Prehistoric Kingdom News

Welcome, park managers!

The second Early Access update is here! This update brings a wealth of changes and performance improvements that target a wide array of systems. If you’ve had issues running Prehistoric Kingdom, we highly suggest giving the game another try and providing us with your feedback.

In addition to these performance improvements, our most notable addition in EA 1.0.4 would have to be support for the Steam Workshop and box selection. These two features go a long way in streamlining the construction side of Prehistoric Kingdom, and we cannot wait to see what the community comes up with.

This update does not include Animal Signs, though they will be coming in the next one.

Steam Workshop Support
Support for the Steam Workshop is finally here! Players can upload their own saves and modular prefabs or download community submissions to construct the park of their dreams.



To upload a save, head to the Load Game menu and click the Steam-themed button. This will open the workshop submission form, allowing you to update an existing submission or create a new one.



To upload a modular prefab, click the Steam icon found on any player-made prefabs in the building toolbox. This will open a similar workshop submission form, allowing you to update an existing submission or create a new one.



Players can also upload their builds directly from the Prefab Editor when creating their modular prefab.

Box Selection
Box selection is a quick and handy way to select a cluster of items when inside a modular group. While holding the left mouse button, drag across the screen to create a box. Any items inside this box will be highlighted for selection.



Players can also drag boxes across the screen while in Demolition mode to mass delete anything inside a group with exceptional speed.



Main Menu Update Prompt
In addition to the main menu’s reworked visuals, a prompt will now appear after every substantial update - highlighting new features, items or animals.


Enjoy the addition of our new terracotta roof style, a set of vibrant tiles found under the Tropical theme in the customization panel.



We can’t wait to see what the community builds with these!

[h3]Full Patch Notes:[/h3]

• NEW: Steam Workshop Support
  • Prehistoric Kingdom is now on Steam Workshop! Discover and download a variety of user-created prefabs and parks, while sharing your own custom creations from the in-game prefab editor!
• NEW: Box Selection
  • Left-click and drag to use the box selection tool while in the modular editing mode to select multiple pieces in real time
    
  • Supports active deselection and demolition
• NEW: Main Menu Update Prompt
  • Introduced a quick update prompt in the main menu to better notify players of notable additions and changes in the newest updates

• Animals & AI
  • Added new behavioural animations for the following animals. Please note that audio implementation is incomplete and that more animations will be coming to the hadrosaurs:
    
    
    • Tyrannosaurus
      
    • Edmontosaurus
      
    • Iguanodon
      
    • Parasaurolophus
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added terracotta roof set to the Tropical theme
• Graphics/Visuals
  • Added distant foliage to far-away relief, improving general level fidelity
    
  • Added real-time cloud reflections, tunable via the graphics presets
    
  • Added selection graphics to objects that previously lacked it (e.g. Wind Turbine)
• Audio
  • Added ear and tail flicks to Coelodonta
    
  • Added additive sounds to Mammoth
• GUI
  • Added gamemode-based filters to the available saves list
    
  • Added map-specific loading screen splash assets

• Camera
  • General camera movement should be smoother and less jittery
    
  • Screenshot mode camera speeds are consistent with regular gameplay
• Gameplay
  • Re-enabled the Tutorial Scenario
    
  • Balanced the feed ordering system, with the maximum amount of feed that can be ordered now being more closely tied to the park’s feeding needs
    
  • Reduced waiting times for feed orders, with the timer now scaling up by a month with every 25 ordered units
    
  • Feed ordering is now disabled if no feed items are selected, or the minimum ordering amount is 0
    
  • Feed order arrival now triggers a notification
    
  • Improved cloud transition speeds
• Save/Load
  • Parallelized loading, thus increasing loading speed
    
  • Added additional smoothing to the loading progress bar
• Foliage
  • Updated slope adherence for trees to remain mostly vertical. This change does not apply to existing painted foliage
• Audio
  • Updated footsteps and terrain sweeteners for Mammoth
    
  • Tweaked fade-in for wind on high camera elevations
    
  • Improved and fixed painted water audio parameters
    • Lake and pond audio now plays in proximity to water bodies
      
