Prehistoric Kingdom News

Welcome to March’s development update!

There’s much to discuss in this month’s devlog for Prehistoric Kingdom: featuring new progress shots, concept art, animations and audio previews!




Despite current conditions around the world, progress goes well. The team’s trying to stay as healthy as possible and work where we can on Prehistoric Kingdom.

In the background, our programmers have been working on optimization, paths, water painting and modular building. Providing better solidarity within the codebase is a considerable focus for performance at the moment in order to maximise efficiency and code structure.






One area the project has been lacking in is how we handle the in-game rendering of fur and fluffy feathers. As a side task to water painting, Seth spent a few days in March creating a highly flexible custom-built fur shader for our animals!

As you can see below, this has a huge impact on the final rendering result of creatures:





Yes, the fur moves in the wind!

This new geometry based shading has already been seamlessly integrated into our existing animal technology, offering great visual fidelity alongside fantastic optimization techniques to help keep framerates high. For lower-end hardware, we’ll add quality options to outright disable fur just in case!



Animals such as Smilodon will feature varying lengths of fur depending on which species have been bred, giving S. fatalis a longer coat, for example.


Mau continued work on the modular building system in March, bringing a lot of its most necessary functions to completion.

As described in prior development updates, players can select multiple wall or roof pieces and change their texture to a unified color or material. This feature is a huge gamechanger for the creative builders out there as it allows for rapid experimentation with various design combinations.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We’ve also been finishing up the remaining pieces of core functionality by implementing group merging and object duplication! Although they’re expected parts of a modular building system, it’s an area we hadn’t gotten around to yet.


Another issue we’ve targeted over the past month has been performance and general optimization. With Seth helping out, we’re working on getting large FPS improvements across the board - searching for potentially troublesome areas under the hood that could use some code reworking or adjustments to speed up processing.

Part of this optimization process has been cleaning up the backend side of terraforming to make way for water painting. Since terrain editing has some existing APIs already built into the engine, part of our challenge is keeping those components performant whilst integrating our own methods within that. Now that we have an extra programmer to handle things like this, Matt and Mau are able to continue working on other parts of the project. Stay tuned for more water painting news!



Paraceratherium and Stegosaurus took the spotlight this month as some of the last animals to be revealed. With forty-seven down, there’s only three left to go!






For the past few months, a small part of the team’s been at work reorganising and cleaning up certain gameplay systems that felt bloated or messy, making areas of the game far clearer as a result.

From a visual standpoint, we noticed that our fence designs came across as inconsistent in how they scale against both security rating and the park’s aesthetic. Each fence material set now has three distinct height variants to work better with gameplay progression:

• Wood, stone and glass: 1m, 2.5m, 4m.
  
• Metal: 2.5m, 4m, 6m.
  

By putting more emphasis into materials, we’re able to squish security requirements and incorporate height as a reliable condition now that there’s consistency. With fewer fence assets to produce, we’re allowing players to recolor their fences from up to three presets per material type.

Please take a look at a handful of our new designs below!

Decorative fences will now be modular pieces due to these changes.

Taking things a step further, gates will now follow a homogenized style in order to fit in with the unified height measurements across fencing. This change reduces the workload for future additions and means we can create the assets at a much higher quality!



At launch, fences and amenities will be listed under the Modern theme - a unified style that defines Prehistoric Kingdom as a brand in-universe. Because of this, you’ll also be seeing improvements to various structure designs in the coming months.

Since the art team are handling these changes, it won’t be affecting the progress of the game as a whole, so there’s no need to worry about scheduling conflicts.


Wielding spiked-thumbs, Iguanodon was a bulky ornithopod found in the United Kingdom. Its enormous hands and stout hindlimbs make this herbivore a highly adaptive creature, switching between quadrupedal and bipedal locomotion when running.



Also known as the woolly rhino, Coelodonta is a distant relative to the Sumatran rhinoceros. This fluffy animal occupied most of Europe, grazing within a variety of climates such as tundras and grasslands.





Featuring uniquely deep booms and ruckles, the Allosaurus is one Jurassic predator you don’t want to meet! With a fearsome snarl and an even worse bite, Byron made sure to give this dinosaur some serious ferocity.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Previous sound updates can be found on Byron’s Soundcloud, here!



