Welcome to October’s development update!

In this month’s spooky post we’ll be discussing some of the things we’ve been working on in addition to creature remakes and a brand new animation reel!



This month, a small handful of influencers were given keys to a slightly enhanced iteration of the PAX build to demonstrate some of the features in Prehistoric Kingdom.

Although there were some expected issues that have since been fixed, we’d like to give a huge thanks to Geekism, BestInSlot, and Swrve for showcasing the project at this stage. There will be more coverage in the coming months as we add the last few features to finish up the creative features, but until then, stay tuned!






Development in October saw the beginning of the new modular building system as well as a full month of animal reduxes, animation, and sound design.

While the rest of the team continue to work on their assignments, Matt’s had the lovely task of porting the project to the latest version of Unity so that we can make use of some new features and address issues that had been resolved in the most recent iteration. As we’re quite far into core systems now, you can imagine that this was quite a big task to ensure that nothing broke along the way.

Now that it’s mostly dealt with (had to get it over with at some point!) new progress in other fronts should appear more frequently.





As the tycoon genre continues to push forward with precise modular construction tools, we’re following suit to bring a high level of customization and variety in creative opportunities to our audience.

Originally, our plans from Kickstarter were to add wall pieces to what would essentially be the very basic modular tools found in the Steam demo. Now, it’s beginning to become the fully-developed and expansive creative suite that this genre’s fanbase has come to expect from modern simulation management games.

Featuring temporary icons and basic functionality, you can find a short demonstration video below.



What sets Prehistoric Kingdom apart is the flexibility to freely enable or disable the grid during construction for any modular object, including wall pieces, pillars, foliage, statues and more! This feature gives players expression and versatility in their design process, whilst giving the option to keep pieces all within the one modular group for easier editing and management.



With a variety of different objects and pieces coming in the final game as well as helpful building options, we can’t wait to see what designs, props and facades the community constructs!

Next month we’ll be developing the 3D gizmo tools that allow for precise movement, scaling and rotation of modular objects like props, foliage and decoratives.


WIP Modular Building Tools and Textures.

Whilst not focused on, work was put into an iteration of the dynamic weather system during October to experiment with how fog, clouds and lighting changes can affect the game’s tone and feeling.


WIP Overcast Weather.

In addition to the occasional overcast sky, dynamic cloud shadows are cast over the island as thicker clouds roll-in overhead! During gameplay we’ve found that this improvement has gone a long way in making the setting of Prehistoric Kingdom feel more grounded in reality.



As per usual, new graphical tweaks were brought to the project in our continued effort to make the game as pretty as possible.

Miscellaneous adjustments included a more focused vignette and increased chromatic aberration alongside bigger changes like time-based fog colors, increased fog rendering distance, modified lighting colours and color-grading tweaks to give the game a deeper spectrum of color. Overall, the team is happy with the graphical direction of the game with the assured goal of only getting better with time!





October was filled with a dozen of deadly dinosaurs with no mammals in sight, how spooky! Featuring many first looks at the new models of old classics, this was definitely a bigger month for our continued reduxes.









Oh, deer! Made famous by its large rack and title as the Irish elk, Megaloceros stands tall alongside our menagerie of mammals included in Prehistoric Kingdom. Animated by Nathan and Mau, we’ve looked at a wide variety of reference material to make this animal move, sound and behave appropriately.



In the future, we will be moving away from the animation video format in favour of more managable content that allows us to share our best animations without losing time that could be spent elsewhere.



Apart from designing the new sounds for Megaloceros and a few other creatures, Byron wrote the newest animal introduction track titled Giganteus. Expanding the range of Prehistoric Kingdom’s music as a continuation of the icy mammal themes, this piece introduces the solo cello and viola to help incorporate a more personal and rigid sound to the music.

https://soundcloud.com/byronmckay/giganteus



Our chunky herbivore friends saw massive improvements courtesy of Cindy’s ongoing remakes and enhancements. Featuring far more detailed textures with some slight design revisions, Ankylosaurus, Camarasaurus and Diplodocus have never looked better in Prehistoric Kingdom!








Much like the animals, staff have their own set of needs that must be satisfied to prevent issues such as dissatisfaction, lack of efficiency and quitting their position.

Basic needs include a worker’s mood, effectiveness, energy and salary. These four statistics can influence each other in addition to outside forces such as animal escapes, deaths and natural disasters.



If a staff member’s mood drops below their minimum tolerance level, they are far more likely to quit as a result. To efficiently manage your park, we suggest keeping an eye on your staff members and ensure that they’re operating to the best of their ability

“My park sucks but I don’t want my staff to leave; what can I do?”

The answer to this question is simple - provide benefits! When disaster strikes and the worst occurs, staff may quit if they don’t feel safe. Benefits allow the player to pay for various coverages to improve the longevity of their staff in the event of tragedy.


Examples of some of the togglable benefits.

Although expensive, benefits will greatly increase the tolerance level of staff across the board. When you’re a corporate managerial mogul with a park full of extinct animals, keeping it up and running is your number one priority!

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Thank you for reading October’s Devlog!

We hope you enjoyed this month’s development update! We’ve got some more great things cooking up behind the scenes and we can’t wait to show it off in the future.

- The PK Team

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Welcome to September’s development update!

It’s been a big month here at Prehistoric Kingdom. In today’s post we’ll be recapping some important events that occurred in September as well as detailing some of our future plans. Without further ado, let’s get straight into it!



Earlier in the month we streamed footage of the PAX build over on our Twitch channel - giving us the opportunity to speak directly to the community and discuss future content.

One of our key points discussed during the livestream was the future of Prehistoric Kingdom and what’s left to do before moving onto the next phase. Announcing new features such as a dedicated moat tool and enhanced modular building, you can find the core slides from the stream below.





Additional information discussed during the stream can be found here.

Development during September was a little more relaxed after the weeks spent preparing the game for PAX West and the livestream. We took some small much-needed breaks, but the show must go on.

As detailed above, we’re going to start laying the groundwork for our modular building system in October. Much like the project, our plans for modular construction have expanded greatly and once finished should offer a selection of tools that are extremely easy to work with.

In terms of general development, we’ve mainly been addressing issues relayed to us from PAX and getting the first pre-alpha into the hands of our generous VIP backers as well as making the game look prettier. We’re currently investigating some new issues that will be fixed in an internal patch soon but despite some bugs, the entire team has been humbled by the overwhelmingly positive reception to early footage.





Saving and loading were added this month so that players can now return to their parks at a later date! Thankfully, it works far better than the demo’s iteration and should be more immune to strange issues like missing data or corruption with game updates. Of course, we’ll need to see how it plays in the future, but so far everything’s been working fine!



Shortly after PAX we spent a few days developing our own screenshot mode to give early players an additional thing to do as well as help the team more easily create new species spotlights and promotional material.

Compared to some of the other screenshot solutions available on the market, we decided to develop our own system as it allows for easier customisation in addition to better accessibility for a variety of graphics cards since it’s built directly into the game.

While it was an extremely easy feature to implement, it’s added a lot of replayability to the game as sharing paddock builds and pretty scenery has never been easier. Depth of field, image effects, filters, camera field of view and more can all be changed and utilised by players to get the perfect shot. And yes, since we include the ability to natively change the timescale we’re expecting some awesome player-made documentaries to come out of this!




In the future we'll be adding support for light direction and dynamic resolution so players can take high-resolution images!



This month’s species spotlights featured an interesting array of cuddly and not-so-cuddly creatures as we begin to close up with our three-star animals.








As some of you may have noticed in our Milestones graphic, Nathan expanded our fence list beyond our expectations for Pre-Alpha 1! With over 30 fences in the game, there’s a lot of variety to select from when building your Prehistoric Kingdom. Take a look at some of our brand new creations!