    • Enabled an underwater transition sound effect which is affected by player speed
      
• Graphics
  • Re-enabled Bloom, Vignette, and Chromatic Aberration
    
  • Reworked Grass Density and Draw Distances
    
  • Slightly increased general saturation levels
    
  • Adjusted fly particles to use transparent wings
    
  • Increased saturation of the sky box
    
  • Improved mesh blending between the main terrain and distant terrains on all levels
    
  • Terrain settings below high now scale the shader quality down
• UX
  • Improved the camera tracking and tracking transitions for a smoother feel - tracking small fast targets won’t lag the camera behind anymore
• GUI
  • Save menu items now display custom map names as opposed to the level names we use in the engine
    
  • Updated auto-slope icon for Coastal and Boreal in the texture painting window

• Critical
  • Fixed a common crash while loading
    
  • Fixed the feeders occasionally not updating their feed type on user change
    
  • Fixed unreliable multiple piece deletion
    
  • Fixed the weather presets not cycling properly
• Animals
  • Fixed broken animation that would cause Triceratops to get stuck
• Save & Load
  • Patched scene cleanup code that could freeze loading
    
  • Fixed loading edge case where the animals would avoid exhibit fences in the beginning of the game
• Terraforming
  • Fixed water brush undo/redo artifacts
• GUI
  • Fixed issue that would display placeholder Nursery Menu assets when loading a species preview for the first time
    
  • Fixed edge case that would cause the time of day to briefly flash when exiting the Nursery Menu
    
  • Fixed a layout issue with the main menu fading animation
    
  • Fixed modular piece info menu layout issue that would cause the feeder menu showing up if all the pieces were selected
    
  • Fixed masking issue with inquiry texts on save/load menu items
• Rendering
  • Fixed certain graphics options not applying (such as heavy SSR)
    
  • Fixed shadow artifacts on the Medium graphical preset
    
  • Fixed bound-based culling for several items, which resolves modular items disappearing too soon before hitting the edge of the screen
    
  • Fixed a visual glitch that would cause selection rendering to be stuck on the red color after quitting modular group demolition
    
  • Re-introduced underwater rendering after being accidentally turned off in the last update

• Major optimizations to the modular rendering system
  
• Major optimizations to modular loading
  
• Minor GPU optimizations
  
• Optimized Terrain Shading & Settings
  
• Minor CPU animal optimizations
  
• Minor CPU optimizations to many small systems
  
• Visitor AI Optimizations

• There are some rare issues related to loading modular colors. Reloading a save may resolve this issue. We will continue looking into this behaviour.
  
• A number of visitor animations are currently broken, resulting in detached mesh pieces. This will be resolved as soon as possible.
  

Hello Park Managers!

Just a quick update to inform you all that the next patch is close to being finished, but is still being tested. Our devs are fixing a number of issues and once testing is complete then the update will be released!

- The PK Team

Welcome to the July Update!

In this month’s post, we’ll be highlighting our upcoming support for Steam Workshop, the next update and future developments.




Much to the excitement of many in the community, our next update will include Steam Workshop support for saved games and modular prefabs.

Getting everything up and running proved to be initially troublesome, but the implementation didn’t take as long as we expected. Seeing the Workshop page fill up with some development and community items taken from Discord for testing purposes was incredibly exciting.



Anyone using a Steam account to play Prehistoric Kingdom can soon easily update or add Workshop items via our in-game tools. We cannot wait to see the community share their wild ideas and creative spark.




Coming to the Tropical theme in our next update, the terracotta roof style provides a whole new decorative flavor for park builders. Offering recolorable tiles, there isn’t a shade these roofs can’t supply.



We especially love how easy it is to change the vibe of a building with this new set. Just a few clicks and you’ve completely restyled your modular group!

Prefab created by Sticky (Discord)


Perhaps one of the funkiest little dinosaurs to enter the Kingdom thus far, we would like to introduce you to Scelidosaurus (seh-lid-oh-sore-us).

Belonging to the family group Thyreophora (thy-ree-oh-for-ah), this small armored dinosaur presents some unique features! Donning a pair of goat-like horns and a spine sheathed in osteoderms, Scelidosaurus lived 191 million years ago in the Early Jurassic. Though traditionally a quadruped, this animal has been observed using bipedal movement to run and survey its surroundings.



