This post is a little offbeat. I thought it might be interesting to see how Parksaurus has changed since entering Early Access.
Every time a major tuning change is introduced into the game we run all-day simulations. Essentially this is for two reasons:
To see if the game tuning is having the desired effect
To identify any unforeseen issues
Money
This graph shows how much money an “average” park made over the lifetime of the game so far. You can see when Parksaurus entered Early Access that money was pretty easy to make. In response to your feedback we started to tune this back, and then REALLY tuned this far back – seen as the sharp drop. Too far! With more tuning, we slightly increased the money generation and feel pretty happy where we are now.
Garbage
I find this graph a cool example of how our simulation system identifies problems. This graph shows how much garbage an “average” park generated. You can see the sharp drop in the garbage after one of our simulations (shown with arrow). This led us to identify guests were not dropping garbage because they were getting stuck on the navigation mesh!
Waiting in Line
This graph demonstrates the constant (any often unseen) optimizations we are always trying to implement into the game. This graph shows the time spent waiting in line on “average” for guests at the admission booth. That sharp drop occurred when we made a custom hybrid navigation system. This is how we verify improvements!
Poop
Finally, this graph shows how much poop dinos created on “average” over the lifetime of the game. Why did this increase as development went on? We actually have no idea. The dinos are living AI entities so who knows.
And, if you got this far, here is a little sneak peek a toy we’re currently working on, with many more to come!:
Disclaimer: Any crazy features we write about might change during Early Access
Breeding & Episode 2
Just in time for the holidays! I can't believe how far we've come. This time of year especially has the two of us at Parkasaurus reflecting on how incredibly grateful and lucky we are for our community. Never forget that!
Campaign
Ship Part Upgrades: Use your ship parts persistent upgrades
Energy: Keep those guests walking
Beach Resort: Fun in the sun
Machu Picchu: The first dinosaur human friends
Privacy: Stop the intrusions
Gameplay
Breeding
Egg machines: DNA Scanner & Eggcelerators
Ragdoll physics back! Toss those humans
Energy system overhaul
Intrusion & Privacy
Quality of Life
Additional Park statistics
Fence Measurement
Items Tiers indicated
Refund on destruction
UI Improvements
Thank you for all your community suggestions, bug reports and support. There many ways to help:
Provide thoughts and feedback so we can improve the game for the final release
Tell your favorite streamers to play our game
Talk about us when you can
Follow us on Twitter, hang in Discord, post about us on reddit
And most importantly, love your animals with all your heart Can’t stop won’t stop the Dino love.
We have seen really cool stories shared by the early supporters of Parkasaurus and thought to ourselves – hey, why not give some recognition. So, this holiday season, we’ll be giving away a copy of the game to the best pic or gif (voted by the community).
TIP: Ctrl + Left Shift + Z hides the UI
How do you share with us your Parkasaurus story? Easy, send us your park shot, free camera shot, dino camera shot, or first person shot 1 of 3 ways by the 20th Dec 11:59 EST:
Visit our Discord at https://discord.gg/washbear and post to the #community_content channel and just tag your image with #screenshotasaurus
Post your screenshot to the Parkasaurus Steam community hub and tag the image #screenshotasaurus
Post on the Twitter and be sure to @washbearstudio or hashtag #screenshotasaurus
Do you have an older screenshot from the game you love? Post it! Here are some examples of great posts that have come from our community:
Breeding dinosaurs in Parkasaurus is on the way for the next patch. Breeding allows you to combine the color characteristics and personality traits of two dino parents together to create an offspring. In this exhibit we have two Kosmoceratops; Ollie and Matilda. They've been inseparable since a young age.
Now we help them create a baby Kosmoceratops!
First, It all starts with an egg!
Second, in order for two dinos to breed their respective Happiness must be above 80%.
The egg is added! But, we need to ensure both Ollie and Matilda have their Happiness above 80%. A great way to improve the Happiness of your dinos is to improve the privacy of their exhibit by adding privacy grass to the viewing hotspots. You know your dinos have achieved breeding happiness when their dino egg is glowing! This means breeding is currently underway.
We highly suggest creating a DNA machine. This helps you Scan the new Kosmoceratops egg. Now you can adjust a slider to which parent you would like to inherit more DNA. You can see this adjusts the color of our baby along with other attributes such as scariness, love, and aggression. The unique personality traits of the parents are also inherited by the baby dino.
Finally, after anxiously waiting - Ollie and Matilda are proud parents of Rufus!
Breeding dinos is a great economical way to add higher tier dinos to your park.
Also, we're releasing more campaign missions in the same patch, we'll have more to say about that later! Thanks all. xoxo
Future Price Increase
Hi friends! As our amazing community of early followers, we wanted to give you a heads-up that we are envisioning increasing the price of Parkasaurus in the near future. We have always wanted the price for Parkasaurus to be in line with what we feel the game is worth, and we hope you’ll agree that an increase feels warranted given the development that has happened since the Early Access release, and with the upcoming campaign missions (including cool features such as breeding). All this to say, this is a great time to pick up a copy if you haven’t already! If not, we definitely hope to have you as a dino friend in the future, and will continue bringing you new exciting content to ensure Parkasaurus is the game we all want it to be ːsteamhappyː
Pumpkin Patch
We hope you’ve been enjoying Episode 1 of the new campaign for Parkasaurus! Please let us know what you think. In the meantime before Episode 2…
…the Pumpkin Patch update for Parkasaurus is a little festive fun for our dino best friends! Park ghosts and witch hats? We have it all. Here’s the catch; the special Halloween items can only be bought from the stores at night!