Continuing the trend of improving the old, the restaurant has been massively improved with higher fidelity textures and a new model. Like the old iteration, we’ve kept the top floor interior visible. However, now it’s far more detailed and even includes a fluorescent Crowny light!



Due to needing to address issues with the PAX build and having to make constant tweaks in preparation for our VIP’s and YouTubers, there will be no animation reel this month as we didn’t have the time to squeeze it in.

Tune in next month for a new animation reel!



Although on the larger side of our small herbivores, the Dryosaurus chirps and chitters with its almost-chittering like calls. Byron’s completely remade our favourite Morrison ornithopod to retain its sound identity from the demo with a brand new mix and enhanced vocal quality.

Please enjoy the Dryosaurus sound update!



In the realm of music, Byron’s been working on a new breakout track for the game titled ‘Run’. It’s not finished yet but we wanted to give everyone a little sneak peek at what’s to come.

https://soundcloud.com/byronmckay/preview-run



Cindy gave two of our Mammoth Steppe friends a fantastic remake this month with completely overhauled textures and big anatomical improvements from Mau. We’re proud to do mammals justice even when against the dozens of dinosaurs available in the game and hopefully, the results speak for themselves.








Mammals weren’t the only things to receive tweaks, however! Although we won’t be updating its textures, Baryonyx had some troublesome anatomy that we wanted to take a closer look at as it’s one of the first animals we made post-Kickstarter. With some tweaks to size and body proportions thanks to more available information, England’s fishy forager is now at its true size and features a more accurate silhouette.





Continuing where we left off from last month’s update, we’ll be discussing staff specialization and its implications in park management.

As previously established, all three staff types have their own skill types relating to their role in the park. The more times a staff member completes a specific skill (e.g. cleaning or refilling a feeder), they’ll gain a skill point and complete that task faster.

Once the keeper has maxed out their skill level in a specific area, they’ll be able to complete that task twice as fast - but how does specialization come into this?

By paying a training fee, players can promote staff members into only completing tasks relating to one of their skills in order to more efficiently manage their zoos when generalised staff simply isn’t cutting it anymore.



Now that a staff member has been specialized, they have the potential to work almost six times as fast for that specific role upon maxing out their skill level.

Although it’ll take longer for them to improve their level since they’re performing a stricter range of tasks, the long term benefits of investing in this system are highly recommended for efficient park management.

Once a specialized staff member has maxed out their skill level, they’ll gain a special perk offering various benefits depending on their job type and chosen specialization.


Example of perks available from a staff type's chosen skill specialization.

These perks offer passive abilities that will greatly reward players for their time investment and can help to cut back on park management stress or make things like animal capturing easier.


Whilst specialization isn’t absolutely required to run your park, players seeking more management opportunities should be able to enjoy experimenting with this system to provide new and diverse results. Tune into October’s update for the next instalment of staff management; needs and benefits!



Since our Kickstarter VIP’s have received their first early preview, check out some of their park creations and screenshots!


Created by AD.


Created by AD.


Created by Silver.


Created by Silver.

Lastly, please enjoy some builds from one of our developers!





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Thank you for reading September’s Devlog!

It’s been a crazy month for impressions and feedback from the community. We’re humbled by the response from those who have gotten to play it and are dedicated to improving Prehistoric Kingdom where we can! October holds a myriad of improvements and core additions that we’ve all been waiting for, so we’ll see you all again next month!

- The PK Team

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Welcome to August’s development update!

The team’s been working around the clock all month in preparation for (you guessed it!) PAX West. Progress across the board has seen drastic improvements to all parts of the current game as well as some new additions, so buckle up, park managers! It’s going to be a long read!



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA_xjsbthB4
It’s been a long time coming, but we’re proud to reveal our first pre-alpha trailer demonstrating some features and general presentation of the current game.

We’ve updated our screenshot gallery on both Steam and the Crytivo store to better reflect the current progress of the project, so make sure to sink your talons into the images below:






PAX West is currently underway! If you’re in the Seattle area and want to check us out, make sure to go visit the Crytivo booth and take a look at all the lovely projects on display. There are t-shirts, games and collectible pins (including our very own Triceratops!) available on the show floor.




One of the first photos taken with our animatronic dinosaur at PAX! Thanks to @Doubleunicorns and many others on Twitter, for sharing these moments! <3

Everyone’s worked extremely hard to get us to where we are today and we couldn’t have done it by ourselves. We’d like to give a massive thank you to our publisher Crytivo for their continued support and opportunities throughout development, as well as all of our Kickstarter backers who have been extremely patient and generous. You rock!

For those who couldn’t make it to PAX or simply want to catch up, Prehistoric Kingdom’s pre-alpha build from the convention will be played live with developer commentary on our Twitch channel on September 5th at 2 PM (PDT)!

If you’d like to come over and watch or simply ask us questions, most of the team will be making an appearance. We hope to see you all there!



With the convention underway and a playable build already in the hands of some lucky members of the public, we’re moving forward at a great pace!

Currently, we’ve got our eyes on feedback and suggestions from players in addition to finalising Pre-Alpha 1 in the coming months. With a lot of the bulk out of the way, the team is extremely eager to get started on new creative features such as elevated paths and brand new modular building tools.

Animals will be another focus point of ours. While we push onward with development we’ll be working on their basic behaviours, new animations, adding creatures and of course dozens upon dozens of micro-sounds to bring them to life. It’s going to be a lot of work but more than worth it in the end!





Coding wizard Matt brought improvements to animal locomotion with the addition of root motion, allowing us to greatly reduce sliding by controlling movement speeds through animation instead of code.



Animals don’t just path in a straight line, either. They can turn while standing still, walking, or running to create an organic and unpredictable look as creatures respond appropriately to the change in direction.

As a result, locomotion is beginning to look great! We’re extremely happy with how the system is turning out and can’t wait to bring further life to the animals with the addition of more complex behaviours and features.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8qnKtlSiaI
After PAX we’ll be looking into introducing basic needs like eating and drinking as an early addition to the quickly approaching Pre-Alpha 2.

The fence/path system saw an enormous update thanks to the inclusion of arc curves instead of the original bezier lines we were using. Although more difficult to implement (thanks, maths!), curved fences now behave as expected while making the experience a billion times more user-friendly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eboIIDVQf4Q
As discussed previously, fences, paths and buildings feature an angle snapping toggle in order to allow for precise construction and building options. In the future, this system will be accompanied by a grid overlay to better visualise exact measurements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzVQn3DkERI

Terraforming received additional polish with some light height constraints implemented on smaller brush sizes to create a more realistic looking shape to hills and mountains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssWjAHREkdY
While also available for building placement, demolition and fence/path placement, we’ve added an extremely handy toggle that locks the user's cursor to the centre of the screen whilst moving the camera with it. Since movement is entirely mouse-driven, terrain and foliage painting feel especially nice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjGcoYqvAlg
Next up for terraforming is to add in all the clutter objects and continue where we left off with water painting. Not too much longer and the entire terraforming suite will be complete!

To make the perfect exhibit creation even easier, we have included a way to view an enclosure's statistics and name. This can be accessed by either clicking a fence, effectively bringing up the area overlay shown below, or utilizing the terrain tools on an enclosed area.

This feature allows the player to check and create the right conditions without the limitations of continuously selecting animals, for a quicker and easier gameplay flow.



Buildings, fences and paths got a lovely shader overhaul this month in our efforts to make structures prettier and add new functionality for features such as emissive lighting at night and improved glass.




Paths got special attention with a new distance fade value that prevents ugly tiling and micro-detail showing up when the camera is far away. With this new inclusion, they’ll seamlessly blend into their detailed texture once the player is within range.



