Planet Zoo 2 | Update 1.0.5

Hayo Zookeepers, 

Welcome to our first post-launch weekend! We hope you’re all excited to play more and to expand those early zoo concepts into detailed builds! There are some incredible designs already on the Workshop, and as you become more familiar with the new tools we’ve introduced, we can’t wait to see how those designs continue to develop. We’ve been blown away by your support for Planet Zoo 2, with the volume of concurrent players, well above our expectations!  

Your support of the Planet Zoo franchise means a lot to us as a studio. Planet Zoo 2 is a milestone for the team that worked on the game, and your appreciation for our work is something we never take for granted.  

We apologise for the stability issues that some players have faced in Franchise Mode, and that general game stability has been below what we would expect. The complexity of simulation in our games often means that we see new issues arising as we see our biggest influx of players outside of significant internal testing and user research.  

We know that, like us, you want to see our game succeed and to continue to grow. You’ve had moments where the game has sparked the reason you fell in love with our franchise, and moments where you’ve simply been unable to achieve what you set out to create. We acknowledge those frustrations, and our sole focus is on addressing several high-priority areas, listed below. 

Alongside today’s Update, we also wanted to provide an initial status update on our current focus. Next week we will share an ‘under investigation’ news post, which will regularly update to highlight key issues from the Issue Tracker which the team are working on fixes for.  

Since launch, we’ve worked to address a number of high-priority fixes which were preventing access to Franchise Mode, improving stability and addressing key pieces of feedback to improve your experience.  This will continue over the coming weeks. 

**High Priority Areas **

• Franchise Mode Stability 

• Resolving Crashes & Performance Concerns 

• Save stability, and negating the loss of CC 

• Re-engaging key quality of life features introduced in Planet Zoo which have not correctly deployed (Ie, edge scrolling and exhibit quick sell/release) 

• Animal behaviours and animations behaving erratically

**Franchise Mode and Frontier Server Connectivity **

Since launch we've resolved several key issues specifically linked to Franchise Mode, including; 

• Increasing the balance between Male and Female animals being added to the animal trading market from Frontier’s Zoos for cash. (Included in today’s Update) 

• Improving the balance between male and female births within Franchise mode. (Included in today’s Update) 

• Extending the login window to reduce the risk of server time out while connecting (Included in today’s Update) 

• Increasing the volume of animals being added to the animal trading market. 

• Increasing server capacity. 

Franchise Mode remains a key priority for our focus. In order to support us in resolving remaining issues, we encourage you to submit tickets on these issues via the issue tracker. Some usernames are also being impacted by our profanity filter due to a banned word being present in the middle of a username, which can also display a server connection error. If this is affecting you, please raise a ticket with our support team.

Please note that if you are using a VPN whilst playing Planet Zoo 2, particularly Franchise Mode, this may also lead to connectivity issues.  

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Update 1.0.5 Notes

Ongoing Areas of Focus

These are specific areas which the development team have identified for ongoing improvements, due to the complex nature of Planet Zoo 2's simulation.

• Animals climbing, jumping, and pouncing will see ongoing improvements.

• Some animals don't align with their enrichments correctly on occasion.

• Animals sometimes erroneously escape from habitats during certain behaviours.

• Animals are being boxed more frequently than usual, including when migrating in wild areas.

• Investigating feedback on core creative toolset.

• Monitoring Franchise Mode stability following fixes.

Key Changes

• Improved stability when loading a franchise zoo, especially for newly created zoos and flat zoos

• Resolved issue where a Wildlife Reserve would sometimes be randomly selected as the sculpted terrain option when creating a Taiga sandbox or franchise map

• Added option for "Edge Scrolling" in Keyboard and Mouse settings

• Resolved issue where several settings were not saved after closing and relaunching the game

• Fixed Zoopedia incorrectly marking DLC animals as inaccessible for DLC owners

Bug Fixes

Stability & Performance

• Various performance and stability improvements

• Improvements to texture streaming to reduce pop-in

• Fixed occasional crash when choosing an Ecosystem Brush in the Tanzania Reserve Wildlife Reserve

• Fixed crash caused by setting multiple commands to the same key in the keybinding settings

• Resolved error not clearing when attempting to create a new save with no save slots available

• Incorrect complexity warning no longer appears when loading into a 100% complexity zoo

• Item browser filters and sorting will now reset on level load

Career

• Fixed career notifications appearing on the main menu when exiting career after certain objectives

• Fixed softlock caused by deleting the Moon Jelly Exhibit in the Nordic Fjords before the relevant objective by adding it as a placable item

• Fixed softlock in the Great Rift Valley career scenario by disabling the ability to "Quick Release" Giraffes which removes them from storage and makes them unable to be placed

• Fixed softlock caused by opening the Animal Trading menu while Alys is talking about adopting a Shoebill in the East Africa career scenario

• Resolved boxed animals appearing in the Sumatra Reserve career scenario when loading into the level

Franchise

• Resolved Wildlife Reserves costing the incorrect amount of Conservation Credits

• Increased the split between Male and Female animals becoming available for cash in the Animal Trading Market

• Improved the overall balance for animals born in Franchise mode to be male or female

Sandbox

• Resolved "Terrain Only" option not functioning when exporting a career scenario to sandbox

Animals

• Updates and corrections added to the Zoopedia

• Fixed adult career animals being sometimes incorrectly flagged as juveniles

• Initial improvements to animal climbing animations

• Fixed Meerkat textures not loading for the albino variant

• Resolved fish getting stuck outside of an aquarium when moving the habitat

• Resolved shoals not using new space when an aquarium is expanded

• Fixed big splashes occurring when animals land on wet beams

• Fixed African Penguins being able to walk on water

Park Management

• Resolved an issue where inspection reports were only giving 4 stars when all aspects were rated 5 stars

• Resolved vet staff getting stuck removing deceased animals from aquariums

Park Construction

• Resolved Basic Vet Surgery unintentionally moving when being placed

• Fixed incorrect tooltips displaying in Wildlife Reserve Ecosystem info panels

• Fixed focus staying in the Object Browser search bar after selecting out of it

• Fixed width setting in path panel functioning incorrectly when using "Feet" as the measurement

• Fixed ESC hotkey occasionally not functioning after using a nature brush

Workshop

• Featured workshop creations now correctly show in the item browser

Settings

• Adjusted HDR calibration image

Gamepad

• Fixed gamepad sometimes being unresponsive in the "Edit Media" panel

• Fixed issue with Move action being performed when trying to Advanced Move using gamepad

Localisation

• Resolved duplicate text appearing during career introduction when playing in specific languages

Platform Specific

• PC (Steam)

  • Fixed inability to connect to server on Steam Deck Proton 11 and newer