Prehistoric Kingdom News

Welcome to September’s development update!

It’s that time again for another look into some of the things that were worked on during the last month. Some non-project related events meant that some of our team members had other matters to tend to in September but nonetheless everyone is doing okay and we are back to show some of our exciting content. This update is a little shorter than usual, but we hope that its content more than makes up for that!



Programming has been back into full-swing after our unexpected and continued waiting on SpeedTree and some other third party tasks. While the development schedule may have shifted, we have been doing our best to continue working on other components and features in the meantime.

With some better news, however, the foliage and water painting are almost complete! Although we currently can’t import the new trees and foliage due to lack of Unity support, our programmers have been experimenting with some stock pieces and we’re blown away by the results.

In-Engine environment painting work-in-progress result using stock and old demo assets.

Please keep in mind that everything used is a placeholder development asset and will either be replaced or made far prettier in the future!



For reference, here is the foliage painting system that currently exists in the pre-alpha demo:



While it wasn’t necessarily bad, it didn’t behave as expected and resulted in players having to click over and over again. Foliage rendering caused a substantial drop in frame rate which meant that dense forests were hard to create smoothly. Thankfully, these issues have all but been eliminated.

Today, we’d like to present the foundations of Prehistoric Kingdom’s new foliage rendering system.





As you can see below the intensity of the brush can be altered, resulting in an increasingly sparse placement of trees.



And of course we couldn’t forget the ability to place individual trees by lowering the brush size to its minimum value.





Yes, it’s finally here! Eagerly awaited by fans and developers alike, the water brush is a quick and easy way to paint water directly into an exhibit.





It’s definitely taken some time to get to this stage, but we think that everyone can agree in that it was worth it purely for the results.



Now with a short and less gif-heavy update, we decided to jump ahead while waiting for SpeedTree to get started on the framework for the new and improved resource system. It’s mainly mathematics and programming at the moment but once we get some UI hooked up we’ll be ready to show it off!







The Off-Road Safari allows your guests to get up close and personal with animals by driving directly through exhibits via a set path.



Building a Restaurant is a great way to avoid queues and serve quality food to your hungry patrons. With a warm two-story design and plenty of seating options, the atmosphere is sure to light up your park’s night life. Players can rename the sign on the building in the properties window.



In the “unlikely” event of an emergency, the Large Underground Bunker is capable of holding up to 500 guests. Much like its smaller counterpart, injured guests can be treated for wounds.

Like our past buildings, any improvements or adjustments from the concept art will be made in the modelling process so everything above is sure to look even better!





In our continued efforts to improve the look and feel of the game, our UI designer has gone back and tidied up the main HUD elements.



It’s not too much of a departure from what we had previously, but it certainly helps give players more screen space when building their park – not to mention its sleeker look. New overlay and access buttons have been added to the top left of the screen, as well as some new icons for fencing and funds. As always the UI colour can be changed by players in the settings menu.





Our composer was quite busy this month but he still managed to sneak in a little preview of something he’s been working on over the past week. It’s currently unfinished, untitled, and very much a work in progress but the final version should be ready for listening in the next DevLog!

http://prehistorickingdom.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/PK_TrackWIP2.mp3?_=1



This month brings one new creature and some alterations to an old classic. Please enjoy the new renders of some of our personal favourites; Dilophosaurus wetherilli and Ursus spelaeus – the cave bear!







In September we made some changes to our old demo animals to make them look closer to their fossilised counterparts.

Velociraptor mongoliensis first debuted in its current state back in 2016. Upon further inspection, our feathery friend had some definite anatomy issues that needed to be addressed!



One request we are often asked pertains to one species of a very well known genus; Triceratops. With some magical developer wizardry, Triceratops horridus will be joining the ensemble as an alt. species for Triceratops prorsus. Since we’ve decided to use textures to quickly swap between the two, no differences will be found in the frill or body. As for the general anatomy and body plan, we updated it to resemble more recent reconstructions of the creature.





