Over the last week, we've been hard at work revising our fence system to account for future features like staff gates and breakouts.
We are now looking at May 10th for our first PTB release focused on some of Update 11's basic features.
These features include:
Leaellynasaura
New Modules & Backstage Props
Improved Fences & Staff Gates
Improved Excavations System
Improved GUI flow
So, what about staff and logistics?
These mechanics actually hinge on the improvements we're making to the fence system! Without a better framework, it'll be difficult to add gates and breakouts. Due to this, staff and logistics will arrive in a PTB update.
We're trying to approach Update 11 iteratively, so even though we'll be working on it for a while, players will be able to play it and watch it improve. We'll have more info in the Dev Diary, but we can't wait to have you with us on this journey!
Dev Diary: March 2024
Welcome to the March Development Update!
In this blog post, we’ll be detailing some of the things you can expect to see in Update 11, talking about new game mechanics and more.
Before jumping into the bulk of our Update 11 coverage, we wanted to quickly touch base on a few things.
The first is that we are working on another recording session with the brilliant Nigel Marven! Not only are we doing dialogue for the species that currently lack it, but we’re retroactively adding an introduction and fact to animals that are now an alternate genus (Tarbosaurus, Charonosaurus, etc). It feels strange to say, but soon we’ll have lines for almost every animal that we’re planning to release during Early Access!
Secondly, we’ve revised the American Lion and Cave Lion’s base animations to fix up their thousand-yard stare. We’re not sure what horrors they might’ve experienced, but relaxed cats are on their way in Update 11!
Supporter Bundle
In case you missed it, we dropped the Supporter Bundle in early March to help fund development and provide access to Volume 1 of our digital art book and soundtrack! We are incredibly proud of how these turned out and wanted to thank everyone for their warm reception.
The art book provides a 200 page look at animal concept art, environment renders and concept sheets for the hundreds of building pieces available in-game, whilst offering development insight into our choices and why things were designed that way. It was important for this to feel like it was more than just a picture book!
We also released a soundtrack, featuring 25 minutes of music and 4 exclusive bonus tracks if purchased on Steam or Bandcamp. The album is also now available on streaming, too! You can find the OST on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music and pretty much any other platform you might prefer.
In-Development: Update 11
In late April, we’ll be rolling Update 11 out onto the Public Testing Branch on Steam so that we can gather feedback and continue developing this update. This release is going to massively change how the game is played, so it’s important that we have the community provide feedback during production. So, in the mean time, here’s a broad look at what’s coming soon!
New Species
Update 11 will be introducing two new animals, the first of which is the squirrel-like dinosaur from down under, Leaellynasaura!
(pronounced Lee-ell-in-a-sore-a)
As southern parts of Australia were located within the Antarctic circle during the early Cretaceous, it’s possible that sunlight would have been highly variable. With this animal potentially going weeks without sunlight, we’ve chosen to highlight the various levels of cold tolerance Leaellynasaura might’ve had through varying lengths of plumage per skin.
Unlike the other small, herbivorous dinosaurs in Prehistoric Kingdom, these ones have quite the frightening dentition!
Now, that leaves one unknown species for Update 11, and before anyone rushes to speculation, this is not another theropod. Enjoy!
Species Splitting
Going forward into Update 11, all animals in the game will be properly split by their species in the UI. This means that when you’re in the Nursery or Excavations menu, you’ll find distinct buttons for each species, rather than lumping them all under one umbrella. We will be extending this functionality to the Animal Info Signs, too.
As far as the game was concerned, each species was already considered unique, and this change simply makes the UI consistent with that. To reflect this upcoming change, we have updated our website’s Animal Gallery!
The Nursery will be receiving a big UI overhaul down the line to better accommodate these changes, so please stay tuned for that!
Early Staff & Logistics Gameplay
In this part of the Dev Diary, we’re going to walk you through what to expect from logistics and the overall gameplay loop it presents.
When Update 11 releases, we’ll only have keepers and laborers available as they are the most essential at this stage of development. The remaining staff types (janitors, engineers, security, vets) will be added as their gameplay systems become relevant.
STARTING OUT
As you begin to build your park in Update 11, you’ll notice that feeders and kiosks are now empty when placed. In order to actually work, they must be stocked by staff members. This is where our logistics gameplay begins.
To get resources into the zoo, players will first need to build a Loading Bay. Upon the initial first-time placement, players will receive an immediate shipment of goods to help get the park up and running. After that, your Loading Bay will continue to import guest meals, merchandise and a small amount of animal feed every 15 minutes (time not yet finalized) via box truck.
Players can purchase up to 2 additional box trucks for their Loading Bay to speed up delivery times or place additional Loading Bays around the park if they need more shipments.
Once the resources have arrived, players will need staff to transport them around the zoo. Laborers can carry the meals and merchandise to guest facilities, while keepers are needed to refill feeders with animal feed.