Update:
Ghouly Guests
Pumpkin Toy
Halloween Hats
Ghouly Guests
Check out the Gem Store at night to buy your own Scary Pumpkin to invite an entire new crowd; Vampires, Zombies and Ghosts. Here’s the thing, Zombies love balloons, and Ghosts love dinosaur gazing. Who knew? All you need to do is purchase a Pumpkin from the Gem Store at night.
Pumpkin Toy
Smashing pumpkins in real life is a such a mess, how about you let your dinos smash for you? Toy balls are out, pumpkin tossing is in.
Halloween Hats
We all know the true meaning of Halloween is dressing up in scary, hilarious, and weird costumes. Your dinosaurs want in on the fun – so check out the range of Halloween hats you can find in the Hat Store at night. Let your dino best friends pretend to be a witch, or maybe a space-dino. Who knows, maybe your dinos will need space helmets later in the game? WHAT?
Stay tuned and pass on the word to your friends! Recommendations from friends mean a lot 😊
Disclaimer: Any crazy features we write about might change during Early Access
Dinos in the Wild!
Hello friends! This past weekend we were in Seattle to demo Parkasaurus in public for the first time a the MIX event. The feedback was very positive, and there even was few Parkasaurus fans who came up to say hi. Don’t worry though – development kept on chugging along, and the final touches are currently being put on the first few missions of the campaign. We’re excited (and scared) for your feedback to help guide us through the rest of the campaign! A quick post this week.
Update:
Dinos in the Wild!
Dinos in the Wild!
This is our first-ever booth! Crazy! It was shown at “The MIX” Pax West”; a single screen with keyboard and mouse. I first loaded up the game in the tutorial – to find a game-breaking bug that only occurred in “off-line mode”. Did I panic? Yes. Luckily, I had a backup build that didn’t have the bug. EEP.
The MIX also made really cool signs for each game; here is ours! (Yes, I took it home and the sign currently resides in my living room)
Disclaimer: Any crazy features we write about might change during Early Access
Update #34: Energy & Tools
Hi all! Playing some of the un-released Parkasaurus missions has made us realize a few features need to come in before moving forward. So currently being developed in parallel are couple features along with missions. I’m confident content updates will be ready in the next week or so. This process has been exciting and we’re looking forward to sharing. Alright, on to a few updates!
Update:
Energy Extended
Employees Expanded
Tools
Energy Extended
Each guest in your park has an energy bar. When their energy goes to zero, they leave the park. As they carry out activities such as seeing dinos, they become tired. We’ve tied in energy to also decrease over time dependent on what time of the day it is.
You now are required to strategically place rest areas for your guests in order to maintain their energy at a high level – high energy results in guests staying in the park longer, and usually more income for the park.
At night a guest’s energy depletes much quicker unless you build a smart network of lights. This has been a ton of fun.
Employees Expanded
While we announced employees earlier, we finally have them hooked into the game (next patch) AND we have done our best to match up the look of you employee in the office to how they look in game. That’s pretty cool.
Tools
Our superb community has requested some tools and we’ve been listening. One of the most popular request has been a mass fence deletion tool. Consider this done. Expect a few other quality of life goodies.
Stay tuned and pass on the word to your friends! Recommendations from friends mean a lot 😊
Disclaimer: Any crazy features we write about might change during Early Access
Update #33: Summer Days
Hello and happy mid summer for those of us on the top half of the Earth. (bottom half?) Last week there was unexpected Parkasaurus “business” work that occurred preventing us from getting the first few test campaign levels up on PTR. I’m super disappointed about not having those ready for you. ☹ With that said a few updates so we can go back to the campaigns!
Update:
Fences and Obstacles
Detailed reviews
One big family
Spinos agree
Fences and Obstacles
An idea that we enjoy exploring is constructing amazing dinosaur exhibits in weird & challenging areas. This has meant a lot of coding to ensure we solve for all the edge cases of where you can and cannot build. Here is a test of constructing an exhibit around city buildings.
Detailed reviews
You might have noticed in Parkasaurus that receiving a high park star rating, and high star user ratings can be difficult. We have decided to expose all the values going into these calculations to help players determine at the end of the day where they can improve their dinosaur park. Also, there are still a few bugs with the review system – such as a tiny piece of garbage resulting in an over expression of guest dissatisfaction.
One big family
There has been some experimentation on how we could challenge players to have multi-biome exhibits without penalty (you can always have multi species exhibits with penalty) – if you have any suggestions be sure to leave a comment. With that said, as a reminder you still can have some cool multi-species exhibits, like this Achelousaurus and Apatosaurus exhibit sent in by a player.
Spinos agree
I personally want to say thanks for all the amazing patience and support AND suggestions our community has given us. We’re working really had to get this campaign started for you all, and these Spinos both agree.
Stay tuned and pass on the word, every little bit helps. 😊