Straight from the nursery and incubation chambers our park scientists have provided us with some more growth charts for a few new creatures. Today we’re proud to show off our geckos, fluff cubs, and lanky chicken bois.









With eight months worth of alternate skins shown since Kickstarter, we’re down to the very last one. There’s a few being saved for their eventual reveal on the model (such as a certain feathered tyrant), but we hope you’ve enjoyed waiting to see what Early Access design comes next!






All of our Early Access Thyreophora – including a new Sauropelta skin!

Believe it or not, we’re down to only three more animals that still need to be revealed. As the total number of finished animals begins to increase all future model reveals will be the alternate skin designs fully realised onto our critters. Stay tuned for next month’s exciting animal showcase as we unveil the last few remaining mammals!

___

Thank you to our amazing backers and fans for continuing to support our project!

It seems like only yesterday that the Jurassic Patch was released and development on the full game began. We’re striving to make October even more productive and deliver on a tycoon experience that we can be proud of. It truly is a group effort and we couldn’t be doing what we are now without you.
___

• Facebook.
• Twitter.
• Discord.
• YouTube.

___

If you would like to check out our past blog posts, you can head to the official one here!

Welcome to August’s development update!

We’re back to the usual format this month with loads of prehistoric goodies for you to discover and share. If you’ve been keeping up with our Discord some will already know that we have a surprise animal announcement to be made, but you’ll have to read on to find out more!





Our shader artist has been designing our new terrain shader from the ground up to work with the voxel terrain. In its basic state the shader is already capable of producing a more detailed look than what was featured in the demo.





With the game overhaul taking place over the last few months since the release of the Jurassic Patch, one of our focus areas has been bringing asset quality up to par with our new expectations and production standards. SpeedTree 8 allows us to work with enhanced generators, wind effects and shaders that are both better and faster than previous versions of the software.

Unfortunately, however, this means that we’re currently waiting on SpeedTree and Unity to finish adding support for SpeedTree 8 and their brand new PBR materials as detailed in their blog post from GDC 2018. While they say that it’s not too far off now, the results look superb and we cannot wait for them to push the additions.

Until the technology is available, we’ll keep progressing with general development and finalise all the art assets until they can be implemented properly.



To almost no one’s surprise, the art team continues to pump out a continuous stream of lovely content that’ll be ready to get dropped in-game.





The visitor dock is one of the few ways that guests will travel to your island. With a large ferry arriving at its port, this will act as entrance and exit to your Prehistoric Kingdom.



Increasing the land value of the immediate area, the science monument stands tall as a reminder of the genetics and power of science that brought once extinct animals back to life.



Originally featured in our pre-alpha demo, the vehicle depot redesign sports a sleek and elegant modern design with vastly improved texture quality. This garage acts as the storage facility for staff transport.



The monorail station is a quick and accessible way to get your guests around your park. Build tracks at varying heights to efficiently view animals, as well as view some in-universe advertisements.



First shown off a few months ago alongside the new mediterranean island, here’s the all tropical wet foliage! We’ve made sure to select a diverse range of plants that cover the expectations of tropical vegetation and mix well with our future climates. Palms, ferns and canopy coverage; we’ve got it.



It’s worth mentioning that for the sake of visual and creative freedom, we occasionally hybridise multiple species of foliage to create a more general and unspecified look (e.g. the canopy tree and tropical palm). With mediterranean and now tropical wet out of the way, it’s time to start work on the boreal and semi-arid climates.



While not originally intended for this update, we thought we’d quickly show off the walk cycle for our Allosaurus using the medium theropod rig. Unfortunately it didn’t have enough time to render out using our usual format, but we hope that you’ll forgive us!



Compared to our larger creatures such as the Tyrannosaurus, you can see more of a bird-like posture in its movement.





