This fix patch addresses a few player reported issues from the last update. Thank you for all the feedback and bug reports on our Discord server!
There will be another update at the end of February that adds the research system and radius visuals for power generators, animal info signs and dung beetles. See you then!
Changes
Guests
Visitor needs grow a bit more slowly, plus bathroom and hunger needs stay low for longer after being satisfied
Module path connection status and icons are now calculated when the game is paused
Added more logging to target initialization crashing
Bug Fixes
Critical
Fixed common new terraforming crash
Fixed another swathe of critical tutorial issues, the experience for this scenario should be more stable
Fixed an issue that could have caused animal info screens to lose their current screen graphic on save if currently not functioning. Animal Information Screens should save/load more reliably in the future
GUI/UX
Fixed the Depth of FIeld effect not displaying in screenshot mode
Notes
Players have reported cases of animals freezing up. We are now in the early stages of overhauling animal AI, navigation and locomotion. Please stay tuned for new information.
We've added a new public testing branch, and you can jump on it by switching to the "ptb_public_testing" beta! This branch will contain public early access to fix and balancing patches in the future, and should allow us to get more accurate testing feedback before releasing an update to the larger public. As always, thank you all for the invaluable feedback.
Prehistoric Kingdom - General Update (EA 1.1.116)
Welcome, park managers!
In this patch, we've made a number of focused changes relating to performance, guests and balance. A number of bugs pertaining to guests have also been fixed, so your managerial experience should be a bit smoother.
This update also adds Gameplay settings to the options menu when playing in a sandbox park, allowing players to adjust various aspects of their gameplay whenever needed!
Some new music cues have been added, too! These short pieces will play when starting a new game or loading into an existing park, changing based on where your park is in the world. There are even cues for loading into a 5 Star park or one with poor statistics. A few more 5 star variants will be arriving in the future!
There is another patch coming later in February that'll introduce the Research system and quality of life features such as range graphics for power generators and dung beetles. We look forward to sharing more news with you and as always, please stay tuned for our next dev diary. You can check out our Trello roadmap to see what's next in the pipeline.
Additions
Animals
Added a handful of behavioral idle and resting animations to the species below. Animals marked with
also have a unique idle or rest animation.
Acrocanthosaurus
Smilodon
Torvosaurus*
Tyrannosaurus
Added a social response animation to Smilodon
Audio
Added sounds when changing maps in the New Game menu
Added new loading screen ambience and transition
Added additional broadcast and social call variations to Parasaurolophus
Added a broadcast to Smilodon
Music
Added over 5 minutes of short musical cues when starting a new game or loading into an existing park
Different cues will play depending on where your park is in the world, if the park is 5 Stars or if it’s experiencing poor statistics!
GUI/UX
Added a Gameplay Settings section in the Options Menu, available in Sandbox mode. This will allow users to change custom gameplay settings on a whim
Enabled the ‘Mute Ingame Music’ options in the Audio Settings menu
Added a visibility value to each fence type, accessible through the building information box
Added special exhibit animals to the Animal Overview Menu
Changes
Animals
Updated Dilophosaurus walk to have less head bob
Adjusted Tarbosaurus biome preferences
Updated randomized animal color variation rules: new animals bred in the park might now have more vivid color variation
Guests
Improved Guest AI decision making and seeking of points of interest. Guests should now be more able to maintain their needs
Guests now cannot use any modules that aren’t currently functioning
Increased chance of guests naturally looking at animals inside exhibits
Improved animal visibility calculations, with different fence types now having varying degrees of visibility
Terrain obstruction now stops animal visibility
Guests will now recover from navigational changes properly
Guests can now properly view statues and info signs without needing to stand in an exact position
Audio
Loading screen ambience will no longer drop away
Minor changes to various Parasaurolophus social calls
Gameplay
Further tuned park rating, making it overall less forgiving after recent user feedback. Exhibit rating and overall animal rating now factors into rating much more heavily
Changed exhibit rating calculations - now only exhibits with animals in them will contribute towards total exhibit rating
Changed animal rating calculations - animals which are not confined by any exhibit will not count towards total park rating
Adjusted timing on the Rating Increase notifications
‘No Animals in the Park’ notification now resolves itself if the player places animals
Decreased upkeep costs across all nurseries
Decreased upkeep costs on the Wind Turbine and Vending Machine
Increased upkeep costs on Bathroom 4x8
Buffed lower tier loan incomes
Increased Deinocheirus breeding cost
Graphics
Distant Lights now have a level of detail step to dramatically improve performance at night when many thousands of lights can be on at once
Adjusted weather transition speed
Bug Fixes
Critical
Fixed game’s detection of wrong or corrupt navigation data in saves, the game may now regenerate all navigation graphs. (This may take between 10 and 120 seconds depending on the complexity of the map and speed of your computer.)
