Closed Beta arrives December 6th 2021 for eligible backers and early adopters!

Introducing new mechanics, features and animals, Prehistoric Kingdom’s next closed-release will be available to those who pledged for Beta Access. Our public launch into Early Access has now moved to April 2022 to give the team an extended period for some important gameplay changes, additional content and polish.

We bet you’re feeling ravenous to learn more, so let’s dive into some of the things you can expect to see in Beta! More features and content will be unveiled closer to its release.





Beta will be arriving with 14 prehistoric beasts and birds to care for! Alongside the species present in Alpha, the park’s newest specimens include: Archaeopteryx, Camarasaurus, Deinocheirus, Pachyrhinosaurus, Protoceratops, Parasaurolophus, Torvosaurus and the Woolly Mammoth.

You can find the initial Early Access species roster on our website, here.

As the definitive oddball, this giant ornithomimid defies all expectations by sporting a bizarre set of attributes: a duck bill, a humped back, sizable forelimbs equipped with sharp claws, and a larger than life appetite.



To top it all off, this peculiar animal comes with a featherless variant. Would this make it scaly? Leathery? Naked? We’re just as confused as you.

Flying its way into your heart, Archaeopteryx soars through Beta as the second Mini-Aviary species. Unlike the Microraptor, it sports a striking color scheme and includes sexual dimorphism, making the males ever so pretty!




Found in German limestone deposits dating back to the Jurassic, this magpie-sized critter holds great scientific significance as one of the earliest bird-like dinosaurs.

As animals are often in the spotlight, it’s incredibly important to us to make them look as realistic as possible, and that includes their animations.

For the past few months we’ve been hard at work expanding the animation libraries for all our species, including many little actions such as stretching, scratching, shaking, chewing, and more. We hope you appreciate these quality of life upgrades as much as we do, as they help cement the idea that these are living, breathing animals!







In July, we gave our community a survey to find out what our future players would be most interested in seeing.

Your answers were incredibly insightful, as they again confirmed that the direction the game is heading towards is not only close to our hearts, but also true to the community’s wishes for the project.

There are a number of upgrades coming, not to mention some rather exciting avenues set to be explored. We’re certain you’re going to be just as excited for them as we are and we cannot wait to share more with you in the future. The following additions are just the beginning…

Experience the sunny tropics with this brand new theme arriving in Beta!

Containing over 100 pieces, the Tropical Theme includes a selection of new and exciting decorations inspired by a variety of real-world cultures. Vases, totems, torches and statues are but a handful of some of the props and pieces available in this exciting expansion to the modular lineup. Your prehistoric zoos have never looked so exotic!


Shown above: new railings, benches, braziers, thatch roofs and palm weave floors (one of the new wall sets!).

We can’t spoil it all, but please enjoy some of this beautiful scenery created by our concept artist, Ida. The team’s putting a lot of work into making sure this theme feels inspiring to build with, and we cannot wait to see what kind of wonderful architecture the Beta community come up with.



Our default theme has been reinvigorated with new props, designs and some much requested pieces. To highlight a few of the most demanded, we believe these miscellaneous pieces will allow players to greatly enrich the authenticity of their zoos!



There are many new items to discover in Prehistoric Kingdom’s Beta, ranging from empty buckets to complete sets of ventilation ducts and gutter piping. Not to mention, that fancy new recoloring sure does help a lot!



Waterfall galore! A highly requested feature, fully modular water effects will be making their way into Beta, allowing builders to create custom waterfalls and fountain features.




For those less impressed by waterworks, smoke and fire are also available. Great for torches, bonfires, and setting the whole park ablaze, right?



Park decor has never been easier than with our brand new dynamic animal statues! These intelligent modules can be manipulated on-the-fly, much like our styling system for walls and roofs.




Players can pick from three different poses for any animal species in the game, complete with a selection of materials to choose from.

Moreover, an initially limited selection of bones are also available, making skeletal mounts or custom displays entirely possible. This list will only grow with time as we expand our fossilized repertoire!




Science Points are a type of economy item used in Excavations and Research*. They’re passively accumulated by constructing habitats, scaling in effectiveness based on a number of factors that players work towards. The better the exhibit, the more rewards to reap!

*Research not included in Beta.



Fantastic beasts and where to mine them, or rather, Excavations, are a central mechanic in unlocking your primordial pals and their genetic skins. Scattered across the globe, players use Science Points to seek out their next big attraction.




Following our Early Access release, Prehistoric Kingdom will continue to see heavy development. We are a small team with big ambitions and it’s important to remind everyone that some aspects of the game simply won’t be as fleshed out as others for the initial launch.