A Not-So-Gentle Giant and Tooth and Sickle Claw are the brand new introductory themes/tracks for our large carnivorous dinosaurs and dromaeosaurs. The pieces present an interesting contrast between a large and foreboding yet majestic sound for our tyrant kings to a more muted and aggressive conversation between a group of instrumental raptors. Our composer had a lot of fun coming up with these, and we hope that you enjoy them.

https://soundcloud.com/byronmckay/a-not-so-gentle-giant-carnivore-theme

https://soundcloud.com/byronmckay/tooth-and-sickle-claw-raptor-theme

These motifs will continue to pop-up across the soundtrack.





This month we’ve got an assortment of new exciting animals to reveal. Without further ado, let’s get a closer look at August’s newcomers; Torvosaurus tanneri, Nothronychus mckinleyi, Coelodonta antiquitatis, and Mammuthus primigenius!



But there is, however, one more to show…



Utahraptor joins the battle! With some surprising body proportions and a terrifyingly large skull, Utahraptor ostrommaysorum makes its way into Early Access as a replacement for Deinonychus antirrhopus.



As you can see we’ve adapted the original ‘vulture’ design of the Deinonychus into an alternate skin for our big land eagle alongside its new default.

Since we wanted to update and redo our previous version of Deinonychus antirrhopus, we ultimately decided to push Deinonychus back into a later version of the Early Access game and introduce a highly requested fan favourite to fill its role as a large raptor.



August brings us an interesting look at the ontogeny of two of Cedar Mountain Formation’s residents: the elusive mango-goat and tiny freedom bird.



Alongside the two aptly named dinosaurs are the brand new versions of our hairy big-nose and hairy long-nose friends – complete with an adorable ontogeny. Please note that our rendering software loves attempting to render flat planes and mammoth tusks, so please excuse the jagged edges which won’t be visible in-game!

https://youtu.be/W0H0n8XWg5Y
https://youtu.be/bndmfd0ysyg



Our brand new Tyrannosaurus skin has been brought over into 3D and we simply love it. As you can see it’s sexually dimorphic in its colour vibrancy, and we can’t wait for you to see how the infants look, too!



We’ve shown many, many, many alternate skin designs since February but we’re almost at the end of our time for previewing the design sheets before they’re translated into 3D textures.





For this month’s gameplay discussion we’ll be talking about our current thoughts on visitor needs and how you, the park manager, will need to respond to their various requirements and preferences. It’s important to note that all information here is subject to change through development and will be tweaked in the future.



Much like your animals, each guest has a basic need that must be fulfilled by players in order to satisfy them effectively and raise your park rating.



Buildings such as Fast Food Kiosks, Restrooms, Grand Hotels and benches can be placed throughout your park in order to allow your guests to replenish their independent needs.



Animal preferences are where Prehistoric Kingdom begins to separate itself from the rest of the herd. Previously, we chose to define guests by three main categories: thrill seekers, paleo enthusiasts, and mainstream. As this is rather broad terminology and doesn’t effectively communicate what a certain guest likes, we have chosen to instead opt for animal group preferences.

Certain guests can respond better to certain animal types whereas others may not have a preference at all. For example, a visitor who favours ceratopsian means that the guest enjoys seeing animals like Triceratops interact or fight with each other and will thus receive an increased mood bonus, rewarding the player with additional park ratings.

These preferences are not mandatory and won’t punish players designing specialised parks, but it will offer support to those creating a varied and diverse prehistoric zoo.





What’s the point in making a zoo if your guests can’t see anything? Fences can have a direct impact on visibility based on their design and visual properties, meaning that players need to find the balance between comfort for their animals and viewing areas for guests.

Attractions such as viewing platforms, lookout towers and monorails allow visitors to look directly into paddocks at different elevations. If an animal feels too exposed it’ll try to hide, decreasing the mood of onlooking patrons and potentially harming the creature from starvation.