To access the staff hiring menu, players will need to build a Staff Center. Of course, like any module, these new structures can be built over or recoloured with the modular building system! Just ensure any access points (i.e. doors) remain accessible.
While out in the park, staff are intended to be very automated. You can call staff to complete specific tasks like refilling a certain feeder or transporting goods, but with the scale of Prehistoric Kingdom, the expectation is that they should just do their jobs.
We believe your primary role as park manager should focus on who you hire, how many people you hire and how you layout the park’s logistics infrastructure rather than micromanaging where your staff are and what they are doing. If jobs aren’t being done, you likely don’t have enough people or your layout stinks.
EXPANDING STORAGE
Picture this: you’ve got a few habitats, the zoo is expanding, but so is the distance between your Loading Bay and the park.
It’s time to introduce some Goods Storage and Produce Storage modules! These warehouses come in small or large variants, allowing logistics staff to move stock from the Loading Bay into their respective storage spaces. This means that if a feeder needs refilling or your restaurant needs more meals, staff can simply travel to the nearest storage module that has what they need rather than walking all the way back to the Loading Bay.
These warehouses are planned to have a few basic UI options that dictate how they should be filled up (e.g. stop ‘Fruit’ from being delivered to this Produce Storage module) but we were aiming to make them more contextual, so a Produce Station near a meat feeder is naturally going to have more meat delivered to it than the Produce Station that’s next to a herbivore paddock. That’s all a bit more theoretical, though, just sharing how we’d like them to work.
YOU SMELL THAT?
When animals eat, they eventually… excrete! Without a place to dump their dung, keepers can’t clean habitats. This is why you’ll need to invest in a couple of Compost Heap modules.
After cleaning dung piles, keepers will transport the poop from a habitat to the nearest Compost Heap. Once delivered, the stored poop will convert to ‘Compost’ over time - a resource that’ll become invaluable when making your own animal feed.
This module can have a pretty negative impact on Park Beauty, so you’ll want to keep it hidden from guest view!
CREATING PRODUCE
After a certain amount of park growth, the measly amount of animal feed you get from the Loading Bay isn’t going to be enough. Thankfully, this is where the Produce Station comes in.
A Produce Station is able to passively create food for your animals by converting the compost in your park into feed. As long as staff can keep delivering compost, you can keep making produce!
Produce Stations can be specialized to cultivate a specific dietary type (plants, fruit, meat, fish, insects) or produce ALL dietary types for a lower yield per compost conversion. As your Produce Station fills up, laborers will transfer it out and place the feed into the Produce Storage modules around the park.
In the event that you have no storage modules, your Keepers will instead take food directly from Produce Stations when going to refill feeders.
LOGISTICS SYSTEM: IN REVIEW
Looking at everything we’ve just discussed from a very high-level view, we end up with a loop like this!
CHANGES FROM JANUARY DEV DIARY
As a final side note, we’d like to mention that since the last Dev Diary, our plans for ‘generalist staff’ have changed. We now intend for cashiers to simply be part of kiosk modules (and their upkeep costs) rather than being separate entities that can be hired/fired like keepers or laborers.
Because of this change, the idea of janitors and laborers temporarily taking on other jobs has been scrapped. This potentially makes the role of staff in the game a lot more clear cut and should make it more obvious when something in the park isn’t working out. Not a huge change in our opinion, but notable enough where we want to keep you in the loop!
Gameplay Changes: Excavations
Excavations are what allows Prehistoric Kingdom to bring extinct animals back to life, scowering the globe in search of viable genetic materials. In the current game, however, the Excavations mechanic really is nothing more than a glorified shopping menu. With Update 11, we aim to rectify this.
THE NEW SYSTEM
Coming in Update 11 is a brand new module - the Fossil Depot! This building provides space for the park’s dig teams and grants access to the Excavations menu.
It is here that players will be able to both buy and send out dig teams to various dig sites around the world. These sites are used to obtain the necessary DNA required to create animals in the Animal Nursery. Any idle dig teams currently not excavating will eventually be visible in the car park below.
(Wikimedia Commons: Hell Creek photograph by Vladimír Socha)
By hovering over a dig site, players will be able to see the potential operating costs of an excavation, the estimated time per excavation cycle and whether or not there are events impacting the dig site. Once opened, up to 5 dig teams can be assigned at once, increasing the ongoing operating costs in exchange for a higher DNA yield every cycle.
There’s no financial penalty for moving teams from dig site to dig site, but they will have to travel back to the park first.
EXCAVATING
Each excavation cycle, your assigned teams will send their findings back to the park in the form of DNA.
The yield amount for DNA is random, but can be improved by installing infrastructure at the dig site such as housing (decreases total excavation time) and their own personal genetics lab (improves DNA yield amounts).
