Prehistoric Kingdom News

Welcome, Park Testers, to this very special public testing update!

This early version of Update 14 includes baby animals, seamless growth, animal herding and first person mode. We are expecting to launch this update on April 24, so there'll be a lot of time for bug fixing and adding all the missing animations and sounds.

While this is all still very work in progress, we are looking for feedback in these areas:

• Animal growth speeds (too fast/slow?)
  
• Animal food intake (do babies eat too frequently/not enough?)
  
• Staff reliability (are staff doing their jobs?)

There's quite a lot that's changed, so be sure to read the full patch notes below to see everything that's new!

[h3]PTB Features[/h3]


Up first, baby animals and seamless growth! This feature is available for 49 out 58 species with all of them at varying stages of completion.

Players can choose to breed animals at any age or even stunt their growth early, preventing them from maturing into adults. Various growth speed options further allow you to tweak just how long it takes for babies to grow up!


Animals are also now capable of creating herds and family units, moving together and following the group leader's actions. Until reaching adolescence, baby animals can be adopted by an older individual, following them until they're ready to join a social group.

This is especially enjoyable to watch with our work in progress locomotion V3, an enhanced movement system that aims to smooth out transitions and give every species a trot animation. Herding and locomotion are areas that we'll continue to work on until full release, so expect to see some oddities.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
You can also get up close and personal with the brand new First Person Mode! Open gates, sit on benches and look through binoculars as you rediscover your park from a new perspective.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]What is NOT included in this PTB?[/h3]


As of this release, the following animals do not have their ontogeny enabled. They will be added as their baby skins are finalized:

• Acrocanthosaurus
  
• Carcharodontosaurus
  
• Torvosaurus tanneri & gurneyi
  
• Brachiosaurus
  
• Argentinosaurus
  
• Muttaburrasaurus
  
• Iguanodon
  
• Styracosaurus
  
• Scelidosaurus

When it comes to audio, we will be working to give every animal unique baby calls and add their various chirps throughout the PTB. Adolescent animals have not been given much attention yet, so expect them to sound much like adults for now. Unique baby animations are also missing audio.

Broadly, here's a list of the various things that we want to add or change for the final Update 14 release:

• Retake Paleopedia/Animal Info Sign screenshots for alt species that have been updated
  
• Updating animal thumbnails to include babies, male/female skins and genetic mutations
  
• Updating genetic variation and mutations to look better
  
• Updating tutorials to include information about ontogeny
  
• Fix Nursery idle animations
  
• Fix swim animation speeds being overly fast for all species
  
• Add help articles for no food, no water and restricted growth park issues
  
• Add more detailed information about social needs and behavior in the Paleopedia

[h3]How to Access the Public Testing Branch (Experimental!)[/h3]


The Public Testing Branch (PTB) is a version of Prehistoric Kingdom that can be opted-into on Steam, containing experimental and potentially breaking changes. With the help of the community, we're able to hunt down various issues and gather feedback before pushing a an update to the public version of Prehistoric Kingdom.

1. Right click Prehistoric Kingdom in your Steam Library
   
2. Go to Properties
   
3. Betas
   
4. Select 'ptb_public_testing'

Please note that it is not recommended to play Public Testing Branch parks on earlier versions of the game. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.

[h3]Known Issues & Additional Notes[/h3]

• Note: social group formation works best for animals that are contained within a habitat
  
• Critical: modular lighting is not recolorable
  
• Critical: animals are teleporting quite a lot according to early testers, please let us know if you can find steps to reproduce this reliably
  
• Issue: herding cohesion is currently broken, so animals can end up standing too close together
  
• Issue: animal avoidance is currently broken, so animals can end up walking through each other
  
• Issue: animals in a herd can get stuck constantly getting up/down if they don't need to rest but their herd leader wants to. This should resolve itself eventually, however
  
• Issue: animals can sometimes snap into their walk cycle or other animations instead of doing so organically
  
• Issue: additive animations can trigger during one shots or right before animals go to eat/drink/rest. We would like to stop this from happening to prevent jank
  
• Issue: many species may have bad color variation or ugly mutations. We are currently going through them one by one using a new method which looks better
  
• Issue: animal animations in the Animal Nursery are currently broken due to the addition of babies, we will be fixing this
  
• Issue: the game may freeze every so often, we are currently investigating the cause of this issue

[h2]Features[/h2]

• NEW FEATURE: SEAMLESS ANIMAL ONTOGENY
  Animals can now be incubated in the Animal Nursery at any point in their ontogeny (growth cycle), and seamlessly grow into adulthood. Incubation gameplay has been re-balanced to make adult animals less economically viable in the early game.
  
  Throughout their growth, animals change in real time:
  
  • Proportions - younger animals are usually lankier, sporting larger extremities and facial features in rapport to the body
    
  • Skin & Coloration - all the baby animals have different patterning and colorations when young, gradually transitioning those into their adult colors. Some babies, like most theropods, are feathered even if the adults aren’t!
    