If you haven’t been keeping count over the last few months, this means that all three animals coming in our first title update have now been revealed. Coelophysis, Dilophosaurus and Scelidosaurus will be making their way into your parks after the next update. Stay tuned for future announcements and release dates!


Currently, the team is hard at work developing our next update. A number of important changes have been made as well as fixing a number of issues such as the idle Triceratops and further save/load reports.

For the next update, we’d like to specify what we’re actively working on and what needs to be finished in order for us to release it:

• Animal Info Signs
  2D art assets for the info sign screen are complete. The 3D art (screen, frame, etc.) is still yet to be made but won’t take long. For now, we will be releasing the animal info signs with temporary screenshots. In the future, they will contribute to the guest education need.
  
• Main Menu Redux
  3D art for the new main menu has been completed. All that remains is to set the scene up in-engine and prepare our new background elements. This is not a “must have” and may be moved into the following update if needed.
  
• Guest Ethnicities
  3D art for new guest ethnicities has been completed, introducing new faces, skin tones and hair styles. They still need to be retargeted and integrated into the engine. Another batch of guest ethnicities will be added at a later date.
  

[h2]Animal Animations[/h2]
Our animators have continued to work on a whole bunch of behavioral animations for a number of animal groups. We saw how much the community loved our last showcase, so we thought we’d reveal a couple more!

Cleanliness is important! Small theropods can be seen cleaning their bodies and snouts.

Much to the surprise of our guests, large theropods like T. rex are still surprisingly mobile - even while laying down!

[h2]Guest AI[/h2]
Improved Guest AI is also on track to join our new species in the next big title update. So far, we’ve added the ability for a guest unit to explore, find a point of interest (e.g. binoculars, shop), use a point of interest, and spend.

For a long while now, our in-game economy has relied on a passive simulation rather than guests physically interacting with facilities and spending their cash. These changes (in addition to needs) will not only make guests appear more active, but will make our economy much more accurate to what visitors are actually doing.

[h2]Performance Improvements[/h2]
Performance for the modular rendering system has been majorly improved with the addition of bounds and shadow culling.


Created by Rayne (Discord).


Created by Jolly Good Show My Fair Boy (Discord).

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Created by Hiysta (YouTube).

...

Thank you for reading July’s dev diary!

The team is super excited for everyone to get their hands on these new updates when they’re ready. Keep an eye on our social media for new information regarding releases, news and updates.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome to the June Update!

We hope everyone had a very Happy Pride Month! June was a busy time for the team as we released Minor Update 1, but we’re continuing to push onwards with new developments. And, just maybe, new species.



So, let’s talk about updates! Next up is Minor Update 2 - a smaller patch that includes a handful of new items and improved guest visuals.

Following this will be Major Update 1, the first big content update during Early Access. Featuring a new map, biome, animals, building set and more, we’ll reveal the exact contents and theme behind the update in a dedicated Feature Focus prior to release, so stay tuned!


In the meantime, we think it’s time to unveil the next sharp-toothed animal joining Prehistoric Kingdom’s roster…

Say hello to Coelophysis! Don’t be fooled by this slender carnivore. With its exceptional vision, high speed and sharp teeth, this small predator makes for a terrifying ambush!



Found as far back as the Triassic period, Coelophysis will be the oldest animal in Prehistoric Kingdom as of Major Update 1. Despite its old age, we think it still looks pretty darn good!


Along with bringing new members to our prehistoric lineup, the first Major Update introduces the first wave of behavioural animations. These special actions provide a fresh level of richness and personality beyond the additive animations already in the game. We want our animals to do things, even when they’re not walking or running around!

These new animations are an exploration of animalistic behaviour and will help to build character for the various family groups of Prehistoric Kingdom. As this is a lot of animation and audio work, behavioural animations will be rolled out for new and old family groups across a number of updates beginning with Major Update 1.

Please enjoy the example of two behavioural animations below. We can’t wait for you to discover them all!



Some park managers have observed smaller theropods practicing their pounces as a form of play.