A map stand is a placeable guest object that visitors can interact with in order to take a look at your park layout and navigate to where they want to go quickly. Without checking a map stand or purchasing a map from an Information Centre, your visitors will wander and explore your park with a lack of purpose – something that could prove fatal in the event of an emergency.



Each building in the game comes with an associated value that will either add to or retract from the immediate land value of an area. Decoratives such as the Science Monument offer a high land value bonus when placed in your park, whereas “uglier” structures such as wind turbines can retract from the park’s aesthetic if placed too close to your bustling plazas.

___

Another month, another development update.

Thank you so much to everyone who has been waiting patiently for our updates to come along each month. We all know that this process takes a long time, but we are incredibly glad to have such a supportive and understanding community.

Until next time. – The PK Dev Team.
___

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Discord
• YouTube

___

If you would like to check out our past blog posts, you can head to the official one here!

Welcome to July’s development update!

This month’s update is a little shorter than usual, but nonetheless we’ve been working on some neat things that we’re quite eager to show off. Let’s get right into it, shall we?



As it tends to do around this time of year, a few of us got caught up in family and personal matters that needed to be tended to. While we experienced some unexpected speed bumps, we’re hoping to make up for lost time by pushing out the first handful of playable builds to our VIP backers as soon as possible. Below is our updated development schedule that better reflects the current status and internal goals.





There’s not too much to show on the programming front this month as we’ve been busy working on setting up our island and integrating it with our voxel terraforming system along with a host of fancy things like water shaders and yes, improved foliage performance. Voxels can be rather experimental on the scale that we’re working with, but the team is doing its best to ensure that it all comes together in the end!



For July we took to working on transferring concepts into 3D models and developing both new and older animations to our most recent standards seen in previous blog posts.





The Sauropod House is the largest shelter available for housing animals in Prehistoric Kingdom, holding up to two-three fully grown sauropods at a time. Equipped with internal washbays and soft haystacks, your gentle giants are sure to feel right at home.

Back in March we first showed our new Nursery design which has since been updated to bring it up to scratch with our more recent building textures and style.





For July’s assignment, our animators completed the basic animation sets for the ceratopsian rig and bison (as first seen in May’s update). Meticulously watching over dozens of real world references from modern day relatives the team hoped to capture the many nuances and physical movements that are to be expected from the bison family. We’re extremely happy with how both the sets came out, and we hope you enjoy the new ceratopsian cycles!

https://youtu.be/ri76DLOOBgY

https://youtu.be/lcT07tDqbeA

Since switching over to a more generalised retargeting system, we swiftly revamped the hadrosaur animations to look far more alive with added weight and movement to their body.

Check out the new and improved run and walk cycles below (yes, we misnamed the first clip, but it’s not our fault – it’s the sneaky post-production, we swear)!

https://youtu.be/rk5b1Cpm0kI

https://youtu.be/mTFa-AkYWjU





Inspired by real world zoos, the park map features a fullscreen stylised view of your island – showcasing all structures, animals, and infrastructure within your park.



It was important for us to retain as much open screen space as possible for players to take quick screenshots with while also offering a quick way to jump to each exhibit and check its total internal area with a quick glance.



The team’s composer has written another ambient track to play along with your busy paths, various construction sites, and roaring attractions.

Welcome to June’s DevLog!

We had an absolute blast this past month with some great progress across the board. All hands were on deck during June as we continued to chug along at a steady pace, making some very exciting advancements within programming, art, and game design. Without further ado, let’s get right into the development update.



June set us up with some great progress on building mechanics and terraforming, allowing us to finally start showing off the new systems (hurray!). Please keep in mind that everything shown here is a work in progress and is subject to change throughout the game’s development!



Prehistoric Kingdom’s clever programmers have created the first rudimentary attempt at the spline-based fencing system. There’s not too much to say about it at the moment as it’s still being worked on, but the first stages of freeform and two-step placement is in.

Snapping angle and the rotation angle all works with the expected lovely curves that is made available through splines.



