Rambling

So this has been an awesome two-year journey. Work on this new version of the website started shortly after I launched ZooBerry 2.0 in 2024, which if you’re reading this from the beta.zooberry.org domain, should still be accessible here: old ZooBerry. If you’re reading this after the beta, you’ll have to check it out on the waybackmachine!

If you don’t know about ZooBerry, feel free to check out a summary in the about page. Basically: we’re here to archive old Zoo Tycoon mods from old websites, but also serve as a platform for newer modders that still have fun modding these games.

Why another ZooBerry?

The old website was built on something called Hugo, which is a static site generator. That means that it’s not very dynamic and does not allow for user registrations or for any of the users that have submitted mods to own management over their files. As the website grew and more people uploaded files, it became a bit difficult for me as a one man army to take on as many requests. I started ZooBerry while I was still in university, and as I’ve gotten busier with my job hunt journey, it became important that I let the website become a bit more self-sufficient.

This new version of the website is now essentially a web app for all intents and purposes. You can register, upload your own files, leave comments, etc.

New features

As you might be able to tell at this point, it’s quite comprehensive in the changes you can see around the website. I won’t go into an exhaustive list, but I think it would be useful to at least cover the important ones.

Register an account

You can register an account any number of ways: with a Google account, Discord, or Patreon. If you have none of those, you’re welcome to register the old-fashioned way with email/password.

Of note: I have no plans to lock downloads behind an account. Just as before this update, all files will remain accessible to any user browsing the website. The intent should be that no one should feel compelled to register to do any modding.

Account features

So what does having an account get you?

• Upload mods from the new Create menu
• Publish tutorials
• Leave contents on mod pages and tutorials (if comments are enabled)
• Like/follow mods and authors
• Add profile links to things like donation pages, google drives, etc

Mod Management

The old website required you to upload mods from a Google form, which wasn’t ideal for many reasons. Importantly, once it was up, it was completely static. You’d need to message me on Discord if you needed to update anything about the page. Now, you can upload mods yourself. A few other things that this allows you to do:

• Set a future publication date for your mod
• Assign collaborators, give them roles, and assign edit access so that multiple people can edit a mod page
• Add images and youtube links to the mod gallery
• Customize how your files are displayed to your users with file categories and descriptions
• All files have a version history, so if you upload a new version the old one stays similar to Github
• Set tags so that users can find your mod
• Add images to the mod description with markdown
• Add dependencies if your mod requires other files to work
• Add external credits for things like assets used to create the mod
• Add links to display on your mod page (i.e., google drive, mirrors, patreon, etc)
• Enable (or disable) comments for your page

Organizations

I do a lot of archival work with ZooBerry, so I needed to add something for organizations; their own page you can access that lists their mods. Similar to mod pages, you can now create your own organizations for things like design teams.

• Add members to your organization and give them roles (ie. coder, texturer, owner, etc).
• Decide who can manage your org
• When you publish mods, decide to publish under this organization if you are a member

There aren’t many yet, but check out the current list of organizations: Organizations

Message of the Day

I didn’t feel like we would be a proper Zoo Tycoon fansite without a message of the day feature, so as you can clearly glean from the home page, you can suggest one! Right now I’ll be doing it manually as the days go by, but I would love it if people suggested random animal, game, or any fun facts you can think of. If your MOTD is approved (to make sure it’s not harmful…), your message will be selected by random, and you’ll be notified.

Oh and if you see a MOTD that you like, pin it to your profile! I thought that would be cool to do. However, if you pin a new one, your old one disappears and you won’t be able to add it back. A bit of a quirk, albeit intentional for the fun of it.

Beta

To summarize: this is a new version of ZooBerry and all of the good and bad that comes with it. This website is a lot more dynamic which means a lot more convenience for modders and users, but it also means that a lot can go wrong. The database can crash, a nefarious actor can try to spam comments, etc. A lot more work will go into this new website to make sure that it’s meant solely as a platform for modders of this awesome, old sim game.

With that, I need everyone’s help. If you’re here from the beta.zooberry.org domain, that means we’re still in open beta. That means that many of the features above plus everything left unsaid is still being tested. You might see things break, or you might see things I thought would work but it turns out, maybe not a great idea. If you spot something that could be improved, feel free to reply to this article or please do join our Discord and let me know there. I will take all the feedback that I can get!

P.S.

Also: the graphics aren’t totally done yet. You’ll notice that the logo is just text. I still need to design a logo…it’s coming.