Prehistoric Kingdom News

Welcome, Park Testers!

This PTB release features a work-in-progress look at Update 13's content, including the reworked building toolbox, building experience, park rating rework, guest sitting and biome updates. Please note that Megaloceros and Ursus are not included in this pre-release and will be available once the patch is completely finished.

Here are some specific things that we'd like to get feedback on:

• Balance and Park Rating Changes: The conditions and various thresholds required to achieve higher park ratings have been changed, with goals that are laid out in the new rating UI.
  
• Building Toolbox and Building Experience: Help us find any oddities, bugs or experience downgrades from the previous system. It's totally new, so please take a little time to play with it!
  
• Guest AI: Visitors have had quite a few AI changes, including the addition of a rest need. Let us know how they distribute in the park and how their needs feel in terms of balance.
  

Once we've fixed the most prevalent bugs and finalized the content on our end, we will be releasing Update 13 very soon! Please send your feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel. Thank you!



[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]

• This version of the building toolbox temporarily does not contain filtering for specific themes or prefabs. This will be added for the official release of Update 13!
  
• Due to a crash fix, some exhibits may be broken if they had fences and gates occupying the same space! Please update habitats accordingly.
  
• Some menus, such as the new building style and coloring menu and the modular selection info panel can seldom overlap. We are working on improving the automatic scaling behavior of any overlapping menu.

[h2]Features[/h2]

• NEW FEATURE: Guest Sitting
  Guests will now stop at benches to rest or enjoy a delicious meal. This retroactively applies to all saves!
  A new ‘Rest’ overlay is available for checking on your guests' new need!
  
• NEW FEATURE: Improved rating and park goals
  • Park Rating Stars are earned by achieving incremental goals
    
  • Animal Points are given by every animal in your park based on the species, genetics, and ecology of the animal
    
  • Removed Exhibit Score: the Ecology Bonus is now part of Animal Points, and cleanliness was always part of Animal Welfare (making it redundant)
    
  • Attraction Points are currently given by shops and binoculars, but is planned be expanded in the future
    
  • Park Appeal affects guest population, and is driven by Overall Park Rating, Amenity Prices, and Park Beauty

[h2]Additions[/h2]

• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added Stylized Animal Sign, coming in multiple animal designs:
    • Acrocanthosaurus
      
    • Ankylosaurus
      
    • Apatosaurus
      
    • Brachiosaurus
      
    • Coelodonta
      
    • Deinocheirus
      
    • Dilophosaurus
      
    • Dryosaurus
      
    • Edmontosaurus
      
    • Elasmotherium
      
    • Iguanodon
      
    • Leaellynasaura
      
    • Mammuthus
      
    • Megaloceros
      
    • Microraptor
      
    • Ouranosaurus
      
    • Pachyrhinosaurus
      
    • Parasaurolophus
      
    • Protoceratops
      
    • Psittacosaurus
      
    • Smilodon
      
    • Spinosaurus
      
    • Triceratops
      
    • Tyrannosaurus
      
    • Ursus
      
    • Velociraptor
• Foliage
  • Added or updated the following Coastal plants:
    • Coastal Manroot 1
      