This progress on the fencing systems has made the team giddy at the thought of soon working on monorail building once all the kinks have been worked out…



All of the basic tools are up and running so now it’s a matter of adding and refining terrain textures as well as hooking it up to construction in order to flatten surrounding land. It’s still a work in progress, so please excuse any wonky graphical artefacts. Here’s a look at some of the tools in action:



As you can see, Prehistoric Kingdom’s terraforming allows players to freely sculpt the terrain through a variety of methods and tools; the world is quite literally your canvas.



Players are able to paint the terrain freely by selecting ground types from the Climate Painter with the option of automatically painting rock or dirt in correspondence to the height of the terrain.



A cave sculpted out of a mountain. Create natural archways, land bridges, mountain ranges, and even “volcanoes” by digging out mountain tops!



Unsurprisingly, the art team has been working hard at bringing the assets of Prehistoric Kingdom to life. For June, we’ve got a hefty assortment of goodies to show off.



In this update we’re taking a closer look at the structures directly used by animals and guests including shelters, amenities, and attractions.



Science Monument

Placed as a decorative object, the Science Monument increases the land value of the immediate area. Key decorations and statues like Monument buildings help pretty-up your park and act as core locations for guests to hang out.



Large Wooden Shelter

The wooden shelter is a large structure capable of housing most animals throughout their life cycle. Whilst quite basic in its material, this building will appease the majority of your creatures in its modest simplicity.



Metal Viewing Platform

Harkening back to real world zoos, the metal viewing platform is a staple of any park due to its ability to get guests up close and personal with extinct creatures without getting caught in harm’s way. This beautiful attraction offers the chance to entice nearby critters to investigate the tiny mammals jumping around on the other side of the glass.





After quite a bit of anticipation, this is how the tropical wet island looks from a distance! With players being able to terraform archipelagos from the seafloor, we can’t wait to see what everyone does in the future with our creative tools and map landscapes.

16km² of pure island goodness.

As you can see by the remnants of the large crater towards the north of the terrain, this island’s origins are volcanic – sprouting a small chain of archipelagos in its wake from the seafloor. The landscape is quite versatile, featuring cliffs, mountains, flat building space, and lakes.

We’ll be sure to show off more of our vegetation for this climate very soon, but until then, make sure to keep your plants on!



Both exciting and conversely terrifying, there’s very little interface designing left to do for the game. Of course there’s going to be tweaks as the project develops, but all of the base drafts and UI sheets for the first pre-alpha are eagerly waiting to be brought to life inside Unity.

Until we begin working on the second pre-alpha (which we are extremely eager to work on!) most of the interface work is going to revolve around polish and visualising in-game features.



Two words: editable signage. Ever wanted to name and theme areas of your park with custom signs and billboards? Look no further! Much to the dismay of long time zoo building players, a lack of editable signs and decorations in past titles has been sorely felt.

In Prehistoric Kingdom, however, the Edit Properties window on select decorations such as the vertical marina banner and the horizontal banner offer a range of bespoke graphical designs that can be swapped out by the player to better match their own park. Special decorations like the editable themed sign even feature a text editor that will display whatever is written into the input field. Cool, right?



To help get players right into the action, you’ll be greeted with small popups that provide a brief description of certain game features, mechanics, and interface explanations as you progress through the game. These can be toggled off permanently at any time, so rest assured that experienced tycoons don’t require unwanted help.





Our sound designer whipped up a special new soundscape preview featuring some more familiar faces. Can you guess all the animals? Let us know on our Discord server!

http://prehistorickingdom.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Soundscape_-_Ice_Age.mp3?_=1



The team’s lovely and very humble composer (who is definitely not in charge of writing our devlogs) wrote a new track that will play alongside the ambience of your park’s bustling environment. Exploring the Park incorporates world instruments within our traditional orchestral setting, making use of rainsticks, bongos, congas, and African shakers to expand the sonic scope of Prehistoric Kingdom’s music. We’re super happy with how it turned out, and we hope everyone’s looking forward to hearing more from the soundtrack in the future.

https://soundcloud.com/byronmckay/exploring-the-park



This month marks the long awaited redesign of our Allosaurus fragilis in all of its fearsome Jurassic glory. Alongside our carnivorous “friend” three new animals are ready to be shown off: Coelophysis bauri, Sauropelta edwardsorum, and Guanlong wucaii!











