| Each Tuesday till the release of Arabian Nights, we will be featuring a new and interesting fact or "tidbit." This could provide something interesting about the development process, the Artifex team, answer a frequently asked question, or maybe even spill some facts about the expansion to taunt you with! Check back every Tuesday for a new Tidbit! Tidbit 14: September 18, 2007 Artifex is excited to announce its newest member: Budgielover101. She has proven her great talent and we know she will fit will into the team. Currently she has been doing great work testing the final products so that they are bug free, but we are sure that there will be more exciting work for her in the future. Tidbit 13: September 11th, 2007 Arabian Nights has been in production for over a year, starting back in August 2006. By the time Arabian Nights is released this Autumn, it will be 14 months of hard work and dedication from the Artifex team that have shaped this expansion, and there is still more to come from them! Tidbit 12: September 4th, 2007 Q. Where on Earth do you get all of your information for animals? Got any links I can use? A. Hehe, we do have a fair number of links that we use; Artifex members are quite amazing with their internet sleuth skills! Here are a few: Animal Diversity Web - straight from University of Michigan, this site is a great reference for animals around the world. ARKive - a site mostly for images and videos, it provides amazing references for several animals. Ultimate Ungulate - Every wondered why there seems to be so many ungulates in the ZT2 games? Take a gander here and I think you will have your answer! Tidbit 11: August 27th, 2007 Q. How long does it take Mika or Manda to perfect an animal skin? A. Mika says: Oh goodness! Well it of course depends on the animal. If its a base skin that I've worked a few times before with, then its a slightly quicker process because I know where the difficult parts of the skin lie in the dds. Some though are just frustrating no matter how many times I've played with it! It also depends on how much painting I have to do; the real challenge with this expansion is that so many of the animals are so endangered, or seen so little by humans, that reference pictures were very hard to find, and animals like the Indian Civet and the Caspian Seal have NO photos in them; they are completed painted by hand. As far as time goes, I'd say that it averages between one hour and five hours - this time frame includes my variants. Manda says: it takes me about 3 hours to 6 hours to perfect the enitre skin sets for the animals...thats if i work on it with very little breaks :P. but usually i dont like to spend one day one just one animal, so by the time it gets finished 1 or 4 weeks have passed :P first i have to get my refrence pictures, which have to be pretty large, since i use the Copy & paste recoloring method. but osmtimes i cant find a good reference picture,for example: the arabian wolf. i regular dog fur for it ^_^ but most of the time refrence picture finding is the most frusturating part of recoloring for me! the actual recoloring doesnt take as long XD Tidbit 10: August 21st, 2007 Q. Why did we choose the Arabian region as a place to focus an entire expansion around? A. Arabia is a place full of wildlife and most people don't realize it. They associate the region with warfare and poverty, desert and religious feuds. Many do not think about the abundancy of life that resides here. The Arabian region was basically completely left out by Blue Fang in their previous expansions, and Artifex felt it was time for this neglected region, not only by BF, but also in people's minds all around the world, to have a chance in the spotlight. The region is diverse and magnificent, beautiful and interesting. It spans more than just the countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, and we feel that Arabian Nights not only reflects this, but also provides insight into an area of the world most people do not think of in this light. We hope that when you download the expansion that you agree. Tidbit 9: August 14th, 2007 The animals included in Arabian Nights were decided as a group, making sure that we considered popular requests, personal favourites, variety in species and size, a broad range of habitats and even some more unusual animals that we thought would make interesting additions to Zoo Tycoon 2. Although Arabia is the theme, we didn't want to feel too limited by geographic range so animals that overlap with the traditional Arabian territory are also included. Tidbit 8: July 31st, 2007 Q. Will you ever tell us how you mesh edited the MM2 animals? A. At this time, we do not plan on releasing our method of meshing the Marine Mania models. As unfair as this seems, it has been the general consensus of the group to not release this information to the general public. We will not be offering hints or answering questions about it either, so those of you intent on learning our secrets will just have to try to figure it out by yourself! It wouldn't be very fun if we gave away all our secrets! Tidbit 7: July 24th, 2007 Our team really loves variety in their zoos. In fact, every plant and animal that is in Arabian Nights has at least one variant, and some have up to 4 or 5. Even some of the objects have variants! Never will two of your zoos look exactly the same again. Tidbit 6: July 17th, 2007 This weeks tidbit is a fact about the Arabian Nights Expansion: Within the expansion seven biomes are covered, and within each biome there will be a shrub and tree native to Arabia, so no animal will be without native foliage! Tidbit 5: July 10th, 2007 Q: What does Artifex mean? A: Artifex comes from the Latin word for Artist. We found the word not only fun sounding, but the meaning behind it works perfectly for the work we do. Tidbit 4: July 3rd, 2007 This week's tidbit is a fact about the Arabian Nights expansion: Although the name "Arabian Nights" might make you think that the majority of the critters are desert dwelling creatures, the expansion features animals from seven different biomes: alpine, coastal, desert, grassland, scrub, temperate forest, and wetlands. Tidbit 3: June 26th, 2007 We had an interested person send us a question we thought was worthy of answering for this week's tidbit: Q: Which animal was easiest to code? A: Most of the animals had some sort of bug or twist in them to make them somewhat difficult, however the main causes of difficult coding are major changes in behavior and model. Therefore, animals such as the Baluchistan Bear and the Caspian Seal were far easier than some of the others. Tidbit 2: June 19th, 2007 We have gotten this question asked of us a lot so we decided it was time to reveal the answer! Q: What is the meaning behind the logo for Artifex? A: Artifex member Nique created our logo; and it was the perfect fit for our group! We liken the group to be represented by the tree; we are not necessarily done growing for one, and thus, like a tree we may slowly grow over the years. Additionally, however, each member of Artifex is part of this tree as an individual, sort of like how fruit is part of a tree yet is its own entity. And while some of our members may leave the group, or the tree, just like fruit does, we are confident that another one will be ready to grow in its place! This logo represents us as we are now, and yet can represent us as our numbers shift and our members change. We liked that it was a logo that could grow with us! Does this mean Artifex is looking for members now? No, haha. We just enjoy that it is a flexible symbol for us so that in the future, if we want to or have to, we can add new people to the team and not have to worry about the logo not fitting us anymore! Tidbit 1: June 12th, 2007 This week's tidbit is an answer to one of your frequently asked questions! Q: Which animal has been the most challenging to code? A: The Rock Hyrax due to its behaviors and model. |
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Tidbit Tuesdays |