Fixed loading crash when saved navigation data was corrupted
Tentative fix for crashes while removing vegetation near borders of map
Tentative fix for guests walking through exhibits
Tentative fix for white prefab icons and a serious bug related to adding prefabs while the game is silently loading prefabs in the background
Fixed a Tutorial bug tied to recognizing placed animals in the park, this should hopefully resolve a common issue with the Mammoth placement objective
Fixed multiple critical memory leaks
Fixed a common guest AI memory leak.
Fixed a game settings initialization issue tied to custom sandbox settings
Fixed two Guest AI bugs that wasted CPU resources with heaps of logging
Fixed Guests being unable to see animals in some loaded games
Fixed an animal dung related bug that created unnecessary logging
Fixed a critical issue with Animal Information Signs losing their power settings after changing the animal species displayed
Resolved a long-standing issue that caused multiple upkeep costs to be logged within the economy system
Fixed a potentially critical GUI initialization glitch on first-time game load
Fixed guests wandering through enclosures
Animals
Fixed randomized animal scaling not loading up properly in saves
Achievements
Fixed an issue preventing the “Ecosystem” and “Managerie Manager” achievements from properly triggering
Guests
Fixed guests not receiving satisfaction from observing animals
Fixed information signs not being registered as a point of interest for guests
Structures
Fixed backface rendering for modular wall pieces
Fixed Barrel Cactus biome
Fixed Path Replacement not working on all path segments
Fixed Fences not rendering underwater
Audio
Fixed rain audio initialization issue on game load
GUI/UX
Fixed several text element cut offs
Fixed several Spanish translation elements
Fixed an obscure Nursery Menu bug that could caused the wrong animal instances to be placed in the park
Fixed ‘Escape’ key not triggering exit events in Main Menu
Fixed enclosure selection being stuck after opening a management menu
Fixed an error related to the weather forecast in the Overview Menu
Fixed Management Menu header text displaying the name of the last opened menu instead of the current one
Fixed an issue that would cause the financial pin tooltip to get stuck on screen after the management menu closed
Fixed a minor issue with the session play time count for new games - this also prevents the “Imaginarium” achievement from unlocking when first starting the tutorial
Fixed an issue that caused the Load menu to load twice
Fixed an issue causing the unlock progress on Nursery Menu gallery animal elements to always default at 100%, even without all of the skins being unlocked
Fixed Mural Djadochta 1 and Mural Djadochta 3 icons being reversed
Modular Prefab cost preview is now perfectly synchronized to the group’s actual placement cost
Performance
Light Imposters added. The slowdown from large parks with thousands of lights at night is drastically optimized
Reduced stutters when updating navigation after various terraforming actions
Massively optimized fence placement
Optimized shadows + underwater shadows
Reduced unnecessary logging
Notes
Memory usage can be very high! We are actively working to address this in future patches.
Some structures might be off path in older saves, simply resetting the structure position should fix this issue until further notice
We are investigating an issue that may result in music suddenly stopping during gameplay.
Dev Diary: January 2023
Welcome to January’s Development Update!
After a wonderful holiday break, the team returned mid-January to continue working on Prehistoric Kingdom. In this time, it turns out we crossed a rather exciting milestone… we’ve shipped 100,000 units since launching in April last year!
With your ongoing support we want to make 2023 a more consistent and even bigger year for us, targeting meaningful gameplay additions and improvements with our usual sprinkling of modular pieces and creativity. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us so far!
To start the year off, let’s dive straight into development progress and take a look at some of the things we’re cooking up behind the scenes.
Where We’re At
Good news! The next patch is almost ready to drop. This one is mostly focused on addressing various issues found in the last update, including a bunch of bug fixes as well as huge performance improvements during nighttime thanks to our new light impostors.
Though this patch does address some trouble spots with visitor navigation, we’re going to continue working on this aspect of guests. Seeing them dance on tables and disregard common decency is humorous, but it’s a side effect of modular pathfinding that requires a more complex solution. Simply removing walkable areas above a certain height or steepness can include a number of knock-on effects that would make some player builds inaccessible to guests. We will continue to research and develop a robust solution to combat this, but in the meantime, we’d like to thank you for tolerating our hooligans.
Moving on to new gameplay additions, the research system is almost done! We’ll be shipping it as soon as it’s ready for release after the next update.
Placeholder values and numbers.
Throughout the year, we will be including new types of items, modules and mechanics to expand upon the initial selection of researchables. This is a system that we want to grow and foster over time, evolving the progression of Challenge mode as the game expands during Early Access.
After the research tree is released, we’ll be shifting most of our attention to the animals. There’s a lot of work to be done in polishing and developing them further with new features, so, let’s talk about that!
What’s in the Pipeline?
Animals
In 2023, we want to do a lot more for our animals, introducing new gameplay features alongside a number of exciting species. This upcoming roster has a great mix of familiar and lesser celebrated faces, highlighting the diversity of prehistoric life on this planet.