We understand that some of you may be frustrated by the move to April 2022, but the reality is that once the game goes live our core infrastructure needs to be locked in place. Any major changes need to happen before then, or else we risk breaking saves or some of the items within them. Breaking save compatibility from Alpha and Beta isn’t too bad, but we’d like to avoid it as much as possible during Early Access.

We have a laundry list of improvements and new features that we’d love to add, and the incredible patience of our entire community has allowed us to go above and beyond the original goal in making this game into what it is today. Nevertheless, our limited resources do mean that sacrifices have to made when it comes to development speed and game complexity. We hope that what we have to offer will feel like great value to everyone waiting for the game, and that you'll have an incredible experience despite the size of our development team and resources.

So, what is in store for Prehistoric Kingdom?

Modules are special facility pieces designed to create functional buildings and attractions using the modular system. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, each appealing to different aspects of park management or guest satisfaction with assigned properties.



Hinted at earlier, the dynamic animal statues are actually a module containing the Amenity and Editable properties, indicating that it both interacts with guests (providing an education bonus!) and is customizable.

We want to merge the gap between modular building and park interaction, so, you’ll be needing new park services!

Kiosks are an open-air module with a unique 4x2 design, making them friendly for all sorts of buildings, whether they’re outdoors or indoors.

Unlike our current buildings, kiosk modules are defined by their function. Rather than having a unique module in the UI, the Tea-Rex Café is now a Style for the Fast Food Kiosk - changing its service menu, set-dressing and logo in an instant.



For the Shopping Kiosk, you’ll find styles for two of our lovely brands; Apato Apparel and Giganto Gifts! This module provides themed merchandise and shopping opportunities for your guests.




In addition to changing the Style/Shop Brand, players can toggle off the props and back-half of a kiosk, giving way to an even greater number of design options.

We plan to do away with “locked” buildings like in Alpha and Beta, opting for prefabs made entirely with the modular system. This allows players to delete, recolor, restyle or even change the building’s function. In essence, every piece of functionality will be handled fully modularly, unlocking limitless potential.

Our goal for Early Access is to develop modules for as many facility types as possible, granting players the creation of custom viewing towers, hotels, nurseries, and more.

However, this does not mean players will be required to build everything by hand! Through the powerful Prefab system, users can instead select from a large array of officially pre-made facilities and decorations to populate their parks with. The workload only decreases, with all the creative options still present. Workshop support is something we are committed to including too, making prefab sharing all that much easier!

Working with zoologist and scientific author, Tom Parker, we’re pleased to announce that the team has started pre-production on prehistoric plantlife!

Though they won’t be arriving anytime soon, we wanted to confirm that they will have a rightful place in the future of Prehistoric Kingdom as update content. As this is highly requested content, we’re doing everything we can to ensure our eventual lineup caters to species diversity, accuracy and offers unique gameplay opportunities.

The team hopes you’re just as excited as we are to eventually plant the seeds for a rich kingdom of prehistoric fauna and flora.



...

Thank you for reading our Beta Announcement!

As you can see, there’s a lot to be excited for in regards to upcoming content. Our regular development updates are expected to return in September, though in a more lightweight fashion as we barrel towards the impending Beta and Early Access releases.

It’s been a hell of a journey for everyone, but it’s finally time to close in for the home stretch.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome to June’s Development Update!

We are steadily moving towards the Beta release, with a feeling of anticipation growing within the team. Many of the gameplay systems required to move the game forward are coming together, so it’s a very exciting time to be working on the project!

While there’s no set Beta release date we can share at this moment, we can give you an insight into our process as we approach this next milestone. Other than obviously completing the gameplay systems we started, the main goals for these coming months include completing a large volume of art assets (such as animal animations, buildings, modular structure, etc.) as well as balancing the core gameplay loop. This second objective is especially important, since gameplay is built from a multitude of interconnected moving parts. As a team, this is our first time tackling such a complex task, so we want to take the necessary time needed to make the player experience enjoyable.

With that being said, let’s take a dive into this month’s development progress!


Created by Warpath.



June had a large focus on background work and optimization, but it also allowed us to work on a bunch of new and exciting features for the game.

First up, object recolouring. This is something that we’re trying to build a robust framework for, but it’s coming along very well. While the system isn’t quite ready enough to be properly shown off, we’re excited to confirm that many objects in Prehistoric Kingdom will be fully recolorable, with some even having multiple color choices for their patterns. We’re hoping to give a more in-depth look into this colorful beast of a system in July’s Devlog, so hang tight!



Next up, music! Our dynamic music system is a first for Prehistoric Kingdom, as it allows us to contextually pick or manipulate tracks using data driven by players and the state of their park. It’s really quite powerful, and we’re looking forward to getting the most out of it.

Finally, the team took a look at optimizing various parts of the game. Modular pieces are now instanced (like painted forests), though more testing is required to see just how much of an improvement it could be. Selection graphics have also been reworked, allowing us to bring back effects like object highlights without affecting performance. Overall, these changes could be quite beneficial for larger parks or actions like selecting big modular groups.