Having previously been one of the oldest models in the game, Stegosaurus received a well-deserved update after many years of living in eternal damnation. The entire model and sculpt have been overhauled with new skin designs to boot!

On a less drastic level, some smaller tweaks were made to the Paraceratherium to address some texture, anatomy and shape issues. Prehensile lips were added in addition to better limbs and skull shape, with both the sculpt and skins receiving a quality improvement.



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Thank you for reading March’s Devlog!

We hope you’re all excited for upcoming content and reveals in future development updates. Keep an eye on our social media for any announcements or new information!

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome to February’s development update!

Today, we’ll be diving into what the team’s been up to over the past month and introduce you to a new team member. Work behind the scenes has continued to grow more exciting by the day as we buckle down on features and content pipelines. Let's get into the discussion!


Joining the Prehistoric Kingdom team, we’d like you to introduce the project’s newest programmer, Seth! He’ll be overseeing developments such as water painting and assisting us where possible to spread the workload more evenly.

You’ll be seeing more progress from him in the coming months while we move onto new parts of the game!


One of our goals this month was to accelerate and optimize development tasks to better utilise the time left until Early Access as an opportunity to clean up a handful of features that aren’t essential to the core game at launch.

Because of this change, we’re ready to move onto the second phase of development! With Seth taking care of features like water painting, Matt and Mau are able to proceed with other aspects of the game. Our goal for 2020 is to provide a playable and polished alpha with a beta release following shortly after depending on player feedback.

Below you’ll find our new monthly development report. Since it’s difficult to quantify an adaptive development cycle via percentages, each month we’ll display cards listing what we’ve been up to. Those marked with a love heart represent a bespoke piece of development that we want to highlight!




Allosaurus served as our new benchmark for animal testing during February, introducing a few changes for creatures going forward.

One of the items on our list is a new blend system! Each animal has its own set of additive fidgets that layer on top of animations to create more interest when moving. You can check out the work-in-progress below:



Another important step we took this month was adding support for eye movement in our rigs! Instead of a dead glassy stare, the animals will subtly dart their eyes around with supplementary squinting and blinking depending on the animation.

Eye Movement Test

It’s a small change with big implications for personality and character. Without this, it’d be almost impossible to effectively portray the gaze of certain mammals like felines and bears.


The modular building system continues to receive new functionality and polish thanks to the collaboration between Mau and Nathan. Pieces can be automatically stacked on top of each other or aligned directly to a surface - available for use with any object type, even walls!



In February we also added recolourable plaster, wood and glass sets to test how scalable our workflow is for creating new material pieces in a timely manner. As expected, a good foundation makes adding new texture sets fairly easy within a short amount of time.



With this in mind, we've been able to start making more interesting builds!



Viewers with keen eyes may have noticed an update to our user interface format! The new HUD shows more placeable objects onscreen at once whilst retaining our existing aesthetic. We took this opportunity to make the menu resizable for ease of use - a long-requested feature from the dev team!




There’s something missing from our world… atmospherics! We’ve added distant atmospherics and height fog to provide our levels with greater visual depth across all times of day.




February’s species spotlight revealed two classic dinosaurs, Allosaurus and Triceratops. Grumpy in every way, both critters require a large amount of space and strict habitat preferences to be successfully contained.




Using its large claws to hunt for fish, Baryonyx is a staple of the UK’s prehistoric history. Housing an array of conical teeth, its specialised diet is a common trait amongst spinosaurids.



Always willing to share a picnic basket, the cave bear carries many resemblances to extant species. Found across Europe and Asia, this creature is smaller than the famous short-faced bear.




Fan favourite dinosaurs Allosaurus and Triceratops received touchups and alterations for their in-game debut courtesy of Cindy. Lis helped out on both species, designing new looks for A. europaeus and T. prorsus respectively.



Be sure to check out the Allosaurus and Triceratops on Cindy’s ArtStation for a better look!

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Thank you for reading February’s Devlog!

As the project moves into the second phase of development we thank everyone deeply for their patience and outgoing support for Prehistoric Kingdom. There are many great things on the horizon with many surprises still to come. What will they be? Only time will tell!