Our laboratory hatched another four new babies this month (they grow up so fast…) and we’re not sure if seeing baby dinosaurs will ever not be completely adorable. For June, please enjoy our little spike nugget, noodle-neck, two angry lizard boys.











Much to the pleasure of our creature design concept artist, all Early Access animals finally have their alternate skin patterns, colors, stripes, and dangly bits designed for our texture artist to realize on the 3D assets.

Since there’s a total of 150 skins going into the game (excluding all genetic mutations like albino and melanistic variants), we have officially only revealed around 91 up until now and will continue to trickle them out over the next few months.















Resource management in Prehistoric Kingdom was first seen in its most basic form back in 2015 with the original tech demo and has been a staple part of our park construction and management since.

Reading about our gameplay plan isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but with our road map laid out in our last blog post we felt that discussing one of the largest components of the game was extremely important.



The first thing to understand is that almost every map in Prehistoric Kingdom offers a gameplay challenge due to the weather patterns that correspond to the climate. Although some climates such as semi-arid don’t suffer from drastic changes, others like subpolar and tropical wet maps experience blizzards and violent seasonal thunderstorms that must be considered to effectively build the ultimate park.

One our biggest design philosophies is to ensure that players feel engaged and like they can influence the world they’re building directly. Stay on top of your park and its environment and you’ll be rewarded with efficiency and successful profits. Ignore the needs of your guests and you’re doomed to fail.





In Early Access, players will be able to construct six utility buildings that are used to generate power and water for your park:



Each of these structures offer a positive and negative trait within their role as a producer in your park, with the negatives often directly correlating to weather or their effectiveness over time as the park expands in its scope.

Due to the sheer size of maps in Prehistoric Kingdom, specialised utilities like water towers and solar panels can be placed in areas without high amounts of wind or surface water to maximise player building flexibility.





All major structures, amenities, attractions, and infrastructure require a connection to electricity and water. As the space available for building on our islands and mainland is extremely large, the second pre-alpha will introduce underground piping and cables to setup infrastructure beneath the terrain.

To avoid micromanagement and monotony, pipes are automatically constructed beneath pathways as players build and expand their park. Originally we had discussed power lines and water pipes as separate objects but felt that it would take away from the aesthetics by having large, ugly pylons decorating exhibit sides and land space.

For players who want the freedom to place infrastructure pipes separately from paths, they can be freely drawn out at anytime to connect new power sources to the grid!



So, your park is thriving and electricity production is off the charts… but you didn’t check the weather forecast.

Once a thunderstorm hits the island or mainland, structures like the wind turbine will automatically shut down to prevent damage to the rotor. Depending on how the player is equipped to respond to this situation, there are a multitude of potential outcomes that are influenced by park layout, security, and back up utility buildings. Everything you’ve worked for is suddenly at risk in the blink of an eye, but there’s still a few options to pursue during this scenario:

• Whilst not as effective in poor lighting conditions, an array of solar panels may just keep your park above water while you wait out the storm. They’re not as cheap to maintain as wind turbines, but guests are also less disappointed by the sight of them.
  
• The Water Power Plant is expensive and has a high upkeep, but allows the player to push through the rain and lightning while pumping water and electricity from one location. It’s the most expensive option, but almost guarantees consistency.
  
• Setting the park into emergency mode while the storm passes may effect ratings, but will ultimately protect guests from unexpected danger in the event of a power outage. Send your patrons to the security bunkers and hope for the best…
  

Remember, a cloud-free day keeps the danger away!*
*Safety on cloud-free days not guaranteed.