Electric power is one of the major cornerstones of modern civilization. This rings especially true in Prehistoric Kingdom, unless you plan on escaped carnivores being part of the tour experience! With the importance of this mechanic being so high, we spent a better part of June introducing new electrifying depths to the power system.

Power generators are now capable of failing on their own, requiring a reboot to get them running again. Their chance of turning off is based on a failure rate; influenced by the type of generator, its effective range, and structural integrity.

Using the new selection graphics, the visuals for our power range and network have been significantly improved since alpha, too.



A generator’s range can be manipulated by players to increase/decrease the chance of failure.

Similarly, all infrastructure and guest facilities take damage over time. Once an initial warranty period has expired, they become susceptible to age, and of course, various weather conditions.



As a building’s structural integrity falls, its monthly upkeep increases until the building eventually shuts down. Occasionally checking up on your park and looking for buildings in need of repair will help keep the costs lower and your guests satisfied for longer.

As nightfall arrives, the park springs anew. Illuminating the paths and boulevards, lights activate across the zoo to bring another dimension of life to your Prehistoric Kingdom.






It’s more than just pretty looking fluff, however. Both nighttime and the now implemented weather system reduce the effectiveness of basic power solutions. Solar panels and wind turbines are less than ideal depending on the availability of sunlight or during strong rainstorms.

Weather patterns change on a monthly basis, offering unique alterations to both visual aesthetics and management conditions. Over the course of an in-game year, players can discover seasonal variations on their chosen map. Wet and dry seasons provide tropical locales with a distinctly damp flair, while colder environments see chilling drops in the temperature.


Weather transitions (sped up).






This is simply a first look at some of the weather options coming to the game, so we hope you’re excited to see how it improves in the future!

To help brighten your park at night, we’ve added over 20 modern lights to the game. With options suitable for ceilings, floors, walls and the outdoors, park managers can flex their creative muscles in a huge number of ways.






We’ve made sure to offer varying degrees of design complexity so that users can more easily create custom light fixtures using the modular building system. And yes, they’re all recolorable!

Coming to beta is the majestic Camarasaurus, arriving with all three alternate species. Though this animal is smaller than some of its Jurassic cousins, we think this creature will quickly become a staple sauropod of parks in the future.




The team’s made some adjustments to the animal since it was last shown off. Better facial anatomy, tweaks to the sculpt and revised skins make this Morrison giant the best it can be.




Created by Jackosaur.


Created by Sdanwolf.


Created by JurassicSmashed.

...

Thank you for reading June’s devlog!

We hope you enjoyed this month’s report, and are just as excited as us for the next release. Should all go well, we will be ready to announce the Beta launch date in either of the two next devlogs, so keep those beady eyes peeled!

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome to May’s Development Update!

This month the team has put together quite a juicy update, rich with new information and a whole bunch of major additions being worked on in the background.



Development during May was great all across the board! We saw a lot of substantial progress in key areas that ultimately led to one of the most important months in some time, bringing in a lot of important gameplay changes and UI elements.

Though things are going extremely well on our end, we should note that Beta is most likely to take place in Q3 so that the team can really polish up the experience. We’re introducing quite a few complex systems and we'd like to ensure most of the prominent edge cases are covered before pushing another major release for testing.

In rather significant news, the logic for our core progression systems like Park Rating have been written. For the first time in the project’s history, we’re able to test and simulate the progression of a park, its economy and inventory of animals (more on that in a minute).

All that’s left to do for self-functioning progression is to link up actual gameplay values like exhibit data, animal welfare, park statistics, etc. In terms of the maths and calculations required behind the scenes, that’s all been taken care of.

Between developing systems and iterating, we’re continually tweaking the game’s visuals and seeking new additions where we can. In May, we introduced a double-pass of AO, bringing richer depth to the shadows and making the game pop more. This change has little impact on performance and can always be disabled.



To top it all off, we also introduced an anamorphic lens flare to hit that slightly more cinematic quality on bright surfaces.





As discussed, three large parts of the game’s progression mechanics and their related management menus have almost been finished up, ready for data to inform their systems.

The Overview menu is where you’ll find the breakdown of your park as a whole, acting as the hub for checking your park rating and performance.


UI Concept Art (Child Pricing, Marketing & Staff Not Available at Early Access Launch).

Relevant management statistics and the weather forecast are all visible on the right side of the screen, offering a surface level look at various areas or activities that players can interact with.

Money makes the world go ‘round, even in Prehistoric Kingdom. As we’re working with more “grounded” pricing, your animals and infrastructure can be quite a hefty investment; potentially costing millions of dollars!