    • Coastal Manroot 2
      
    • False Lily of the Valley 1
      
    • False Lily of the Valley 2
      
    • Maidenhair Fern 1
      
    • Maidenhair Fern 2
      
    • Maidenhair Fern 3
      
    • Scots Pine 1
      
    • Scots Pine 2
      
    • Scots Pine 3
      
    • Scots Pine 4
      
    • Scots Pine 5
      
    • Scots Pine 6
  • Added the following Temperate plants:
    • Beech Tree 1
      
    • Beech Tree 2
      
    • Beech Tree 3
      
    • Beech Tree 4
      
    • Beech Tree 5
      
    • Beech Tree 6
      
    • Beech Tree 7
      
    • Beech Tree 8
      
    • Daisy Grass 1
      
    • Daisy Grass 2
      
    • Daisy Grass 2
      
    • Dandelion Grass 1
      
    • Dandelion Grass 2
      
    • Dandelion Grass 3
      
    • Dandelion Grass 4
      
    • Eared Willow 1
      
    • Eared Willow 2
      
    • Eared Willow 3
      
    • Eared Willow 4
      
    • Field Grass 1
      
    • Field Grass 2
      
    • Field Grass 3
      
    • Flame Azalea 1
      
    • Flame Azalea 2
      
    • Flame Azalea 3
      
    • Flame Azalea 4
      
    • Flame Azalea 5
      
    • Flame Azalea 6
      
    • Flame Azalea 7
  • Added the following Temperate biome presets:
    • Temperate shrubs
      
    • Temperate field
      
• UI/UX
  • Updated the Building Toolbox menu with a fresh new look and improved functionality
    • Every structure category now has an ‘All’ menu selection, allowing a quick visualization of the entire structure list set for that category
      
    • Added ability to switch between large and small icon size for the Building Toolbox
      
    • Added save preference functionality to structure favoriting - newly favorited structures will now carry over across all saves
      
    • Added a set of contextual Building Action panels to the right hand side of the screen - these menus appear while any structural action is active and are highly contextual based on the current action type. Through these menus, several QoL features have been added to the building suite:
      • Improved keybind tooltip readability
        
      • Modular: random rotation and scale settings
        
      • Modular: gimbal move increment
        
      • Modular: gimbal Axis Flip, available during gimbal scaling. This allows quick mirroring on any local axis for the current objects
  • Added a new keybind: Toggle Fences/Path Replacement Mode - bound to ‘R’ by default. When pressed, this keybind will toggle the current fence/path action from ‘Build’ mode to ‘Replace’ mode, and vice versa
    
  • Updated the modular styling and coloring panel to be completely independent of the building toolbox, allowing for more screen real estate when changing modular pieces!
    
  • Color controls are now relative to piece types, giving more granular control over the coloration of each piece style
    
  • Updated the Management View menu and included a new park rating report to match the new rating additions
    • Added a Guest Navigation view - allowing guest navmesh visualization
      
    • Added a Staff Navigation view - allowing staff navmesh visualization
  • Added a Projected Park Population report tooltip that appears when hovering the park guest count on the main board
    
  • Added a trend icon next to guest population that shows when the projected number of guests is higher or lower than your current amount
    
  • Clicking the finances, staff, animals and guest numbers at the bottom of the HUD will open up their respective management menus

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Gameplay
  • Removed individual price categories for different food and gift brands, unified into two simple categories
    
  • Added price setting for Binocular modules
• Animals
  • Lowered shininess of Coelodonta fur
    
  • Animal overall welfare has been reworked to better consider each component of an animal’s life
    • Animal needs drain slower
      
    • Animal excretion amount lowered
  • Adjusted minimum exhibit sizes for the following species’ default grouping size:
    • Charonosaurus: 5,550m2 → 4,340m2
      
    • Deinocheirus: 3,400m2 → 1,575m2
      
    • Edmontosaurus annectens: 14,000m2 → 6,125m2
      
    • Edmontosaurus regalis: 33,440m2 → 10,425m2
      
    • Iguanodon: 13,580m2 → 4,030m2
      
    • Juxia: 6,220m2 → 1,100m2
      
    • Lambeosaurus: 11,400m2 → 2,500m2
      
    • Muttaburrasaurus: 6,524m2 → 2,796m2
      
    • Nasutoceratops: 3,600m2 → 1,400m2
      
    • Ouranosaurus: 7,920m2 → 3,300m2
      
    • Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis: 18,800m2 → 13,100m2
      
    • Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai: 11,780m2 → 6,570m2
      
    • Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum: 5,500m2 → 2,400m2
      
    • Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus: 9,845m2 → 2,737m2
      
    • Parasaurolophus walkeri: 9,510m2 → 3,538m2
      
    • Styracosaurus: 6,000m2 → 2,400m2
      
    • Ugrunaaluk: 6,220m2 → 2,860m2
• Staff
  • Removed staff unhappiness for now, we have plans to reintroduce it with more gameplay in the future
• Guests
  • Adjusted guest population cap and spawn rates as a function of Park Rating and Park Appeal
    
