
    
  • Bobbin Drum
    
  • Colourful Small Ball
    
  • Natural Termite Mound
• New Leaves Bedding type in 4 sizes.
  
• New Nature Pieces.
  
  • Mossy Rock Set - moss all over
    
  • Dynamic Mossy Rock Set - moss always orientates to the surface!
    
  • Strangler Fig Trees and Roots
    
  • Ombu Trees
    
  • Cordyline Plants
• New Difficulty Settings added for all game modes.
  
• Easy, Medium (the current game difficulty) and Hard. These will affect:
  
  • Whether animals get bored of enrichment items (Hard Difficulty only).
    
  • How quickly animals get stressed.
    
  • How quickly animals lose welfare from hunger, and how fast they starve to death. The frequency of feeding required for 100% welfare will remain the same for all difficulty modes.
    
  • Whether guests will request refunds (Hard Difficulty only).
    
  • How willing guests are to spend money.
    
  • How much guests learn from education sources.
    
  • The average Guest Happiness required for 5* Guest Happiness Rating.
    
  • How fast your staff get tired.
    
  • How large of a happiness boost staff get from training.
    
  • When starting a new zoo you'll be able to choose the difficulty setting before starting.
    
  • When a zoo is loaded the difficulty can be changed in the settings menu.
• Jaguar Hat & Shirt

Management

• Reduced negative influence around buildings by using scenery to hide them.
  
• Negative radius can be reduced up to a maximum of 50%, by getting Scenery Rating up to 100%.
  
• Animal Trading list remembers filters when returning to it.
  
• Added notifications for when ATMs are not powered.

Staff

• Fixed an issue where mechanics would queue for a workshop when others are free.
  
• Keeper improvements:
  
  • Keepers can now run inside habitats while placing food and filling water, if the job is critical.
    
  • Keepers can now run with buckets of food, if the job is critical.
    
  • Keepers will run to and from Keeper Huts, if the job is critical.
    
  • Keepers now fill feeders stations in a more sensible order, using the closest one after each fill, instead of order by distance from the gate.
    
  • Added new staff thoughts for Keepers about their habitat jobs to make their behaviour more understandable.
    
  • Added staff inspection animations to make keeper reactions to their jobs more intuitive.
    
  • Fixed an issue that caused keepers preparing food for multi-species habitat to take a very long time.
    
  • Fixed Keeper clipping into Hanging Barrel Feeder on refills.
• Staff status now describes their active job if they have one, as it is more intuitive.
  
• Improved Staff performance at low frame rates.
  
• Vets no longer walk through the examination table and other equipment after treating animal.
  
• Fixed vendors leaving the shop right after it's been placed and sometimes not returning.
  
• Vet no longer runs on the spot when taking animal for treatment in Vet surgery.
  
• Inspectors & Reporters no longer use a walking animation at a running speed when fleeing dangerous animals.

Guests

• Issue Tracker - Fixed missing mobile phones on guest animations.
  
• Guest Happiness Improvements:
  
• Added new guest history tab to Guest Information panel. This shows a guests opinion on their long term stay in the zoo:
  
  • ticket price
    
  • their feelings about the animals
    
  • environment (litter, vandalism, staff facilities, scenery, etc.)
    
  • their feeling of security (pickpocketing)
• Updates to the Guest Management screen:
  
  • Clicking on a Guest Happiness stat will now open the relevant heat map.
• Added date stamps to guest thoughts.
  
• Added guest arrived and projected leaving dates to Guest Information tab in the Guest Information panel.
  
• Guess Happiness is capped when they have low needs.
  
• Guests can now be renamed.
  
• Create new guest thoughts for too much plant coverage.
  
• Education Improvements:
  
• Separated Guest Education from affecting Guest Happiness, instead it now provides additional desire to spend.
  
• Added Zoo Management Education screen:
  
• A breakdown of the Guest Education Rating, which includes the average guest education level.
  
• Which animal your guests have learnt the most about.
  
• More information on Audio Guides, such as
  
  • How many were sold over the last year.
    
  • Average time of the visit spent using them.
    
  • Average number of species they've been educated about.
• This tab will also show more information about Zoopedia Education Research and Vets that are doing Advanced Research.
  
• In a separate tab, there will also be a breakdown of each animal and how well the education is performing. This will help highlight any issues with the layout of zoos and how it affects education.
  