  • Animations - young animals move around differently, using their own bespoke locomotion animations. Most species even have specific play actions
    
  • SFX - animal sound scales with maturity, with infants sounding chirpier and higher pitched than their adult counterparts
    
  • Behavior - as babies, animals form clutches and follow their adopted family around the park
  Through the Animal Nursery and various game settings, players are now able to control:
  
  • Animal Neoteny
  • Animal Growth Speed
• NEW FEATURE: Animal Herding and Social Groups
  Animals now form social groups! Depending on the species, they’ll follow their group leader and synchronize behavior (eating, drinking, resting, etc.) to varying degrees. Infants can also be adopted by adult animals, though they won’t contribute to a social group until reaching adolescence. If infants cannot find an adult, they’ll stick together regardless.
  
• NEW FEATURE: First Person Mode
  A first person mode has been added to the game, accessible from the camera menu (bottom right of the main HUD). This new game mode allows for two alternative play styles:
  
  • GUI ON: toggleable by having the game GUI on screen. This allows for the full creativity suite while in first person
    
  • Full interaction: normal Prehistoric Kingdom gameplay is disabled, while new interaction is unlocked: the player can interact with fence gates, seating, binoculars, and more!
• NEW CHANGE: Animal Locomotion v3
  Animal locomotion has been improved once more with the intent to tidy up and polish the movement introduced in Update 9. The following have been changed/added:
  • All animals now have trot animations
    
  • All animals now have baby animations
    
  • Animals will now move between walk, trot and run more discretely, preventing animation blending from happening for too long
    
  • Animals will now generally transition between all animations more seamlessly
    
  • Animals will now have a chance for zoomies, causing them to run around their paddock. This is more likely as a baby and varies per species
    
  • Animals are less prone to slowing down while moving forward
• NEW CHANGE: Animal Socialization and Awareness
  Animals of the same species will now talk to each other, issuing a call and response. This cannot happen if animals are unable to see one another. If their welfare is too low, animals will play a sad call. If their welfare is extremely low, they’ll play an angry call.
  
• NEW CHANGE: Improved Animal Sexual Dimorphism
  Many species such as Triceratops, Styracosaurus and the Mammoth now feature physical sexual dimorphism, giving females shorter tusks, horns and a more gracile appearance
  
• NEW CHANGE: Improved Animal Alt Species
  Updated the models and proportions for the following animals to make them more distinct:
  
  • Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus
    
  • Charonosaurus, Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus and walkeri
    
  • Juxia, Paraceratherium bugtiense and transouralicum
    
  • Psittacosaurus sp, sibiricus and mongoliensis
    
  • Smilodon fatalis and populator
    
  • Camarasaurus grandis, lentus and supremus
    
  • Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis, lakustai and perotorum
    
  • Elasmotherium and Sinotherium
    
  • Plateosaurus trossingensis and gracilis

[h2]Additions[/h2]

• Gameplay
  • With the addition of animal ontogeny, we restructured the Biology research tree to account for various new animal features. The following research items were added:
    • Accelerated Ontogenic Synthesis - improves pricing and timing requirements for breeding full adult animals
      
    • Induced Androgenesis - ability to breed male animals in the Animal Nursery
      
    • Rapid Genetic Replication - multiplies the breeding speed of animals in the Animal Nursery by 100%
      
    • Hyper Genetic Replication - multiplies the breeding speed of animals in the Animal Nursery by 200%
      
    • Suppressed Ontogeny - enables stopping an animal’s growth at a chosen moment in its growth cycle
      
    • Ontogenic Regulation - enables modifying an animal’s growth cycle speed
      
    • Capacity Protocol #1 - Increases the Animal Nursery capacity to 10 slots
      
    • Capacity Protocol #2 - Increases the Animal Nursery capacity to 15 slots
      
    • Dynamic Replication Allocation - Increases the Animal Nursery capacity to 60 slots
      
  • Added new Park Issue for staff not being able to access an enclosure
    
  • Added new Park Issue for animals not having enough room to grow
    
  • Added new Park Issue for shops not having a cashier present
    
  • Added new Park Issue for not having a Compost Heap in the park
    
  • Checklist Park Issues now have click-through behavior to quickly place the required module
• Animals
  • Animals will now consider their vertical reach when deciding which feeders they can use (primarily affecting the Tall Feeder). This is influenced by their current size, so infant sauropods will need ground food to start out with. Animals which can access high food sources will prefer them
    
  • Added an idle shake and additive head throw animation to Megaloceros
• UI/UX
  • Animal portrait icons now better reflect the animal’s current visual state, with distinct icons for each skin, sex, age, and genetic skin mutation. This is applied throughout the entire GUI
    
  • Added a Biology panel to the Animal Info Menu, reporting current animal statistics such as age, maturity, length, mass, etc.
    
