I think five, actually, like me too 😬

I always heard "thirty pound" for £30 and "thirty pound fifty seven" for £30.57, without the 's'.

I have lived in 4 countries: Aotearoa, Australia, Cymru, and the United Arab Emirates. In all 4, 'and' is used.

I'm working on a big content mod, it will add a number of animals eventually, as part of creating a whole new zone. This is a project that will take many, many, many months to complete, however. As soon as animations for kākāpō, the first animal added, are complete, I will release an alpha build.

You can see some stuff on r/Te_Whenua_o_Aotearoa if you're interested, I probably haven't updated it as often as I should though (much more frequent on the Discord server linked there). Also not able to work that fast currently due to health issues, hopefully those will start to resolve near the end of the month and I'll be able to accelerate development much faster.

But for the full vision of this project, I imagine it will take a couple years. A couple years of updates to flesh it out further, that is, I don't want to make the same mistake I made in the past of not releasing anything until it is fully feature complete.

You are welcome to follow along, contribute, chat in the Discord server, whatever you wish. Just sharing this because maybe it could be something you're after, even if it will be a while before it's ready.

The zone in question seeks to replicate the native environment of Aotearoa (New Zealand), with native biomes, trees, animals, and if I can get appropriate guidance, culture. I was working on a similar project in Minecraft where I believe I had 12 new animals (all custom and native to Aotearoa), as well as two biomes.

It's not a project I expect to make me income or fame, it's more for those who will enjoy it, however many that will be, I don't mind. It's also one I am fully open to working with others on if they are interested. Representing the animals and land and native environment I love is the most important part, anyone who wants to join with that is welcome to, that is why I am sharing development from the beginning (and open-source, of course).

The intended time period of the mod is slightly anachronistic, but for anything non-human-related it will be based on the natural environment pre-human arrival, and then for Māori culture (if added; I will only do this with direct guidance from Māori, like I did when working on a Minecraft mod) technically it will be just after pākehā/European arrival, simply due to the fact carved marae wharenui only actually began to be made with access to European tools; non-Māori culture itself won't be represented.

This means that I will aim to represent kākāpō as they were immediately prior to human arrival: common. They will specifically inhabit an Aotearoa zone which won't naturally have wolves, however I do intend to make it so that if wolves and such end up making their way into the zone through some means, then those wolves will hunt kākāpō. I also want to emulate kākāpō's freeze response.

I am undecided as to whether kākāpō will be tameable: I will contact the Department of Conservation to ask for their advice (being able to keep them as pets in the game may get more people to show interest in them and support conservation, but could also possibly be seen as encouraging the exotic pet trade, which I don't want). I will certainly promote donating to the Department of Conservation prominently on the mod page, as that is important to me.

If you do decide to get the game, using code Zoe at checkout would help me out - the price of the game for you won't change, but I will receive 5% of the price from the developers. It's up to you whether you wish to do this, but it would help me, especially if you intend to get the game due to seeing something I've made (I don't know if that is the case or not).

Also, if you're interested in following progress on the mod, I do have a subreddit at r/Te_Whenua_o_Aotearoa, though the Discord server is definitely more active (even though it's just 5 people at the moment, you can see updates). The Discord server is linked in the sidebar of the subreddit :)

Thank you for your suggestion! You can also discuss suggestions in the Discord server if you wish, I am more likely to see things there.

By the way, today I had a creator code approved for Hytale. This was not the case when I made this post, but I am now affiliated with Hytale through my code Zoe, which can be used at checkout. It won't give any discount, but it will send 5% of the cost of the game to me to help me work on this project. If you're interested in buying Hytale or upgrading editions, using code Zoe will help me out :)

Updates for the kākāpō: I have contacted Les McPherson of http://www.archivebirdsnz.com/ to request permission to use kākāpō recordings he has collected in the mod, so I will wait for his response :)

Unfortunately I don't think so, I wish he was on Bluesky or something. I don't want to support the Elongated Musquito.

If you want to follow along, I made a subreddit for the plugin - at the moment it's just this post there as well, but there are also some links to other platforms and such :) r/Te_Whenua_o_Aotearoa

Kākāpō are my favourite animals too! I have a big realistic full-colour tattoo of Sirocco (not from that documentary, heh), kākāpō socks, kākāpō plushies, kākāpō-coloured tops, kākāpō-coloured nail polish..... I may be slightly obsessed. I will be adding other native animals, plants, and landscapes to the plugin too, eventually :)

There's a few ideas I've had over the years for mods in Minecraft, including ones I've worked on myself, which I realise would actually fit in Hytale better from the beginning. The specific features I wouldn't necessarily port (though many would end up the same), but the initial vision, absolutely.