  • Should now look at animals much more frequently, with higher Animal Points resulting in more frequent visits
    
  • Shopping behavior is no longer a need that builds up over time, instead guests will shop after having positive park experiences
    
  • Guests should now walk faster in general, and even faster still when they have a pressing need
    
  • Guest AI will no longer ‘explore’ for overlong periods
• Buildings & Scenery
  • In addition to benches and tables having interaction points, the Restaurant now has functional tables. Guests will get in line to purchase food, then take it to a table to sit and eat. Guests will also attempt to find nearby seating after purchasing from Food Kiosks or Vending Machines
    
  • Guests will now get in line to make a purchase after viewing products on shelves in the Gift Shop
    
  • Kiosks now have an exit point slightly to the right of the register interaction point, which helps clear up traffic jams when guests try to leave the kiosk. Guests moving from the register to this exit point are able to move through navmesh obstacles for that short distance, making it possible to build queue line ropes/barriers to direct the line, while still allowing guests to leave without walking backwards through the queue
    
  • Large bathrooms now have an internal capacity of 8 “stalls” for guests to use
• Environment
  • Updated sunrise/sunset ambient light to be brighter and warmer, reducing pitch black shadows
    
  • Updated Tanzania map lighting to be more consistent with other maps and appear less harsh
    
  • Updated environmental reflections to include fog
    
  • Adjusted clouds to appear less saturated and overblown during sunrise/sunset
    
  • Slightly brightened grass in the shade
• Foliage
  • Updated wind settings on older trees and removed wind from various cactus species
    
  • Adjusted global wind simulation to look more lively
    
  • Adjusted elephant grass coloring to better fit with the rest of the foliage
    
  • Adjusted shading on boreal fireweed and labrador tea to appear less round
    
  • Adjusted sizes for temperate arrowwoods 1 and 2 for better leaf size consistency, making them smaller overall
    
  • Reduced wind during rain
• UI/UX
  • Updated biome preset icons for temperate foliage and coastal pines
    
  • Updated the enclosure info panel to reflect the new rating changes
    
  • Updated the animal rating info panel to reflect the new rating changes
    
  • Opening the Terraform Menu now clears all non-animal selection
• Post-Processing
  • Adjusted auto-exposure to improve the game’s base brightness and increase visibility when in dark areas. This is most noticeable in dense forests, buildings and at nighttime
    
  • Adjusted bloom to have less spread and appear less intense. Most noticeable on metal objects such as feeders. It now mostly acts as light bleed for dark areas
    
  • Looking at navigation in the Management View no longer tints the screen blue, making the navmesh more visible

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Crashes
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when deleting a fence section if that fence had been loaded in overlapping another fence section
    • This enforcement of fence proximity rules may break existing enclosures which had gates and fences trying to occupy the same space!
  • Fixed improper process scheduling that could lead to a rare crash
• Gameplay
  • Fence placement undo and redo now properly changes the park balance
• Animals
  • Reworked interactable access which should help address animals not always using interactables after modifying them
• Staff
  • Fixed staff going on eternal breaks
    
  • Fixed rare navigational issue that prevented staff from moving
    
  • Fixed keepers being able to walk through obstacles to clean up dung if there was no navigable path
    
  • Fixed keepers getting stuck in an infinite loop of offloading dung if the assignment for that dung pile had previously been attempted and failed
    
  • Brought back staff end-of-assignment reaction animations
    
  • Fixed Auto-Hire-Cashiers not hiring anyone at the moment the toggle is activated
    
  • Fixed Staff Placement only showing correct placement validity while the mouse is moving
• Guests
  • Fixed Visitor Welfare being incorrect at roughly 75% of the desired value
    
  • Fixed a bug that caused guests to be unable to see animals
    
  • Fixed guests falling out of a queue line occasionally
    
  • Fixed guests getting stuck because they thought that roofs were walkable area
    
  • Fixed a bug that caused guests to have a slightly lower opinion of animals than they were supposed to
    