Different species have their own yield rarities, so even if you decide to tackle Hell Creek from day one, you’re unlikely to unlock a Tyrannosaurus before Edmontosaurus. Once 100% of the DNA has been found for a species, it can be bred from the Animal Nursery!
Completing all animals within a dig site will unassign the relevant teams and return them to the park.
EVENTS
Everything we’ve discussed so far assumes that your excavation has gone smoothly, though! Every month, there are global events that randomly impact dig sites all across the globe.
A positive event like the Fossil Boom can help speed up the excavation process, drastically increasing yield amounts for as long as the event is active in a dig site. On the other hand, a negative event like High Export Tax can increase your operating costs, excavation time and lower yields as your teams struggle to send your excavated goods back to the park.
Players may need to pivot their excavations from month to month depending on how these conditions change, taking advantage of sudden opportunities or temporarily leaving a site behind. What might have been a great month in the Hell Creek Formation may quickly turn to an expensive crawl the next!
Guest Art Overhaul
Moving into a more stylized art direction, the future brings a new era of visitors to Prehistoric Kingdom; intended to introduce better faces, hairs, clothing, new ethnicities and an expressive suite of animations that make the park feel more alive.
Below you can see some of the work in progress animations we’ve been making. Though not all will be in-game as of Update 11 (there are some technical things required to make the selfie work!) we hope this shows our commitment to improving the quality of our humans.
Mesh topology is non-final, we’ll be improving those elbows!
Update 11 is planned to bring the first stage of this guest art overhaul with it, focused on upgrading our technical backend to support these new visual features. There have been a lot of assets to design, model and curate, but we are getting there! We will have more info about what guest features are ready for Update 11 once it hits PTB.
And yes… we’re working on bench sitting!
The Future
Ontogeny Art Tests
To close out this month’s Dev Diary, we’ll leave you with a work in progress look at our baby Tyrannosaurus! We’re expecting some proportions and face shapes to change before ontogeny is fully implemented and added to the public game, but this at least gives you an early look at how these fluff balls could look. You can even spot an adolescent T. rex in the back based on the Jane specimen!
As mentioned previously, all baby skins are designed to blend into their adult coloration regardless of what skin was selected. In the case of our T. rex here, that means all Tyrannosaurs would start as feathered infants and either lose feathers through maturation (e.g. growing up into a scaly skin) or retain them (e.g. growing up into the feathered skin). We can’t wait to share more looks at ontogeny with you in the future!
EDIT: Here’s an additional look at the baby rex with improved proportions! Since ontogeny in Prehistoric Kingdom is seamless, infant animals cannot have perfect 1:1 limb sizes to what’s found in the fossil record. We will be doing our best to make the babies feel cute and somewhat accurate without overly warping the models!
Created by Incog
Created by ASSASSINSPINO
Created by CarlosG72
Thank you for reading March’s dev diary!
There was a lot to read this month, but we hope you got through it okay! We’re very excited to continue developing Update 11 and can’t wait to share more once the PTB version goes live.
We're pleased to announce that the Supporter Bundle is now live on Steam; featuring volume one of the Prehistoric Kingdom digital art book and soundtrack!
The Supporter Bundle is intended for players who would like to continue supporting our development team and is available for $7.99 USD as optional downloadable content here.
For new players looking to jump into Prehistoric Kingdom, there is also a Base Game + Supporter Bundle option available to purchase.
Alternatively, the art book and soundtrack can be purchased independently.
Q&A
Who is this for? This bundle is meant for people who would like to continue supporting the development team, that may have missed out on Kickstarter rewards, or simply want to listen to some PK music and read a book!
I’m a backer/early adopter! How can I get this? Please check your Crytivo account for elligible rewards. We are still working on getting everything correct, so please give it a few days for your rewards to appear. We will post to Twitter and Facebook if major changes need to occur!
What does this mean for the game’s monetization? We will continue to release free content updates as we continue to go through Early Access and beyond! It’s way too early to think about paid gameplay/animal DLC.
These art books and music releases simply help fund development and give the community something to enjoy in return! We hope that everyone looks forward to and enjoys the Supporter Bundle when it releases on March 8th.
Supporter Bundle Arriving March 8th
Welcome, Park Managers!
We hope you’ve been enjoying the recent release of Update 10! In case you missed it, this update introduces the new prehistoric mammals Elasmotherium, Sinotherium, and two species of cave lion. On top of that, there’s a brand new map, stone age building set and an updated boreal biome!
We’re proud to announce that on March 8th (next Friday!), we’ll be launching the Supporter Bundle on Steam: featuring volume one of the Prehistoric Kingdom digital art book and soundtrack!
This collection has been lovingly put together by our team’s artists and composer over the last few months, working together to build dozens of beautiful pages and a gorgeous selection of music from the game.