  • Added a Social panel to the Animal Info Menu, displaying information about the animal’s current social and family groups, if relevant
    
  • Added an icon to the Animal Info Menu header to indicate the animal’s sex
    
  • Added selection cycling buttons to the Animal Info Menu header, allowing players to quickly switch between animals of the same species if the animal isn’t contained, or animals of its exhibit if the animal is contained
    
  • Added a confirmation window that appears when selling animals, notifying the player of the refund sale price
    
  • Animal Management Menu: added the ability to select multiple animals and sell them with a single click
    
  • Animal Management Menu: added a ‘Most Popular Animal’ widget on the left sidebar, displaying brief information about your park’s most popular animal and focusing it on click
    
  • Animal Management Menu: the ‘Locate’ button on the habitat headers now actually selects and focuses the relevant enclosure/habitat
    
  • Added new keybind: ‘Toggle First Person Mode’ set by default to LeftControl+T
    
  • Added new keybind: ‘Switch Item Next’ set by default to RightBracket
    
  • Added new keybind: ‘Switch Item Previous’ set by default to LeftBracket
• Audio
  • Added a number of new UI sounds to various buttons and sliders to improve the user experience, replacing many of the old sounds
    
  • Added ambient building sounds to the Fossil Depot, Research Station and Staff Center modules
    
  • Added growls to T. rex eat
• Music
  • Added dynamic variants to many tracks, changing the musical fullness/arrangement depending on the time of day, park rating, weather or building activity
    
  • Added dynamic and semi-procedural pause music (around 25 minutes of material that plays randomly and adjusts layers depending on player input and location)
    
  • Added 2 new Ambient tracks:
    • It’s Yours (2:52)
      
    • Night Life (3:56)
  • Added 2 new Building tracks:
    • Evolution (1:55)
      
    • World’s Greatest Potential (3:43)
  • Added piano variants to 2 Ambient tracks:
    • The New World (1:42)
      
    • Perniciem (2:10)
  • Entering first person mode will cause music to sound radio-like and filtered. This can be turned off in the game options
    

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Balance
  • Animals have received a substantial round of rebalancing:
    • All animal costs have been re-tuned, with a higher overall cost ceiling. Animal pricing is now fully automated, with costs being mathematically based on the animal’s mass and perceived popularity
      
    • Animal pricing is now plastic, changing in real-time over the animal’s age and taking into account the animal’s appeal. High appeal animals are now worth more in-game money, which is reflected when selling individuals
      
    • Rebalanced animal base appeal points to be mathematically based on the animal’s mass and perceived popularity
      
    • Animal base appeal now slightly varies for each individual, based on their current mass
      
    • Increased animal starvation and dehydration time by 2x and 1.5x respectively, making animals eat/drink less frequently
  • Base price for science projects (excavations, research items) is about x2 higher
    
  • Additional funding levels in the Excavations Menu now have a higher cost, but also a higher fossil yield
• Gameplay
  • Excavation system: animals can now be found in multiple excavation sites. When a species is unlocked in a specific site, that will update in all the other sites that species is present in. This currently extends to:
    • Kökşetau Fm. has been replaced with Kozhamzhar Fm. where Elasmotherium and Mammuthus can be found.
      
    • Psittacosaurus mongoliensis is now found in Dushihin Fm. and Jiufotang Fm.
      
    • Edmontosaurus regalis is now found in Prince Creek Fm. and Horseshoe Canyon Fm.
      
    • Vilyuy River has been re-added to the game, containing Coelodonta
      
    • Yamal Peninsula has been re-added to the game, containing Mammuthus and Elasmotherium
  • Animal creation: each animal instance now progresses asynchronously in the Nursery Holder
    
  • Added the ‘Animal Aging’ gameplay setting: this can completely disable animal aging in Sandbox Mode
    
  • Added the ‘Animal Ontogeny Speed Multiplier’ gameplay setting: this is a global value that affects all
  • animal growth speeds in Sandbox Mode, as long as their growth speed isn’t set to ‘Realistic’
• Animals
  • Animal AI now has a more advanced planning and execution model, allowing them to “think” about new things while still performing their current state, which prevents them from constantly being interrupted by thoughts they can’t currently execute on anyway
    
  • Animals will perform animation one shots at the end of their pathfinding, rather than stopping randomly
    
  • Animal locomotion speeds more accurately reflect their raw animations, leading to overall faster and more alive feeling animals
    
  • Animals will now remain in a single move animation (Walk, Trot, Run) rather than sitting at an awkward blend between two
    
  • Updated neck posture for Megaloceros eating and grazing animations
    
  • Updated various locomotion animations for:
    • Coelodonta
      
    • Dilophosaurus
      
    • Coelophysis
      
    • Dryosaurus
      
    • Psittacosaurus
      
    • Edmontosaurus
      
    • Lambeosaurus
      
    • Iguanodon
      
    • Parasaurolophus
      
    • Nasutoceratops
      
    • Pachyrhinosaurus
      
    • Styracosaurus
      
    • Triceratops
      
    • Tyrannosaurus/Tarbosaurus
      
    • Acrocanthosaurus
      
    • Carcharodontosaurus
      
    • Torvosaurus
      
    • Deinocheirus
      
    • Paraceratherium/Juxia
  • Improved model weight painting quality for most animals
    