• This will include another tab for conservation boards.
  
• Female voice added to the education speakers.
  
• Education Boards/Speakers - UI now says if they're broken down/damaged.
  
• Education Heat Map - guests will turn red when in overlapping speaker areas of different types.
  
• Child guests are no longer misaligned when using Indian Picnic Bench 02.
  
• Guests on rides happy/point reactions will now point the correct direction.
  
• Guests no longer face the wrong direction on Classical Picnic Bench.
  
• Guests may now also decide to donate after viewing animals from rides or benches.
  
• Issue Tracker - Protesters no longer appear when animal welfare is disabled in Sandbox Mode.

Zoo Construction

• Paths Updates:
  
  • Staff buildings now inherit their path type from the type of path they are connecting to, e.g. staff path to staff path and vice versa. Guest facilities always still connect with normal path.
    
  • Double clicking a path piece will now open path editor with that path type and texture selected to continue building with.
    
  • You can click over normal path to replace with staff path just like changing a path texture now, and vice versa.
    
  • Staff path will now be placed at the foot of a Habitat gate by default.
    
  • Added the ability to set step height in half metre increments, making it easier to shape your paths around terrain.
• Snow now settles on top of Bromeliad plants.
  
• Fixed an issue with Zoo Entrances where some pieces of path were not able to be deleted when the entrance was deleted.

UI

• New Animal Genealogy UI - Now you can navigate through the genealogy, check the genes and filter progeny by mates.
  
• Issue Tracker - Player Settings for Units (Meters VS Feet etc.) You can now specify preferred units of measurement in the Settings Menu → Interface Tab → Units. These values default to the English standard units. Zoopedia Habitat Requirements will update but Zoopedia descriptions will remain unchanged.
  
• Added additional biome types to China on the front end globe. Please note that this is the only change we will be making to the globe.
  
• Added ability to rename zoos that are part of your Franchise from the front end franchise menu.
  
• Added a locate button to the Inspector objective window.
  
• Added a search box to the Zoopedia.
  
• Added audio support for Franchise animal trading UI.
  
• Added tooltips to help explain the symbols that are displayed in compare mates UI.
  
• Newly added Staff Member no longer has a truncated tooltip when attempting to train (price displays over information).
  
• Navigable Area is now displayed in correct measurement system based on player setting.
  
• "Preparing food" locate pin now takes the user to the habitat the food is being prepared for, rather than the building the food is being prepared in.
  
• Moving or boxing an animal whilst in traversable area heatmap mode no longer stops the heatmap updating.
  
• Animal movement UI now displays a list of animals being moved, correct cursors for the type of movement (staff vs automatic) and error messages in case animals fail to be moved.
  
• Updated animal list in habitat information panel.
  
• Long vertical scroll list replaced with a side scrolled list that checks all the info of a species per page.
  
• Easier navigation between species.
  
• Easier visualization of specific information per species.
  
• Selected blueprint filter option will now remember when object browser is closed.
  
• Made contraception easier to administer in UI.
  
• When looking at an animal's information panel, selecting a different animal will open the new animal information panel on the same tab.
  
• Improved readability of some UI elements, like the headers in many panels.
  
• Removed Arctic and Antarctic filters in the habitat info panel's environment tab.
  
• "Research complete" pop up is now translated to all supported languages.
  
• Truncated string no longer occurs in confirmation pop up when leaving a franchise zoo.
  
• Issue Tracker - Fixed an issue where opening up any information panels (information windows that open on the right of the screen) will cause the window to display without any UI. This has been reported for animals, guest/staff and structures.
  
• Fixed an issue where exiting the credits while in the career menu would lead to blank scenario UI panel.
  
• Fixed an issue where pressing ESC while the exhibit window facade UI is open will prevent further interaction with the world.
  
• Fixed an issue where players are not notified when ATMs are unpowered.
  
• Fixed an issue where notifications about Inspector & Reporter visits repeat the word "months".
  
• Fixed an issue where notifications about Inspector & Reporter visits did not appear.
  
• Fixed an issue where the cash amount was cut off by the scrolling bar when setting cash value in Sandbox mode settings.
  
• Fixed an issue where closing the "Server Maintenance" UI on the main menu would not restore the menu's original state, instead showing the topmost UI buttons, the background world and nothing else.
  
