Dinos love toys! We figured why not let all the dinosaurs enjoy playing with water toys. Therefore all our news toys can be enjoyed by dinos on land and monsters in the sea.
Hats
I suppose our logic about Water Toys also applies to Hats. Real talk – I find the 6 new hats so freakingly hilarious on the Theropods I had to make them available to all. If this game isn’t about the joys of life then what is ya know?
Experimental Controller support
Finally! For those who like to lounge back and play Parkasaurus with a controller, now you can. Why do we call it “experimental”? Wellll, because there might be a few hiccups still. The cursor now becomes center screen locked which makes building and movement in the game much easier. In fact, I find myself faster in a lot of aspects of the game when using the controller
Quality of Life
A few notable quality of life additions in this Sea Monsters update:
UI goes to 125% Yes – we were aware for quite a while the UI could be difficult for some people to read. I just wanted to make a quick note here; if increasing UI size was easy we of course would have done it a long time ago. The reality is that for a game like ours, increasing UI is a really tough feature; languages break, UI breaks, and this requires weeks of testing on our part. Of course, we love our community and you’re all worth it! Just that there are only two of us so we sometimes can’t fix everything, or fix it right away.
Reduced GPU Usage when V-Sync is off You either get this or you don’t. For most players this was a non-factor, but for the few that had V-Sync off the game really put stress on your poor machines. Fixed!
Max people park 300 to 600 We had limited the number of guests in the park mainly because the game came to a crashing halt performance-wise if we went above the 300 number Well, we overhauled the animation system of our guests so everyone gets into the park. This very well might break the game in a way we have not thought of soooo..
Improved Performance Remember when Parkasaurus became available on the Switch? (we are available on the Switch!). Well, we opened the hood of the game and cleaned up our wires a little which resulted in a nice performance boost for PC. Enjoy!
DLC Available
Of course - there also is DLC available here that introduces aquatic exhibits and sea monsters. More about this later this week.
Update #60: DLC Sea Monsters - Looking for a few brave souls
Currently pausing PTR DLC Codes. Please feel free to post your parks still though! If we feel the need to get more testing in we'll go to the thread below in order
Hey all! We're looking for a few people to try out the DLC, report any bugs, maybe provide feedback. If someone even wants to try a controller (experimental feature) even better!
We might have to limit the # of people, depending on interest. Anyway - how do you participate? Let's be convoluted about it!
If interested: make a post of your park on this Steam thread:
Note #1: If for whatever reason we're pausing on giving out DLC codes, I'll comment on this thread.
Note #2: Any game saved in this version of the game can only be used moving forward with this version or newer.
Note #3: This is a development build is where we upload experimental features or fixes and as such may be unstable. There is always the chance your favorite save games will get ruined forever. This chance is very very low, but PTR builds are just that - tests.
Note #4: I think you're great.
Update #59: Below Ground
Hey all! Your next Parkasaurus update has a little everything. Today’s focus is on below ground water exhibits for the upcoming Parkasaurus DLC: Sea Monsters! I’m sure you’ve Wishlisted, right? Then there is the Parkasaurus Switch release!
Below Ground Water Exhibits
Water Feeders
Parkasaurus on Switch!
Below Ground Water Exhibits
Last time we chatted about above ground exhibits which are pretty cool. This time though, I wanted to discuss below ground exhibits! Why are these fun? Well – there is a bit more terrain modification required that I find fun! (although not necessary). Also – you can use pretty much whatever fence you desire since there is no requirement for a specialty fence to keep in water.
Another nice aspect of below water exhibits is the mix of land and water, such as below. This allows for some very beautiful exhibits to be made.
Water Feeders
There is range of water feeders! Now, your semi-aquatic Sea Monsters still want to eat their water on the ground – so no need to throw those out. Your aquatic Sea Monsters do require floating water feeders.
How does your vet fill the water feeders you may ask? Well with an old school scuba helmet :)
Parkasaurus now on Switch!