August saw the reveal of five new species spotlights featuring their various habitat statistics. Between the hell pig and chicken mimic, this month’s line up was quite diverse in shape and size.









Much to the approval of our fluffy mammoth friends, Nathan finished up the remaining Subpolar climate textures and foliage assets.






While we went back to optimise all foliage in the game, quite a few changes were made to the tropical wet plants to make them more visually diverse and interesting.



Now that all 64 plants and 32 terrain textures are in the game, we’ve had great results when mixing and matching the various climates to create a more diverse landscape. We invite creativity when building your paddocks and greatly await seeing the user made creations in the future.

Once we’re finished adding the clutter objects to the terraforming menu, exhibits will only become even more diverse in their detail and aesthetic.

In addition to 17 path textures of various shapes, materials and sizes, Nathan’s designed two unique pathways that’ll go a long way in theming your parks.

Featuring familiar patterns, the new ammonite and footprint paths let players show off their prehistoric pride throughout the park. Equipped with a new shader (thanks, Mau!), specularity shines through during the island’s warming sunsets to give paths a more polished look.





Amongst creating some new sounds for the Prenocephale as well as general game audio, Byron wrote a new piece specifically for the teaser trailer titled Building the Impossible. We hope you enjoy the track!

https://soundcloud.com/byronmckay/building-the-impossible



Cindy got to work on various odd jobs needed for PAX as well as updating the new two-foot turkey. With entirely new designs and a flashy display crest that physically moves up and down, our Velociraptor mongoliensis continues the trend of bringing new life to outdated animals.




Now that we’ve revealed its species spotlight and the skins are done, please enjoy a better look at our Gallimimus bullatus (if they’re willing to cooperate!).





Today we’ll be starting our deep dive into staff management in Prehistoric Kingdom. Essential to your park’s survival in the late game, your employees are an extremely valuable asset!

Whilst players can manually perform certain actions such as refilling food troughs and emptying trash cans themselves, workers will complete tasks based on their job to make zoo automation easier.



At launch, staff will be divided into three main jobs: Animal Keeper, Maintenance Worker and Park Ranger.

• Animal Keepers care for animals and their habitat: refilling feeders, cleaning poop and checking their health.
  
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• Maintenance Workers collect trash, repair broken structures and can improve the speed at which buildings are constructed.
  
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• Park Rangers act as the primary security division within the park. They can use lethal force or tranquilizers to subdue animals and are required for moving creatures across the park.

As staff members perform various jobs around the park, their skill level will begin to increase. Gradually doubling the speed at which tasks are completed, points will be added to one of three unique skill types depending on which duty they’re undertaking.

Skills are unique to each of the three main staff types and help to further differentiate them from each other.


Example of the three Animal Keeper skills and their speed increases based on proficiency.

Improving their skill level is a completely passive occurrence that doesn’t necessarily require input from the user. However, players are incentivised to keep staff safe and happy to increase the working speed of their employees. Treat staff poorly and you’re going to have trouble in no time!

Tune in to September’s update for the next instalment of staff management; specialisation! The team’s very excited to reveal more about our future plans and can’t wait to get working on them in Pre-Alpha 2.

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Thank you for reading August’s Devlog!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s look into development. Don’t forget that we’ll be live streaming on September 5th at 2 PM (PDT), so set a reminder, buy some snacks and get ready for fun. Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome to July’s development update!

Progress is going better than ever behind the scenes, with some much-needed mechanics finally starting to take shape, making the current iteration of Prehistoric Kingdom feel more like the game we all expect. Last month we mentioned we might not have as many news due to the higher volume of work, but there are still many exciting things to uncover, so bear with us!



In case you’ve missed the last few updates, we’ll be attending PAX West from August 30th to September 2nd in Seattle with our publisher, Crytivo! As the opening day gets closer (tickets available here), Crytivo’s been sharing pictures of some of the merch and booth elements that’ll be found on the show floor; how exciting!




PAX attendees can expect to play a short slice of introductory gameplay designed to familiarise players with some of Prehistoric Kingdom’s exhibit creation tools.

Taking the helm as the new park manager of an almost operational island, it’s your job to follow requests from the Board of Directors to successfully populate the park with a happy and healthy herd of Edmontosaurus.



As this is an exhibit-focused build and the first playable iteration with our current features, certain building categories will be disabled for the sake of streamlining the user experience at the convention.

Alongside continuing previously scheduled work, our programmers have been focused on completing specific requirements for PAX that also go towards meeting development milestones we set for future playable builds.

July oversaw the biggest development leaps with the management interface, but also animal locomotion and pathfinding, which are a massive upgrade from the respective demo’s systems.

As you also might notice in the graphic below, the "Pre-Alpha 2: Management" box got its color updated this month, as we worked on some of the management systems needed for the future.





As you have probably gathered by now, much of this month’s development time was put into making our animals move around. Matt has always been vocal about updating the locomotion system of the demo, and he’s finally got a chance to shine - he laid the foundations for an all-around superior locomotion.

He implemented IK’s for both the animal’s limbs and heads, not only virtually removing any sort of sliding or shifting to the feet once in movement, but also allowing for a more believable ground adaptation. Moreover, animals can dynamically move their heads around points of interest, further adding to a life-like appearance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stCF87zvA74

While there is obviously much more work to be put into locomotion and overall AI, we hope you’ll enjoy this sample of what we’ve been doing. Even as a work in progress, this trumps anything we’ve done in the past on the matter.

In charge of the core gameplay progression, Mau spent time working on some of the features needed for August’s PAX build - inbox and offers.

These are some of the first management features we started working on ahead of time, as they are vital to a park’s natural growth and spice the gameplay up with that extra edge of challenge. We have shown concept graphics for offers in the past, but now we managed to actually lay down the framework necessary to craft any kind of contract or offer in the future, in a very dynamic and customizable way.



Equally as important, an inbox system allows the park owner to receive many kinds of notifications, ranging from the aforementioned offers, to dig results, forecast alerts, financial reports, and even rating increases. While not incredibly flashy in its current state, the system we built also allows for simple further implementation of different message types in the future.




Nearly 22 weeks since we began our species spotlights all of the 1-2 star creatures have been shown! Leading the next set of creatures with Ceratosaurus, the team hopes you’ve enjoyed the weekly journey so far.








The tropical dry climate is home to some iconic plant species that are going to make quite a few of your Jurassic animals always feel at home.



Taking inspiration from the world’s great dry plains, we are sure you will recognize imposing trees such as the Acacia and the Baobab.





Finishing off our structure list for Pre-Alpha 1, Nathan created the next observation-based attraction. Providing an elevated position for your guests to survey your park, the Lookout Tower provides a unique vantage point.



Similarly, the Viewing Platform’s texture set was updated to better unify the two viewing attractions and conserve memory. Those with keen eyes may even spot the unique ammonite floor tiling!





This month Byron began work on creature sound redesigns, beginning with Edmontosaurus. With a completely reworked sound set, we can’t help but love the new sounds of our weird Hell Creek behemoth.

Every so often we’ll be uploading small sound updates to our Facebook and Twitter accounts to show a selection of audio from a featured animal. Any reveals throughout the month will be recapped here, so don’t worry if you miss one!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGzgTW8lQUI



With few feathers ruffled, Cindy finished up the redux of our Oviraptor philoceratops! Featuring pronounced sexual dimorphism across males and females, this alleged “egg thief” (not guilty!) is a must-have for any startup park with its uniquely bird-like looks and movement.



Huge improvements were brought to the new Oviraptor model with drastic alterations to the skull and its feathers thanks to our new technique. Out of all the enhanced creatures shown so far, we personally feel that this is by far the most improved.