Rolling can help scratch some tough to reach spots!

Ensuring the animals are lively and interesting to watch is a long term goal of ours that will require ongoing development. Major Update 1 will see the overhaul of animal locomotion which is a necessary step in supporting more advanced pathfinding and AI behaviours. Animals interacting or simply acknowledging each other has been a huge community request and we will keep working towards that.


This month we’ve got an extra treat for you all! Our 3D animal artist Cindy recorded various stages of her work on the Dilophosaurus - unwrapping, sculpting and painting a previously unseen skin. You’ll have to wait and see what the finished design looks like though!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

If you’d like to see more behind the scenes content like this in the future, be sure to let us know!

...


After initial delays with the first Minor Update (released mid June), we’ve readjusted our current roadmap accordingly so that players can continue to follow our development plans and know when to expect the next update. You can view the updated roadmap here on Trello. Players can also expect the tutorial to return shortly after we’ve resolved unexpected issues caused by the last patch.



In terms of general development tidbits, here are some bullet points we’d like to highlight:

• We are working on a follow up patch to Minor Update 1, adjusting the feed balance and addressing some miscellaneous issues (loading, visuals, etc.)
  
• Steam Workshop support is a highly requested feature that we will be working on soon. We’re eager to launch workshop support so that players can conveniently share all of their unique builds and create a community together.
  
• We have begun working on guest AI and management for Major Update 1. We are very excited to bring more management gameplay into the fold over the coming months.
  
• We are still working on further optimizations for loading speed and rendering.
  

Created by Evolve (Discord).

Created by Magnanimous_Matt (Discord).

Created by POTPdeluxe (Twitter).

...

Thank you for reading June’s dev diary!

The team hopes that everyone’s excited to see more from our future updates and learn who the mysterious third animal could be! Exciting times ahead, park managers!

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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• Discord
• Reddit
• YouTube

Welcome, park managers!

Update 1 is now available! In this patch, we’ve added a number of new features and quality of life changes to help improve the state of the game. This is only the beginning of our journey through Early Access as there will be many more changes to come.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get this update out earlier due to engine related technical issues. Previously hidden problems with Unity have only just revealed themselves due to a significantly larger playerbase with highly varied machine specifications.

Though we are continuing to fight Unity’s rediculously poor loading and memory related management, we’ve made good headway in optimizing the game and implementing custom workarounds. This will be an ongoing process that’s an unfortunate reality of making a game this large in a brittle and archaic engine.

Feeding System
Feeders can now empty after usage, leading to an ever-growing animal feeding demand as your park grows. Use the Animal Overview Menu (found in the Management Dashboard) to place new orders, passively increasing your available supply of feeding types.



Feeders can be manually refilled individually through their respective piece panel or in bulk through the enclosure info menu.

Notifications
Notifications will now appear inside the new Park Status window, alerting players to various problems in their zoo. You can click alerts to go directly to the closest issue!



Alerts can be muted or customized to highlight exactly what you’d like to know.

Habitat Markers
Create invisible paddock boundaries with the Habitat Marker! Unlike regular fences, animals are not held back by Habitat Markers and will require the usage of terrain, rocks or other methods to keep creatures inside the pen.



Habitat Markers are invisible during regular gameplay and will only appear when building or selecting a habitat.

Animal Nursery Sizes
In Update 1, we’ve added a small and medium Nursery Module. Each Nursery size has its own holding capacity and breeding size limit. Use larger Nurseries to breed and release bigger animals.



Bug Report Tool
In the pause/escape menu, players will now find a dedicated Bug Report Tool. This tool replaces manual GitHub reports by directly sending us a full report containing a game screenshot, a title, description, and full error log.




A big highlight for Update 1 is all the new scenery pieces! Over 50 new items and props have been added to the game, with some highlights including topiary, hedges and recolorable animal silhouettes.



We also switched over to a new weather/sky solution to improve performance. This does however mean that weather and map specific ambient lighting will be unavailable until we can reimplement those features.



Due to pathfinding related issues, the water troughs shown in our last blog post have been moved to a future update.

If you’d like to find exactly what’s been added, changed or fixed, please continue on to the full patch notes below!