The Supporter Bundle is intended for players who would like to continue supporting our development team and will be available for $7.99 USD as optional downloadable content.
Alternatively, the art book and soundtrack can be purchased independently.
The Art of Prehistoric Kingdom, Vol. 1
Available separately for $5.99 USD on March 8th
Over 180 pages of artwork, including exclusive early looks at upcoming animals and behind the scenes information about how we work on the game and our design decisions.
Non-final previews.
This volume provides an in-depth look at our process, animal concept art, the science behind some of our creatures and a deep dive into the wealth of structural art we’ve painted for the game. Whether you’re a paleo fanatic or simply interested in the art process of game dev, you won’t wanna miss this!
Prehistoric Kingdom, Vol. 1 (Original Game Soundtrack)
Available separately for $3.99 USD on March 8th
Ranging from dino-sized orchestral soundscapes to introspective instrumentals, take a walk in the park and enjoy 30 minutes of music of Prehistoric Kingdom composed by Byron McKay.
This release features 15 tracks (including 4 bonus biome medley tracks) in addition to updated music arrangements not yet heard in-game with live woodwinds performed by Joe Di Fiore and mixing by Adam Miller. You can wishlist the soundtrack page on Steam right now!
Q&A
Who is this for? This bundle is meant for people who would like to continue supporting the development team, that may have missed out on Kickstarter rewards, or simply want to listen to some PK music and read a book!
I’m a backer/early adopter! How can I get this? We’ll be sharing info on how to get your copies next week! Thank you for your patience.
What does this mean for the game’s monetization? We will continue to release free content updates as we continue to go through Early Access and beyond! It’s way too early to think about paid gameplay/animal DLC.
These art books and music releases simply help fund development and give the community something to enjoy in return! We hope that everyone looks forward to and enjoys the Supporter Bundle when it releases on March 8th.
Dev Diary: January 2024
Welcome to the January Development Update!
Happy New Year, everyone! We hope you all had a lovely holiday season with plenty of gifts and giving to go around. This blog post will be focused on what’s to come in 2024, looking at the upcoming Update 10 as well as some rather exciting additions coming throughout the year. Let’s jump right into it!
Last month in December, we released Update 9 featuring the Grassland biome and a selection of fan-favorite animals like Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus. The reception to this update was really positive, and we quickly wanted to thank everyone who tuned in to play the game again.
Both Update 8 and 9 have been our first major steps into making our animals feel more organic and alive thanks to the overhauled locomotion and brain systems. This year, we’re going to continue this trend with adding more AI behaviors, animations, and the long-awaited introduction of baby animals.
As a start, we’ve been tackling a long standing community request; animal avoidance. Borrowing much of the technology currently used on guests, our goal is to give the animals a similar implementation, dynamically pathing around any incoming creatures in a nice and performant way. Take a look at the work in progress version below that’ll be coming in Update 10!
Once Update 10 releases, players will be able to see a dramatic decrease on animals walking directly through the middle of each other. While there will still be some clipping with heads and tails (hard to get rid of without having oversized avoidance ranges on the animals), this will be a massive improvement across the board.
Update 10: Coming Soon
In mid-late February, players will be able to explore the frozen wilds of the Canadian Rockies in Update 10, building your park with a brand new modular theme and resurrecting extinct species straight out of the ice age.
New Species
Joining the roster is none other than the Siberian unicorn, Elasmotherium! This large species of rhinoceros is best known for what is typically depicted as an exceptionally large horn. In recent years, however, its exact size has become the topic of debate.
When cloning Elasmotherium, our scientists were fortunate enough to find a variety of horn shapes and sizes depending on the genetic skin that they selected. Very convenient!
That’s not the only rhino joining us for Update 10, however! Found in east Asian fossil deposits, Sinotherium was a hairless ancestor to what would later become Elasmotherium. Available in-game as an alternate species, Sinotherium is the perfect option for park managers that want another grassland-based mammal.
In total, this makes two species of rhino and two species of cave lion coming to the game in February. The team looks forward to seeing all of your gorgeous screenshots once Update 10 releases!
Stone Age Theme
The Stone Age theme is a new collection of styles and building pieces inspired by paleolithic and neolithic architecture. With items based on caves, early living and budding civilization, we think this theme will truly make your park feel like a Prehistoric Kingdom.
Of course, a new building theme wouldn’t be complete without new fences, too! We look forward to seeing what habitats you build with these palisade and stone fences in Update 10.
New Map
Finally, we’ve arrived in the mountains of Canada. This map boasts gorgeous, snowy views with a variety of foliage from the boreal, coastal and grassland biomes.
At night, players will be greeted to a stunning lightshow from the… aurora borealis?! At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your kingdom?! Yes! Please stay tuned for the release of Update 10 in mid-late February!
The Future
So, Update 10 is looking pretty cool, but what does the year look like for the game? We have a few major pillars that are in development behind the scenes, and our aim is to deliver them throughout 2024.