To start, let’s take a sneak peak at two animals coming this year. If we told you too much about them, it might just spoil the theme of our next big update! We can’t wait to read all your speculation.
Beyond updated locomotion and new ways for the animals to interact (e.g. herding, chasing/fleeing), we also plan to tackle everybody’s favorite Hollywood moment, animal breakouts.
These escapes will cause your park rating to plummet and spark fear in guests around the park. We’ll have more information on breakouts in the future!
Genetic Mutations
Genetic mutations are coming to Prehistoric Kingdom in 2023! The team has proudly developed a semi-procedural approach that allows us to create albino, melanistic and leucistic variants all through shader.
An albino and melanistic Tyrannosaurus.
A huge benefit of this approach is that every skin can mutate. Rather than using a generic “albino” or “melanistic” texture, we came up with a powerful solution that is both memory efficient and highly variable.
The procedural nature means that there’s an astoundingly high degree of individuality and randomness. Note the extreme difference in brightness, color and pattern visibility on these two albino T. rex!
The effect of this variation is especially present in leucistic specimens, adding a unique splash of shading to otherwise familiar skins. Cookies and cream, anyone?
A leucistic Tyrannosaurus.
Some art is still required for this system work as intended across all our current species, so genetic mutations will be arriving later this year. Stay tuned for more information!
Guest Art Update
For the last few months, we’ve been working to design a more appealing and cohesive art direction for our guests. We sat down with our concept artist, Ida, to talk a little about the process and what we ended up settling on.
“The basic idea was that the guests should be pleasant and fun to look at. They’d need to appear interesting and diverse when looking at them directly or from afar as a crowd when you’re trying to manage other aspects of your park.
It was also important to us that the guests look expressive and are able to emote in a way that’s easy for the player to interpret.
I tried out a lot of different styles, from realistic to very stylized, just to get a sense of what would fit in-game with the dinosaurs and assets we already have made. We ended up settling for something in-between that will hopefully make the guests feel way more lively while still fitting the world.” — Ida, Concept Artist
Below is a concept sheet showcasing our collection of male/female presenting faces as well as some of their outfits. Depending on which map you’re playing on, guests will enter the park wearing clothes best suited to the environment.
Please note that as this is a concept sheet for our 3D artists to reference, the guests below do not feature any hair. We will also be removing all handlebar moustaches from the game. Not sorry.
The guest art overhaul will be coming later this year alongside new animations and audio to truly enhance the crowds of Prehistoric Kingdom. A number of interactions like sitting on benches, throwing trash away, and of course, animations when using kiosks or seeing their favorite animals are on our radar, too.
Created by Extinct Bricks.
Created by luci257.
Created by Blue Raptor.
Thank you for reading January’s dev diary!
As always, we will continue to release our monthly dev diaries, keeping the community informed and up to date with where we’re headed and what you can expect to see.
If you would like to provide feedback and report bugs during your experience, please head over to our official Discord or use the in-game report tool. For now, please enjoy the next update and we’ll see you in February for the latest dev diary!
The latest Early Access update is here and it’s our biggest patch yet! Featuring 3 new species, guest management and more, there’s never been a better time to jump into Prehistoric Kingdom.
If you’re yet to play the game or think it’d make a great gift, Prehistoric Kingdom is currently 25% off during the Steam Winter Sale!
1.1 Features
Animals
Say hello to Coelophysis, Dilophosaurus and Scelidosaurus! These three are the latest dinosaurs to join Prehistoric Kingdom’s roster, ushering in a new collection of early game animals from the Triassic and Jurassic.
We’ve also added ambient behavioral animations to 14 animals as part of our ongoing efforts to make the creatures more lively. These animations can play whenever an animal is idling or resting, performing a small action like looking around, sniffing or even playing!
Most of these creatures have also received a unique animation in addition to any actions shared across the family. Check the full patch notes below for a list of what species can perform behavioral animations!
Guest Gameplay
In this update, players will now have to consider guest needs! Over the next few weeks, we will be deepening and balancing guest related gameplay.
Ensuring visitors are catered to will increase your park rating and keep them in the zoo for longer. Modules such as kiosks, toilets and information signs can be placed throughout the park for guests to interact with and improve their welfare.
Visitors will spend cash when interacting with kiosks and vending machines, putting more of an emphasis on keeping up with their demands to make a profit. If you’re not careful with how you’ve laid out your park, this can cause traffic jams in high density areas! Our new avoidance algorithm ensures guests will actively path around each other while trying to find the shortest way to their destination.
To help find out what the park needs, this update also adds a new section to the Management View. Players will be able to switch between previews for the 6 different needs, with Accommodation modules coming down the line.
In-game, you can find Management View on the left hand side of the screen.