___

And to finish it all off our good friends over at The Isle made this awesome crossover piece featuring their own animals and designs! How cool is that?



___

Another month, another development update.

We’ll be back again in July to show more progress on the project. Keep an eye out for our mid-month updates, and be sure to follow us on our social media platforms if you haven’t already!

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Discord
• YouTube

___

If you would like to check out our past blog posts, you can head to the official one here!

Welcome to May’s DevLog!

This month we continued to chop away at the game’s enormous amount of art, make some great progress with the programming side of Prehistoric Kingdom, and art (as we’ve all come to expect). As per usual there’s some big topics of discussion, so let’s get right into it!



June will be extremely exciting for us as we finally and properly integrate terraforming and get started on our refined building systems. All other departments? Business as usual! We’ll be continuing to work on the same tasks listed in last month’s DevLog.





As to be expected the terraforming that we want to achieve for Prehistoric Kingdom is quite difficult as it’s untraditional to most game engines. However, while we continue cooking up the adaptive terrain shader, link up everything to the UI and work out the expected kinks, we’ll leave you with some extremely exciting and early looks at the structures that can be sculpted by players…





May has undoubtedly been an exciting and fantastic month for the art team with all the new stuff being worked on and prepared for the first pass on the building systems and animal additions that will be coming up in conjunction with our first Early Access pre-alpha for VIP Backers.



Buildings! Lots of buildings! Next to the creatures it must be said that we really love working with our concept artist and modeller to bring the architecture and structures of Prehistoric Kingdom to life. For May we took a focus on the infrastructure and guest amenities that will inhabit your park.



Gift Shop

The gift shop is your guests’ favorite place to purchase prehistoric-themed souvenirs and assorted gifts. Do not fret, as we will make sure the balloons and the dino-present statue look as cute as possible when it comes to the ingame model.



Food Stash

Coming in a variety of food groups, the Food Stash is recommended for small or medium sized creatures. Its vertical design is useful for constructing a paddock with tight spaces.





Ranger Station

Responding to emergency situations, the Ranger Station houses a car, transport truck, and helicopter to subdue escaped animals and carry guests to safety.





Central Hub

The Central Hub is a large building designed to educate guests about the park and its prehistoric inhabitants. As this structure is categorised as an attraction, it draws crowds to its rooftop theatre and viewing deck. To really push the attention of detail in Prehistoric Kingdom you’ll see a few information signs popping up around your park to breath a little more life into the world.



We’ve always wanted to take our animals just that little bit further and today we’re happy to announce that creatures will be featuring dynamic physics to better simulate fat, flesh, fur, and feathers in ways that we simply couldn’t before.



Our Brachiosaurus, for example, features a large fleshy fat deposit running down the majority of its neck. Thanks to this new system we’re able to properly simulate the unique area of the animal’s body and have it constantly react and adapt to its movement; regardless of animation.

An even better area to look at would be how feathers will move on our floofier friends such as the Gallimimus. It’s a far less rigid movement and helps to envision how we imagined these critters moving with fluffy integument.







With fifty creatures currently learning how to walk we stepped back for a moment to assess how we were going to cover such a vast range of animals in the most effective way possible. For us, this means setting up shared rigs that are built around the main family groups going into the game.

While similar species and genus will retain the same general movement style (which was to be expected even with personalised animation sets), we’re making individual changes on a per animal basis to ensure that nothing looks off or imperfect compared to related genuses. As a whole this allows us to put way more detail into base animations and ensure that they are the best they can possibly be for the project. It’s extremely important to note however that certain species may feature distinct animations and actions that are unique only to them, so there’s no need to worry about everything looking the same. Apart from that it’ll make adding future content additions that much more easier.

