OUGD505 - Product, Range, Distribution - National Zoo Conservation Exercise and Zoo Tycoon 2

National Zoo Conservation Exercise

Whilst I was looking into how much money is spent on Panda conservation, I stumbled across this school exercise that is aimed at children in their early teens in an attempt to make them understand issues of conservation. The exercise can be found here. It's particularly about, habitat fragmentation, food resources, human needs, and how these issues affect budgets. The idea of the exercise is for students to plan how they would spend the budget to protect Panda territory while still balancing out the needs of local people.

By simplifying this sort of model and digitising it would make it much more appealing and appropriate to a slightly younger audience (8-14). Changes to simplify the exercise could include: 

• Automatically taking money out of the budget for the extra housing, all the player needs to do is place the houses. 
• Add a colour scheme to show protected areas, unprotected areas, and privately owned areas to give a visual overview.
• Display the map on a grid so that areas can be bought and sold on the basis of how much land is wanted.
• Simplify how land is bought, rather than buying a new reserve or buying a habitat corridor, you just by land in general, making it less complicated.
• Differentiate between panda genders and bamboo types through use of colour as well as through symbols.

Different levels could represent different provinces of China where Pandas live, and as you move from one level to another, you have to protect more land and achieve a greater increase in the number of wild pandas starting with the same amount of money.

Zoo Tycoon 2

When I was younger I played a game called Zoo Tycoon on the computer. I got my mum to post me the game so I could assess how the visuals and layout of the game could help me with my app.

The menu screen displays it's options through images, with only the selected option having text shown. The space that the text is displayed in stays the same regardless of what option is selected, which saves space on the screen. The loading screen is pretty dull in comparison to how bright and interactive the menu screen is, and this is something that they game doesn't capitalise on. When you compare this loading screen to the loading screen of Rhino Raid, you realise how useful the loading screen can be.

The game is time-based (top left corner), with it cycling through months and years as you spend more time playing, although you can pause time if you want to. The middle box in the top displays messages advising you what to do, and the right box shows you how much money you have available. These are features that I intend to take forward into my game as they will all help the player. 

You can rotate around the world or zoom in or out using the arrows and the plus and minus sign in the bottom corner. These tools are useful for seeing the world at different angles, however, you have to navigate using the arrow keys on the keyboard, so a way round this would need to be found.

The world is viewable from a birds eye view as well (left) which allows you to see what is going on where and allows you to jump quickly from one area to another. Their is also a photography mode which allows you to explore the world in a first person view and take photos. This is useful for if you get a bit bored of the game as it provides you with a different angle to explore it from. 

Implementing Zoo Tycoon 2 Mechanics to the Exercise

Colour Scheme

Using the terrain editing mechanics you can create a colour scheme within the world, for example, unprotected land would be shown in brown (dirt), privately owned land in bright green (gras), and protected land would look like a natural forest floor being a mix of different shades of dark brown and green. The privately owned areas and protected areas would also be differentiated by the fencing that surrounds them. The privately owned areas would have low stone walls around them to give a rustic feel to them, and the protected areas would have metal fences around them to show a serious nature.

Time, Money and Messages

Keeping a running total of the budget available to the player makes the game easier as they can play as they go along, which means that they don't necessarily have to plan how they're going to go about the game at the beginning of each level.

Time is an important factor as well, as the game needs to show that if isolated pandas stay isolated for too long in areas that can't support them, they'll die. If a month were to pass every 5 minutes it keeps the game moving at a fairly fast paced rate which will stop the user from getting bored. Playing through time can also bring it's rewards, such as gaining extra money every 12 months from WWF funding and through Zoos if the player has chosen to loan out a panda from their reserve.

The messages can keep players up to date on the important issues that need tackling. For example, if is in an isolated area and it's food source is running out, the message board would alert the player to this so they could do something about it.

Clicking on the money display or message board would bring up screens like the above ones, which automatically pause time and allow you to assess the situation of your budget and your pandas.

Photography Mode

If the player got bored or ran out of money, they could switch to photography mode, allowing them to have a more first person view of the world. The player would be rewarded for photo's they took by getting extra money put in their budget as the photographs would create publicity and encourage donations. Photo's including multiple pandas or baby pandas would result in larger amounts of money being added to the budget.

Birds Eye Map

By overlaying an isometric grid onto the map, land would be bought and sold through individual triangles, with each triangle having the same price, giving the user an easy way to buy an area of land quickly whilst being able to view the cost. The triangles would be fairly small, and so it would be necessary to be able to zoom in and out of the map. The key on the right would be replaced with options like "Buy Private Land", "Buy Unprotected Land", "Sell Protected Land", and "Loan Panda", which would allow you to loan one your Pandas to a foreign zoo for a year in return for an increased budget.

The human housing, represented above with a present and in the exercise as little squares, wouldn't fit the grid, so they will need to be changed to triangles. They can be placed anywhere on the map every by clicking them. This would be done every December after a cycle of 12 months and would be a screen that is brought up automatically so the user is forced to consider the needs of people.

The triangle would be coloured in the appropriate colour of brown, green, or a darker mix of the colours to represent which area they currently were. 

The location and number of Pandas would remain the same as above, but they would be against either a pale blue or pink background depending on their gender. There would also be icons to indicate the levels of food supply in each area. These two features would indicate to the user what areas needed to be connected.