In the same vein, Gallimimus bullatus also received a much-needed update. As one of the earliest animals to be modelled, this fluffy ratite-like theropod underwent several upgrades across the project’s history. With our recent wave of animal updates, we thought it would be a good idea to give it one last revision, and with what results! Our beloved ‘chicken mimic’ got a brand new coat of feathers, and looks better than ever!



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Thank you for reading July’s Devlog!

August is going to be the month we show the world (although, on a more limited scale) one of the very first playable versions of what is eventually going to become the full build, so we have reasons to be both very excited and incredibly horrified (it’s gonna be fine, right?).

- The PK Team

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Welcome to June’s development update!

We’re back again with another monthly development blog post. The team’s eagerly been working on more behind the scenes planning and content in preparation for a certain convention in the US, so perhaps it’s time to reveal more about it. Tune in below, park builders!






After using our previous logo design for almost five years, we felt it was time to update the game’s identity and bring it closer to modern zoos with a simpler, more readable aesthetic. Showcasing our new iconographic sauropod, Crowny, she’s quickly become a fan favourite on our Discord server.

This logo will be present in all future media (both in-game and promotional), so with in-game environments taking on an inviting and colorful aesthetic, the updated logo better compliments the extended periods of relaxed park building gameplay amongst the island’s atmosphere and cheery music.




Thanks to our lovely friends at Crytivo, Prehistoric Kingdom is heading to PAX West this August!

Featuring a small playable build of the current game at Crytivo’s booth, attendees will be able to snag some physical goodies and meet our very own animal texture artist, Cindy! Tickets are running out quick so make sure to grab them while you still can!


To keep it brief, we finally fixed our issues with Unity and are now continuing to prepare our show floor demo for PAX. Please understand that all of our focus will be on PAX itself, so upcoming devlogs may not feature animation reels and lengthy content reports. Without our supporters and Crytivo, we wouldn’t be able to take on such massive conventions and we’re extremely grateful to receive offers like this because of that.

Not a whole lot has changed since last month from our milestone chart so we won’t show an updated graphic due to redundancy. However, basic animal AI is currently getting worked on, so please look forward to some early tests of the creatures walking around soon!




The continued implementation of animals in-engine was furthered with the introduction of basic animal selection, animation states, sound cues and particle effects!

Below is a quick test for a key behavior many of our animals are going to display – broadcasting. This is going to be employed as an effective warning/alert call, usually by the alpha member of a group. Bear in mind the effects and sounds are still WIP, and will be replaced with time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuVr1Uy3onw

This month we have started laying the ground work for animal locomotion – making sure AI navigation is not only realistic in the way it chooses its walking paths, but also looks good doing so. In order to be able to accomplish that, we have started looking into Inverse Kinematics systems (IKs for short) for our animals’ limbs, which should considerably reduce jitter while walking and running. While these developments aren’t ready to be showcased yet, you can be sure we’ll show more in the following months, as the AI and pathing progress.

Preparing not only for the PAX preview, but also for the first pre-alpha build, we started implementing some of the animals you’ll be able to play with. Here’s a preview of just 3 of them:





This month saw the reveal of four brand new species spotlights featuring unique habitat specifications. From the woodland dwelling Bos to the tight family packs of Yutyrannus – which one is your favourite?









Due to this month’s heavy workload when it comes to engine work and animation, we weren’t able to put much focus on map creation. Even so, we have readied all the assets needed for the 7th climate of Prehistoric Kingdom, the Temperate Oceanic climate. As one of the game’s most ancient looking climates, its foliage includes classic staples such as the towering redwoods and ground-dwelling ferns. Even the mightiest of sauropods are dwarfed beneath these trees!



Placed together, these vegetation assets make for great scenic environments, fit for the majority of your prehistoric exhibit needs!







Animation galore! We’ve got two brand new previews to show off this month featuring our slow rocky friend and a slightly more hairy critter. As with all of our animation showcases not every animation is shown so please don’t be alarmed to see things missing; they’ll definitely be there!

Kicking off with the promised preview from May’s DevLog, Mau finished up our Ankylosaur rig! Decorated with shoulder spikes and bony osteoderms, Sauropelta’s defensive nature allows it to ward off oncoming threats. Adapted to its heavy and tank-like build, this nodosaur is a formidable foe to any hungry carnivore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUJ7Fsfu784

Through June, Nathan got to work on the elephant rig using a variety of real-world references. Arguably the most well-known of the ice age creatures, Mammuthus primigenius or the Woolly Mammoth, is a true titan of the Pleistocene epoch. Featuring sturdy tusks and an elegant trunk, this is one five star attraction that time didn’t leave behind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_SZN7PEX-M




Proceeding with the feathers and hair overhaul, the Bos received a huge update to its anatomy to provide a correct restoration of the animal. In addition to the long-horned bison, the Mammuthus received some new shampoo and conditioner to tidy up the various body to alpha transitions and present a much nicer look!





Building across various islands around the world, it’s expected to come across some unfavourable conditions. Weather pushes the player to prepare for their environment by affecting the way the park responds due to changes in animal and guest behaviours.


Each island comes equipped with its own unique set of dynamic weather conditions. Naturally, normal weather events aren’t particularly damaging to the park but can alter the effectiveness of resource production, which plays into park management and layout e.g. solar panels are better suited to long sunny days than rain or fog. At the same time, wind turbines function better under windy conditions.




At launch, two natural disasters will be available: hurricanes and blizzards. These two events are all around pretty similar, but because they are based on varying temperature, they diverge the most when it comes to visuals. Regardless, these disasters pose a great threat for your park as they render it more inhospitable, scaring animals, exponentially slowing transportation, and putting power production to a halt.

Later on, we plan to expand our disaster roster across maps, with 2 new disasters: tornadoes and earthquakes. Once again, these are map specific (as there can only be one disaster type for each map). While shorter in duration than hurricanes and blizzards, these two extreme cataclysms have the opportunity to be more destructive, as they directly affect your buildings and fences.


Note that until the latter 2 disaster make it into the game, the existing maps are gonna use the first 2 disasters.


Reading this, you are probably left wondering: “What can I do to prevent my dear Scruffy Rex from being obliterated by a tornado?” While we want to fill the player with a sense of urgency during these events, we don’t want to render them as complete deal breakers, given the proper insight and preparation. We plan to include researchable items that can upgrade buildings, services and animals alike to shield them from especially bad weather. At the same time, smart park layout can be employed, assuring a constant input of energy by placing varying power options.

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Thank you for reading June’s Devlog!

Like mentioned above, July and August are going to be incredibly busy months for us as a team, as we have to prepare what is perhaps going to be the first playable version of the game, for a larger public. We might not as be as consistent with updates, but that shouldn’t take away from summer’s excitement! Until next time!

– The PK Team

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Welcome to May’s development update!

Featuring new content and previews for what’s currently in the pipeline, the team has prepared a variety of goodies to sink your ravenous teeth into. There’s much to come in the next few months, so let’s get straight into the discussion.



May brought a new host of exciting opportunities and development obstacles to overcome. Due to asset limitations of the Unity engine, we had to delegate time to finding solutions before being able to create new development builds. This was unfortunately a large and unforeseen issue, so efforts had to go into figuring that out if we wanted to be able to play the game outside of the engine.

Apart from looking into our main issue above, the crew’s had their own oddities and life to attend to during the month which is to be expected. We’re set to begin working on something pretty cool that’ll come to fruition in a few months, so we hope you’re looking forward to seeing that. There’s a lot of big things coming up and the team couldn’t be more excited!






Placed right in the middle of the temperature scale, the temperate continental island offers a generous amount of flat terrain around its centralized mountain range. With accents of color dotted around the map thanks to the native foliage of the climate – what better place to build your Prehistoric Kingdom?