As these pillars are quite the undertaking, we will continue to release more art-centric updates (e.g. Update 10) to help prevent content droughts while we work on them in the background. There were a number of months last year when the game did not receive support while we developed Update 8, and that’s something we do not want to repeat.
So, grab your reading glasses and a drink because we’re about to see a lot of text!
Staff & Logistics
Staff are going to be the heart of Prehistoric Kingdom’s management. They are the connection to your park, your guests and your animals. Beyond simply hiring the right people, it will be your job to ensure the park’s layout is designed efficiently so that supplies for both guests and animals can be moved quickly.
In terms of development, we’ve started laying the groundwork for staff in the codebase. We’ve done a lot of design work figuring out what exactly they should bring to the game and how that relates to our upcoming logistics management systems. While we’ll be getting into exact gameplay details in a future post, we’d like to start by sharing our vision for the various staff types in Prehistoric Kingdom and what they offer.
GENERALIST STAFF
Generalist staff primarily interact with the guest and backend side of your park. Taking up the role of cashier, janitor or logistics, these are the people who ensure everything runs smoothly.
Cashier: tends to visitors at kiosks and stores
Janitor: cleans toilets, trash and delivers garbage to dumpsters
Logistics: delivers shipments from loading bays to various storage units around the park (goods storage, animal feed warehouses)
What makes generalists unique, however, is that these roles aren’t rigid! If an urgent task appears and there’s an idle staff member nearby, they’ll complete it as long as it’s a generalist job. For example:
If a cashier is waiting vacantly with no customers to tend to, they might decide to quickly go clean up a pile of trash (janitor job) or restock some merchandise shelves (logistics job) if they have nothing else to do. Once complete, the cashier would return to their original job.
Our goal here is to maximise the utility of your generalist staff, so if the park’s demand raises slightly higher than your current workforce numbers, the player has a built-in safety net. Of course if the demand continues to rise and trash gets out of control for example, the best move would be to hire more janitors.
SPECIALIST STAFF
Specialist staff interact with specific parts of the park management experience. Unlike generalists, their roles are fixed and can’t be done by other staff types.
Keeper: restocks animal feeders and enrichment, cleans habitats and delivers dung to compost heaps
Veterinarian: monitors habitats for sick, injured or pregnant animals, can provide feeder supplements and medication
Engineer: repairs damaged fences, modules and builds high security fencing
Security: accompanies staff into dangerous habitats and protects guests in the event of an emergency
WHEN CAN WE HEAR MORE?
There’s a lot to cover with staff and logistics gameplay, so we will be doing a more in-depth blog post when we have more in-game content to show.
This is going to fundamentally change and set the direction for Challenge mode going forward, so we’ll likely run some early feedback builds on the Public Testing Branch once we get to that stage. If you’ve been waiting for Prehistoric Kingdom to get more meat on its management bones before jumping in, please stay tuned to these dev diaries because we’ll be wanting your feedback in a few months.
Ontogeny
This year, the team will be adding the process of ontogeny to Prehistoric Kingdom. In real time, you’ll be able to watch your animals seamlessly grow from tiny babies to gangly adolescents and of course, into the fully grown adults you’ve already been incubating in the park.
These are not just simply scaled down adults, either! Our baby animals will have softer appearances, smoother skin, different bone proportions and make the most adorable of squeaks. You can see an early test of our Edmontosaurs above, showcasing stubbier snouts, a lack of spinal ornaments, and their baby skin patterning!
HOW WILL THIS WORK?
Over time, the animals will seamlessly blend between their life stages, growing into their mature silhouettes and fading into their adult coloration. If you got to play or have seen footage from our old demo in 2017, you’ll know exactly how this works.
HOW MANY BABY SKINS WILL THERE BE?
For both technical reasons and memory constraints, we will be limiting baby skin patterns to 1 per animal. This means that regardless of the skin you’ve chosen, all designs for a given animal (e.g. Edmontosaurus) will appear the same at birth and eventually grow into their selected skin color. There may be a few exceptions to this as development continues, but generally the rule is 1 baby skin per animal.
We should note that like adults, however, baby animals will have individual color variation. Each little hatchling, calf or kitten will look slightly different from another.
HOW WILL PLAYERS CREATE BABY ANIMALS?
In Sandbox, players will be able to pick the age of an animal when creating them in the Nursery. In Challenge mode, however, we are planning to make that part of the research tree. If players want adult specimens at the beginning of their Challenge game, they’ll have to go through different means to acquire them (ooh, future mechanics!).
More info on revised animal creation and acquisition gameplay will be coming in the future.
BREEDING?
Breeding is something that a lot of people have been requesting and we agree that it feels like the next step for ontogeny in Prehistoric Kingdom. With that said, we are focused on delivering the core experience first (animals growing up) before expanding with additional gameplay (breeding).