[h3]Full Patch Notes:[/h3]

• NEW: Feeding System
  • Feeders can now empty after usage, leading to an ever-growing animal feeding demand as your park grows. Use the Animal Overview Menu (found in the Management Dashboard) to place new orders, passively increasing your available supply of feeding types
    
  • Feeders can be manually refilled individually through their respective piece panel or in bulk through the enclosure info menu
    
• NEW: Notifications
  • Notifications will now appear inside the new Park Status window, alerting players to various problems in their zoo. You can click alerts to go directly to the closest issue
    
  • Alerts can be muted or customized
• NEW: Habitat Marker
  • Create invisible paddock boundaries with the Habitat Marker!
    
    Unlike regular fences, animals are not held back by Habitat Markers and will require the usage of terrain, rocks or other methods to keep creatures inside the pen
    
  • Habitat Markers are invisible during regular gameplay and will only appear when building, selecting a habitat or in the Management view
• NEW: Animal Nursery Sizes
  • Added 2 new Nursery Modules: Nursery Small & Nursery Medium
    
  • Each Nursery size has its own holding capacity and breeding size limit. Use larger Nurseries to breed and release bigger animals
• NEW: Bug Report Tool
  • Added a dedicated Bug Report Tool which can be accessed through the Pause window. This tool replaces manual GitHub reports by directly sending us a full report containing a game screenshot, a title, description, and full error log

• Animals & AI
  • Added grazing to Dryosaurus and Coelodonta
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added 24 silhouette pieces, picked from a wide array of animal and plant species in the game
    
  • Added 3 new Tropical Lamps, perfect for housing fire FX
    
  • Added 12 Topiary pieces, ranging from hedges to animal shapes
    
  • Added Chainlink Arch piece
    
  • Added 2 new styles to the Flat Feeder - Wood and Stone
    
  • Added the remaining feed types to the Flat Feeder - Fish and Insects
    
  • Added 5 Tropical Banners & 3 Tropical Tarp props
    
  • Added 3 Tropical Pot clutter props
    
  • Added 2 Tropical Mask wall decorations
    
  • Added a wooden Tropical Wall Sculpture wall prop
    
  • Added 2 Tropical Basket clutter props
    
  • Added 2 new Tropical Benches
    
  • Added 3 Tropical Bins
    
  • Added 3 Tropical Doors
    
  • Added 3 Tropical Windows
    
  • Added 5 Tropical Paint-Stripped Wooden Beam & Arch pieces
    
• UI/UX
  • Added: exhibit & modular camera tracking
• Audio
  • Added new foley when animals eat from fruit, fish and insect feeders
    
  • Added sounds to Deinocheirus additive animations
    
  • Added growls to Coelodonta, Dryosaurus and Psittacosaurus when increasing nourishment
    
  • Added new terrain-based surface interaction sounds for when some animals lay down
    
  • Added dawn chorus and additional birds to UK temperate ambience
    
  • Added opening and closing audio events to the dialogue box
    
  • Added completion sounds to animal breeding completion

• Buildings & Scenery
  • Updated junction distance for concrete and glass fences
    
  • Updated Chainlink piece texture fidelity - better visuals as well as improved tiling on angles.
    
  • Fixed a variety of reflection artifacts on several misc modular items & modules
• Save/Load
  • Crashes during saving should no longer corrupt that save
    
  • Added saving failure notifications to let players know if something has gone wrong
    
  • Expanded economy saving: loan progress is now saved and loaded, and the finances history now carry over saves
    
  • Added nursery animal state saving/loading - bred animals contained in a nursery but not yet released will now be saved and loaded
    
  • Added special exhibit saving/loading - mini aviary settings and animals now carry over saves
    
  • Weather menu preferences are now registered over different save games, provided they are in Sandbox mode
• UX/Balance
  • Foliage items are now categorized by their biomes within the Building Menu
    
  • Changed animal-derived park rating behaviour: global species rating will now only change when an animal is successfully placed, and will go down if no more animals of that species are present in the park
    
  • Camera tracking can now be triggered even when the cursor is over a GUI element
• GUI
  • Changed behaviour of the Nursery shortcut button inside the Nursery Holder to open up the closest nursery to the camera, instead of the first nursery ever placed
    
