So when I was younger, I loved me some Zoo Tycoon. but one time I was playing it and was fairly far along, when all of a sudden ALL the animals in the zoo just stopped moving around or making noise. All their stats were okay and didn't change at all, they weren't unhappy or unhealthy or hungry, but they just didn't move. I could click on them (that would make the animal sound) and move them and stuff, but they didn't move on their own or make noise on their own. They were never fed or needed their poop to be cleaned (all the zookeepers were wandering around aimlessly, since they cleaned up the poop and there wasn't any poop replacing it) and eventually they died of old age and disappeared like usual (the ones that were babies when it froze were still babies when they died of old age). There was no breeding, and if I bought new animals they didn't move either.
I hadn't started on the dinosaur or marine parts of my park yet, and was a bit afraid to in all honesty, but I was dying to know what would happen, if the dinosaurs would behave the same way, what happened with the marine shows, etc. (By the way, I had all the upgrades and toys and stuff by this point, that I had gotten even before the glitch happened) So I made an exhibit for a fairly easy dinosaur, I think the Camptosaurus, and bought (excuse me--hired) a scientist. The egg didn't age, didn't decrease in health when the scientist didn't visit, and never hatched. The scientist didn't respond to the egg, didn't do the regular checks, put down food, anything. Boring.
The marine life, specifically the shows, were a bit more interesting. First, I made a dolphin tank. The dolphins didn't move, as usual. The marine specialist added the food, and left. When I set it up for a show tank, things got a little weird. I don't remember how often I set it for, but the visitors would go sit down in the stands right before the show starts, the marine specialist would open the slidy hole thing so that the dolphins could travel to the show tank (but the didn't move at all), go over and do the arm motions and stuff, but the toys, water, etc all moved around in the same animation as if the dolphins were there. It looked like there were invisible dolphins or something. But anyways, the show goes on normally, and does everything planned, then when the show is over and people are supposed to leave, EVERYONE who was in the stands is in the frantic/screaming mode, as though an animal broke loose. Usually when you look at their thoughts during the show, it's like "wow, that was a cool trick" or something, and those thoughts are still there during the show, but disappear as soon as the show is over and they leave the stands (all the guests' older thoughts were also cleared). The visitors who saw the show also lost all their items, food, etc. Their other stats were the same, but for whatever reason just kept running around panicked, and wouldn't calm down.
My next idea was to physically click and move one of the dolphins from the dolphin tank into the show tank the next time there was a show, to see if that would do something. It still stayed there without moving, all the animations were normal, and everyone panicked at the end. I left the dolphin there to see if something would happen, but nothing did.
Oh, one more thing of note with the marine life: so there's the thing where if you put mermaid statues in a tank they will become real mermaids. I tried that, and it was weird, because it didn't turn into a mermaid, didn't have an animal window for it, was literally just the statue underwater, but the marine specialist came by and put down food anyways.
Phase two of the experiment: wreak havoc. I usually prefer to have orderly zoos and rule over them with an iron fist, but I couldn't resist seeing what would happen if shit hit the fan. So I went around checking the animal fences, and apparently the janitors (those lazy bums) had gotten behind and didn't fix some of the fences between animals, so it had the ruined rusty fences in a bunch of places. In a normal game, as soon as that happens you get an alert, but I got nothing, and this had happened while I was messing around with the dinosaurs and marine animals. As far as I could tell, not having a border between animal exhibits didn't really effect anything, EXCEPT that it made the two exhibits into one big exhibit. This unfortunately got rid of one of the gates, which meant that it had caused a kind of chain reaction where the janitor would try to get in to fix a fence, but by the time he walked over to the gate, the fence had deteriorated and the gate had been removed.
The next thing I did was make a hole in the fence so that the animal could escape into the general park, rather than into another animal's cage. Nothing happened, no panicking. From a different cage, I took an animal (a lion) and moved it into a busy street (this took a bit of manipulation, since people kept getting in the way, but whatever). Everyone started panicking, and what I found interesting: no matter how quickly I then moved the animal back into its exhibit, or if I left it out there, it very quickly died. Well, okay. Next I bought an animal and without putting it in an exhibit placed it in the street. Same panic, followed by the animal dying.
Next, I took a human and put it in an exhibit (one with crocodiles). And, the freaky part: the human just stopped moving, as though it were one of the animals of the exhibit. Then, when I removed the human from the exhibit to bring it back to the general population, everyone responded as though that person were an escaped animal: panicking, running away, and shortly after, the person died for no apparent reason.
I did some other things, like adding shops to the enclosures to see if they would freeze up (they didn't, just had the bored shopkeeper animation because obviously he wasn't selling anything). The zookeepers, janitors, tour guides, scientists, and marine specialists moved everywhere. None of the guests had any animal related thoughts (such as "zebra 2 looks happy"), and other than that it was fairly boring.
One last thing I tried: I figured that since having the broken fences didn't do anything to how the exhibits worked, I would try the money cheat (press and hold shift+4, but all fences immediately deteriorate. This was when things really were weird, because as soon as I pressed it, a bunch of things happened at once (I had to continually pause and unpause the game to assess the situation): 1. all the fences were removed (obviously) 2. all the animals started moving and making noise again, they behaved like normal animals, only they would occasionally glitch to a different spot, rather than walking somewhere 3. the ones that I saw were at 0 happiness and 0 environment suitability, regardless of what they were before 4. none of the tools worked anymore, only play/pause and movement/deletion tools 5. most chillingly, all the humans (including zoo keepers, janitors, everyone) were frozen, and would disappear whenever the dangerous animals walked through them.
What happened, guys? Pissed off animals getting their revenge? Either way, what the fuck.
It all starts with the Cursed Indian Lions Mane Jellyfish you bought from the shady guy in the trenchcoat. And then it all goes downhill from there. I remember when it happened to me, all the guests turned into wolves and exploded.
Fucking tropical aquarium building...
Also, unrelated to this story but incredibly fun: in an (unglitchy) game of Zoo Tycoon, I had made this huge zoo that kind of looped around, and I figured the guests would be smart enough to remember how to leave and would know to backtrack. Eventually I noticed that there were thousands of people all congregating in this one plaza place toward the end, and a bunch of them were angry and had been there since the zoo had opened, like three years earlier. So I cut a path in between two exhibits, and I literally remember how it went:
1. build railing
2. remove old fence on the side where the crowd was
3. crowd funnels through and completely floods this little tiny 1-square wide path, fitting about a hundred people there, who went through as far as they could but were stopped by the other railing.
4. remove the other railing, completing the path back toward the start of the zoo
5. straight line of visitors, walking about 10 per square, filing out, walking EXACTLY on the designated paths I created, staying in their thick throng, and all LEAVING THE PARK. Not even stopping for a bathroom break or anything, just getting the fuck out.
6. I decided to fuck with them and put a fence right at the very front of the park, so that they couldn't leave. Now this giant throng (which still trailed back a long long way) was packed up in the front of the zoo, upset because they couldn't leave.
oh my god good times.
I remember that if you rename a guest to "Alfred H." crows will swarm your zoo and people start panicking.
Another one: if you rename one of the zookeepers Howard L, all of the zookeepers get little cthulhu heads.
*May not be true. But wouldn´t that be awesome?
I've always wanted to see Cthulhu cleaning up warthog shit.