Update 12: New Species
Arriving later this year in Update 12 is the much beloved gentle giant, Apatosaurus. This enormous creature is the first dinosaur included in Prehistoric Kingdom to be part of the superfamily known as Diplodocoidea, a group of sauropods best recognized for their immense length and whip-like tails.
We’re still working on this animal of course, painting the other skins, animating, etc. but the team really wanted to start 2024 off with an early look at one of the biggest creatures coming this year.
Coming alongside Apatosaurus, however, is an alternate species with a household name and much dubious fame.
We hope you enjoy the concept art for what will eventually become the mighty thunder lizard, Brontosaurus! Adorned with “bronto smash” neck spikes and a cluster of lethal spines at the tip of its tail, this classic from the Jurassic has never looked so good.
10 Years of Prehistory
Grab your digging tools and call us a fossil, because on February 14th, Prehistoric Kingdom will have existed for 10 years.
When this project was first created all the way back in 2014, we were teenagers, high school students, and young adults in college. This project, iteration upon iteration, has been us learning, growing and meeting amazing like minded individuals who share a passionate love for not just this genre but prehistoric life as a whole.
It took a number of years before Prehistoric Kingdom started to go anywhere, and we’re still not as fast as the big studios making games like this, but we love our baby and we couldn’t be more grateful for having the opportunity to develop this game.
To our team, families, backers, Crytivo, players and fans; thank you.
Created by ASSASSINSPINO
Created by Hex-MSMB
Created by Incog
Thank you for reading January’s dev diary!
We hope this post has gotten you excited for the year ahead (those babies look so cute!) and that everyone is looking forward to Update 10’s arrival in February.
This is a small patch bringing over recent fixes and changes from the PTB, fixing common crashes as well as drastically improving guest pathfinding.
The team are now returning from their holiday breaks, so we hope you look forward to hearing more about Prehistoric Kingdom in 2024. As always, please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.
Full Patch Notes
Changes
Guests
Guest pathfinding is significantly improved, now taking into account crowding and multiple chokepoints
Bug Fixes
Critical
Fix for very common OverlapCapsule crash
Fixed a rare bug in Animal AI Recover To Navmesh that would also cause that entire capability to be defensively disabled, resulting in further downstream issues
Fix for common crash when multiple animals try to share a feeder
Guests
Patched a rare but dangerous bug regarding visitors getting reset to the entrance
Misc.
Fixed a number of unhandled exceptions
Minor safety improvements
Performance
Minor CPU Optimizations
Prehistoric Kingdom - PTB Hotfix (1.6.19)
Welcome, Park Testers!
This is a small hotfix that addresses a common crash for players in Update 9.
How to Access the Public Testing Branch (Experimental!)
The Public Testing Branch (PTB) is a version of Prehistoric Kingdom that can be opted-into on Steam, containing experimental and potentially breaking changes. With the help of the community, we're able to hunt down various issues and gather feedback before pushing a an update to the public version of Prehistoric Kingdom.
Right click Prehistoric Kingdom in your Steam Library
Go to Properties
Betas
Select 'ptb_public_testing'
Please note that it is not recommended to play Public Testing Branch parks on earlier versions of the game. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.
Full Patch Notes
Bug Fixes
Critical
Fix for common crash when multiple animals try to share a feeder
Prehistoric Kingdom - PTB Hotfix (1.6.18)
Welcome, Park Testers!
This PTB release improves guest pathfinding and game stability with various crash fixes for what could be experienced in Update 9.
You should see guests making better use of their walkable space, especially when encountering multiple chokepoints throughout the park. Previously, they would almost exclusively form a single chokepoint. We have ideas on how to further improve guest pathfinding which will be implemented early next year.
Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.
How to Access the Public Testing Branch (Experimental!)
The Public Testing Branch (PTB) is a version of Prehistoric Kingdom that can be opted-into on Steam, containing experimental and potentially breaking changes. With the help of the community, we're able to hunt down various issues and gather feedback before pushing a an update to the public version of Prehistoric Kingdom.
Right click Prehistoric Kingdom in your Steam Library
Go to Properties
Betas
Select 'ptb_public_testing'
Please note that it is not recommended to play Public Testing Branch parks on earlier versions of the game. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.
Full Patch Notes
Changes
Guests
Guest pathfinding is significantly improved, now taking into account crowding and multiple chokepoints
Bug Fixes
Critical
Fix for very common OverlapCapsule crash
Fixed a rare bug in Animal AI Recover To Navmesh that would also cause that entire capability to be defensively disabled, resulting in further downstream issues
Guests
Patched a rare but dangerous bug regarding visitors getting reset to the entrance
Misc.
Fixed a number of unhandled exceptions
Minor safety improvements
Performance
Minor CPU Optimizations
Prehistoric Kingdom - Hotfix (EA 1.6.16)
Welcome, Park Managers!