• Foliage
  • Fixed incorrect alphabetical ordering for Coastal biome trees in the terraforming menu
• Construction
  • Fixed a major bug that caused modular piece colors to desynchronize after deletions
• UI/UX
  • Fixed a GUI Input oversight that would cause toggles to turn on graphically but otherwise not trigger their intended behavior upon right clicks or middle clicks
• Rendering
  • Improved synchronization of human and prop animation
    
  • Generally improved human animation system

[h2]Performance[/h2]

• Numerous small memory improvements
  
• Human animation is more optimal
  
• Many performance improvements to the building menu, especially for the search function
  
• Slightly improved save loading speed

Welcome to the November Development Update!

In this blog post, we’ll be taking a quick look at the remaining parts of Update 13, including a brand new animal. Oh deer! We’re also 25% off on Steam right now, so if you’re yet to support us, it’s a great time to jump in!





To summarize the last Dev Diary, Update 13 will be released in December as our final update for the year. It’s primarily a content update focused on adding two new animals, stabilizing parts of the game’s balance and including quality of life improvements such as a redesigned building toolbox. There’ll be a trailer announcing the release date soon!

Going into 2025, the team will be focused on completing long awaited updates such as animal socialization, babies and paleobotany. Since these features are so large, we don’t have an ETA for when they’ll be playable. As usual, though, we’ll be releasing Dev Diaries to keep the community informed and show progress as we’re further along.




[h3]New Species[/h3]
It may not be a reindeer, but we reckon a Megaloceros could pull Santa’s sleigh just as well! This massive deer is best recognised by its absurdly large antlers, measuring in with a span of over 3 meters.



Also known as the Irish Elk, Megaloceros once lived across Eurasia with the cave bear and woolly mammoth. Despite the nickname, Megaloceros is more closely related to a living species, the fallow deer. Our scientists have noted the two animals making very similar calls, highlighting their common ancestry!



We’re excited to see what habitats you create for Megaloceros and the cave bear in Update 13!



[h3]Expanded Coastal & Temperate Biomes[/h3]
Rounding out the foliage additions from Update 12, we’ll be adding a few more plants to the Coastal biome. These include the Coastal Manroot, False Lily of the Valley, Maidenhair Fern and improved Scots Pines. There are 13 individual plants between them.



Similarly, the temperate biome will be getting quite a lot of love, too! This update adds beech trees, daisy grass, dandelion grass, field grass, eared willows and flame azaleas (flowered and unflowered versions!) for a whopping 29 new foliage pieces. These plants have quite a bit of color, making them particularly great for more diverse habitats or within decorative planters.



[h3]Stylized Animal Signs[/h3]
Finally, let’s take an in-game look at some of the animal signs that were shown off last month! There are quite a lot of these coming in Update 13, so please look forward to discovering them all when it releases in December.




Created by Nerd


Created by W3


Created by luci257



Thank you for reading November's dev diary!

Although a shorter one, we hope you’re looking forward to Update 13. We’ll be taking a little break over the holiday period at the end of December, so in case we don’t end up doing a Dev Diary due to New Years, we wish everyone a happy holidays. See you soon, park managers!

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome, Park Managers!

This patch improves stability and introduces notifications that tell the player about one-time events such as finished research, animal unlocks and excavation changes. The next major release will be Update 13 in December!

Please send your feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel. Thank you!

[h3]Steam Autumn Sale (25% off!)[/h3]

Prehistoric Kingdom's now 25% off until December 4th! It's a great time to jump in and cozy up while building the ultimate prehistoric zoo.