- The PK Team

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Welcome to January’s development update!

This Devlog marks the beginning of our second year of hands-on development, following 2018’s year of pre-production and planning. It might seem like a long time, but we managed to accomplish a lot of great things during the past twelve months. 2020 is going to be filled with a lot of milestones for Prehistoric Kingdom, so the most exciting news is yet ahead, park builders!




Over the past month, we’ve been searching for a potential candidate to join the programming team on Prehistoric Kingdom. Finalising a lengthy interview process, the newest team member will be joining us shortly to help develop additional gameplay systems.

Assisting with the weight of development, Matt’s been working on automating animal setup as much as possible. Since the dinosaurs and mammals are such an integral part of the game’s experience, an automated pipeline will greatly assist in providing templates where possible to avoid wasting time with manual setup.

January also allowed us to plan milestones and alpha-related content deadlines to hit certain marketing opportunities. With our eyes on releasing alpha at an unspecified date this year, it’s important to put production deadlines in place.



Park managers looking to stay up-to-date with the project can sign up for the Crytivo Club! It's totally free and provides exclusive access to giveaways, promotions and even the occasional game. Sign up today!

In addition to the Crytivo Club, don't forget to Wishlist us on Steam!






Modular pieces can now be selected and moved around! While it may sound simple in concept, the system needed to be robust enough to work with multiple pieces at once with the added functionality of moving across a grid at varying scales with no room for error.

With selection developed, we’ve integrated an outline when placing objects to ensure that players can see the location of their piece at all times regardless of obstructions.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


Based on the concept art from last month, Mau is almost done with the functionality for recoloring roof and wall pieces.

Each material type comes with its own bank of recent colors that can be easily transferred to another texture by copy and pasting its hex values. The default setting can be returned to by dismissing its small color preview on the material button.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Ugly development textures and all!

With user experience always a priority, there’s been a handful of technical challenges to overcome with designing a system like this. Nevertheless, the team’s continued to find solutions where it matters in an attempt to evolve the usability of modular building systems in the genre.



Two popular Cenozoic icons were shown off in-game this month with their new designs revealed to the public. Opposing each other with drastically different temperature requirements, the Smilodon and Woolly Mammoth are essential beasts in Prehistoric Kingdom’s roster.






Once roaming the lush forests of ancient North America, Acrocanthosaurus prowls with a menacing stature. With a unique shape courtesy of its infamous raised spine, Mau’s animation helps to bring this shy carnivorous giant to life.



Coexisting with ferocious predators, Camarasaurus is a staple sauropod of the Morrison Formation. Known from three distinct species, this animal is far more nimble than its larger relatives!






As a blast from the past, we’d like to show you the updated vocals for Camarasaurus. Introduced to our community all the way back in the Jurassic Patch, Byron’s done a complete overhaul on its sound set to better convey this dinosaur’s enormous scale.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Sounds sourced from seals, walruses, spider monkeys, manatees and even more animals were used to create the new sounds for this sauropod.


Without good implementation, even the best sound design can fall flat when integrated into a game environment. By using audio middleware like FMOD, the sound team can create custom sequences and parameters accessible by programmers in order to deliver on a far more detailed soundscape with better user interactivity.

We’re only experimenting at this stage but so far the results have been promising. Things like distant carnivores roaring with the appropriate reverb falloff, footstep weight increasing as animals age and a more dynamic ambient soundscape are all areas Byron’s managed to create using the toolset.

The team looks to begin integrating this new audio system shortly!


One of our many experiments for an age-based footstep event.




With their anatomy vastly improved, Cindy continues to show off her skill with the newest sculpts and textures for Smilodon and Mammuthus. Staples of the Ice Age aesthetic, the updated iterations of these creatures have a far greater resemblance to what we know the prehistoric beasts looked like.





If you’d like to see more renders, check out Cindy’s ArtStation for a better look at the animals!

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Thank you for reading January’s Devlog!

There are some good surprises in store for the community in the following months that we can’t quite talk about yet, but we promise they’ll be worth the wait. Make sure to tune into the following development updates for even more gameplay news!

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome to December’s development update!