  • Improved estimated data for animal mass
    
  • Improved navmesh margins to reduce animals getting stuck on tight corners
    
  • Animal selection input is now far more accurate
    
  • Improved genetic color variance across all species, with more accurate albinism and melanism, and several new leucism coloration types
• Guests
  • Guests will now spawn and use only one contiguous park area, whichever is largest. Multiple spawners are still valid, but only those which are connected to this largest area. Previously it was possible to create multiple disconnected sections of a park, and guests would become confused trying to navigate to attractions in another area. This affects module accessibility, the visitor navmesh preview, and the visitor areas used for Park Beauty calculation
• Environment
  • Improved distant terrain rendering quality by accounting for texture bump in the resampling mechanism: this means more distant ground textures will appear more detailed
    
  • Improved terrain texture fidelity, lowering the scale of most textures to look better next to babies and small animals. This may result in more tiling in specific circumstances, but we feel this is a worthy sacrifice
    
  • Desaturated wetland sand texture and adjusted the wetness of mud
    
  • Decreased visual clutter of snow particles
    
  • Reverted lighting clamping during the early morning and late evening
    
  • Night is now less overwhelmingly blue with better visibility in moonlight and while looking top down
• Foliage
  • Updated kapok and coconut palm impostors
    
  • Reduced alpha cutoff for distant coconut palms and tree ferns, allowing them to maintain their silhouette and better cast shadows
    
  • Slightly increased wind simulation intensity
• UI/UX
  • Reduced minimum brush size for terrain painting to 2, from 5
    
  • UI Transparency now can’t be accessed while the Management Menu is open
    
  • Improved sun lighting transition when going into the Management Menu
    
  • Issue state icons now have 1:1 parity with park issue notifications
    
  • Staff and Visitor inaccessibility park issues will not show up if there are no staff centers or visitor spawners
    
  • The Loading bay and Storage buildings will no longer generate Module Logistics Unfulfilled park issues
    
  • Notification popups can now show over the management menu
    
  • Overview popup audio now only triggers the first time a new popup is created
    
  • Modular gimbal GUI: clamped at the edges of the screen
    
  • Modular gimbal GUI: further offset positioning so that the buttons don’t overlap with the gimbal editing axes
    
  • Animal Paleopedia: the ‘Thoughts’ page now preview character voice lines
    
  • Changed behavior of the bottom-left park stats buttons to open/close their relevant menus based on current context
    
  • Clearing all notifications in the Notification Menu now automatically closes the panel
• Post-Processing
  • Reduced SSR roughness, resulting in less-green foliage during rain
• Audio
  • Adjusted entire audio mix, resulting in an overall louder and more cohesive experience
    
  • Adjusted Nasutoceratops social response calls to better fit the animation
    
  • Drag sounds for fences, paths and modular objects are now more responsive
    
  • Park Services ambience is now ducked when assigning Science Teams to excavations/research or hiring staff
• Music
  • Extended 1 Ambient track:
    • The New World (1:53 > 2:23)
  • Updated the mix and arrangements of several tracks to match the styling of Volume 1’s soundtrack release. Most current in-game music will receive similar updates!
    • 4 Ambient tracks: All For Them, A Walk In The Park, Dawn Chorus, The New World, Perniciem
      
    • 3 Building tracks: Visitors On Main, Ingenuity, Build Sleep Repeat
  • Changed gameplay music algorithm to be entirely based within FMOD
    
  • Music now sounds more distant, echo-y and lacks low frequencies at nighttime
    
  • Music will not stop playing when entering the Park Services dashboard and will instead sound distant
    
  • Music will lower in volume when at ground level if the player is not building
    
  • Intro music will now fade in at a lower volume when starting or loading a game

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Critical
  • Fixed ambient audio duplicating itself upon specific circumstances, potentially crashing audio or the game
    
  • Fixed a critical GUI exception causing the staff management menu to not properly populate itself with staff entries, when certain staff members have null assignments
    
  • Fixed an issue causing the park name text in the Management View menu to default to “Prehistoric Kingdom” upon loading a save, instead of the saved park name
• Gameplay
  • Fixed staff placement rotation input not working if time is paused
    
  • Fixed certain Park Issues not correctly responding to sandbox settings such as disabling Logistics or Dung
    
  • Fixed a bug which would prevent a visitor spawner from being usable if it was placed on its own, even after being connected to path
    
  • Fixed an issue where unloaded animals in the Nursery would overlap with other animals
• Animals
  • Fixed an animal shader issue that could cause certain skins to wrongfully display iridescence
    
  • Fixed certain animals such as sauropods being unable to reach their max speed
    
  • Fixed Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus neck snap on its rearing animation
    
