The highlight: we're approved by Steam and ready to release THIS FRIDAY at 9 am PST.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/700320/Tyto_Ecology__Cretaceous_Mongolia/




Now, to those that were concerned about how long it took, we had a few delays due to personal situations like Hurricane Irma (picture of how we protected gear in our bathrooms - then we sandbagged it in!) and our Creative Director getting married and taking time off for her honeymoon.




Now, on to the Cretaceous Mongolia DLC! Head over to the Steam page to see a list of all species included, and enjoy this adorable picture of how Tarbosaurus sleeps:




We look forward to you all getting your hands on these awesome new creatures this Friday!

There will also be a few broader improvements to the game, like some optimizations and fixes to insectivore hunting failure rates. Full patch list will come with the update on Friday!

The highlight: we're approved by Steam and ready to release THIS FRIDAY at 9 am PST.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/700320/Tyto_Ecology__Cretaceous_Mongolia/




Now, to those that were concerned about how long it took, we had a few delays due to personal situations like Hurricane Irma (picture of how we protected gear in our bathrooms - then we sandbagged it in!) and our Creative Director getting married and taking time off for her honeymoon.




Now, on to the Cretaceous Mongolia DLC! Head over to the Steam page to see a list of all species included, and enjoy this adorable picture of how Tarbosaurus sleeps:




We look forward to you all getting your hands on these awesome new creatures this Friday!

There will also be a few broader improvements to the game, like some optimizations and fixes to insectivore hunting failure rates. Full patch list will come with the update on Friday!

Hello, everyone!

We've been excitedly prepping for our new Cretaceous ecosystem. Our Creative Director, Caroline, has been calling up unsuspecting academics and asking them questions for a video game, to which some have been surprisingly open!

And now, we want your feedback!

https://trello.com/b/VUR5yPJi/cretaceous-gobi-desert

First, we have put together a public Trello board with the species we are currently planning on using in the ecosystem. This is of course subject to change as research and gameplay testing continues.

If you all know of any resources about these species, especially harder-to-find ones like about plants and insects, please do share! There is open commenting and contribution on the board.

On the note of plants, we found when calling up researchers that the conditions that are suitable for excellent preservation of dinosaur bones are different than those that are good for plants. So you basically don't get a lot of plant information from the same places you get great dinosaur fossils. Which means generalizing information from similar ecosystems in other places.



In-progress model for the velociraptor!

We also have some specific questions for feedback.



We knew that if we were going to make a biodome based off of Cretaceous Mongolia or Flaming Cliffs, we would need to include velociraptor, arguably the most "famous" dinosaur of the region. Velociraptor fossils, along with protoceratops and oviraptor, have been found in the Djadochta geological formation in Southern Mongolia (also known as the Flaming Cliffs.) This region dates back to the Late Cretaceous period, around the Campanian and Maastrichtian ages (around 70-80 million years ago.)

Many of our other dinosaurs were found to the southwest, in what is known as the Nemegt geological formation, some 220 miles away. This is where fossils of therizinosaurus (aka "Danger Floof"), Tarbosaurus (the t-rex of the Gobi), and Opisthocoelicaudia (an enormous, long-necked dinosaur) have been located. All fossils were found in what is now the Gobi desert during the Late Cretaceous period, though there isn't sufficient fossil evidence to prove that all of these dinosaurs lived at exactly the same time or exactly the same place. The only irrefutable, fossilized proof that any of these dinosaurs interacted with one another lies in a fossil depicting a protoceratops locked in battle with a velociraptor--all other interactions between dinosaurs have been inferred or assumed.

All this is to say...we aren't sure what exactly to call this ecosystem! Not all species hail directly from the Flaming Cliffs region, but all did live in the Gobi Desert. The "Gobi Desert" was not a desert in the Cretaceous era, however, which makes it a bit awkward to use that descriptor. Not all species have been proven to have co-existed, though they all lived in the Cretaceous period in around the same area. How precise should we be with our ecosystem name?

Can we call it "Flaming Cliffs" because that's close enough? Should we call it "Gobi Desert," even though "desert" is an inaccurate word? Should we simply say "Mongolia," even though the Gobi Desert is a very specific region that may have had wildly different species from, say, Northern Mongolia in the Cretaceous era? We aren't sure!