• Fixed an issue where the small button for Zoopedia animal window would close all windows, but sometimes would not open the Zoopedia.
  
• Fixed a parse error in the Visiting Players Alerts.

Scenarios

• Scenario 1 - Snow Leopard and Ring-tailed Lemur are no longer boxed at top of tree and on top of shelter respectively upon load.
  
• Scenario 4 - Staff no longer get stuck on a path intersection.
  
• Scenario 11 - Navigation to broken down Toilet blocks is fixed.

Sandbox Mode

• Issue Tracker - Guests will not explore the entirety of a large zoo.
  
• Added new sandbox toggles to make guests stay in the park for longer, and give them infinite cash.
  
• Added a new Sandbox toggle to disable the Inspector.
  
• Exhibit animals are now affected when disabling animal welfare.

Franchise Mode

• Increased Trade Centre storage capacity to 50.
  
• Preventing re-listing of Frontier Zoo animals onto the animal market when bought for
• Conservation Credits; this is to fix players relisting Frontier animals at a large markup.
  
• Research shared across all Franchise Zoos:
  
  • In order to make sure you've got all of your research data from across your Franchise you'll need to load into each zoo individually. This is due to the fact that if we were to do this in the background, it could create incredibly long loading times for you, so to make the game more seamless when loading zoos, your Franchise zoos will load research individually once you load into them. Once your Franchise zoos are all up to date, this will create a new baseline of research shared across them, until you upgrade research further.
• Updated the in-game animal trading medals to match the online trading.
  
• Fixed issue where some released animals would not count towards Community Challenges despite meeting the requirements.

Audio

• Added transport Riverboat ride audio when colliding into other boats.
  
• Added Plains Zebra audio when eating from the Hanging Grazer Feeder.
  
• Added Juvenile Baird's Tapir paddling sounds when swimming.
  
• Added new sonic texture for the Rubbing pad.
  
• Added audio detail to water pipe.

Stability

• Further crash and stability fixes.

Localisation

• Various localisation fixes.

Hayo Zookeepers!

Now that the air is getting warmer and the nights are getting longer, we're feeling... tropical. It's time that we travel down to South America and meet some of its beautiful wildlife and lush fauna! What does the continent have in store for us?



We're so happy to announce the Planet Zoo: South America Pack, coming alongside free Update 1.2 on 7 April, 2020!

We're putting on a party and you're invited to join us! We're celebrating five new, glorious animals to welcome to our zoos: the wonderful Red-eyed Tree Frog, the mischievous Capuchin Monkey, the unique Giant Anteater, the friendly Llama, and the beautiful Jaguar! These five animals present their own list of challenges when you bring them into your zoos, as they have their own specific needs you'll need to cater for to keep them happy and well looked after in your parks.



In addition to the animals, there are over 250 new scenery and building pieces that will be sure to inspire you and help you create the zoo of your dreams. Create the city of a lost civilisation, or an overgrown jungle adventure that will have your guests gasping in wonder and your animals feeling right at home.



Planet Zoo: South America Pack will be available to purchase for £7.99 ($9.99, €9.99) on Steam and the Frontier Store from 7 April. In the meantime, wishlist now on Steam and you'll be notified as soon as it's available. Not long to go now before your next adventure begins!

Hayo Zookeepers!

We're thrilled to announce free Update 1.2, coming to Planet Zoo on 7 April, 2020.

This free update contains a variety of different features and improvements based on community feedback; this post will give you more information on what we will be implementing in our next update and how it may affect your gameplay.



Genealogy
Building further upon your great feedback, we are ready to reveal the Genealogy UI. Upon selecting an animal, you will be able to see which animals are their parents, siblings, mates and offspring. Each animal is selectable, allowing you to ‘walk’ along animal bloodlines, so you can see close relations easily, and even work out common ancestors – all handy to avoid inbreeding.

We’re also exposing deeper genetic information - for the first time you’ll be able to see the Genetic Identity of genes (a simplified genetic code). While it’s not necessary for all of you to dig into this much detail, (avoiding inbreeding is fine), we still wanted to give you the chance to see these mechanics in action.

