Notes on Guest and staff AI in Zoo Tycoon (2001)
Acquiring and pleasing guests
Guests will start entering your zoo, the moment you place an animal within an exhibit.
If your zoo entrance is blocked for whatever reason, the guests will path around outside of the entrance for a set amount of time, before leaving. This can affect your overall guest happiness in the park, as they will gradually get more and more angry.
Vomiting guests
A couple of things will make your guests vomit and play a sound of them doing so.
- All guests entering the zoo during January 1st will be sick and vomit. This will not affect guest happiness.
- Guests near animal poop, trash litter or the compost building will get sick and vomit.
The distance required is not yet confirmed, but a guest view distance is 10 squares and it's possible it's within the full distance.
Pathing
There's a number a number of ways you can control how guests and staff paths through your zoo.
- Two-way Staff-only entry: Decorative fences, can be used as a block for the guests, that the staff can walk through.
- Marine specialists only: Found in the Zoo Scenery tab, the stage door will block off any guests and staff, but will let through marine specialists.
- Path-blocking: With the exception of Marine Specialists, Neither guests or staff will cross water under normal circumstances. However guests can swim across, if chased by a predator. Staff will not be able to swim across. If you want to block off a path at all times for both guests and staff, you can use exhibit fences (low or normal ones), Just make sure to not make it an exhibit.
- One-way entry: Using a large bench or a zoo map will allow clipping through by guests and staff. The front of the objects will server as the way in, and the back will serve as the road block back. For this to work, it's important that the bench or map is placed with the backside at the edge of the square, and the squares on both side blocked by buildings or fences. Use ctrl+G to view grid square. View example.
- One-way guest-only entry: The shark tunnel will allow guests to walk through (after paying). This can be useful to maintaining a high amount of guests in your park, and earn more money. Guests will not go through another shark tunnel again.
It's worth noting guests and staff are able to clip through pillars on archways and your zoo entrance.
Idle staff members, are biased walking towards to the right of the zoo entrance.
Drowning
Guest swimming for more than 30-40 seconds in water, without the ability to get up, will start to drown. The game will warn you with a red message through the message box, and the guest will have a special animation. After another 5-10 seconds they'll drown and disappear.