During May we got started on basic visitor implementation ahead of the Management schedule for reasons we’ll reveal at a later date (wow, secrets!).

As a way to bring diversity and life to a park’s guest population, the randomization system is working extremely well to produce various results from an assortment of age demographics, body weight, height, ethnicities, and clothing options. Since this is our first pass on guests in the game, please understand that they’re very much a work in progress and aren’t completely representative of how they’ll look further in development.



In a few months we’ll start the next step of giving visitors basic AI navigation before they inevitably get their own needs during Pre-Alpha 2.


Big fidelity improvements were brought to animals this month with the development of a new animal shader. Scaly or feathered; this is the best the creatures of Prehistoric Kingdom have ever looked in-game.




Beyond the expected visual improvements, new support has been added for body wetness, reflective eyes, body translucency, and more.



Random skin colouring makes a return from the demo with individuals possessing variation in the darkness of their body when compared to other members of their species! This simple feature allows large herds of creatures to feel more individualised and helps to break up the monotony (in addition to random sizes between fully-grown creatures).



Over time we plan to add new features to the shader such as disease overlays, damage wounds, and battle scars.



Another month, another species spotlight! Showcasing the diversity of our climates, each animal has their own unique exhibit personality and requirements to meet.










Holding many familiar trees found all across the world, temperate continental includes common foliage such as bamboo, magnolias, oaks, and willow trees.



We can’t wait to see what parks and paddocks players create with these contemporary staples!


Although not initially planned (what were we thinking?!), we’ve added hedges to the game with two variants: tall and short.



Along with the green trimmings above, Nathan built two more asset variants for creative players to make use of: the rope fence!




During May, we weren’t able to get the Ankylosaur rig finished in time for this blog post. To put it simply, we were unable to complete the animation reel due to the time we’ve spent trying to fix the Unity asset bundle problems and complete additional work on other parts of the game. Instead of delivering a rushed and unpolished rig preview, we’ll be revealing the animation reel featuring Sauropelta during June.

Until then, thank you for understanding and we hope you look forward to having two animation reels next month!




In addition to developing new sounds for the Sauropelta, Byron began work on a new ambient piece! You can listen to a short excerpt of the work in progress below:

https://soundcloud.com/byronmckay/preview-ambient-05

Since our posts leave little room for surprises in the final game, we’ve decided to keep future music track reveals to previews only. There’s a lot of content going into Prehistoric Kingdom, so we’d like to at least keep some of it a surprise!




Continuing the trend set by other feathered creatures like the Yutyrannus and Guanlong, Cindy revamped the textures for Thescelosaurus and Nothronychus! These herbivorous dinosaurs are appropriately fluffy and look far better than their original counterparts.






As a reward for providing proper care towards your prehistoric creatures, animals can be awarded with additional star ratings! More popular and attractive to guests, prestige is hard to attain but can be highly rewarding.


Prestige is earned by successfully keeping a creature’s mood above 90% for an extended period of gameplay.

Acting as a passive background reward, each additional star will multiply an animal’s popularity with guests and in turn help contribute more to your overall park rating. By introducing prestige, it allows early game animals such as Dryosaurus and Psittacosaurus to not become totally redundant with time as long as they’re highly satisfied with their conditions.


To qualify for prestige stars, the player must ensure that the animal has a high exhibit satisfaction and that all needs have been met. If these two conditions are reached, the animal will begin the gradual process of earning an additional five stars over time.



Every animal has its own internal stats behind the scenes that we use to fine-tune its effectiveness in the park, so no, a five star Coelophysis will not have equal worth to a five star Tyrannosaurus.


On the flipside, prehistoric attractions can lose their star rating at the hands of poor management. In the event of… “visitor casualties,” the critter responsible for killing a guest will immediately accumulate negative prestige – reducing the number of guests that actively view the paddock containing the animal.



The longer an animal is left ill with disease or escaped from their exhibit, all additional stars will begin to disappear entirely. Some diseases and weather conditions are prone to freaking out dinosaurs and mammals alike, so be sure to research vaccines and check the weather forecast!

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If you would like to check out our previous blogs, you can head to the official one here!

Welcome to April’s development update!

We’re back with another DevLog showcase to discuss recent ongoings and everything that the team’s been up to! Without further delay, let’s get right into it.



Contrary to other months, April was mainly spent working behind the scenes on necessary parts of the game such as automatically setting visual quality on initial startup and ensuring that things like terraforming work as intended in the built game. Whilst we started adding the backend support for animals, the team also got their hands on a fresh new development build!

For this reason, we partly focused on documenting potential quality of life improvements from our internal testing to minimise issues early on. From here on, we assessed the next focus areas of development to bring new usability improvements to the game.






Whilst not as hot as last month’s island, the team thinks our next map is pretty cool! Packed with trees and exceptionally long in its terrain, the boreal environment is the second coldest climate in the game.









From the towering peaks to the flat, gravel-filled shorelines, this map allows for a variety of ways to build your park on its sloped, diverse terrain.


Working alongside Byron to implement one of the most important pieces of UI in the game, Mau painstakingly developed the Nursery during April. With a fresh look and visual-functionality that completely blows the demo’s design out of the water, this is by far the most complex menu currently implemented in the game due to all of its functions under the hood.



When an animal is selected we showcase an animated 3D model that corresponds to the skin that’s been chosen for the creature (yes, you can still spin it around!). This area in particular has become far more visual than the demo and is something we’re quite proud of.



Adding new animals and their skins to the Nursery is a breeze thanks to the dynamic nature of Mau’s system. Climates, habitat statistics, and skins are easily defined while all animals can be sorted into five specific filtering options; clade, climate, period, diet and rating! If you’re extra stuck or want to get specific, we’ve included a search bar at the top to find exactly what you’re looking for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGD3TgbAU_Q


In regards to animal growth, the new ontogeny system is roughly halfway done. This time we’re taking performance into account to try and reduce issues from the demo such as distance “popping” when moving away from a creature.



The new system allows us to set growth and size changes across animals and skins, meaning that alt. species can have a different physical appearance and drastic changes to sizing.


On the technical side of the game, our best boy Matt has been working hard polishing and reworking aspects of the game to improve both performance and the visual fidelity.

To achieve this we’ve began implementing impostors for many of our high poly in-game objects. Unlike traditional billboards, impostors use a series of images from multiple angles in order to create the illusion of a 3D model. It looks great, runs great, and becomes virtually indistinguishable from actual geometry at a certain distance. Don’t believe us? Check out our “hotels” in the video below!



(high quality version: https://gfycat.com/oddoccasionalirishwolfhound )

This technique carries over into the foliage, too! Distant trees will always appear full and fluffy in order to provide players with constant eye candy; no more weird shadows and shading!



The game’s grass received some love for the first time in a while! This newer iteration offers neat visualization for grass height blending between climates along with smooth transitions to other textures like sand, dirt and rock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un5SNx4X4zQ

In addition to all of the above, certain buildings requiring the water’s edge will snap directly to the shoreline when placing them.



(high quality version: https://gfycat.com/poorevergreenhyena )


The team spent a lot of time with the game in April: building, creating and trying to find trouble spots within what we have so far. Thankfully for us, it’s going well! With some requests and changes from developers noted, we all greatly enjoyed building basic parks across the four Early Access maps.





Created by Mau.





Created by Nathan.



April flew by as we revealed another four of our creatures’ requirements. Including our first few tropical wet and dry animals as well as the showing of our first in-game feathered creature, we hope you enjoy this month’s species spotlights.









Beneath the peaks of our snowy mountains sit a variety of pines and bushes – the classic selection of a colder boreal environment.




Over the past few months we’ve been adding brand new climates with relative ease; so much so that we’ve changed our minds! With the original four climates now finished, the team is happy to announce that all eight climates will be coming to Prehistoric Kingdom at launch!