Some dinosaurs have rich information and even evidence about their color (see this article: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100127-dinosaur-feathers-colors-nature/ )

However, many don't have that much available when it comes to any preserved feather bits or other indicators of color. A lot of artists seem to stay more simple in their depictions, but there are some pieces of concept art of dinosaurs with incredibly bright and unexpected color palettes.

What are your thoughts on how we should handle this when there is no evidence of color (helping us find some for our dinosaurs would certainly be helpful!)? Stick with expectations of whatever is most common? Create a beautiful palette of our own creation and run with it? Something else?

(On this note, if anyone has found scientific research on the colors of any of our species, please post it!)

Hello, everyone!

We've been excitedly prepping for our new Cretaceous ecosystem. Our Creative Director, Caroline, has been calling up unsuspecting academics and asking them questions for a video game, to which some have been surprisingly open!

And now, we want your feedback!

https://trello.com/b/VUR5yPJi/cretaceous-gobi-desert

First, we have put together a public Trello board with the species we are currently planning on using in the ecosystem. This is of course subject to change as research and gameplay testing continues.

If you all know of any resources about these species, especially harder-to-find ones like about plants and insects, please do share! There is open commenting and contribution on the board.

On the note of plants, we found when calling up researchers that the conditions that are suitable for excellent preservation of dinosaur bones are different than those that are good for plants. So you basically don't get a lot of plant information from the same places you get great dinosaur fossils. Which means generalizing information from similar ecosystems in other places.



In-progress model for the velociraptor!

We also have some specific questions for feedback.



We knew that if we were going to make a biodome based off of Cretaceous Mongolia or Flaming Cliffs, we would need to include velociraptor, arguably the most "famous" dinosaur of the region. Velociraptor fossils, along with protoceratops and oviraptor, have been found in the Djadochta geological formation in Southern Mongolia (also known as the Flaming Cliffs.) This region dates back to the Late Cretaceous period, around the Campanian and Maastrichtian ages (around 70-80 million years ago.)

Many of our other dinosaurs were found to the southwest, in what is known as the Nemegt geological formation, some 220 miles away. This is where fossils of therizinosaurus (aka "Danger Floof"), Tarbosaurus (the t-rex of the Gobi), and Opisthocoelicaudia (an enormous, long-necked dinosaur) have been located. All fossils were found in what is now the Gobi desert during the Late Cretaceous period, though there isn't sufficient fossil evidence to prove that all of these dinosaurs lived at exactly the same time or exactly the same place. The only irrefutable, fossilized proof that any of these dinosaurs interacted with one another lies in a fossil depicting a protoceratops locked in battle with a velociraptor--all other interactions between dinosaurs have been inferred or assumed.

All this is to say...we aren't sure what exactly to call this ecosystem! Not all species hail directly from the Flaming Cliffs region, but all did live in the Gobi Desert. The "Gobi Desert" was not a desert in the Cretaceous era, however, which makes it a bit awkward to use that descriptor. Not all species have been proven to have co-existed, though they all lived in the Cretaceous period in around the same area. How precise should we be with our ecosystem name?

Can we call it "Flaming Cliffs" because that's close enough? Should we call it "Gobi Desert," even though "desert" is an inaccurate word? Should we simply say "Mongolia," even though the Gobi Desert is a very specific region that may have had wildly different species from, say, Northern Mongolia in the Cretaceous era? We aren't sure!



Some dinosaurs have rich information and even evidence about their color (see this article: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100127-dinosaur-feathers-colors-nature/ )

However, many don't have that much available when it comes to any preserved feather bits or other indicators of color. A lot of artists seem to stay more simple in their depictions, but there are some pieces of concept art of dinosaurs with incredibly bright and unexpected color palettes.

What are your thoughts on how we should handle this when there is no evidence of color (helping us find some for our dinosaurs would certainly be helpful!)? Stick with expectations of whatever is most common? Create a beautiful palette of our own creation and run with it? Something else?

(On this note, if anyone has found scientific research on the colors of any of our species, please post it!)

The winner is...


This ecosystem includes the Velociraptor, Protoceratops Deinocheirus mirificus, Plesiohadros, and more!


Image by PaleoGuy on Deviant Art.

This ecosystem includes what YouTuber Best in Slot refers to as "danger floof," or the Therizinosaurus, which is my favorite:


Image by Sergey Krasovskiy

Now, several people noticed that it ended in a close tie at the end between Mongolia/Flaming Cliffs and Hell's Creek, so we took a look at the IP addresses of the votes to make sure our own office votes didn't skew the results. What we found instead though, was... drum roll... massive voter fraud!