Guests will also travel to view exhibits from paths and modular structures, seeking out areas that provide animal visibility.
Observing animals will actively contribute to a guest’s entertainment need, while binoculars can be used to let visitors see further into a habitat.
In the future, we will be making this system more advanced to better account for visual obstructions and provide more Management View options for readability.
As this is all still a work in progress, guests can be found climbing on top of surfaces or falling off buildings. We are working on a new collision system we hope to introduce as soon as possible. We expect this to arrive early next year, with a total guest art, animation and audio overhaul coming later in 2023.
Localization
Six new languages can be picked from in the Interface Settings: French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, and Simplified Chinese.
We will continue to update our translations based on user feedback in future updates and may consider additional languages.
1.1 Content
Explore the scorched sands of the new Jordan desert map and build stunning zoos with over 100 scenery pieces from the Arid building set.
If the heat’s got you beat, take a stroll under the blissful shade of our new desert plants. With 24 foliage items like the Date palm and Joshua tree, they’re the perfect companions for desert dwelling dinosaurs.
There are loads of wonderful items waiting to be used in creative ways. Whether it’s a forgotten desert temple or a bustling bazaar we can’t wait to see what you build!
Modular pieces and plants aren’t the only additions, however! Brand new fences and a shingle roof set have also been included in 1.1.
Holiday Content
To help wrap up the year, the team’s put together a handful of holiday items that you can use to show your festive spirit! Baubles, snow pieces, a jolly old sleigh and even more pieces are ready for you to put up around the park.
Known Issues
Paths stacking and clipping is currently broken, resulting in awkward layering behavior. We are actively looking into this issue!
Guests may be pushed through objects, fall off buildings or stand on top of surfaces. We have a solution for this, however it needs more development time before it’s ready
Additive animal animations can play on top of behavioral idle and resting animations, resulting in unnatural movement or clipping through the ground. Animals as a whole will be overhauled and expanded upon in 2023
There is a small chance that some users may experience a severe FPS drop when selecting an animal in the Nursery. If this issue persists, please download your latest graphics drivers. We are looking into this issue.
Full Patch Notes
Features
NEW: New Animals
Restore the early Mesozoic with 3 new animals, Coelophysis, Dilophosaurus and Scelidosaurus!
New dig sites: Chinle Formation, Charmouth Mudstone Formation and the Kayenta Formation
NEW: Expanded Animal Animation Library
Several behavioral animations have been added to our first wave of animals when idling and resting.
NEW: Improved Guest AI & Management
Improved guest navigation - guest AI can now recognize and avoid walking into other guest instances
Guests now spend their own money on amenities in individual economic interactions with amenities
Guest needs and motivation: guests have needs to be met, and will leave the park if their requirements aren’t satisfied! Make sure you’ve got ample amenity and entertainment coverage in your park by making use of the new Guest Needs View
Animal visibility: guests can navigate towards visibility points to get a better look at their favorite animals - this system is still early in its development, so it will receive more complexity passes as we update it
NEW: Desert Map
Explore the red sands of Bahr Harin, our first desert locale
NEW: Desert Biome
Build your desert habitats with 9 new species of vegetation (24 plants total) and 4 additional terrain types
NEW: Game Localization
Prehistoric Kingdom has now been translated to 6 new languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian and Simplified Chinese!
Additions
Animals
Added several behavioral idle and resting animations to the first wave of species below. Animals marked with
Added additional broadcast variations to Iguanodon
Added ambient Nursery sounds to Coelodonta, Dryosaurus, Psittacosaurus and Smilodon
Music
Added a new ambient track
UI/UX
Added ‘Holiday Props’ category
Added ‘Holiday Signs’ category
Added ‘Silhouettes’ category
Added a Guest Needs view in the management view menu, allowing users to select specific category and visualize which visitor instances haven’t had their needs met, while also highlighting relevant amenity structures
Options
Added a language option in the Interface Settings menu, allowing users to select their GUI language
Changes
Animals
Added the Desert biome to Brachiosaurus, Camarasaurus (grandis, lentus supremus), Dryosaurus, Protoceratops, Psittacosaurus (mongoliensis) and Torvosaurus (tanneri)
Adjusted the play chance of busy or noisy additive animations across all animals
Animal eyes now show more environment reflections
Fixed weight paint issues for Brachiosaurus and Psittacosaurus
Buildings & Scenery
Replaced the Modern Metal Panel Roof textures for higher visual fidelity that is more in line with the rest of the building sets
Texture improvements to Modern Asphalt & Modern Wood Roofs for higher visual fidelity
Modified several roofs (Modern Metal Panel, Modern Wood, Modern Asphalt) meshes to include 3D ridges/trims on their models (included on the Gable, Round & Corner roof pieces)
Construction Tape pieces are now recolorable