Still seems pretty crazy to us Parkasaurus is out on the Nintendo Switch. Yes, we did the port ourselves, and yes we like punishing ourselves. Maybe your friend isn’t so down with Steam but they are on the Switch – soooo – let them know. 😊
Hi friendos! I wanted to share with you one of the two types of water exhibits available in the upcoming Parkasaurus DLC: Sea Monsters! Wait, you haven’t Wishlisted it yet? Oh, also a little Parkasaurus Switch update.
Above Ground Water Exhibits
Water Toys!
Switch release 28th April!
Above Ground Water Exhibits
Above ground water exhibits are really well suited for pure aquatic sea monsters. What we mean by above ground is just that – the water where your sea monster lives are above the ground. This requires a special fence to hold that water. You have the choice of a short wall or a tall wall to hold your water and both walls come with medium visibility and strength
What happens if you use a normal fence? See? That isn’t going to work for your aquatic sea monsters.
Water Toys!
Due to some technical hurdles we were not entirely sure if there would be water toys, and luckily we figured it out! Water toys float, bob, and can be carried away. The only thing they might not do is burst from sharp teeth. 😊 Check out the Ichthy and her new toy!
Do you have any suggestions for in-game water toys?
Switch release 28th April!
We now have a date when you can play Parkasaurus on your Nintendo Switch! Circle your calendar for the 28th of April and be sure to tell all your friends who don’t play games on Steam. (can you even imagine?)
Hey friendos. Parkasaurus is in the SimFest so we figured why not do a couple of live streams! Have we ever done a live stream? Yes! We've done one. I'll do it live!
We're going to have fun?
Fun guaranteed! If you show up I'll let you name all the dinos.
Developer Livestream!
Hey friendos. Parkasaurus is in the SimFest so we figured why not do a couple of live streams! Have we ever done a live stream? No, we haven't. Will it be a disaster? Sure probably.
But we're going to have fun.
(fun not guaranteed)
Upcoming DLC: Sea Monsters
Lots to share and talk about during the next month about Sea Monsters. First, check out the store page:
The plan is to make Sea Monsters available simultaneously with the next Parkasaurus update. Our aim is to have this out the door soon!
Today I’ll just focus on some fun facts about the Sea Monster DLC itself:
New Biomes
See-through wall
Water doors
Veterinarian Helmets
New Biomes
The big addition here is water exhibits with 3 new biomes: Beach, Lagoon, and Photic. Unlike our previous exhibits that are morphed by “Wetness” and “Mountainous”, water exhibits are morphed by water depth and heat!
See through wall
You can see through the walls of above-ground exhibits! This might seem like a no-brainer, but it was quite complicated to pull off for a variety of reasons, a big one being performance. Well worth it though:
Water doors
You might find yourself losing a lot of water from your above-ground water exhibits. This might be because you’re not using a water door! Using a normal door results in a slow leak. Water physics for the win!
Veterinarian Helmets
Of course, you could not expect our veterinarians to fill up food containers and take care of the new sea monsters without an underwater breathing apparatus. While yes – there is an old-school scuba helmet one can unlock – we provide this automatically whenever a vet goes underwater.
Big news friends! Parkasaurus is coming to the Nintendo Switch early 2022! Bringing Parkasaurus over was a challenge the two of us had always wanted to do ourselves. Playing the game on the Switch feels pretty fantastic – and I don’t think anyone else would have given the same love to the port as we did. Wait wait wait, so how does this relate to the PC/Steam version? Well, the controller support required for the Switch (a TON of work) is coming to Steam, along with some other cool tidbits I thought to talk about:
Fence helper
Guest skeleton optimization
Multi-threading NavMesh
Controller Support
Fence helper
In the video, one can see two fence helpers. The blue bar that appears showing how the wall aligns is currently in the game. We now added a floating tile that helps the player not lose track of the cursor location. This makes creating fences with a controller or mouse snappier and quicker.
Guest skeleton optimization
Who knew the skeleton in the models of the guests took up so much computing power! Maybe some of you knew. Each guest had an entire animation skeleton that the game had to keep track of. Multiply this by 200, 300 guests, and that is a lot of wasted CPU! Now all our skeletal animation was converted to vertex animation so the GPU could help out. This means more guests on screen, which also means we can raise (or remove) the guest cap.