  • Fixed sauropod rolling animations extending longer than intended
    
  • Fixed Psittacosaurus eat exit animation
    
  • Fixed Pachyrhinosaurus snapping resting animations
    
  • Reduced wiggling animation inaccuracies on various animations
    
  • Fixed animals using high browsing eat animations when taking from ground feeders
    
  • Fixed animals not always being able to drink from shallow water
    
  • Fixed animals getting their needs drained significantly on first placement if you had previously sold other animals in the park
• Staff
  • Deep rework of Staff Dispatch, which now keeps track of all “Job Sites” such as feeders, shops, enclosures etc. and continuously validates that the correct assignments are being sent out to staff. Should prevent the dreaded lazy staff behavior that has plagued them since their release
    
  • Fixed a logical error that allowed laborers to fill feeders if that was one stop in a multi-stop transport assignment
• Audio
  • Fixed guests getting stuck in a Donation Task if it wasn’t completable on the first try
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed selection collision for Research Station
• UI/UX
  • Fixed a collision problem on the coastal map causing the camera’s behavior to be unpredictable at certain positions and angles
    
  • Fixed camera jitter during zoom in/out while tracking a moving object
    
  • Fixed a timing issue causing certain GUI tooltips to stick on screen
    
  • Fixed a minor issue causing the modular style panel from not disappearing when opening the management menu from within modular selection
    
  • Fixed tooltip still being open in screenshots
    
  • Fixed tooltip text for the animal water preference bar reporting the incorrect preferred values
    
  • Fixed timesliced processing on animal breeding within the Nursery Holder, leading to more accurate animal creation timing
    
  • Fixed Shara Murun Formation being named Sharamuran Formation
    
  • Fixed Landscaping Menu issue causing the selected biome preset to not paint the correct foliage when the menu would be opened for the first time in a session
    
  • Fixed a weather menu bug causing the ‘Cycle Weather’ toggle to be auto-selected upon closing the menu
    
  • Modular gimbal GUI: fixed first-frame-glitch effect when entering modular edit mode
    
  • Modular gimbal gizmo: fixed washed out graphics, restored full colors
    
  • Fixed layout refreshing in the options menu, when changing sandbox settings
    
  • Fixed slider handles in the options menu
    
  • Fixed slider handles in the screenshot menu
    
  • Fixed slider handles in the landscaping menu
    
  • Fixed Module Inaccessible park issues from showing up when a feeder or shop is simply empty
    
  • Fixed an instance of layout glitching for overview pop-ups
• Audio
  • Fixed numerous UI buttons with incorrect sound events
    
  • Fixed Carcharodontosaurus broadcast being inaudible beyond 64 meters
    
  • Fixed missing audio events for a few Triceratops, Velociraptor and Paraceratherium animations
    
  • Fixed offset audio events for Coelophysis
    
  • Fixed potential issue where multiple skin layers could repeat over themselves
    
  • Fixed an issue causing the modular ‘moving’ sound to be stuck on during grid placement
• Music
  • Corrected overly aggressive file compression for brass in The Miracle of Life, eliminating a ringing sound

[h2]Performance[/h2]

• Decreased spikes to GUI rendering when accessing UI transparency and screenshot mode
  
• Improved physics engine performance related to animal selection
  
• Slightly improved modular processing CPU performance
  
• Made significant improvements to the Animals Management and Staff Management menus performance, with list creation being deferred over multiple frames

Welcome to the March Development Update!

This month, we released our trailer for Update 14, showing off a variety of baby animals coming to the game. This update will be arriving April 24th, with the Public Testing Branch (PTB) version coming to Steam on April 2nd.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

As always, the PTB version is intended to catch various issues and get feedback on new features. Not all animals will have ontogeny and the content itself will be in various stages of completion, lacking sounds, animations, skins and other things.



It’s officially 24 days until Update 14 is properly released and yet all of the features are effectively done! For the next few weeks, it’s a matter of finishing the content, polishing, bug fixing and making various tweaks to get this update exactly where we want it.

While there’s a list of changes we’ll be working on until release, one of our favorites is an expansion to our animal thumbnails, with an aim to include renders for babies, sexual dimorphism and genetic mutations. Especially with ontogeny, this is going to make it a lot easier to find specific animals! It also works for the Animal Holder, so you’ll know if you have an albino before it’s even in the park.






[h2]Baby Animals[/h2]
It’s a new month, so it must be time to show off more baby animals. Today, we’ll be sharing a bunch from our Discord, starting with the highly requested Spinosaurus! These tiny croco-saurs lack many of the features found in the adult versions, such as their tall crests and giant sails.

Adorably, they even move around with their tails raised, demonstrating how much more nimble the young ones are.


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The sauropodlets of Camarasaurus grandis, however, are what you might expect! With proportionally shorter necks and softer features, these babies sport similar coloration to the adults with banded faces and more abundant patterning.