Adjusted point light position on Decorative Lamp items
Moved all holiday/seasonal props into a new ‘Holiday Props’ category
Moved all holiday signage into a new ‘Holiday Signs’ category
Moved animal silhouettes into a new ‘Silhouettes’ category
Due to a transform misalignment in the Binoculars piece, the forward direction on this object was flipped. We’ve accounted for that in Official Prefabs, but players might have to change their orientation manually in saves created before this update
Gameplay & Balancing
New Game menu now defaults to Normal difficulty instead of Easy
Updated calculation for park rating: gave slightly more weight to exhibit score, making low value exhibits drag down the general rating more with this update
Modular placement stacking now also registers fences, allowing users to stack modular objects such as screen on top of existing enclosures
Environment
The snow terrain texture is now brighter and more fluffy to match the new snow pieces
Save/Load
The auto-save slot now only appears in the Load menu, preventing users from accidentally overriding the wrong save slot
New saves now account for time of day
Audio
Added missing sounds to previously implemented Iguanodon and Tyrannosaurus behavioral animations
Added missing sounds to a variety of additive animations
Argentinosaurus
Brachiosaurus
Camarasaurus
Coelodonta
Dryosaurus
Psittacosaurus
Smilodon
Hadrosaur species now use more distinct growls in non-additive animations
Iguanodon
Lambeosaurus, Parasaurolophus (shared)
Hadrosaur breathing is quieter and less bassy
Graphics
Improved distant path texture visual fidelity
UX
Opening the ‘Enclosures’ and ‘Fences’ building categories won’t display an irrelevant Styling Toolbox context anymore
After player feedback, we’ve set the modular track toggle to disabled, to prevent camera motion when selecting a modular group
Exhibit Score Bonuses and Penalties are now hidden when not applicable, to reduce visual clutter
GUI
Improved Power Management View labeling and values, for a clearer read-out of the park’s power situation
Bug Fixes
Critical
Fixed numerous crashes
Fixed a critical error preventing a handful of users from accessing the main menu upon start-up
Fixed an error causing the camera to be stuck on enclosure selection, when starting a new action
Fixed animal naming resetting to the previous name
Added safe-guards to the saving code, reducing occasions where the game could get stuck in the loading state
Fixed animal skins being accessible for non-purchased excavation sites in the Excavations Menu
Scenarios
Fixed zone marker graphics not coming up during the tutorial scenario
Save/Load
Fixed a loading issue with Animal Info Screens set to display Mini Exhibit animals
Guests
Fixed two bugs that could cause guests to walk through enclosures and other game objects
GUI
Fixed several kiosk themes not being available in the modular style menu
Performance
Optimized several game systems, freeing up more than 1ms of main thread time
Addressed several memory leaks throughout the game’s systems
Introduced significant optimizations to the group selection GUI by including more accurate group object scans - most significant with larger, more complex groups
Fixed multiple crashes
Preview: Update 1.1
Welcome, park managers!
We’re pleased to announce that the long awaited 1.1 Update will be launching alongside the Steam Winter Sale on December 22! If you’re yet to jump into Prehistoric Kingdom or looking for a great gift, we’d highly recommend taking advantage of the 20% discount!
In this very special blog post, we’ll be giving you an overview of all the major content coming in tomorrow’s update.
Check out the trailer below!
The Jordan Desert
Home to a number of species in Prehistoric Kingdom, the desert biome provides an arid flair not yet seen in any other biome.
Coming with 24 plants and a new map set in the Jordan desert, there’s no place like home for the many creatures that once inhabitated scorched prehistoric landscapes.
Animals
Update 1.1 introduces three brand new dinosaurs to Prehistoric Kingdom!
Coelophysis, Dilophosaurus and Scelidosaurus are some of the oldest creatures in the game. Small in size, these animals are perfect for adding more Mesozoic variety to your park. Their rating makes them especially accessible during the early game!
All species are coming with three alternate skins to choose from, with both Coelophysis and Dilophosaurus including a feathered variant.
Behavioural Animations
As shown in the trailer, we’ve begun adding all sorts of little fidgets, actions and motions for animals to do while idling or resting. This has helped breath new life into our creatures, and we can’t wait to bring these animations to even more animals in later updates.
Guests
In Update 1.1, players will now have to consider guest needs! Ensuring visitors are catered to will increase your park rating and keep them in the zoo for longer. Modules such as kiosks, toilets and information signs can be placed throughout the park for guests to interact with and improve their welfare.
Through these improvements to guest AI, our economy has also become more accurately simulated. Each visitor can spend cash when interacting with kiosks and vending machines, putting more of an emphasis on keeping up with their demands to make a profit.
How you build your park will also be more important in this update! With a fancy new avoidance algorithm, guests will actively path around each other while trying to find the shortest way to their destination. If you’re not careful, this can cause traffic jams in high density areas.