Okay, not that massive, but our top IP address voted 29 times for Hell's Creek!

Now we do recognize some of the smaller ones can be multiple family members or people in the same location, but 29 people with the exact same IP address voting for Hell's Creek with most of the votes only taking 2-3 seconds to complete? Sorry, someone was cheating.

So we dug into the data, removed excess suspicious votes, and by the end, Flaming Cliffs was the clear winner:

• Flaming Cliffs: 43%
  
• Hell's Creek: 33%
  
• Europe: 24%

And, for your humor, we made this handy cheating infographic -- really all in good fun because it's not like this was a super serious legal vote. But we did want to get to the bottom of what the actual most popular ecosystem would be, and we did!

The winner is...


This ecosystem includes the Velociraptor, Protoceratops Deinocheirus mirificus, Plesiohadros, and more!


Image by PaleoGuy on Deviant Art.

This ecosystem includes what YouTuber Best in Slot refers to as "danger floof," or the Therizinosaurus, which is my favorite:


Image by Sergey Krasovskiy

Now, several people noticed that it ended in a close tie at the end between Mongolia/Flaming Cliffs and Hell's Creek, so we took a look at the IP addresses of the votes to make sure our own office votes didn't skew the results. What we found instead though, was... drum roll... massive voter fraud!

Okay, not that massive, but our top IP address voted 29 times for Hell's Creek!

Now we do recognize some of the smaller ones can be multiple family members or people in the same location, but 29 people with the exact same IP address voting for Hell's Creek with most of the votes only taking 2-3 seconds to complete? Sorry, someone was cheating.

So we dug into the data, removed excess suspicious votes, and by the end, Flaming Cliffs was the clear winner:

• Flaming Cliffs: 43%
  
• Hell's Creek: 33%
  
• Europe: 24%

And, for your humor, we made this handy cheating infographic -- really all in good fun because it's not like this was a super serious legal vote. But we did want to get to the bottom of what the actual most popular ecosystem would be, and we did!

Today we have a big announcement…

We’re about to begin work to add a dinosaur biodome to Tyto Ecology!

This has been our most-requested addition, and we're thrilled that our art team is finally about to have the resources and time to pull off a new biodome highlighting the Cretaceous Era! It’s really important for us to be as scientifically accurate as possible, so we have three pretty specific times and locations we’ve been trying to choose from.

So that’s where you come in!

From today until Tuesday, June 26, you get to vote between three different dinosaur groups and locations.

One vote per person!

(1) Cretaceous Mongolia, including Flaming Cliffs: including the Velociraptor, Protoceratops Deinocheirus mirificus, Plesiohadros, and more!



(2) Cretaceous Hell Creek: including Tyrannosaurus Rex, Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, and more!



(3) Cretaceous European: Including lesser-known dinosaurs such as Turiasaurus riodevensis, Ampeloasaurus atacis, Baryonix walkeri, and more!





Once the votes are in, we’ll announce the final winner! Then we’ll start the research needed to create a sustainable ecosystem from producers, consumers, and decomposers with species from that era and location! This will be based on all the most up-to-date theories out there that we can find, and we’re super excited to release an as accurate-as-possible prehistoric ecosystem expansion pack!




Images from Paleo Guy on Deviant Art, who does absolutely incredible work!


Also, we're debating if we should just release this as an expansion, or if we should run a Kickstarter first to give people the opportunity to get cool rewards like art prints, 3D Printed Models of their favorite dinosaurs, and help set some stretch goals to make it even cooler. Let us know what you think we should do in the comments.


RESULTS AS OF MONDAY AT 8:30 PM EST - GUYS WE'RE TIED!!!

Today we have a big announcement…

We’re about to begin work to add a dinosaur biodome to Tyto Ecology!

This has been our most-requested addition, and we're thrilled that our art team is finally about to have the resources and time to pull off a new biodome highlighting the Cretaceous Era! It’s really important for us to be as scientifically accurate as possible, so we have three pretty specific times and locations we’ve been trying to choose from.

So that’s where you come in!

From today until Tuesday, June 26, you get to vote between three different dinosaur groups and locations.

One vote per person!