Though the holiday season has now just passed there are quite a few goodies to discuss and showcase in this month’s DevLog! With a handful of artistic treats and programming gifts, the team's been hard at work spreading festive joy to all the good little critters of Prehistoric Kingdom in time for the new year.




The team’s been up to a lot of great stuff during December whilst tackling the usual engine headaches. Apart from addressing issues with the modular grid, support for new materials has begun to work its way into the game thanks to Mau’s automated setup procedures and Nathan’s exceptional patience in texturing new pieces.

In terms of keeping the community up to date, we’re looking to overhaul our milestones chart soon to better reflect what’s being worked on and where development priorities sit in a more fluid manner - something that the previous design failed to reflect. We hope to have more news on that available soon, so stay tuned!




Still a work in progress, Matt’s been developing new functionality for the path system; elevation! Slopes galore, elevated paths take your guests to discover your park from a new perspective.

Work in progress.

Continuing with polish and eventually finishing elevated paths, they’ll receive support for edge railings to make them appear more grounded. Once a raised path hits a certain angle, they’ll automatically become stairs to better suit the slope.

Although fairly rudimentary in appearance at this stage, we are certain that many of you creative builders have already begun to think of new walkway design ideas for your future parks!


We’ve implemented a small texture gallery window to help make texture, color and theme switching quick and painless when selecting and working with various modular objects.

UI Mockup.

By keeping wall and roof textures contained to their own panel, materials are comfortably accessible at any time while designing - leaving more space in the object selection menu for a huge pile of pieces.

Players will be able to select areas of their custom buildings and effortlessly change textures without having to rebuild the structure, allowing for easy design switching to see how your building looks in a completely different style.


Applying a much softer edge to the affected areas, terrain painting has been updated! Lower intensities are far more usable while offering better control over terrain blending and adding an improved sense of polish to the system.



As seen above, the recent changes provide a vast degree of subtlety that simply did not exist prior due to the hard delineation between surfaces. Smoothing it out resulted in hand-painted areas looking far more natural.


Acting as one of the most visually important parts of the game, it’s imperative that we continue to improve the visual fidelity and shader functionality for animals in-game.

To keep animal shading consistent across all times of day, we’ve added occlusion maps to create definition on our creatures regardless of shading or the position of the sun.




Earlier in the month, we upgraded our foliage shader to support translucency, enabling sunlight to realistically pass through leaves where appropriate. Combined with Nathan’s new techniques for creating plants, our foliage is about to start looking a whole lot better.

Our most recent Kapok tree model and shader.

Kapoks are now properly shaded from all angles.

While the new year begins we’ll be working hard on environmental updates alongside core features to get both flora and terrain textures to a better state across a number of climates.



Closing in on the completion of our species spotlights with the introduction of five-star animals, fan favourites Parasaurolophus and Utahraptor received their in-game debut - complete with a design overhaul!






Almost four and a half months out from PAX West, we’ve been making changes to streamline the user experience and bring improvements to both the interface and game design where necessary.

Based on usability feedback, Byron redesigned the landscaping panel to feature an enhanced layout, cleaner visuals and superior button styles that will be applied to the rest of the UI in order to help bring better consistency where it may have been lacking prior.

The New Design.

The Four Panels: Painting, Foliage, Water and Terrain.


Most reminiscent of ratites like emus or ostriches, Gallimimus is a classically bird-like dinosaur featuring feathers and a lengthy stride. Animated by Mau, this chicken mimic behaves similarly to its modern-day counterparts.





The third-largest ceratopsian in Prehistoric Kingdom, Styracosaurus is best known for its large nasal horn and impressive frill. Sharing an ecosystem with the fearsome Gorgosaurus, this defensive dinosaur treads confidently whilst boasting its intimidating appearance.








Delightfully croaky and ready to hiss, Byron’s Guanlong takes inspiration from a variety of birds and ground animals to bring its raspy character to life. Running around with a group of up to four individuals, this crested critter is one tropical bird you don’t want a bite from!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Alongside creature vocals, we’ve also taken the time to begin expanding our custom sound and foley library to truly bring these animals back to life. From swarms of flies to the subtle grunts and hisses of a feasting dinosaur, it’s the tiny details that help flesh out the believability of our animal roster.