To help find out what the park needs, this update also adds a new section to the Management View, showing guest needs around the zoo. Players will be able to switch between the 6 different views, with Accommodation modules coming down the line.
Exhibit Viewing
Guests will be able to view exhibits from paths and modular structures, using attraction modules like the Binoculars to see further into the habitat. Observing animals will actively contribute to a guest’s entertainment need!
In the future, we will be making this system more advanced to better account for visual obstructions and provide more Management View options for readability.
Scenery
Over 100 new scenery items will be available in our brand new Arid building set. We’ve taken great inspiration from a number of cultures to provide unique designs that are perfect for building your prehistoric zoo.
This is in addition to our selection of Arid fences, a highly decorative collection of barriers that fit right at home in the desert biome.
There are also a number of non-Arid themed items included in this updated such as a new roof style, roof pieces and tropical fences. We’ve added some extra mesh details to a bunch of our roof sets so make sure you check them out when the update drops!
Holiday Items
To round out the update, we’re celebrating winter festitives with these wonderful holiday items. From snow pieces to a beautifully crafted sleigh, there’s quite the variety of decorations to spread festive cheer with.
You can get a taste of some of the pieces below, including the brand new shingle roof. We’ve had a great year and we hope you enjoy our extra gift to you this holiday season!
Translations
6 new language options are coming to Prehistoric Kingdom! French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, and Simplified Chinese will be available in the settings menu.
We will continue to update our translations based on user feedback in future updates and may consider additional languages.
Thank you for reading the preview for our next update!
Patch notes for 1.1 will be released on the 22nd alongside the update, but apart from that, we’re done for the year! This is our last official blog post for 2022 as the team will be on break until early January.
In the next Dev Diary, we’ll be reflecting on Prehistoric Kingdom’s progress over the past year and where we’d like to go during 2023.
Thank you all for an amazing year, thank you to everyone who has played our game, and thank you to everyone who has given us your phenomenal feedback. We wouldn’t be here without you!
After a short break from Dev Diaries, we’re back! In this month’s post, we’ll be showcasing the 1.1 Update’s rich, arid architecture and providing more information on various aspects of development.
As the 1.1 Update draws closer, we’d like to show off a bit more of its eye candy while the mechanical side of the update is still being worked on. Our artists have had a great time drawing from various influences and cultures to bring these pieces to life.
We’ve been referencing a lot arabic, adobe and rural desert architecture to design a look that fits with Prehistoric Kingdom. We hope all these new pieces will give the builders a breath of fresh air to build inspiring creations.
Arid Scenery
A big update wouldn’t be complete without brand new scenery pieces! In Update 1.1, players can sink their teeth into over 60 new items and a handful of new wall and roof styles. The full list of scenery items will be available in the change log once the update goes live.
New Fences
New fences from a variety of themes are also being added in the 1.1 update. Available in 1, 2.5 and 4 meter variants, each height offers a unique design with inspiration from regions around the world.
The new fences are:
Basic Ironbar Fence
Arid Wooden Fence
Arid Pillar Fence
Arid Clay Fence
Tropical Stone Fence
We can’t wait to see all the new habitats you’ll make with them!
Where We’re At
Currently, we are developing the 1.1 Update, festive Holiday content and laying the groundwork for new releases in 2023. The team expects to release the next two updates before the end of 2022, though they may be merged into a single update (like on Halloween).
Holiday Items Concept Art.
During 2023, we will be looking to hire additional programmers to help get gameplay additions out faster and improve key areas of the game. Clarity in the UX and UI is something we want to look at overhauling due to some of the user feedback we’ve been receiving.
As detailed later in the post, we’re focused on getting guests into a better state before moving onto further animal development. We only have so much development bandwidth to work with, which means we have to stagger certain improvements in favour of others. Rest assured, after 1.1 we’ll be diving straight into expanding animal AI and behaviors.
Throughout the year, we’ll also be releasing new animal species outside of our major title updates. Keep your eyes peeled on our social media for any surprise announcements!
What’s in the Pipeline?
Animal Animations
Since we last showed off behavioral animations, our library has almost been completed! All that’s left is to retarget any non-unique animations and design all their audio. We can’t wait to begin rolling these out in Update 1.1 and beyond!
Improvements to locomotion, AI and general polish will begin after we release the 1.1 update. There are a lot of things we want to do for the animals, but they’ll have to wait until we’ve improved the state of guests.
Guest Improvements
As mentioned in our last Dev Diary, 1.1 will include a number of system improvements to guests.
Now, guests will naturally form congested crowds due to a new avoidance algorithm that prevents people from walking through each other. This is especially noticeable when visitors are seeking out facilities in the park, driving the economy.
We’ll be adding a new overlay to the Management View to show exactly where guests are demanding a certain type of facility, as pictured in the concept art below.
UI Concept Art
To further add depth, each guest features a certain level of wealth that dictates how long they’ll stay in the park and how much they can spend on facilities. This will be expanded upon during a second pass on guest systems in the future.