New Difficulty Settings
We are introducing new difficulty settings to Planet Zoo. You will now be able to choose between Easy, Medium (the current game difficulty) and Hard. These settings will affect:

Whether animals get bored of enrichment items (Hard Difficulty only).

• How quickly animals get stressed.
  
• How difficult it will be to maintain animal welfare.
  
• Whether guests will request refunds (Hard Difficulty only).
  
• How willing guests are to spend money.
  
• How much guests learn from education sources.
  
• What percent of Guest Happiness is require for the 5* rating.
  
• How fast your staff get tired.
  
• How large of a happiness boost staff get from training.

When loading into a Zoo in any mode, you will get the opportunity to choose from the three settings. For more information on these settings, you will be able to select the question mark icon above the settings to learn more about what will change when you play. You are free to change the difficulty at any time via the settings while you’re inside your zoo too, so the difficulty settings will be able to change to suit you at any moment.

Changes to Animal Feeding
Since launch, we have received a lot of feedback regarding the way Keepers feed the animals in your zoos. We thank you all for taking the time to explain to us the changes you would like to see to this system. Here's what's going to happen in the new update:

• Keepers will now fill feeding stations in a different, more efficient order by filling up the one that's closest to the Keeper first, before moving on to the next one, and so forth.
  
• Keepers' food prep time has simplified so that it will be the same for all habitats, regardless of the number of animals, and mix of species. Previously, this caused intermittent hunger in some habitats.
  
• New Keeper thoughts have been added, so that you can identify issues in your habitats easier.
  
• Animals in mixed species habitats will now be able to eat any upgraded versions of shared foods. Previously, food theft could cause intermittent hunger in some mixed habitats.
  
  • For example, all animals that eat level 1 Hay will be able to eat any upgraded version of Hay. All animals that eat level 1 of Monkey Chow will be able to eat any upgraded version of Monkey Chow. But, animals that eat Hay still cannot share food with animals that eat Monkey Chow.
• Keepers will now sprint to and from the habitat when doing a feeding and water refilling task, when the task is critical.
  
• Keepers will be able to sprint when carrying their buckets.
  
• Juveniles will cost less to feed. The amount is different per species, and is estimated by body mass.

Breakdown of Guest Happiness in Guest Information Panels
The team have made some great changes to the Guest Information Panels to help you learn more about your zoo and how you can improve it.

• Guest Education has been split from happiness and now offers a spending bonus multiplier, meaning a well-educated guest will want to spend more money. We’ve also added a new management screen for education, more on this further down the post.
  
• The Guest Information panel will now include a new tab, the History tab. This will show their opinions on their entire stay in the zoo, to indicate what they might have liked or disliked during their visit. The Guest History tab will include ticket price, environment (litter/vandalism/staff facilities), their feelings about the animals, and security, as well as any other issues they had that affected satisfying.
  
• Guest thoughts will now have time stamps on them so you’ll know how long ago a guest had that thought, and whether it’s still relevant or not.
  
• All the opinions that guests have will be classed as happy (green face), neutral (orange face) and unhappy (red face).

Guest History will not be applied retroactively to existing zoos and Guests. For the Guest History to become available, you will need to play in that zoo for a while so that the History can be generated and applied to the tab.

Guests will now also display their arrival date, projected leaving date and the progress of their visit. You can view this in the Guest Information tab.



Guest Education Management tab

We have implemented changes to make Guest Education clearer. The Guest Education tab, which is found in Zoo Management screens, will show:

• A breakdown of the Guest Education Rating, which includes the average guest education level.
  
• Which animal your guests have learnt the most about.
  
• More information on Audio Guides, such as
  
• How many were sold over the last year.
  
• Average time of the visit spent using them.
  
• Average number of species they've been educated about.
  
• This tab will also show more information about Zoopedia Education Research and Vets that are doing Advanced Research.
  
• In a separate tab, there will also be a breakdown of each animal and how well the education is performing. This will help highlight any issues with the layout of zoos and how it affects education.
  
• This will include another tab for conservation boards.

Increased Social Interactions
All animals in game, including Deluxe Edition and Arctic Pack animals will now trigger their social interaction animations more frequently.

Reducing the Negative Impact of Staff Buildings
After building a shell around your staff buildings, or placing decorations around them, the negative impact radius will be reduced. The radius can be reduced by up to 50% - to get the full 50%, your scenery rating for the facility must be at 100%.