Multi-threading NavMesh
We’ve improved the rebuilding that occurs every time an object is placed in Parkasaurus. The game is broken up into regions that get activated more or less depending on the point of view of the player. This results in a much snappier and lag-free experience building the perfect park.
Controller Support
Everyone said controller support was a lot of work. Did we listen? NO! Was it a lot of work? YES! Adding controller support to us meant more than just being able to play Parkasaurus with a controller – we wanted the experience to feel as good if not better than keyboard + mouse. We underestimated how complex the interactions are between all our UI windows that have to be solved with a controller. The video below looks simple, but we had to decide and work on the ordering opening/closing windows. Phew.
Now be sure to tell your Switch friends about Parkasaurus. 😊 We’ll post again when the game is available.
Boo! Hallowescream is close and we figured let's show you some cool stuff! Posts have slowed down a bit and that is mainly because we are working on a few items that we aren’t quite ready to talk about. Nevertheless, there are a few items I should mention.
Reminder: Our Halloween stuff
Amazing Parks!
Controller Support
Sale!
Reminder: Our Halloween stuff
A little reminder of the cool Halloween stuff we have in the Parkasaurus! I was going to post it all here, but check out the original Halloween patch we did a while back! Magic pumpkins, turn your guests to ghouls and vampires, and more!
The two of us at Washbear often get so busy we forget to take a moment and smell the roses, ie. Truly appreciate the amazing parks our players have created. I think we’ll run a contest in November if there is interest in that. Either way, the parks below were showcased in our Discord and I thought they were too good not to share!
This park is nuts. Water flow is so cool, and I really enjoy the walkway that skirts the cliff face. [credit: blossom]
Another great exhibit. Multi tiered exhibit in the bottom. A great little food plaza on a plateau with really neat walk bridge across the mountain. [credit: blossom]
Really enjoy overall layout of this one. The rest area 1/2 up the walkway to the top exhibit is a great idea for your guests, and walkways over the water is slick. [credit: freeball1]
I love the flow of this exhibit with the night sky and lanterns at night! [credit: unknown! I’m lost it ☹]
Controller Support
We had always hoped to get controller support into the game but were hesitant because the gameplay might just feel bad. Turns out, no! In fact, I almost prefer playing Parkasaurus now with the controller. I’m hoping we have this in for our next patch (date unknown!). But, below is me quickly whipping up a little park just using the controller.
Sale!
Looks like we’re on a discount for the Steam Halloween Sale! I mean, if you’re reading this you already own the game and that’s so cool, basically, you’re invited over for our Halloween party. (note, the party will consist of the two of us, my two puppies, and a jack-o-lantern).
That’s it for now; hoping to have more juicy news shortly.
Happy Birthday (to us!)
Hello friends! I just wanted to jump on here and say: Thank You. Today is the 1 year anniversary (time flies like a pterodactyl) of Parkasaurus becoming a “full” game. As mentioned a while back, we are working on some new things, some Parkasaurus related, some not. I can’t wait to talk about all this, but not for a while. Just know that all your love and support has us working harder than ever.
While writing this I looked back at some of our first posts, and am truly scared how far we came since then. I thought you might like to see this too! Here are some of our earliest images from the game:
You can see here our earliest iteration on the biome system we were creating for Exhibits. This was before we incorporated biome transformation.
The dust effects were definitely not good at this point! But we were so excited to get upgrade sets into the game. We ended up adding extra entrances for the Admission Booth upgrade.
We made a Discord; and, also, we had the WORST cover art. At the time I thought it was awesome and then someone with some real art chops saved us.
Lastly and certainly not least; our first hats and sunglasses! The dinos look pretty awful at this point. Who am I kidding, the entire game looked rough. 😊
That’s it for now. We hope everyone is staying safe out there and we can’t wait to share more. And remember, you can always chat with us on our Discord or through Twitter. xoxo