Research Tree
Though being introduced in 1.1, the Research system is something that we will grow throughout Early Access as more features are introduced. Once the UI has been integrated and everything is up and running, we’ll talk more about this mechanic.
For this month’s Community Spotlight, we’d like to highlight our Community Manager, Rosie. She’s been such an integral part of keeping the community engaged, and sadly, this is her last week working with us! Whether it’s on stream or socials, Rosie has helped immensely in keeping you informed with all things Prehistoric Kingdom.
We’d like to send off this blog post with a word from Rosie and her last three community picks. Best of luck in the future, Rosie!
“Hello Park Managers! I want to thank you all for a wonderful year, and for being such a kind and welcoming community. It's been a pleasure and a privilege to have worked alongside the talented devs that work on this game, and I am truly grateful for the opportunity to be a small part of Prehistoric Kingdom's legacy!” - Rosie, Community Manager
Created by Magnanimous_Matt.
Created by Wikz.
Created by Black Heron.
Thank you for reading November’s dev diary!
2022 is coming to a close! We’ll be back next month to release our final development diary of the year, celebrating our festive cheer and looking on to 2023.
The team is highly eager for all to get you hands on the next update, explore the beautiful new map, and of course care for your new species! Stay tuned for more exciting news regarding the update, with more sneak peeks to be revealed in the upcoming weeks
Join us for a very spooktacular event where we'll be drawing more trick-or-treater cutouts as the chat takes part in choosing their festive costumes for the evening!
The third Early Access update is here. In this special update, we're celebrating spooky festivities by adding almost 70 new pieces themed around tricks and treats. From tombstones to pumpkins, there's plenty of Halloween festivity to carve into.
For the remainder of this update, we've fixed a number of player reported issues and made great quality of life improvements such as the new GUI scale slider, enhanced text legibility and expanded camera options within Screenshot mode. Animal Information Screens are making their debut, too! Featuring an image for all the genus in the game, they're a great way to add that extra edge of realism into your park.
Since one of our core team members has been in and out surgery over the last few weeks, our original 1.0.6 update could not be released sooner. The health of our developers will always take priority, so we thank you for your patience.
Development on the big 1.1 Update has continued to progress well while we work on these intermediary updates in tandem. Our first preview for the Desert biome was a huge success, so please be on the lookout for future sneak peeks.
Halloween Content
Boo! Our Halloween update brings a variety of new pieces to play with. Set the mood with waxy candles, some seasonal foliage, or even deconstruct your park with damaged props, rubble and cables! With almost 70 spooky items to use, we think you'll be screaming with possibilities!
Now, who might these dashing young characters be? It looks like we've found Die-no, Count Tacula and Nerdy going trick or treating! These are just 3 of the 14 cutouts included with the Halloween content.
Though we're always trying to fix bugs, we couldn't help but add two more in the form of statues! The Arthropleura and Meganeura are two delightfully creepy crawlies from the Carboniferous period, now immortalized as art pieces in the park.
You can even build a giant Arthropleura or design a new pose using the additional segment pieces.
Be sure to check the change log at the end of this post to see a list of all the new items!
1.0.6 Features
Animal Information Screens Now available in 1.0.6 are Animal Information Screens! These can be placed around habitats to display information about a specific animal nearby.
Simply select your Animal Information Screen module and pick a genus from the list in the UI. You can do this while in a modular group, or by visiting the List menu when selecting a modular group.
Players can decorate their info screens by placing an Animal Information Sign Frame around their screen module. There are 3 different recolorable styles to pick from!
We've also included 5 different prefabs to get you started as quickly as possible.
Once the Paleopedia has been added in a future update, we'll be updating all the temporary lorem ipsem to use our extensive animal facts. We hope you enjoy this extra piece of scenery!
Achievements Achievements are unlocked by completing various challenges or reaching certain milestones in the game. Starting with 24 on Steam (2 are workshop related) and 22 on Epic (coming soon), we'll be adding more achievements as we see fit over the course of development.
Screenshot Mode Additions Screenshot Mode has received additional functionality, allowing players to hide the camera UI and make adjustments to the camera's exposure and roll amount.
Adjustable depth of field, bloom and vignette settings have been added through the brand new Effects panel at the bottom of the UI. Virtual photographers, enjoy!
1.0.6 Content
Want an extra touch of realism in your habitat builds? Check out our 2 new decal animal signs with 5 styles each! They're a sure fire way to make your park seem safer than it actually is.
We've also rounded out our ensemble of animal silhouettes by adding the remaining species.
Check the changelog below for all the details!
Full Patch Notes:
Features
NEW: Achievements
24 achievements have been added to Steam and 22 to Epic (coming soon), with more achievements available in the future as game mechanics are added to the game
NEW: Animal Information Signs
When placed near habitats, Animal Information Screens can display information about an animal in the park. Select the screen and then choose an available animal from the list.