You can take a look at some of the newest animations for our Tyrannosaurus (large theropod rig) and Baryonyx (spinosaurid rig) below.

https://youtu.be/Zm45tnSI__s
https://youtu.be/SkJXW_F26qc
https://youtu.be/Q7r24RhE7wI
https://youtu.be/rRQI0J1j518



Nothing super crazy to show here! UI for this month was mainly focused on management, options menu, and bringing our old save/load menu up to scratch with the newer style.









This month we’ve got some classic faces appearing fresh off the back of their concept art. Give a warm welcome to Bison latifrons, Iguanodon bernissartensis, Parasaurolophus walkeri, and the fearsome Acrocanthosaurus atokensis!











Since last time you saw our favorite big cat, we went ahead and made several improvements to both the mesh and the textures of Smilodon. We worked predominantly on the feline’s face, bringing its proportions closer to what the animal probably looked like. Moreover, the model now features shape-keys (sets of geometry data that can smoothly transition to each other) that allow it to close its eyes (like all the other animals we have), but also retract its claws, yawn, show aggression, and even display pregnancy! Exciting times for mammal lovers, indeed.





May gave us some time to revisit a familiar face and incubate some new hatchlings and babies to show off to everyone. This time it’s a lizard boi, demon gecko, duck thing, teetho, and a little moo-moo. We’re proud of our naming conventions.













Much like April we focused on pumping out a wide variety of skins across a number of animals. While there’s again too many fit neatly into one post, here’s some of our favourites!



We’ve gone ahead and decided to improve our Tyrannosaurus by giving it an additional scaly design, moving the feathered Highlands look to its floofier cousin Yutyrannus.



Allosaurus also received some much needed love this month with a complete animal overhaul that will greatly improve its body proportions and overall look in the future. You will see more of the updated model in future posts.

Like we did for Tyrannosaurus and the following Acrocanthosaurus, we removed some of the feathered designs, favoring more likely scaly designs. In the case of Allosaurus, scales are all that remain, with the two previous feathered skins having left us to join feather heaven.

















Our projected release roadmap is expected to span over 2018 and 2019 to deliver a valued product to our backers and fans alike. Currently, we’re looking at the following structure for how we present and develop the game. Please note that is a rough outline and does not detail every specific item and piece of content!



Pre-Alpha 1 Creation (Q3 2018)
The first official private pre-alpha for VIP backers will set the basis for Prehistoric Kingdom’s creative gameplay. Terraforming, revised fencing/path systems, 17 animals and a brand new map provides a thorough look into the games tone and atmosphere.

Pre-Alpha 2 Management (Q1 2019)
Core and expanded management features such as visitors, finance, security, and resource management will be integrated alongside new animals and buildings.

Alpha Progression (Q2 2019)
Released to Kickstarter backers who donated to appropriate tier levels, Alpha introduces progression aspects to gameplay as well as overlay tools and shaders that will help provide information about your exhibits and park.

Beta Backer Testing (Early Summer 2019)
Beta presents itself as the very last large scale testing of Prehistoric Kingdom before being pushed to the store platforms. Featuring the majority of animals, buildings, systems, and features that will be available within the live game, we’ll be working together to squish as many bugs as possible!

Early Access Launch Public Release (Summer 2019)
Prehistoric Kingdom will be available to the public on Steam and the Crytivo store.

We want to be as transparent as possible with everyone and outline our current development plans so that all of our backers and fans can understand where we’ll be headed. If plans or the schedule changes for whatever reason, we want everyone to be on the same page so that no one feels left in the dark or like they don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. At the end of the day, it’s a big game. Hopefully this provides a little bit more clarity, and we cannot wait to show more. Features or dates may shift back and forth but in the end it’s to bring the absolute best that we know we can!

___

That’s it for May!

Thank you for reading this month’s DevLog and make sure to join us once again in June for another exciting update! Feel free to follow our social media platforms below to stay in touch and never miss an announcement.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Discord
• YouTube

___


If you would like to check out our past blog posts, you can head to the official one here!