Today we have a mini-patch disguised as a hotfix for you, adding a new Spinosaurus animation in addition to some extra sound variations. We have also made a few more changes to the animals as well as giving Muttaburrasaurus the correct formation.
The team is currently investigating a few crash issues that have been appearing, but as always, please send your bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel. Providing the player log and save files will allow us to hunt down these issues a lot quicker!
Additions
Animals
Added digging behavioral one shot to Spinosaurus (mudcrab gets audibly annihilated, onlookers shocked)
Audio
Added broadcast variations to Spinosaurus
Added broadcast variations to Carcharodontosaurus
Changes
Animals
Animals now begin life with randomized need values
Animals should now try to stay around their appropriate animation speeds during locomotion, making them less likely to stay at transitional values for extended periods (e.g. halfway between walk and run)
Muttaburrasaurus is now properly found in the Mackunda Formation (removed Winton Formation)
Updated Smilodon ‘Dauntless’ skin icon to better match its new coloration
Buildings & Scenery
Adjusted rendering distance for particle VFX
Foliage
Optimized Marula 3
UI/UX
Removed the now obsolete ‘Min. Exhibit Size’ stat from the nursery animal preview screen
Bug Fixes
Animals
Fixed animals having their decision making process completely overwhelmed by swimming, which prevented them from satisfying basic needs
Animals will now avoid trying to interact with feeders from a direction that would place them too far underwater
Improved animal individual pathing randomization
Guests
Fixed a common bug where visitors would get stuck walking to particular areas endlessly
Visitors should utilize much more of the navigable path area, prioritizing wide open spaces and avoiding narrow choke points
Foliage
Fixed green seams on Acacia 2
UI/UX
Fixed the Animal Info Menu displaying low welfare stats and welfare issues with the ‘Animal Welfare’ and ‘Animal Habitat Welfare’ gameplay settings turned off
VO
Fixed text overflow for one of Nigel’s Spinosaurus lines
Performance
Fixed several major memory leaks
Minor CPU Optimizations
Known Issues & Additional Notes
The team has tracked down the source of guests not using donation boxes as often as they should. This issue is caused by guests not observing animals properly, rather than something wrong with the donation boxes.
Unfortunately, this is going to be quite an involved fix
Prehistoric Kingdom - Update 9 (EA 1.6.14)
Welcome, Park Managers!
Update 9 is now available! This patch introduces 4 new animals, swimming, a new map, biome, as well as a new selection of font styles. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.
The team will be working on hotfixes for Update 9 over the next few days in addition to adding a few additional animations that didn't make it into the initial release. This will be our last major update for the year, as the team will be going on a short break over the holiday period.
This release also adjusts our version numbers to better reflect our original versioning scheme, which we were too silly to follow through on. Oopsies!
Your patience this year has been greatly appreciated, and we look forward to sharing our plans for Prehistoric Kingdom with you in January's Dev Diary in 2024. For all the details on what's changed in Update 9, please be sure to read the full patch notes at the bottom of this post!
- The PK Team
Update 9 Features
New Species
Expand your kingdom's collection with 4 brand new species: Ouranosaurus, Muttaburrasaurus, Carcharodontosaurus and Spinosaurus!
Swimming
Take the plunge with swimming! This new behaviour allows animals to cross rivers and explore deep water bodies by swimming across the surface.
Every species has varying degrees of water affinity, meaning that some animals like Spinosaurus frequently try to seek out water, while other species will try to avoid it all costs.
New Map: Tanzania
Build in the heart of the savanna with our new map set in the grassland biome. With sparse vegetation and flat terrain, this location is perfect for builders!
New Biome: Grassland
Adding 9 new types of plants, the grassland biome is one of our most versatile climates yet. Alongside classic trees like the Acacia, the grassland biome also comes with, well... grasses!
New Fonts
A collection of new styles are now available for the modular letter pieces. Coming in a range of different themes, these fonts are the perfect way to change up your park's signage.
PSA: Navigation Changes
Due to the introduction of water-based locomotion, all navmeshes will have to be regenerated! This means that upon initial load, your saved games may take longer to enter. Please resave your games once loaded in.
We have also made slope limit changes to the navmesh, so if you had animals that we were previously stuck in surprising places (e.g. rocks, roofs) you'll have to move them back down to an appropriate area.
Known Issues & Additional Notes
We will be fixing as many crashes as possible as they're reported. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.