Next, Ankylosaurus has to be one of our favorites! Despite their size, these grumbles are still miniature tanks, though that iconic tail club hasn’t grown in yet. This is also one of the few species that we’d like to create a baby-specific sculpt for, removing various wrinkles and smoothing out their osteoderms. Keep an eye out for that in the future!



Plateosaurus gracilis is another favorite of ours. With the adult having clown-like face colors, we wanted to make the juveniles equally bold. Their cookies and creme patterning evokes a similar vibe to the adult, while making us slightly hungry, too!



Finally, here’s a look at our Sinotherium! Like their modern relatives, the horn on this baby rhino is yet to grow in, leaving a small protrusion on its head.



[h2]Animal Herding & Social Groups[/h2]
That’s right, animal herding is coming to Update 14 - surprise!!! You thought it was the next update, but we actually snuck it in for this one.

So, how does it work? Animals that are adolescents or older will be eligible to join a social group. At random, the game will pick a group leader, allowing them to decide where the herd will go or what they’ll do. For example, if the group leader decides to rest or drink, herd members will follow and attempt to do the same thing.

This level of herd cohesion is something that we can vary per species, making animals like Dryosaurus very tight knit, while a pair of T. rex are more independent from each other.



To check if your animals are in a social group, we’ve added a new tab to the animal information panel! Here, you can find the group leader, group members and see how many babies are associated with this group.



[h3]Adoptive Parenting[/h3]
Rather than taking up slots in a social group, baby animals are instead adopted by adults, creating a more realistic herd structure. Within these new family units, babies will follow their parents until reaching adolescence, eventually disbanding to find a proper social group. While growing up, though, they’ll do their best to stick near an adult. It’s pretty cute watching them cluster up!

Non-final thumbnail renders!

In the case that babies cannot find an adult (oh no), they’ll cleverly form their own clutch, following a leader much like a regular social group.

[h3]Animal Awareness & Socialization[/h3]
Finally, we’ve implemented the first version of animal awareness. In this update, animals will be able to speak to one another, offering a call and response. They’ll prioritise group members, but can occasionally call to other species or animals outside of their group. This behavior can only happen if the animals can see or hear each other.

Animals will also use sad calls when they have unmet needs, or if their welfare is really low, let out an angry bellow. For our fearsome Leaellynasaura, it’s more like an angry rat.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

In the future, we want to introduce look-targets/head IK that would allows animals to look at each other, making it more obvious who they’re talking to. We also want to reuse the sad and angry calls as a way for animals to react to each other e.g. “get away from my herd!”

[h3]All Together Now![/h3]
You probably want to see all this in action, so we’ve prepared a short video showcasing a couple of species and different scenarios. In this video you can also catch a glimpse of animal locomotion V3, an update focused on smoothing out movement and adding a trot animation for every animal! It’s still very much work in progress, so we’re hoping to improve it more by April 24.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]




So, since we managed to sneak herding into Update 14, what’s the plan for 15? Well, while we can’t get too specific just yet, our goal is to further enhance the animals with new behaviors and animations to make them even more lively.

Notably, this includes expanding the social and herding behaviors to feature a more dynamic social hierarchy with things like threat displays. There’s a lot that we can do, and we’re excited to finally begin exploring this side of Prehistoric Kingdom. With that said…

[h2]New Species[/h2]
There’s a new species on the horizon and they’re, uh, flocking this way. It’s everyone’s favorite chicken mimic, the Gallimimus!



Although the first ornithomimid in Early Access may have been Deinocheirus, Gallimimus has had an even longer history with Prehistoric Kingdom, namely being part of our first two demos ever! It’s certainly been a while, but we’re overjoyed to see Gallimimus finally come home. We’ve missed you!



[h2]Paleobotany[/h2]
Let’s take a look at even more paleobotany arriving in Update 15! Below, you’ll find the last few foliage species coming to the Scrubland biome. This includes a relative to the modern monkey puzzle tree, araucaria!



When you combine all the Scrubland plants together, you get a pretty cool environment! All that’s missing is a Stegosaurus hiding amongst the cycads.



With Scrubland out of the way, our attention turns to a different type of land, the Wetland! For this biome, we have a lot of plants that are intended to sit in shallow waters or on top of the water’s surface.



In addition to the water-based plants above, we’re also going to have giant horsetails! This plant is quite a bit larger than its modern counterpart that’s currently in the game. Think somewhere between reeds and bamboo.



This brings us to our final plant for today and it’s a peculiar one! It’s not a palm nor a mangrove, but actually a fern. We especially love this one and hope you will, too!






[h2]New Terrarium Species[/h2]
To close out this Dev Diary, we have a new terrarium species to share with you! Meet the adorable Simosuchus, a tiny crocodilian from the Late Cretaceous. This armored pug is believed to have been herbivorous due to its short snout and unique teeth! We’d still suggest keeping your hands away from its mouth, though, they’re quite nippy.