Now that there’s a two-week gap between species spotlights, we’ve had a lot more breathing room when it comes to redesigns and overhauling animals. Featuring a design from Lis each, Cindy remade the beloved Parasaurolophus and Utahraptor with big improvements all around.





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Thank you for reading December’s Devlog!

With elevated paths working in their current state, the next goal of ours is to improve them in addition to adding new components to the modular system such as advanced editing to manipulate objects using a 3D gizmo.

Until next time!

- The PK Team

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Welcome to November’s development update!

Getting closer to the holiday season, the team’s been busy conceptualising, revising and creating new ideas and assets for the project.




This month we welcomed a new member to the team - Lis! As an additional skin design artist, she’ll be taking on a variety of roles such as finalising VIP backer skins and creating new animal designs for future post-launch content.

Examples of her past community-made content.

We’re grateful to have her on-board as a helping hand and can’t wait to see more excellent creations!


Last month we talked about having to update our engine in order to utilise some of its newer features and fixes. While the mechanics were mostly untouched by the upgrade, visuals and a number of asset packages broke themselves in a rather severe fashion.

Because of this, we sadly weren’t able to work on new features for the better part of the month and had to delegate programming time to fix areas of the game that were affected.

In the meantime, the team’s been able to sit down and revise a handful of mechanics not yet implemented that felt too bloated or unfocused in their design. As a small team, it’s important to remain realistic and push things to the back burner if they aren’t absolutely essential to the core, playable experience.




Pieces, pieces and pieces! There are around 66 unique shapes for roof and wall pieces per texture. Curved walls, rounded slopes, slanted roofs, gables, eaves, height variants, slope variants - all the expected building blocks are here as well as some nice additions such as roof-end pieces and flat eaves.

Not all pieces have been added at this time, but these overview shots should offer a solid look at the different components that are available for construction (even if they currently have a beautiful temporary development texture!).





Next month we’ll be moving onto developing the UI for texture selection, advanced editing and adding a handful of props to the game.



This month’s species spotlight features a range of unique body types and fan favourites. Finishing up the four-star animals with Megatherium, we will be revealing the five-star creatures every two weeks!












Behind the scenes, there’s a lot of wall and roof pieces in Prehistoric Kingdom, each with their own textures like wood, stone and metal. We’ve created a handful of design sheets to act as a guide for piece designs, and today we’ll be sharing some of that artwork.


4x4 Glass Designs.

Included as part of the Modern theme, a translucent glass set helps to cover all your basic viewing and window needs! Basic, divided, patterned and embellished glass designs assist in shaping the feel of your park and opens up new options for player theming.

Since it is a Prehistoric Kingdom, our ancestors need some kind of representation, right? Gathering resources and references inspired by Paleolithic and Neolithic architecture, a modular Stone Age theme is being planned for launch.


4x4 Designs.

These pieces differ from the regular walls by including unique meshes with bumps, extrusions, and wooden poles to better capture a truly prehistoric feel.


Mau began working on the locomotion animations for Carnotaurus in November. As an Abelisaur, we wanted to give it its own rig for the purpose of making an already strange dinosaur more unique.






What’s small, elegant, and absolutely adorable? Not this creature! With large teeth and an interesting body plan, Daeodon is one of the more unique mammals in Prehistoric Kingdom.

Based on a number of large ungulates, it was important to go beyond the traditional stock pig sounds found in most restorations - something grumblier, weirder and… chuffier?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]




Our Lambeosaurus, Woolly Rhino and Giant Ground Sloth were redone with major changes to their anatomy. Most skin designs are retained however tweaks were made to better resemble the original concept art or new artwork (e.g. Lambeosaurus). If you’d like to see more of Cindy’s portfolio, check out her ArtStation for a better look at some of the animals!








As a surprise announcement, we were lucky enough to have a special guest redesign our one and only ferocious feline before its model revamp in the coming months. Working with our good friend and fantastic paleoartist Fred Wierum, we are proud to showcase the new skin variants for Smilodon!



We can’t thank Fred enough for helping out with this animal. You can find more of his work here!

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Thank you for reading November’s Devlog!

Although a shorter one, the team hopes you enjoyed a look at some of the new artwork and revamps coming to the game. Thank you for all of your patience as we continue to improve our own skills and the end product.

- The PK Team

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