Muttaburrasaurus is missing Nigel voicelines! We will be adding them next year when we do our next recording session with Nigel
We’re still tuning the render distance for small objects, so some items may disappear sooner than expected
Animals do not animate while in the Nursery due to the new locomotion system. They will animate again in the future
Animal IKs are a work in progress and will be improved in future updates
Animals may jitter when resting or sleeping in shallow water
Guests can pick some pretty funky paths! We're in the middle of reworking our technical backend for path choices, so this will be fixed in a following update
Full Patch Notes
Features
NEW ANIMAL: Muttaburrasaurus
NEW ANIMAL: Ouranosaurus
NEW ANIMAL: Carcharodontosaurus
NEW ANIMAL: Spinosaurus
NEW ANIMAL BEHAVIOR: Swimming
Take a plunge with swimming! Every species has varying degrees of water affinity, meaning some love swimming while others will try to avoid water at all costs
NEW MAP: Ngorongoro Crater
Set in a beautiful Tanzanian crater, this map offers flat landscapes with sparse forests and grasses
NEW BIOME: Grassland
Explore the new grassland biome with a variety of trees and small shruberry, including highly versatile grass pieces
NEW: Text Fonts
Change up the vibe of your park signage with a collection of new font styles
Additions
Gameplay
Added new excavation sites in Africa and Australia:
Elrhaz Formation
Kem Kem Group
Winton Formation
Animals
Added mannerism additive animations to animals previously missing them:
Dilophosaurus
Scelidosaurus
Velociraptor
Added swimming to all animals: any creature is now able to freely navigate the surface of the water. Animals have buoyancy, making submerging smooth and natural
Animals are able to avoid and seek water navigation depending on their species, making certain animals more water-averse while Spinosaurus and Deinocheirus, among others, love getting their feet wet!
Animals now get visibly wet when entering the water or swimming, with the visual being based on the waterline height relative to body size
Added new animal names from Hausa, Arabic, ancient Egyptian and assorted Aboriginal
Buildings & Scenery
Added several Font styles spread across all themes in the game
Added Silhouette pieces for Muttaburrasaurus, Ouranosaurus, Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus
Added Human Keeper Silhouette piece
Foliage
Added Acacia 1, 2, 3
Added American Tarwort 1, 2
Added Digitaria Dry Grass 1, 2
Added Digitaria Grass 1, 2
Added Elephant Grass 1, 2 (found in gardening!)
Added Pampas Grass 1, 2, 3
Added Triodia Dry Grass 1, 2
Added Triodia Grass 1, 2
Added Marula 1, 2, 3
Changes
Balance
Buffed the Diesel Generator and Solar Panel
Gameplay
New games will always default to Sunny weather for the first three months
Animals
Animals can now be placed in water
Increased run movement speed for most animals to better match how they were pre-Update 8
The ‘Vibrant’ Edmontosaurus skin now has subtle iridescence
Decreased overall genetic skin mutation chance
Buildings & Scenery
Changed the way fonts are colored by separating emissivity into its own coloring buffer for greater control - the first color slot purely controls their coloration whereas the ‘glowiness’ is now controlled in the second color buffer
Added emissive coloring to the 2nd slot for Silhouette pieces
Fixed Pachyrhinosaurus Silhouette piece
Improved the water VFX pieces
Environment
Increased choppy water’s transparency and made it more tropical blue
Adjustments to underwater fog colors
UI/UX
Map selection is now automatically randomized every time the New Game menu is opened in the main menu
Post Processing
Reduced overall bloom intensity
Audio
Brought back animal footstep audio events from prior game versions
Wading sounds when walking through water should better reflect the size of the animal
Footstep terrain materials should sound more correct for small animals
Adjusted the camera’s water entry/exit sounds to be softer at slow speeds
Adjusted some ambient frequencies while underwater or during rain
Adjusted sharp frequencies on small metal fence placement
Stopped ambient birds from playing while in the Nursery
Ambient animal sounds in the Nursery are now more audible
Bug Fixes
Critical
Fixed a major memory leak in pathfinding, should help with the excessive performance loss over time while playing!
Fixed various smaller memory leaks
Animals
Fixed an animation bug that could cause animals to get stuck
Foliage
Fixed missing collider on Mangrove 1
Environment
Fixed fresh water specularity
UI/UX
Improved globe scaling in the main menu so that the map selection globe won’t overlay on other GUI elements anymore
Fixed a building menu issue causing the ‘Enrichment’ and ‘Gardening’ sections to not properly load
Fixed an issue causing the time of day and weather cycles to not automatically loop in Challenge Mode
Fixed an issue causing the destruction icon and notification to not properly refresh themselves after repairing structures
Rendering
Fixed a visual glitch resulting in shadows not updating properly for different modular styles
Audio
Fixed an issue introduced in Update 8 that prevented some niche audio events from triggering (tail, throat, etc)
Fixed an issue introduced in Update 8 that would cause some sounds to end abruptly
Fixed offset audio for Edmontosaurus unique behavioral one shot
Performance
Massively improved modular loading performance, overall reducing loading times and responsiveness
Improved draw distances of modular objects to be more optimal and to better reflect individual piece scale