Created by W3


Created by ASSASSINSPINO


Created by W3


Created by Alkhan



Thank you for reading March’s dev diary!

To recap, Update 14’s PTB is on April 2nd while the actual update comes out April 24th. We hope you’re excited to finally play it and await your feedback!

- The PK Team

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[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Update 14 is coming next month on April 24!

An early version of this release will be available on the Public Testing Branch starting April 2, allowing the team to gather bug reports while we polish Update 14 and add the last few assets.

[h2]Baby Animals & Seamless Growth[/h2]


The headline features for Update 14 are the brand new baby animals and their seamless growth systems, allowing players to watch their animals morph and change in real time!

It was important to us that babies weren’t simply scaled down adults. Throughout their life, they’ll adjust their size, proportions, colors, sounds and even behavior over time. We’ve been working hard to create a new set of animations and sounds exclusively for use by the babies.

Seamless growth will be available for all of our current and future species, excluding any Mini-Exhibit or Terrarium bound creatures like the tiny Archaeopteryx and Microraptor.

• INCUBATION
  From the Animal Nursery, players can choose to incubate their animals from any age, easily allowing them to create babies, adults or anything in between.
  
  You can also pick the maximum maturity of an animal, too! This means that as an animal grows up, it can continue to look young despite its age increasing.
  
  
• BABY BEHAVIORS
  Depending on the species, babies will instinctively seek out a parent to adopt them! They’ll try to stick close to their guardian, or if unable to find one, stay with other unadopted babies as a clutch.
  
  At the end of Early Access, we would like to include breeding as a mechanic that adult animals can use to create natural offspring.

[h2]First Person Mode[/h2]


First Person Mode allows players to experience their park from a whole new perspective, dropping down to the eye level of a human.

In this mode, players can run, jump and crouch like you’d expect from any other first person game. We even added a few interactions like sitting in benches, opening/closing habitat gates and looking through binoculars to see what your guests see!



The full patch notes will be available once the update goes live.

See you soon, park managers!

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Welcome to the February Development Update!

It’s almost been 65 million years since the last blogpost! Or has it? Thanks to your support, we’ve been releasing mini-status reports every Wednesday over on our Patreon. These reports include exclusive baby reveals, concept art and weekly information about what we’re working on. While some of the Patreon content will be shown in this Dev Diary, there’s still a few things that we won’t be showing here.

To touch on when we last spoke about our financial situation, we wanted to take a moment and thank you for your help. Your support on Patreon has not only helped us immensely, but shown us just how important our project is to this community. If you can help spread the word or afford to offer a donation, the team would appreciate it greatly.

For now though, Prehistoric Kingdom is not going extinct. ♥



[h2]Ontogeny Progress[/h2]
It’s been all hands on deck this last month preparing Ontogeny for Update 14. In terms of art, around 40 of the 58 babies are in advanced stages of completion. Most of the remaining production time will be spent on finishing their skins, animations and sounds.



On the technical side, every day presents a new challenge to overcome. Since we change the physical proportions of our animals as they grow, this has a huge impact on various animations like sitting and walking around. Our amazing programmers have been developing new tech to help support our seamless growth systems, allowing us to:

• Correct limb IKs with age
  
• Reposition the vertical offset of young animals while resting, rolling and sleeping
  
• Reproject root motion to better sync movement speed to their new leg lengths
  
• Swap between navmesh sizes as animals get bigger
  
• Prevent animals from growing if a space is too small
  
• Swap locomotion and key animations as animals age up
  

We’ve also improved the way we handle animal selection with an optimized set of colliders that scale and stretch based on age. This lets us keep the selection accurate regardless of an animal’s current growth stage.



Thinking about all the implications that come with seamless growth, there’s a good reason why games haven’t really done this before! It has to scale, it has to react and it’s a big technical hurdle to solve. But, we’re giving it our best shot and are proud of the results thus far.

[h2]Free Patreon Post: Ontogeny Audio[/h2]
If you’d like to learn about how we’re approaching audio for ontogeny, be sure to check out a free blog post we put up on our Patreon last month! It outlines the problems, requirements and the solutions needed to keep asset development and implementation scalable.



[h2]Update 14’s Release Window[/h2]
Once we’ve gotten Update 14 in a more playable state, we’ll start to push early versions to the Public Testing Branch on Steam. While we’re not quite ready to begin this yet, you can expect to hear more next month as we get closer to Update 14’s release window in late April.

With how big this update is, we want to give ourselves some decent runway to ensure there aren’t any babies missing from the update. It’ll also be just in time for our Early Access anniversary!




[h2]Baby Animals[/h2]
This month, we’re pleased to unveil even more babies! These are but a handful of the animals already shown on Patreon, so if you can’t wait for Update 14, go check that out.

Up first is the massive Paraceratherium and its much smaller relative, Juxia. These little ones are almost like a baby rhino and tapir rolled into one with their prehensile lips and big ears.