(1) Cretaceous Mongolia, including Flaming Cliffs: including the Velociraptor, Protoceratops Deinocheirus mirificus, Plesiohadros, and more!



(2) Cretaceous Hell Creek: including Tyrannosaurus Rex, Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, and more!



(3) Cretaceous European: Including lesser-known dinosaurs such as Turiasaurus riodevensis, Ampeloasaurus atacis, Baryonix walkeri, and more!





Once the votes are in, we’ll announce the final winner! Then we’ll start the research needed to create a sustainable ecosystem from producers, consumers, and decomposers with species from that era and location! This will be based on all the most up-to-date theories out there that we can find, and we’re super excited to release an as accurate-as-possible prehistoric ecosystem expansion pack!




Images from Paleo Guy on Deviant Art, who does absolutely incredible work!


Also, we're debating if we should just release this as an expansion, or if we should run a Kickstarter first to give people the opportunity to get cool rewards like art prints, 3D Printed Models of their favorite dinosaurs, and help set some stretch goals to make it even cooler. Let us know what you think we should do in the comments.


RESULTS AS OF MONDAY AT 8:30 PM EST - GUYS WE'RE TIED!!!

Our next update is now available to download as a free content addition... babies!



Previously in the game, all babies (not yet mature animals) were half-sized versions of the adults. But of course, many babies look quite different from their adult counterparts, so we've been working on an update that would allow us to all squee at baby cuteness.



With this update, the baby phase lasts the first half of their childhood (i.e. before sexual maturity and becoming an adult). During this phase, for the species that have unique baby versions, they will appear as these new adorable babies we've created. Not all animals have this, as some species look similar as babies and adults or are too small to notice a difference, in which case they will still be scaled down versions at 50% of adult size. During the last half of childhood, every species will be a juvenile version at 70% of adult size as their sort of teenage years. Then they'll mature into adults at the end.

To make sure this functions better in the ecosystem, we've also adjusted it so that baby carnivores (separate from juveniles) can eat animals one size lower than their adult counterparts. This is so you don't see a tiny baby cougar take down a mule deer.... as we did during testing before we added this!

• Asian Black Bear
  
• Asian Elephant
  
• Bison
  
• Bobcat
  
• Capybara
  
• Caribou
  
• Coatimundi
  
• Collared Peccary
  
• Cougar
  
• Coyote
  
• Dhole
  
• Gray Wolf
  
• Grizzly Bear
  
• Jackrabbit
  
• Jaguar
  
• Marsh Deer
  
• Moose
  
• Mule Deer
  
• Muntjac
  
• One-Horned Rhino
  
• Pronghorn Antelope
  
• Red Fox
  
• Red Panda
  
• Tapir
  
• Red Junglefowl

Watch a brief intro video: https://youtu.be/H2zghbiGzdA

Our next update is now available to download as a free content addition... babies!



Previously in the game, all babies (not yet mature animals) were half-sized versions of the adults. But of course, many babies look quite different from their adult counterparts, so we've been working on an update that would allow us to all squee at baby cuteness.



With this update, the baby phase lasts the first half of their childhood (i.e. before sexual maturity and becoming an adult). During this phase, for the species that have unique baby versions, they will appear as these new adorable babies we've created. Not all animals have this, as some species look similar as babies and adults or are too small to notice a difference, in which case they will still be scaled down versions at 50% of adult size. During the last half of childhood, every species will be a juvenile version at 70% of adult size as their sort of teenage years. Then they'll mature into adults at the end.

To make sure this functions better in the ecosystem, we've also adjusted it so that baby carnivores (separate from juveniles) can eat animals one size lower than their adult counterparts. This is so you don't see a tiny baby cougar take down a mule deer.... as we did during testing before we added this!

• Asian Black Bear
  
• Asian Elephant
  
• Bison
  
• Bobcat
  
• Capybara
  
• Caribou
  
• Coatimundi
  
• Collared Peccary
  
• Cougar
  
• Coyote
  
• Dhole
  
• Gray Wolf
  
• Grizzly Bear
  
• Jackrabbit
  
• Jaguar
  
• Marsh Deer
  
• Moose
  
• Mule Deer
  
• Muntjac
  
• One-Horned Rhino
  
• Pronghorn Antelope
  
• Red Fox
  
• Red Panda
  
• Tapir
  
• Red Junglefowl

Watch a brief intro video: https://youtu.be/H2zghbiGzdA