Introducing a set of TexMod retextures that will change the appearance of in-game zoo buildings:

Elephant House

This was another on my list of structures that I’ve been wanting to alter since I first saw it in the game. The number one thing to go was that blue roof which I initially tried to replace with tiling but I’ve never seen a texture so tortured and convoluted around a model until I saw what that trial retexture looked like in the game. Because of that this roof needed to remain a solid color. As you see the wood trim’s been lightened and that inexplicable design beneath the eaves has been replaced with complemental shingles.

Giraffe House

Apart from that mystery dark spot in the center of the roof which has now been covered with a matching peak very little change was required here.

Ape House

In spite of the fact there’s glass located directly behind it the developers of this game have seen fit to apply an unnecessary transparency to the texture hanging off the edges of the roof – something I may attend to if I ever do a version 1.1 of this set. There were only small touches needed on this one: tinting the glass, putting a complemental peak on the roof, adjustment of tree trunk color & rock textures, and cleaning up the wood planking on the apes’ access walkway.

Small Herbivore House

This was the most fun to do because moderate alteration and a new shingle roof resulted in a much neater, more architectural looking structure.

Carnivore House

Nothing needed to be done to this except adding a slight golden tint to the textures.  Now those rocks don’t look so cold!

Large Herbivore House

Some of the challenge in completing this one was in figuring out how some of the texture map was actually painted onto the model.  The new shingle roof and the raised wood siding do a lot to improve the finished appearance. This change in the visual aspect of this building suggests the carpenters and plasterers had a light time and much fun renovating & cleaning up this building in the park.

All the structures have had a little more bedding added to the floor inside so they look less Spartan and give a feeling that it would actually be comfortable for the zoo animals to lie down inside. In addition to the texture changes some of the buildings’ colors have been tinted in varying degrees in order to get them to look as if they all belong with each other and that they all belong in the same park.

The Animal Keepers’ Hut has been cleaned up and has had a complemental shingle roof added, with the overall color of the hut lightened.

My new Zoo Structure ReTextures v1.0 is now available File Transfer Database. I hope you will gain as much enjoyment out of using these new zoo structure retextures as I had in making them.

A copy of TexMod is needed to use this pack. TexMod information, instructions, and download are available here:

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