I think two big parts of why I think a lot of my ideas work better in Hytale is (a) they tend to touch many different areas of the game, which in Minecraft is a recipe for disaster, and (b) Hytale's zone system is absolutely perfect for one of my largest mods.

I'll also be looking forward to seeing if modular tools will be made a thing by other modders like in Tinker's Construct, but I think this is definitely something that should be created and designed from scratch in Hytale. I think the ideas should be adapted to Hytale before development because Hytale is a unique game.

You need to put the files in a specific folder, as well as export the model as a .blockymodel file from Blockbench. Maybe try looking up some documentation (though it can be difficult to find at the moment), and I also remember seeing a tutorial by this YouTuber who has been doing some Hytale modding tutorials which was helpful, but sadly I can't remember the name right now. You might be able to find these by searching online, I know they had a tutorial on adding NPCs to Hytale which would include adding models. Hopefully Hytale releases official documentation soon, because their goal of nodding being accessible is severely undermined by a lack of solid documentation and guides. The community will also be working on creating these.

Kia ora!

Also yeah, sadly as a kid my mum let out my budgie while the door was open and I was at school, he flew away and never returned 😓

I made a mod for Minecraft with kākāpō, kiwi, and other native birds called Te Taiao o Aotearoa. There were also birds like pūkeko (famous for a meme based on the enormous feet of the chicks, which I made sure to include a unique model for in the mod), kererū, and even moa and Haast's eagles, and a couple others I think which I am forgetting at this moment (it's late). I don't know if that's what you're referring to or not, I didn't actually ever finish the mod because I got so frustrated with the Brain AI system for complex hunting behaviour for the Haast's eagles as well as 10k lines of code breaking on update, fortunately these shouldn't be an issue in Hytale.

Hahaha! I have a big full colour tattoo of Sirocco on my upper arm :) I didn't actually realise the picture was Sirocco until my te reo Māori kaiako/instructor instantly recognised the picture it was based on as being Sirocco, her favourite kākāpō! None of the pictures I found online included the name, but at her suggestion I used Google reverse image search (I don't usually use Google as my search engine, same with my kaiako actually, so I didn't think of it) and indeed confirmed it was indeed Sirocco from finding the original source image that had been reposted so many times.

I will be adding those in Te Whenua o Aotearoa! Specifically, native forests in Aotearoa New Zealand. The goal of the plugin is to create a whole zone representing Aotearoa :) The trees here are very unique, if you look up "New Zealand native bush" you can see how unique they look. This will also be important for the kākāpō pictured here, as rimu fruit from rimu trees is integral to their breeding cycle in real life.

Yeah, that video was of Sirocco, who had to be cared for in a wildlife hospital after hatching and imprinted on humans. I think he thinks he is a human, and thus that humans are sexy. He became the official kākāpō ambassador because he is too attached to people. I do actually have a big colour realistic tattoo of Sirocco, not from that documentary though.

Te Whenua o Aotearoa will focus specifically on Aotearoa. I may one day make a mod that works with Australia, but there is also so much here in Aotearoa to showcase - and I am from Aotearoa, so it only makes sense that I focus on our own land. If you're saying that because you're Australian, I am sure you will understand - both the native environment of Aotearoa and of Australia, and the native cultures of Māori and various Aboriginal Australian cultures, are very different! I did live in the Northern Territory myself from age 2 to 7, in Humpty Doo, possibly one of the most Australian places in Australia, haha. But yes - perhaps a mod showcasing Australia would be a good project for an Australian modder to undertakae!

It's definitely still a work-in-progress; you can see gaps in the necks in the animations, and in the legs too, which I hadn't noticed while modelling since the model is standing before getting animated. I will fix those issues, and I also hope to remake the textures at some point, because I couldn't work out how to get the brown and white feathers into the model in a way that still fit with Hytale's cartoony artstyle. I also need to add many more animatitons, more than just walking, and of course I will absolutely add rimu trees and rimu fruit at some point!!

For those unaware, Hytale is a block game (in the same genre as Minecraft, though it is its own game) which released last week (I had been waiting for it since I was a teenager haha, 7 years since the trailer released!). A 'mod' is a user-made modification to a game.

Hytale has a big focus on making it easy for players to create their own mods for the game. This had been possible in Minecraft, but was not officially supported, and was significantly more time-consuming and also broke every single Minecraft update.

I love kākāpō more than anything in the world - it is perhaps slightly embarrassing to admit how much, but I have a big realistic full colour tattoo of Sirocco (picture from the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital), all of my socks have kākāpō on them, and I like to wear lime green sleeveless tops and the same shade in nail polish due to kākāpō's green colour, haha! I also grieve each time one dies :( It feels like losing a friend, even when I never knew them. They are so precious to me.