  • Added keybind support to the Excavations Menu worldmap panning and scrolling
    
  • Applied background blur to the save/load menu
• Rendering
  • Fixed rendering for the UK level ocean
    
  • Improved particle effect rendering
    
  • For performance reasons, we’ve switched to a completely new weather/sky rendering solution, which should be easier to render, while providing a higher graphical fidelity:
    • Cloud and fog graphics have been completely overhauled
      
    • Introduced sun shafts and improved atmospheric volumetrics
      
    • Introduced cloud shadows
      
    • Brightened general nighttime ambience
      
    • Slightly neutralized lamp lights
  • Improved distanct rendering for several path materials
• Audio
  • Added support for unique animal audio per skin and integument
    
  • Adjusted timing for day, night and dawn chorus transitions to match new weather systems
    
  • Changed wind sound when at higher elevations
    
  • Wind rips will now be more frequent at high elevations
    
  • Updated footsteps and terrain sweeteners for Coelodonta

• Critical
  • Fixed memory disposal related crashes
    
  • Fixed a Modular deletion bug that could cause both ‘ghost pieces’ and failed deletions.
    
  • Fixed Saving issue that could cause science points to reset at 1,000 on save load
    
  • Potentially fixed an issue that could contribute to excavations sites not unlocking at the right rating level
    
  • Fixed an event failure that caused enclosures to not refresh their data when new feeders were placed within their perimeters
    
  • Fixed a bug that caused random modular objects to occasionally disappear when an exhibit’s dung was cleaned
    
  • Fixed various GUI events that caused modular group power information to not update at the right times
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed an issue with the Mini-Aviary lights - the lights should now be fully recolorable
    
  • Fixed the amenity module lights being turned on throughout the day
    
  • Fixed metal fence post LODs
• Rendering
  • Fixed selection outlines rendering artifacts
• UX/GUI
  • Fixed an issue causing the terraforming actions to have a staggered/slow effect
    
  • Improved dynamic scaling ratio of GUI canvases
    
  • Fixed an inaccurate labeling of the time spent on individual saves. Overwriting any of the old saves should now update the labeled metadata with a more accurate time
    
  • The object tooltip now displays the correct genus name when hovering an animal (i.e. the tooltip will now display “Tarbosaurus” instead of “Tyrannosaurus”)
    
  • Fixed an issue causing the excavation site selection highlight to not turn on during selection
    
  • Fixed issue that caused the management menu to stay open when double clicking on the main board management buttons
    
  • Fixed bug causing the exhibit donations to be timescale-independent
    
  • Fixed GUI bug that prevented the correct month and year from displaying in the Finances Overview
    
  • Fixed layout issue that prevented the last save slot in the save/load menu from being deleted
    
  • Fixed Special Exhibit animal welfare bars
    
  • Fixed a minor issue that caused the new game map pins to not promptly display their tooltips
    
  • Fixed a minor layout issue with the breeding progress bar not filling up fully
• Audio
  • Fixed Management Dashboard ambience loop “pop”
    
  • Fixed an audio issue where the audio wouldn't pause within the Screenshot Menu if the timescale was 0
    
• Dialogue
  • Corrected missing words from Brachiosaurus intro subtitle
    
  • Fixed Nigel repeating a Pachyrhinosaurus line
    
  • Fixed Nigel repeating a Protoceratops line
    

• Animals are now loaded in as needed, resulting in a small amount of time where no animal preview is visible in the Nursery
  
• Minor CPU optimizations for modular processing
  
• Significant GPU optimizations for lighting and weather
  
• Optimized loading times significantly
  
• Massively optimized selection rendering for large modular groups
  

• Due to edge cases introduced by the new features, we decided to temporarily disable the Tutorial. This scenario will be back at a later date
  
• As the current weather system integration is still a Work In Progress, the lighting orientation slider within the Screenshot Menu has been temporarily disabled
  
• Cloud shadows may display a sharp "cut" edge. This is something we are investigating
  
• Water troughs have NOT been included in this patch due to pathfinding related issues