It’s important to understand that this change will not increase development time beyond our internal schedule. The addition of four new climates has very little impact on our workload and would open up even greater design opportunities for our players.



Now including 8 islands, 32 paintable terrain textures, and 64 unique plants at release, we’re sure that there’s enough here to satiate your creative desires.


Like other buildings from past DevLogs, the Gift Shop got a quality enhancement to its model and textures.




During April, Nathan prepared the Small Ornithischian rig for a highly adorable … cactus… thing.

Measuring in at just over 2.5 meters, Prenocephale is one of the smallest creatures found within the roster. With a uniquely fruit-filled diet, this prickly dinosaur is equipped with a signature dome-shaped skull.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k03kmv5HMjs




Apart from adding alarm and broadcast calls to the original Prenocephale soundset, Byron remixed the game’s audio levels to achieve a better sound balance. Everything’s far more accurate to where it should be and we’re glad to have done this early on before introducing even more audio files.


Chicken Mimics is a new animal introduction track that’s used for a variety of small-medium herbivorous dinosaurs. Creatures like the Prenocephale and Psittacosaurus will use the light version of the music (heard in this animation reel), whilst larger animals will get the full mix.

https://soundcloud.com/byronmckay/chicken-mimics-herbivore-theme




Over this past month, Cindy was tasked with altering our feathered animals with a new technique in order to get even better results. We’re incredibly happy with how these new iterations have come out and we’re sure that you’ll agree. With some proper fluff and feathering, take a look at Guanlong wucaii and Yutyrannus huali!




For anyone who’s played our old demo, you’re probably familiar with the “gorgeous” Dryosaurus. Like other old critters, Mau’s given our long-legged friend an adjusted model and brand new designs based off the older skins. Thanks to Cindy’s handy work, the team is delighted to reveal our revamped Dryosaurus altus.



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Thank you for reading April’s Devlog!

This has been an incredibly fulfilling month, bringing every system a step closer to being finished. In the upcoming months we are going to look into implementing the first animals in the game, and getting some basic AI going! Exciting stuff!

– The PK Team

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If you would like to check out our previous blogs, you can head to the official one here!

Welcome to March’s development update!

The Prehistoric Kingdom team have been working consistently this past month to continue making our game the best it can be. With some revitalised energy, let’s get into one of the chunkiest updates yet.



March was a great month of consistent work that ultimately allowed us to make fantastic strides with implementing new assets, improve visual fidelity and tidy up the existing systems.

At this point in the time, we’re working on getting fences and terraforming (water/tree painting) completely polished. Ensuring that the process of building exhibits is a great user experience is one of our biggest priorities for the project.

Over the coming weeks, Matt will be developing advanced path and monorail systems while Mau adds in functionality for the Nursery in addition to a pretty new main menu. Once everything regarding creation itself is out of the way, we’ll be moving onto the animals in order to get them moving, roaring and needing!






We don’t like to gloat, but the next map is pretty hot. Roughly half the size of Tropical Wet, our Semi-Arid island is currently the smallest map in Prehistoric Kingdom. Despite this, there’s still a lot of space to build freely! We’re sure that players who enjoy a challenge will find the more limited size appealing to work around, not to mention the sunsets are gorgeous.










Moving onto further functionality, Matt polished up the vegetation painting so that it works across all climates and feels great to work with.



As a base, each climate comes standard with 8 types of paintable vegetation that can be individually placed or grouped together to quickly paint a large forest. It’s super easy to use and the ability to change brush intensity for placement and removal makes perfecting your landscapes just that little bit easier.

https://youtu.be/R0EojkEQzvw


Much to the delight of our Baryonyx and wetland lovers everywhere, water painting is here! Equipped with fidelity and three paintable types of water in addition to editable depth; what’s not to love?



The addition of water painting opens up an entirely new realm of creative possibilities for exhibit design that we cannot wait to see played with by the community. Keep in mind that it’s a work in progress, but to “wet” your appetite, here’s a little preview:

https://youtu.be/k1OV7IjRRLA


After getting pushed back for a while due to more important programming matters, selection and demolition finally progressed further towards their completion. While removing fences and paths will come once they’re finished, Mau’s gotten buildings to function as intended.

https://youtu.be/s2NUTmP0nAw


Throughout March, we continued to tweak and refine various parts of the game’s visual fidelity. As you can see in the comparison between now and last month, we’ve made great strides in improving the shadows, foliage rendering and terrain shader!




With the combined efforts of Nathan’s modelling, Mau’s programming and Byron’s sound design, the Shipping Harbor is in the game! This is by far the largest building in Prehistoric Kingdom and rightfully one of the most detailed.

You can preview the cargo unloading effect below, currently just a simple visual effect that is eventually going to be linked up to shipping management mechanics.

https://youtu.be/WfvYg3lEKoA

For additional detailing, Nathan’s buildings and plant pots received their various shrubs, bushes and trees from selection of our climates so far. Although slight, the greenery amongst the structures is a definite welcome.





If you’re already following us on Facebook, Twitter, or Discord, you’ll be familiar with our recent species spotlights that are released once every Thursday (EST).

These infographics feature the animals inside their respective climate alongside the in-game environmental needs of the presented species. With four down and another forty-six to go, please enjoy this menagerie of some of our Semi-Arid and Mediterranean creatures!









With the implementation of feeders in the game, Nathan has whipped up some new habitation assets that’ll certainly be of interest to all players. If there’s one thing that you won’t run out of, it’s fences!



Basic yet durable, the wooden chain link fence is a staple of any park tycoon’s first exhibits. Although suitable for quite a few creatures, we recommend upgrading along the way.



The concrete wall is a great tool for designing private exhibits and fleshing out your general park environment with alleys and walls. Including a glass panel variant, this wall is great for more skittish creatures, however its skinny nature might prove difficult in containing larger behemoths.



With three different texture variants (brick, sandstone, cobblestone), the stone wall is a thick and sturdy ally for a secure park builder. As a bonus perk, we’ve found it to perfectly suit our semi-arid island.



A classic staple of any modern zoo, the electric steel pole fence is perfect for containing medium and large animals due to its electrified cables.



Although animals can drink from painted water in their exhibits, the small water dish and artificial watering holes are ideal for small enclosure designs and a necessity for creatures that aren’t too fond of having water in their paddocks.



As the second of a few vehicles coming to Prehistoric Kingdom, the Ranger Chopper is essential in tracking down and subduing escaped creatures.


During March, Mau worked on animating the tall sauropod rig. Due to its colossal size, it was important to capture the sheer weight and enormity of these creatures.

As a true titan of the Jurassic, Brachiosaurus is one of the largest animals in Prehistoric Kingdom. With a neck that cranes along the tallest trees, this is truly a five star specimen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=froV0uFdt6Q



In terms of sound design, Byron primarily worked with Mau to integrate new sound effects and variations for both the demolition system and vegetation placement. Since the demo, we’ve developed a heavy emphasis on including feedback and interaction sounds for the player’s input and interaction with the world.


In addition to more feedback sounds, we began implementing ambience for all maps and climates. Thanks to a lot of nifty programming from Matt, the game is able to recognize dense foliage and play the forest sound of a painted climate if it’s thick enough! Areas close to the ocean will of course sound like an ocean (now with 100% less seagulls) and a flat prairie will sound as expected.

https://youtu.be/ESGp5gE9bQw


Presenting the player to the creatures of Prehistoric Kingdom, Creation was written specifically for the animal selection menu that appears right before entering the island in challenge mode. What kind of park will you create? The choice is yours.

https://soundcloud.com/byronmckay/creation




Cindy painted up a handful of the last new skins for our more toothy bestiary; theropods! There’s some still additional creatures to go after this month, but please enjoy Ceratosaurus nasicornis, Carnotaurus sastrei and Acrocanthosaurus atokensis.





