We’ve added a new terrain feature called Conservation Areas. These areas have some restrictions on what you can build in them but one thing you can do is build elevated paths that travel over them.

This expansion also introduces ground vehicles that you can use to tour through you exhibits. You can make bridges using the elevated path feature so you can have vehicles travel on bridges over guest pathways or have your guests walk on overpasses over your roads.

What was the process for developing this feature?

This feature was a pretty big undertaking that involved design, art and engineering. On a simple level it started with design talking about what we wanted to be able to do on, and with, elevated paths. For example, things like, “Do we want you to be able to place buildings on elevated paths?” (yes) or “Do we want you to be able to build entire exhibits on elevated paths?” (no).

Engineering works with design to help determine what we feasibly could and couldn’t do, and this helps refine the design further. And art works with design and engineering to figure out what they are going to look like and how they are going to be constructed, not by the player but by the game engine itself.

Then it gets implemented piece by piece, the graphical look gets refined, the user interface (UI) gets polished and the kinks (aka bugs) get worked out. This process started from the moment we began talking about the expansion after Zoo Tycoon 2 was completed, and continues as I write this while we make sure it’s bug free and working smoothly.

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