Search Added to Zoopedia UI
When using the Zoopedia, you will now be able to search for the species by typing, as well as being able to scroll through the UI.

Research Shared Across All Franchise Zoos
Completed research will be shared across your Franchise. If you load into a Franchise Zoo, the research data will be saved so that the highest levels of research will be carried over between all Franchise zoos. It's important to note, that if a Staff Member was researching a research category where the jump in levels is less than 1, then when you load into the zoo, they will no longer be assigned to that research and you will need to re-assign them. In comparison, the research should continue if, for example, they were researching level 1 Chinese Pangolins, and level 1 was completed in another zoo, then when you load back into the zoo they should be researching level 2.

In order to make sure you've got all of your research data from across your Franchise you'll need to load into each zoo individually. This is due to the fact that if we were to do this in the background, it could create incredibly long loading times for you, so to make the game more seamless when loading zoos, your Franchise zoos will load research individually once you load into them. Once your Franchise zoos are all up to date, this will create a new baseline of research shared across them, until you upgrade research further.

Path System Improvements
We have added a variety of improvements to our pathing system. Staff buildings will connect to Staff Paths with a staff path, and standard path will connect up with standard path. Guest facilities will continue to connect with standard paths. You will now be able to click over normal path to replace with a staff path, similar to how you change the texture of a path, and vice versa. Double clicking a path piece will now open the Path Editor with that path type and texture selected to continue building with. We’ve also added the ability to set step height in half metre increments, making it easier to shape your paths around terrain.

Player Settings for Units (Meters VS Feet etc.)
You can now specify preferred units of measurement in the Settings Menu → Interface Tab → Units. These values default to the English standard units. This will not work for Zoopedia descriptions.

Added Creativity!
Of course, we couldn't complete this free update without some new enrichment items, building pieces, and foliage! Among other items, we will be adding in new Tropical and Moss Rocks as well as the much requested Glass Panel pieces! We can't wait to see what you'll build with those!

Update 1.2 will arrive alongside bug fixes and gameplay tweaks that will improve your Planet Zoo experience, and you'll get the full Update Notes when it goes live on 7 April!

Thank you for all of your wonderful support and feedback on Planet Zoo! We are grateful to have such a caring, enlightening community!

Hi everyone,

We’d like to take a moment to update you all on what’s happening at Frontier with regards to COVID-19, and what you can expect from us in the foreseeable future.

In order to safeguard the health and safety of all Frontier employees, we are implementing a work from home policy across the studio.

Frontier’s games and channels bring joy to the community, and we are all united in our love of these fantastic worlds and the positive impact they produce; this is why we are working hard to avoid any disruption and will do our very best to keep you updated and entertained throughout this challenging time.

Our games will continue to be supported (including online functionality), and at the moment we do not anticipate any major changes to our plans across all titles. However, with the situation changing daily, we will keep you informed and appreciate your patience and understanding as we continue to bring the best gaming experiences to our players. Our Communications team will continue to be active across our channels, including forums, Reddit, Discord, and social media; our Customer Support team will continue to offer help and support through our dedicated support channels, and game teams will continue their work on future updates and releases.

As an added precaution, we are restricting work-related travel for the time being, which means we are not attending any events at the current time.

Our hearts and minds are with you and your family; we will continue to monitor the global situation and will adjust our operations as necessary, and keep you posted.

Please stay safe and healthy, and thank you for your ongoing patience and support.

Take care,

The Frontier team.

Hayo fellow Zookeepers!

Thank you for all of your support and feedback following Update 1.1.5 - we have now launched Update 1.1.6. This minor update focuses on guests and staff.

Misc

• Issue Tracker - Fixed an issue where guests with no desire to spend money were queuing for shops, especially when leaving the zoo. Guests without desire to spend money will now do other things or leave the zoo without visiting shops en-route.
  
• Issue Tracker - Updated guest logic so guests with no cash will be more likely to visit an ATM.
  
• Issue Tracker - Fixed an issue where occasionally staff would get stuck outside a staff building.

Stability

• Further crash and stability fixes.

Please continue to provide us with your feedback and Issue Tracker reports. If you make a forum post about a bug, please link to your Issue Tracker support so your fellow community members can help confirm the issue.

Hayo Zookeepers!

