Everyone’s favorite zoo sim just received a massive patch. Frontier has released the Planet Zoo 1.0.2 update, adding an unusually high number of fixes and quality-of-life improvements to a game that was just released on November 5, exclusively on PC. Contrary to what you may think based on the update notes, this game had a warm reception from players eager to manage their own wildlife zoo. Let’s take a deep breath and look at some of the issues that this Planet Zoo 1.0.2 update addresses.
Planet Zoo 1.0.2 Update Patch Notes | Highlights
One particularly frustrating issue happens when the animals decide to ignore the food that you affectionately place in their habitat. It sounds like a major step toward extinction and an inadvertent additional challenge that the game poses you, but thankfully it should now be fixed. Animals getting stuck in scenery is another occurrence that might happen, which makes you wonder if these creatures care about self-preservation at all.
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But wait, getting stuck in Planet Zoo isn’t an issue exclusive to animals. It seems that the park staff is also prone to getting glued to props while navigating, and this also happens to visitors as well. Sounds like a name change to Planet Jammed could be in the cards.
The Career mode saw some changes to a few scenarios, a couple of them involving Giant Pandas for some reason – perhaps pandas are more inclined to experience bugs than other wild animals? Several stability and crash fixes were introduced with this update, and localization was also debugged. The Building and Editing UI received a few fixes as well, turning the act of creating your own zoo into a less frustrating experience.
Frontier has revealed that it is now working on improving the Sandbox Mode with new features, and other issues that the community has raised are being investigated and will hopefully be solved in time for the next Planet Zoo update.
Planet Zoo 1.0.2 Update | Full Patch Notes
Animals
- Fixed a number of cases where animals might ignore food placed in their habitat.
- Fix for animal shake behaviour which could lead to them temporarily getting stuck.
- Fixed issue where going from water to climbing frames could get animals stuck in a loop.
- Fix for boxed animals reporting that they are escaped incorrectly.
- Fix for animals walking on water when using climbing frames in water.
- Fix for animals jumping incorrectly, which could lead to them becoming stuck on shelter roofs.
- Animals group together more often to encourage herding.
- Improvements to animals boxing unexpectedly.
- Increased population and sex limits of Timber Wolf and African Wild Dog allowing for larger, relatively peaceful packs that still Alpha fight infrequently.
- Fix for some animals being pushed through the floor when being tranquilised.
- Fixed discrepancy in how Exhibit Animal welfare was being reported.
Staff
- Fix for Staff getting stuck when navigating.
- Fix for Vet getting stuck when Vet and Caretaker were both sent to do the same job.
- Fix for Mechanics navigating to vandalised objects they shouldn’t be able to reach.
- Fix for Mechanic sliding whilst repairing objects.
- Vendors will now leave newly placed shops if they are unpowered.
Guests
- Fix for guests getting stuck when navigating.
- Guest thoughts about ticket prices should now update more quickly.
- Reduced loss of guest happiness from bad education sources.
- Fix for guest thoughts reporting animal visibility incorrectly; guests will report good views!
Sandbox Mode
- Added option to limit guest numbers; you can find this setting under Settings – Game – Current Save Settings (as a tick box).
Stability
- Multiple crash and stability fixes.
Franchise Mode
- Better notifications for failed connections.
- Fix for guest avatars showing no name.
- Seriously injured animals can’t now be traded.
- Locked the entrance gates so they can’t accidentally be deleted.
- Fixed issue with friend list sometimes populating incorrectly.
- Added an icon to the Animal Exchange which will mark animals with albinism/leucism.
- Optimisations on server load.
Career Mode
- Stars should now show correctly on Career Mode saves.
- Fixed an issue causing the ‘raise barrier height’ objective in Scenario 1 to not complete when multi-selecting barriers.
- Added hint for Scenario 3 to locate workshop objective.
- Fixed Scenario 3 objective logic to include Giant Pandas that have already been sent to Quarantine.
- Stopped Scenario 3 Giant Pandas being able to be released to the wild.
- Changed Scenario 5 bronze education objective to use star rating.
- Updated time of day in Scenario 8.
- Fixed issue with tutorial hint tips disappearing.
Building and Editing
- Fixed case where pressing X would stop toggling between rotate and movement in advanced movement mode.
- Fix for placement options not showing for duplicated objects
- Enable setting flexicolour for multiple items in group edit mode.
- Copy and pasting education objects now retains the assigned education topic.
- Fixed issue where deleting and undoing deletion of facilities and power sources could cause the facilities to be incorrectly unpowered.
UI
- The Trade Centre should now report animals’ correct ‘source’ information.
- Fixed some errors in the Zoopedia regarding age of maturity.
- Y axis on finance graph now reports figures above £100,000 correctly.
- Fix for sorting Exhibit Animals by species.
- Fixed issue when saving a blueprint with quotation marks in the name would cause them not to show up in game.
- Added bar to transport ride UI to show wear and tear.
- Fixed unresponsive UI elements when clicking off Zoopedia.
- When locating an animal in the animal management menu it will now open the animal’s information panel.
- Animal information panel enrichment bar now shows correct value.
- Switched the position of Staff thoughts and Staff needs in their info panel.
- Notifications for Staff not being able to find Staff Centre or Keeper Huts are now red and pop out.
- Fix for animal information panel not updating to dead animal information panel.
- Added alerts for inaccessible Power and Water Treatment Facilities.
- Fixed discrepancy in loan repayments being reported incorrectly.
Barriers
- Animals can now escape via climbable chain link fences.
- Fix for animals pouncing through walls.
Feeders
- Increased the capacity of the Forage Pool Enrichment Feeder to help with feeding issues.
Scenery and Foliage
- We solved the case of the mysterious missing D alphabet letter!
- Adjusted which branches can be climbed on the large pines.
Achievements
- The ‘Welcome to Planet Zoo’ achievement should now unlock correctly for people who played the Beta.
Audio
- Fix for audio occasionally briefly cutting out.
Localisation
- Various localisation bug fixes.