In addition to its larger cousins, Dilophosaurus received a much needed update to its default skin and model!





Home to most of Prehistoric Kingdom’s bestiary, North America holds a total of 31 different creatures (including alt. species). From terrible tyrants to longhorn bison, this continent is the go-to place for dinosaurs and mammals.





Since we’ve last spoke about animal habitation and enclosures, quite a lot has changed! Whilst everything here can be disabled in sandbox, it’s important to consider the environmental conditions of a given species within Challenge mode.




To begin, every component of animal habitation makes up an individual’s total exhibit satisfaction. By doing this we can ensure that purposely ignoring something like foliage density for the sake of paddock design will not cause an animal to rampage by itself but will contribute to lowering the mood of the creature.




Every animal species has its own minimum recommended paddock size. Within the UI, players can also see the enclosure’s population – a percentage that fills up as creatures of different sizes are added into the paddock. If the player exceeds 100%, the exhibit will be deemed too small and its inhabitants will try to escape to find more space given enough time.


Foliage and water density allows us to better represent an animal’s unique environment or living conditions despite sharing its climate with the modern world. From a gameplay perspective, it’s the difference between a swampy mediterranean for Baryonyx and the drier, coastal mediterranean of Plateosaurus. As developers it allows us to present a unique challenge to players for every creature whilst still offering creative flexibility in designing the paddock.

Within the context of the game, an exhibit’s foliage and water density will always be calculated in direct relation to the size of the paddock; something that’s visible to players while terraforming.




The social group of an animal corresponds directly to its own species, nothing else within the paddock. If an enclosure is larger than its base value, the social group tolerance of a species will scale alongside it to compensate – meaning that groups will retain their original herd size regardless of exhibit space.



Juveniles/offspring are not included in the social group until they reach sexual maturity or need to counted in order to satisfy the group needs of a lone adult.


To calculate privacy, an exhibit accounts for the fence types used and any attractions that may be placed in, alongside, or through the paddock. If a player builds their enclosure with a highly visible fence and includes an attraction such as a safari tour, they’ll need to satisfy the independent privacy value of an animal with sufficient shelter coverage, better fencing or intelligent attraction placement.



Placing an elevated path over a paddock will also lower the privacy within an exhibit.


If an animal’s security recommendation is less than or equal to a fence’s security value, it’ll be able to escape the paddock when rampaging or stressed. Always consider the materials you’re building with to ensure the safety of your park.


Thermal Modulators are a minimalist range-based enrichment object that can be placed to raise or lower a paddock’s temperature to better match the preferred climate of any creatures within the enclosure. By default, an exhibit’s temperature is set by the climate of the map the player uses, meaning that the more extreme a map is the more challenging it’ll become to maintain upkeep from Thermal Modulators.

Animals are able to live within a temperature range from their preferred climate that’s visualised by a thermal falloff in the UI.



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Thank you for reading March’s Devlog!

We all worked incredibly hard this month, but there’s no time to rest: we look forward to polishing existing features throughout April, as well as adding ulterior functionality to paths and monorails. Stay tuned!

– The PK Team

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Welcome to February’s development update!

While this devlog isn’t as gameplay-filled as last month’s, we still have a lot of in-game goodies to keep everyone hooked! Ready to dig in?



February saw the celebration of Prehistoric Kingdom’s 5th birthday anniversary; something that seemingly came out of nowhere!



The team and project alike have changed greatly since its inception in 2014, altering and evolving to get us to our current goals and work environment. The love and support of our fans, backers and oldest prehistoric veterans means a lot to us, so thank you for sticking with us along the way.

Behind the scenes we’ve mainly been working on polishing up currently implemented features and continuing to improve the user experience but of course there’s always more to that!






Since finalizing most of our Tropical Wet island, Mau started work on the next climate; Mediterranean!

This time around there’s dozens of tiny archipelagos to the north of the island, with sloping hills and flat terrain across the main surface. With a few buildings placed around the park it’s easy to see how much building space there is!



Once we get the game into your hands, our Greek archipelago is sure to lend itself to some creative monorail tracks and park layouts!








Seeing a bit of development love from our coding wizard Matt, the path system is currently in its early days. There’s still much to do in the way of polishing and making them look nicer with borders, however, it’s a good start!




Like we did last month for the terraforming and fences, we’ll be sharing a demonstration video once we’ve made them nicer to use. Stay tuned!


Much to our composer’s delight, ambient tracks will now morph between full or light versions of a given piece depending on the time of day. Thanks, Mau!

https://youtu.be/wxGVclkCheA

Due to the length of month cycles and music frequency in testing, we’ve had some amazing sunrises accompanied by our own swelling orchestra. Since this system is so flexible, we plan to give the same functionality to animal introductions and breakout music.




Although there weren’t a whole lot of new structures this month, our shipping harbour got a total makeover to better suit the quality of recent buildings using Nathan’s excellent workflow techniques. Cleaner and sharper than ever, we’re greatly looking forward to creating its in-game animations and UI!




The Visitor Dock received some extra love with higher quality textures, more detail and an adjusted mesh that now includes lights and benches!





Since the release of SpeedTree 8 we’ve been able to get a hold of some excellent tropical and mediterranean foliage assets to populate our islands with. Big palms, little palms – we got ‘em!

Tropical Wet Foliage






Mediterranean Foliage






Some climates like the Tropical Wet will naturally include ferns on their grass surfaces to better match their real world counterparts and get auto-generated when terrain painting with the right texture.


Like last month, Mau and Nathan both worked in unison to successfully create the animations for the dromaeosaur rig. With its intimidating size and large sickle claws, Utahraptor has quickly become one of the most fascinating species in the animal roster.

Cunning and full of bird-like influence, we hope you enjoy February’s animation reel!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP7h6e3XwCY



In the sound department, Byron’s been working on brand new sounds for our Utahraptor in addition to new tracks for various parts of the game. Across all title pieces, ambient tracks and event cues, the game is going to have quite a bit of music!


Straight from our last animation video, Chaos Theory is a new track that will play (and loop) during an animal breakout! Loaded with percussion and some feisty brass, your guests will be running in no time.

https://soundcloud.com/byronmckay/chaos-theory

Bronto Burgers is another of our bespoke looping pieces written specifically for a building in the park. As the title suggests, this funky food theme can be heard from Fast Food Kiosks while they’re active.

https://soundcloud.com/byronmckay/bronto-burgers-extra




Before jumping into the last handful of theropods and oddities, Cindy prepared the remaining alt skins for our defensive Thyreophorans; Miragaia longicollum, Edmontonia rugosidensis, Sauropelta edwardsorum and Ankylosaurus magniventris.






In addition to the thyreophorans, Utahraptor received its final skin from September’s DevLog!





With the second largest number of dig sites available on a single continent in Early Access, Asia features a diverse range of extinct fauna from the Jurassic, Cretaceous, Paleogene, and Quaternary.





The inbox is where you’ll find all your incoming messages from the outside world and get a monthly summary of how your park’s operating.


Offers make a return from tycoons of the past as a way for players to complete optional objectives and earn rewards for their accomplishments.

Organisations, museums and other eager entities may approach your park with requests to see certain animals or different objectives completed in order to present the player with a variety of benefits like money, science points and even positive park reputation.



Some excavation teams and museums can even offer their excess findings in favour of adding living, breathing specimens to the park!




Once a dig team has finished, their findings from an active site will be sent to the player’s inbox.




In addition to an on-screen popup, the park rating recap shows all new unlocks and available research.



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Thank you for reading February’s Devlog!