Next up are the fan favourites Parasaurolophus and Charonosaurus. Each species has a unique pattern to help them transition into their adult coloration, making them quite distinct from one another. If you look close, you can even spot a tiny nub on their head!



Finally, the most scrungly one of all, Deinocheirus! We knew from the start that Deino simply had to have baby bird energy. Our artists looked at animals like juvenile pelicans, roseate spoonbills and flamingos to find the perfect level of freak. What a funky fellow!



With the baby Deinocheirus ready, one of our artists, Ida, was able to recreate her classic meme with PK flavoring.



If you’re looking for something really cute, though, we also shared the babies for the woolly rhino, Dilophosaurus, Dryosaurus and Velociraptor on our socials!



We’ve also refined the Megaloceros fawn since its reveal earlier in the month. There are some fur fixes that we stilll need to make, but it looks more like a young deer now. Thank you for your feedback!



To cap off this section, let’s take a look at some seamless growth! Please note that any stuttering is due to processing time steps since the increased speed is unrealistically fast. During normal gameplay, this effect is imperceptible.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Alt Species Changes[/h2]
Thanks to recent tech advancements, we’re also taking the time to improve the visual differences of alternate species in Update 14. This means corrected proportions and more accurate shapes for many animals, such as the two Smilodon species.

Below, you can see that populator is much more robust than fatalis with its bulkier build. Fatalis is sleek with a skinnier face, limbs and reduced shoulders. We even gave it cheek ruffs from the original concept art!

We’ll be reducing the fur length on populator’s ears!

In the case of Camarasaurus, each species will have a different head shape and silhouette. From left to right, grandis is the skinniest species with a rounded head. Supremus almost resembles a Brachiosaur with a bulbous skull, short neck spines and a thick neck. Lentus maintains much of the current Camarasaurus, acting as a middleground between the three.



Of course, you can expect to see similar changes for all the other alt species like the Parasaurs, Pachyrhinosaurus and others. Some changes may be less extreme than others, but the team is excited to get these animals feeling more unique.

[h2]First Person Mode[/h2]
Since we initially revealed the prototype last month, we’ve seen a lot of great comments about this feature. We’re happy to say that not only is first person mode now functionally complete, but we even had time to sneak in a few object interactions, too!

While running around the park, players will be able to sit on benches, swap between seats, look through binoculars and open/close gates to enter habitats. Any music that’s currently playing will also be given a radio-like effect!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Eventually we’d love to include some simple park management gameplay and make animals respond to the player in first person, but for Update 14 we think this is already a lovely little feature. It helps to appreciate a park from new perspectives!

[h2]Gameplay Changes[/h2]
Rounding out our progress on U14, we’ve been making a few targeted gameplay adjustments now that ontogeny is coming to the game.

• Animal Creation
  Animals are now incubated asynchronously in the Animal Nursery. This means that rather than waiting for one after the other, all incubating animals will progress at the same time. We’ll likely lengthen adult incubation times a little to compensate, but it definitely feels better to have a group of animals be ready together.
  
• Animal Points
  The base appeal of an animal has been rebalanced so that it’s calculated on an animal’s current mass and perceived popularity. This will help make things a little more objective when it comes to balancing, as we previously made the numbers up based on vibe.
  
  As a side effect, base appeal now slightly varies for each individual due to their differences in mass. A small adult T. rex will be slightly less appealing than a large one, for example.
  
• Excavation System
  Widespread animals such as Edmontosaurus regalis and various mammals can now be found in multiple dig sites. Excavation progress will be carried between all the other dig sites a species is present in. We’re also looking to retune excavation costs and speeds to make them feel like more of a long term investment.
  
• Staff Dispatch Improvements
  
  The way staff are automatically assigned to tasks has been improved to hopefully make job completion more reliable. Back to work, slackers!

[h3]Paleobotany[/h3]
To wrap up this Dev Diary, let’s take a look at some of the other paleo plants that’ve been worked on. As a reminder, don’t forget that paleobotany will be coming after Update 14!

Below, you’ll find a coastal biome conifer from throughout the Mesozoic, Elatides! This tree will come with a bunch of variations, including one that splits off into two trunks.



Next up are two scrubland plants from the Jurassic, Kimuriella and Korallipteris! We think these two go well together, giving off an arid yet somewhat alien vibe.



Finally, here’s a quick look at one of the oldest plants in the world, the cycad! This family has been around since the Permian, almost 300 million years ago. Despite this, many species can be found all over the world today.




Created by W3


Created by ASSASSINSPINO


Created by Emerson Hul (@ps_arts_official on Instagram)



Thank you for reading February's dev diary!

We’ll be back again at the end of March for our next dev diary. Each week until then though, we’ll continue posting to our Patreon to provide small status updates as work continues on Update 14.

- The PK Team

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Welcome, Park Managers!

In this small fix patch we are targeting a couple of the more egregious animal bugs, leaving the game in a more stable state until the next major update (Update 14) is released. Enjoy!


[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]