We hope you've seen a lot of benefits due to Update 1.1.4. Did you check out the MontseC cheat? Send us all your cute screenshots!

Thanks to all of your feedback, we have released Update 1.1.5. Here are the update notes:

Misc

• Issue Tracker - Fixed an issue when running the game at 5x speed, staff get alerts for not finding a staff room despite many that are free.
  
• Issue Tracker - Fixed a rare crash when placing habitat gates.
  
• Fixed an issue where guests may re-spawn to zoo entrance when editing distant paths.

Stability

• Further crash and stability fixes.

Please continue to post any pesky bugs you come across on our Issue Tracker! If you make a forum post about a bug, please remember to link your Issue Tracker report so other people can contribute.

Hayo Zookeepers!

Thank you for all of your Issue Tracker reports over the last couple of months, we have just released a general update which should fix some of the more generic issues members of our community have reported to us.


Animals

• Animals that have been boxed by the game will now be automatically unboxed, when safe!
  
• Fixes to Polar Bear jump to swim animations.
  
• Replaced references to Arctic continent with the appropriate North America and European tags and filters. This means Arctic animals have suitable plants if you want them!
  
• Fixed jumping into water from climbing frames.
  
• Zoopedia text updates based on your feedback - thank you for bringing these to our attention!

New Content

• Added a free avatar costume: Ice Cream Hat. Be careful, it might melt!

Management

• Refunds have been temporarily disabled while we review the overall system - thanks to all of the feedback you have given us!

Staff

• Vets, Mechanics, and Keepers now have unique inspection points inside the habitat gate to help prevent them from standing on top of each other.
  
• Fixed an issue where if a player deletes a habitat where food inside the habitat is on the ground, food will not degrade completely and would not be cleaned by Staff.

Guests

• Guests' needs now decrease slower while in shop queues to match Transport Ride queues.
  
• Guests now move between nearby shops based on queue length!
  
• Fixed an issue where guests departing or going to the next station of a Transport Ride opened their umbrellas early.

UI

• Replaced 'Uses last month' with 'Uses in last 12 months' for all habitat objects (feeders, water bowls, enrichment) info panels.
  
• Habitat cleanliness alert now opens habitat cleanliness Heat Map rather than water cleanliness.
  
• Fixed text error in high alert warning with special characters.
  
• Path icons now display a price in the main browser.
  
• Added 'No suitable species' feedback message to the feeding station info panel.
  
• Fixed duplicating scenery and buildings using duplicate and advanced move.
  
• Fixed shop inventory selling items that have been toggled off.
  
• Fixed albino animals displaying the wrong non-albino icons when being Released to the Wild.
  
• Fixed albino adult male and juvenile Zebras showing wrong thumbnail icon.

Sandbox Mode

• Fixed an issue where toggling off welfare in Sandbox Mode was still spawning protesters.

Challenge & Franchise Mode

• Fixed an issue where players were not receiving their rewards from Community Challenges.

Misc

• [As highlighted via the Issue Tracker] Fixed an issue where if the Ice Block Wall Slope 4m is selected in the placement tool there will be a second piece attached to the asset while being placed.
  
• [As highlighted via the Issue Tracker] Fixed an issue where the Zoopedia UI fails to open if opened through the Animal UI with any other "Top Left" UI open.
  
• [As highlighted via the Issue Tracker] Fixed a bug that prevented Vets from collecting some animals from the trade centre.
  
• Fixed a rare crash when adjusting Transport Ride min/max delays.
  
• Improved performance when using the shape terrain tools.

Stability

• Further crash and stability fixes.

Localisation

• Various localisation fixes.

Please continue to report any bugs you have come across on our Issue Tracker so we can look into the issue.

Hello Zookeepers!

Thank you for all of your feedback and support since our last update. We have now released update 1.1.3 which includes a range of fixes for your zoos.

Here are the update notes:

• Fixed an issue where some players loading into their franchise zoo would be immediately forced back to the front end menu.
  
• Fixed an issue with an infinite loading screen in franchise mode for some players.
  
• Fixed a crash when loading some large zoos from Steam workshop.
  
• Fixed an issue where guests would not use transport rides.
  
• General stability fixes.

Please continue to report any issues you encounter on our Issue Tracker and we'll keep you up to date on further news or updates!