March will oversee the near completion of one of the first large builds of the game, one we’re gonna make sure to showcase as soon as it becomes available.

– The PK Team

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

Welcome to January’s development update!

We hope everyone had a lovely New Year’s Eve and 2019 so far. Like always the team’s been super busy working on the game and we’ve even managed to get a few short live-streams out in the meantime.



For January we prioritized the integration of pre-alpha content and worked closely together on our tasks. After many laughs and frequent cheer, the future is bright and the team has never been more excited about the project!

As detailed in the following post, we’ve made great progress on core systems and are incredibly eager to get even more into the engine in early 2019.

On a different note, however, we’re happy to confirm that all eligible backers have been included in the credits! There’s a lot of names but we’re quite confident that everyone’s in there.







As we mentioned, this month we put considerably more work into the game’s core mechanics and visuals, as opposed to past months, so we are incredibly happy to be able to include such a lengthy programming section in this post. Get ready for a read and the occasional eye-candy!


We can finally say: “I own an island”! The flat, small, square test terrain was bound to get old so we decided to put our focus into creating our first island: complete with smooth and rocky shores, mountain chains and flat plateaus to build on!

While the level itself isn’t completely finished as we still have to fully figure out plant and water placement, we felt that we’ve brought the game’s graphics to a complete enough stage to be showcased in the devlog.

Please note that position of foliage is temporary! We’ll be increasing the vegetation variety as well as fine tuning its displacement across the island.








Not to mention our brand new water shader actually looks like water and runs incredibly well.





To coincide with our brand new island and terrain shader we’ve also overhauled the ambient lighting system by incorporating volumetric lighting, clouds and fog into the game.



Our colours for day and night are far more dynamic and transition well together (unlike a certain demo!) – not to mention how deliciously fluffy our clouds look.


En garde! Our spectacular systems programmer Matt has been working super hard on our fencing system and we’re blown away by the results!

To provide players with maximum creative flexibility we’re offering three placement modes; Freeform, Curved and Arc. Combined with the additional development efforts of Mau, Nathan and Byron to add polish, new fences and sounds, we’re very pleased with the outcome. Please note that trees have been disabled for clearer presentation purposes. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/wBudkthijhs


Terraforming is finally here! Super performant and incredibly smooth, we’ve finally come to a solution that ultimately works better for the game as a whole.

https://youtu.be/_1VE4aIT6II

As you might have noticed, we’ve decided to not integrate a voxel terrain system into Prehistoric Kingdom. Beyond the creation of caves and arches, there was no guarantee that pathfinding would have been able to navigate successfully nor did it significantly impact gameplay beyond the tools that are available to players now.

Our new terrain system is far more performant and ideal for the game we’re making, so we hope that you understand our choice.


Between our busy programming development we managed to briefly begin work on our new animal shader.



There’s a lot of work that needs to be done in order to fit our requirements, but we’re pleased with the results so far. Ensuring that our animals look as good as they should is one our priorities!


A lot of our time this month has been spent getting assets into Unity and making them both look, feel and sound polished. Some temporary but rather lovely looking shaders help give structures so much more life and fidelity than what was last seen in the demo.




Overall we’ve added 16 new structures to the game in January – complete with LODs, foundations, personalized sounds/music and even animations for specific structures like the Gift Shop and Ranger Station.

https://youtu.be/PbDKReFvCuw

They’re not quite ready to be shown off yet, but Matt is also making some great strides with setting up the monorails, too. The track, pillar, and train assets will be updated in the future to meet a higher graphical standard.



Even though it’s still a work in progress, all these little things have started to really come together; the perfect park is almost within our reach!






For the past month Nathan has focused on creating new structure assets, as well as revamp old, outdated ones for an overall higher quality.


The wooden stable is a large, basic shelter designed to hold a variety of animal sizes.


Perfect for the modern zoo aesthetic, the iron bar fence takes cues from a handful of city zoos to help make any park look more refined.


The reinforced metal fence is the most secure way to enclose large animals in Prehistoric Kingdom. Enormous in both size and electrical consumption, this fence is capable of holding most sauropods.


Holding up to 1000 visitors, the Grand Hotel is the largest building in Prehistoric Kingdom. Its design is sharp and modern, including a tennis court, decking and a pool.


In order to get old assets up to scratch with recent additions, Nathan has provided some fantastic updates for us!


The Gazebo Shelter received some big changes to its colour and materials, making the overall structure feel way more rustic and grounded in the park.


The Restroom was remade with a new mesh that allows for a far more detailed appearance along with crisp textures and additional signage.


The Fast Food Kiosk was altered to encompass a slightly larger area, fit more detail into its texture and change some of the materials of the building. Its unique blue roof provides great contrast to other structures in the park!


Initially appearing quite similar to the original Ranger Station, the building was retextured to make better use of the available space. With an additional animated antenna on the tower, the Ranger Station is one of our favourite structures!


As you might have noticed, a much larger amount of work has been put into the gameplay side of the game this month compared to previous months, which leaves less time to art, in contrast. Due to this, this month’s animation reel comes as a result of a joint effort between our two animators (Mau & Nathan), who have been taking turns at giving our ceratopsian rig its much needed attention. A 5 star attraction, Triceratops moves with surprising agility for its majestic and imposing nature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70TSsSVvDo4



Along with producing a variety of new interaction and environmental SFX (over 50 unique sounds across all placement modes!), Byron’s been busy composing new tracks for the game.


Genesis is a new ambient track that’s quickly become one of our favourites amongst the team. Contextually we think it’s going to work great as a calm background piece to play amongst your dinosaurs and we hope that you agree!

https://soundcloud.com/byronmckay/genesis

Defenders is the fifth introduction track to be revealed – this time for our large armored and horned dinosaurs such as Triceratops and Ankylosaurus.

https://soundcloud.com/byronmckay/defenders




Cindy started our year off strong with the completion of some familiarly long-necked creatures. Please enjoy a look at the new skins for Plateosaurus engelhardti, Diplodocus carnegii, Brachiosaurus altithorax and Argentinosaurus huinculensis.






Now that our gentlest of titans have their alternate skins done we think it’s only appropriate to show off our Sauropodomorpha in all their glory:



Next stop; theropods!



European and African dig sites in Early Access include a handful of classic animals from the Mesozoic.





With an incredibly large list of animal species ready to be available at launch, we’re posed with the interesting conundrum of handling the early game roster in challenge mode.


Animal selection is performed at the very start of a new challenge game via the world map. Sharing the same appearance as our Fossil Hunting menu, it is here that players will select up to four species from any digsite to begin their park with.



Creatures with a rating above three stars are unavailable in the starting roster when playing on Normal or Hard difficulty settings.




Prehistoric Kingdom is a game with an extremely large roster of animals that lend themselves to an extended variety of park designs and exhibits. For us, we didn’t like the idea of having preset animals or randomising them without the option of player input. The beginning of a game can greatly impact the choices a player might make when building their park so it was only natural that we try to lean into that when designing the system.

Technically, yes, providing choice may create an easier or unbalanced experience depending on what creatures are chosen. Despite this, we feel that this was the right choice for our Challenge Mode and we hope to make the early game as balanced as possible over time.


Star ratings determine the popularity of an animal and often reflects its pricing within the Nursery. To create an even-scale between all creatures, our choices were developed under the following criteria:

• Size.
  
• Appearance.
  
• In-universe popularity (not real world) with vague pop-culture influence.
  
• Gameplay balance.

Animals affected by albinism will automatically gain an additional star.

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Thank you for reading January’s Devlog!

2018 has been one hell of a year and we are ever so hopeful that 2019 has got great things in store for the community! Personally we believe that we’re off to a great start and cannot wait to continue delivering content for all of our backers and fans!

- The PK Team

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