Combine screens with an Animal Information Sign Frame to create beautiful custom designs.
NEW: Screenshot Mode Additions
Enabled the Exposure and Camera Roll slider in the Screenshot Menu, allowing users to set custom camera rotation and brightness
Added an ‘Effects’ tab to the bottom of the Screenshot Menu, coming with adjustable Depth of Field, Bloom and Vignette effects
The Screenshot Menu can now be hidden while in screenshot mode using the ‘Hide GUI’ keybind
Options
Added a GUI Scale option in the Interface Options menu, allowing players to resize their UI by up to a factor of 0.1
Changes
Gameplay
Reworked calculations for exhibit Forest density for better accuracy. This may affect existing Animal Welfare!
Spline type for Path and Fence actions has been changed to Curved by default
Foliage
Small tropical foliage now contribute less to Forest need
Drastically improved rendering for foliage, resulting in correct normals and fluffier plants. This is most noticable on the oak, elm, papyrus, horsetails and other dense vegetation that may have been prone to dark face
Color adjustments for papyrus, cattails, palm seedling and coconut palm
Graphics
Improved anti aliasing smoothing of sharp edges
Improved several atmospheric settings and colors
Improved visual fidelity of scrubland and temperate environments and lighting
UX
To compensate for the recently introduced camera changes, the rotation sensitivity slider’s max. amount in the Options Menu changed from 3 to 10
Modular grid graphics are now turned off on group placement actions where the current group doesn't contain any grid-bound pieces
Improved responsiveness for action start-up when inside modular editing - starting a non-modular action while editing a group now only requires one click
GUI
Improved readability of the Management View's Power section
Removed redundant GUI panels from the Special Exhibit menu
Massively improved font resolutions, which should improve GUI readability
Slightly upscaled several text elements that were below 12px in size, thus increasing legibility
Bug Fixes
Critical
Fixed a potential issue related to game loading
Fixed faulty event callback that would cause special exhibit creatures to not deregister from the game’s data when deleted
Fixed Steam Workshop bug that prevented certain item batches from properly showing up in the game’s UI
Fixed a Workshop issue that would cause failure to display all created items
Fixed critical feeder issue that would allow players to enable non-existent feed types for the Tall Feeder
Fixed an input reading error causing camera orbit length to not update properly with camera height
Animals
Reduced tail droopiness displayed by certain animal species
GUI
Fixed bug that would prevent the spline mode text to display the current context on first load
Fixed layout issue that would cause structure items in the building menu list to bleed outside of their rect bounds
Fixed major scaling issues with parts of the management menu
Fixed the Exposure Compensation setting in the Options Menu
Fixed Light Orientation label not changing in the Screenshot Menu
Fixed Time of Day settings being uninteractable during certain Sandbox games
Rendering
Fixed glitchy shadow rendering for several roof and wall pieces
Fixed exhibit selection graphics not showing up during management view mode
Completely removed white gizmo circle that would render through the corner of the map
Fixed outline graphics persisting during screenshot mode
Performance
Fixed a prefab loading related race condition that could cause lag on lower end machines
Massively improved memory handling regarding exhibits and tree painting, most crashes related to this issue should now be fixed
Fixed several memory leak issues
Notes
Some foliage may still display dark surfaces. This is an issue we will continue to look into.
NEW Halloween Content!
Hello Park Managers!
Join Rosie in today's livestream as she shows off the new spooky content coming to Prehistoric Kingdom!
Weekly streams every Tuesday on Twitch & YouTube! Twitch: https://bit.ly/3CoTrPZ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3ycFjIh
Halloween is coming to Prehistoric Kingdom
Hello, Park Managers!
Take your prehistoric park to the next level with our brand new in-game Halloween decor and items! All spooktacular objects will be available starting on October 25, 2022 for Steam Scream Fest. Check out some of the new decorations coming to the game:
Prehistoric Pumpkins Be it traditional gourds or carved Jack-O-Lanterns, illuminate your park with these Halloween classics with a prehistoric twist!
Candles Create a chilling ambiance using customizable wax candles to guide both guests and spirits through your park. Customize the color of your candles and select from a variety of sizes.
Prehistoric Insect Statues Bring in the creepy crawlies! Keep visitors on their toes as they’re greeted with statues of the insects of old.
Buntings A classic addition to any holiday or celebration, drape decorative buntings throughout your park. Multiple styles are available!
“Destroyed Pieces” Nothing offers better atmosphere than crumbling wall decals and eerie piles of debris. Create your own horrifically interesting displays and wow park visitors with your creativity.
“Tricera-Tombs” A must have for every haunted dinosaur park! Upgrade your regular Halloween decor to give it a prehistoric flair like this dedicated tombstone for the Triceratops.