[h2]Additions[/h2]

• UI/UX
  • Added the new Notifications Menu, where the player can receive information about one-time events in the park. Current notifications include:
    • New Animal Unlocked
      
    • Research Completed
      
    • Excavation Completed
      
    • New Excavation Event

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Gameplay
  • Changed how interactables work behind the scenes, the positions of interact points on various modules may change. This change lays groundwork for future expansion, but in the immediate term will provide fixes for traffic jams at queue lines, binoculars not always connecting to the navmesh correctly, misaligned positioning at some modules, and modules being inaccessible from some directions when the game thinks they are accessible.
• Staff
  • When a keeper is cleaning dung, selecting the keeper will show which dung piles they are planning to clean up in this trip
• Audio
  • Adjusted large theropod eating sounds

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Critical
  • Fixed a critical guest issue that caused them to misbehave after removing an interactable item that they were using previously
    
  • Fixed a rare freeze when trying to exit the game
• Animals
  • Fixed a case where animals could get permanently stuck if they’re too far above or below the navmesh
    
  • Fixed Dilophosaurus sleep using the rest animation
• Staff
  • Fixed staff being assigned to different shops than the ones they were at previously on loading a save
    
  • Fixed keepers being overly picky about distances and fill levels when finding a compost heap
    
  • Fixed staff members not playing their post-assignment reaction animations
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed placement and nav detection bounds for many modular pieces
• UI/UX
  • Fixed park issue icons displaying as blank in the Park Issues menu
    
  • Fixed a message popup layout issue causing popups to overlap on screen when in instances where they are meant to be hidden
    
  • Fixed main board economy report not properly displaying negative numbers
    
  • Fixed park issues arising when the relevant gameplay settings are disabled
• Rendering
  • Improved light LODs transitioning behavior
• Misc.
  • Many stability improvements behind the scenes

[h2]Performance[/h2]

Welcome, Park Managers!

This hotfix fixes issues such as animals not eating from feeders, crashes, and some critical save/load issues.

Please send your feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel. Thank you!


[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Animals
  • Reduced amount of time it takes animals to get dry after emerging from bodies of water

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Crashes
  • Fixed an issue during shutdown which could cause a crash
    
  • Fixed a couple oversights in terraforming that could potentially cause crashes when terraforming near the edge of the map
• Critical
  • Fixed a critical save/load issue related to empty animal info screens
    
  • Improved modular/save load behavior so that file writing errors for specific pieces won’t completely skip saving the whole modular group - this will minimize missing groups on load in the future
    
  • Fixed critical modular bug causing random extra ‘ghost’ pieces to be loaded in bulk in saves
    
  • Fixed click input collision that would cause actions to finalize if left click input is detected during right click hold input
    
  • Addressed animals not being able to eat from feeders until moved
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed bad floor collision on official prefab ‘Rustic Restaurant’
• Environment
  • Fixed Aurora not showing up in the ‘Canadian Rockies’ level
• UI/UX
  • Fixed GUI exception in the modular Storage Widget
    
  • Fixed a layout issue at the bottom of the Modular Prefab saving panel

Welcome, Park Managers!

This hotfix resolves additional issues reported by the community as well as expands the Help menu with a new section for Park Issues.

Please send your feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel. Thank you!


This hotfix makes Animal Info Signs more reliable by streamlining their data for saving and loading. To facilitate this transition however, we had to phase out all the existing info screen save data.

Players will be required to re-assign animals to their info signs and save their game. We apologise for this inconvenience!


[h2]Additions[/h2]

• UI/UX
  • Added Help articles for Park Issues
    
  • Added section to the Terraforming Help article that mentions how to remove specific pieces of foliage

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Balance
  • Lowered purchase price for Microraptor and Archaeopteryx
• Animals
  • Removed the backwards look around animation from Argentinosaurus, Brachiosaurus and Camarasaurus until a better solution can be put in place
  • Added the Grassland biome to the following animals:
    • Apatosaurus
      
    • Brachiosaurus
      
    • Brontosaurus
      
    • Camarasaurus
      
    • Dryosaurus
      
    • Paraceratherium
      
    • Torvosaurus (tanneri only)
  • Adjusted minimum exhibit sizes for the following species’ default grouping size. Most of these were significantly reduced:
    • Ankylosaurus: 2,000m2
      
    • Coelodonta: 1,200m2
      
    • Coelophysis: 600m2
      
    • Dilophosaurus: 1,100m2
      
    • Dryosaurus: 732m2
      
    • Elasmotherium: 1,300m2
      
    • Leaellynasaura: 435m2
      
    • Mammuthus: 1,904m2
      
    • Panthera: 700m2
      
    • Plateosaurus gracilis: 994m2
      
    • Plateosaurus trossingensis: 1,704m2
      
    • Protoceratops: 650m2
      
    • Psittacosaurus mongoliensis: 475m2
      
    • Psittacosaurus sibiricus: 401m2
      
    • Psittacosaurus sp.: 250m2
      
    • Scelidosaurus: 734m2
      
    • Smilodon fatalis: 600m2
      
    • Smilodon populator: 800m2
      
    • Sinotherium: 1,300m2
      
    • Velociraptor: 550m2
  Buildings & Scenery
  • Adjusted collider for Cedar Siding Wall Pillar 4m
    
  • Gate modules will no longer cause groups to snap to fences if that group contains any non-decoration or non-enclosure-related modules
• Foliage
  • Increased forest contribution of Acacia 1, 2 and Marula 1, 2
    
  • Decreased forest contribution of Yucca Tree 2
• UI/UX
  • Improved placement states readability by extending the placement actions’ tooltips to include more information about the validity of the current construction
    
  • Animal, Staff, and Guest welfare displays will now show accurate fill levels, even in sandbox mode, but will always display as green to indicate that a low welfare bar won’t actually have any negative impact on the park
    
  • Renamed Park Issue: ‘Module Logistics Unfulfilled’ to ‘Pending Logistics Transfer’
    
  • Renamed Park Issue: ‘Park Logistics Unfulfilled’ to ‘High Resource Demand’ and disabled it temporarily until we add a Logistics overview screen to the Park Services menu
• Post Processing
  • Removed CTAA option from the Antialiasing quality, as it was causing unwanted visual effects
    
  • Sharpened default TAA
    
  • Adjusted the game’s Ambient Occlusion for a higher visual fidelity. This has a major effect on shaded geometry (such as interiors)

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Crashes
  • Potentially fixed some crashes caused by moving and placing large modular prefabs
    
  • Fixed a crash related to guest animal visibility
    
  • Fixed a crash occurring right after loading a large park
    
  • Fixed a critical application hang when demolishing a large amount of pieces from a large modular group
• Critical
  • Strengthened checks for removing Animal Nursery preview assets, corresponding to previously viewed animals. This should properly resolve a bug that would cause 2 or more animals to be previewed in the Animal Nursery at the same time
    
  • Patched a rendering issue that would cause the camera FOV to not be applied correctly, resulting in weird rendering artifacts on water especially
    
  • Fixed inconsistency around updates to the navmesh
    
  • Animals loaded with invalid positions will now be recovered
    
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the guest walkable area to calculate incorrectly and break all visitors
• Animals
  • Fixed animals getting stuck at the edge of water
• Staff
  • Fixed several bugs leading to staff not properly taking up necessary tasks
    
  • Fixed the way staff gates connect to the navmesh, which should prevent them from teleporting onto roofs
• Guests
  • Further fixed guests ability to recover when you change the environment around them, they should no longer reset to the entrance
    
  • Fixed a bug with animal viewing
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed visibility for Rustic Log 2.5m and Rustic Log 4m fences
    
  • Fixed several desync cases for animal info signs - streamlining their data and save/load. This means that in the future, animal info screens should be far more reliable. To facilitate this transition however, we had to phase out all the animal info screen save data, apologies for this inconvenience.
• UI/UX
  • Fixed camera zoom intensity for perspective camera mode
    
  • Fixed enclosure button in the Animal Info panel not being enabled when the animal is enclosed
    
  • Fixed several localization elements throughout the GUI
    
  • Fixed duplicated keybind elements in the Options Menu
    
  • Fixed a GUI issue causing all the animals in the Animals Management Menu to have maximum star rating
    
  • Fixed a Building Menu listing bug that would result in a significant portion of user-downloaded workshop prefabs to not appear in the list

[h2]Performance[/h2]

• Significant optimizations to the modular system
  
• Improvements to fence loading