In-Game UI Connected to Economy Data.

From the Finances menu, players can look at their quarterly performance to see all their recent profits and expenses. The customizable line graph on the right shows what you’ve been up to over time with the option to switch between a monthly or yearly review.

If you’re really struggling or need a boost, players can redeem loans that are paid off at a flat interest rate per month. With factors like facility upkeep as a monthly overhead, we’re curious to see all your failure and success rates during Beta.

Excavations are how players selectively unearth new animals over the course of the game. Locked off by the current park rating, dig sites can be purchased with cash while the animals inside are unlocked with a unique currency, science points.

Though some animals are missing their prices or other stats, the experience surrounding this part of the game is really starting to come together - take a look!


Work in Progress.

Part of the many improvements coming to Beta, we’ve been experimenting with the game’s weather and atmospherics to see what types of climate conditions we’d be able to simulate. In June, we’ll properly start the process of creating weather presets and fully implementing them into the game’s calendar year.




As you could probably guess, the weather system will also influence the park’s soundscape and other simulations like temperature. It’s a level of immersion and detail that we’ve never quite had before, so we’re very excited to see where it’ll take us.

Take a dive beneath the surface to experience your park from a splashing new perspective!

Underwater rendering is here and we’ve approached it in quite a refreshing way, allowing for a seamless visual transition between what’s above and below the waves of your prehistoric ponds.




Our soundscape changes with the camera’s position, too! As the player plunges beneath the surface, elements like animals, buildings, music and ambient audio are filtered out depending on how deep the camera is underwater.


Work in Progress.

In the future, additional wildlife audio will be introduced to give the impression of a bio-diverse wetland in areas with water.

Flying animals in a contained space are difficult to get right, no matter how you approach them. For us, the best option for our tiny Microraptors ended up being animation loops and predetermined locations, though even that has its own set of unique challenges to overcome.

In May, we began developing a more dynamic approach to setting up their navigable paths. Instead of hand animating the entire motion, we’ve instead switched to using spline and velocity data to inform how a creature should animate as it moves along the path.

This might sound like the most obvious choice in hindsight, but the reality is that this approach has a much higher technical development cost to get it looking right and functioning correctly. The biggest benefit of this solution, however, is how much time it cuts down on animation, allowing us to build a library of unique movements that the game can pick from.


Custom Development Tools.

With almost half an hour of original music already written for Beta, the score is starting to take its shape! To celebrate, this month we’re showing off two more snippets from the soundtrack, All For Them and Ingenuity (non-final mix).

• All For Them
  
• Ingenuity

The Coastal biome received its quality of life update, introducing loads of new items to bring its total foliage count up to 21 variants.






Perhaps one of the most well known hadrosaurs, Parasaurolophus is a truly remarkable creature. Best identified by the elongated resonating chamber on its head, three of its species are spread across the world ready for players to find in the upcoming Beta.






Recently, Nigel teased his role in the game with a short dialogue preview! Click the link below to visit his Twitter page and watch this very special clip.






Created by swoop_there.

Created by Jackosaur.

Created by Warpath.

...

Thank you for reading May’s devlog!

After a highly successful month we hope that you enjoyed another Prehistoric Kingdom development update. As always we’ll be back next month with more information and great progress to share with you all!

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome to April’s Development Update!

In this shorter blog post we’ll be covering the usual; what our team’s been up to and what the community can expect to see in the future! Most of our work in April was done on the game’s backend, so there’s not much to visually cover this month.


Aviary Interior by Warpath.



After pushing our last update to the alpha, our main priority was upgrading our engine version, source control service and fixing all the lovely issues that can occur as a result of that.

Despite the expected and partial setback, a lot of exciting content started production in April. Art highlights include new music, vegetation assets, 3D building sketches, dinosaur sculpting and extra types of idle animations for the animals (e.g. sniffing and scratching).

As part of the on-going effort to improve our modular system, the grid is now super reliable! This should address a lot of the problems users experienced in alpha. Similarly, the backend for material switching and recoloring was rebuilt to allow for the new UI features. Check it out!


As you can see, it’s now possible to mass-select a building and change all swappable materials on the fly. This functionality is expected to apply to object recoloring, though we’ll save the details for a later date when that’s implemented.

On the management side of things, we started with exhibit data. This provides us with a jumping off point to start figuring out the calculations for things like animal needs and their overall welfare. Exhibits and how they’re scored are very much the driving force behind our management simulation, influencing everything from guest spawns to the park economy and rating. How you build and optimise your paddocks in Prehistoric Kingdom is a central component in ensuring your success as a player.




This month we’ve got two work-in-progress samples from the game’s soundtrack to tease you with! Though there’s currently 11 minutes of goodness behind the scenes, we wanted to give everyone a small taste of what’s to come.

Below you can find two types of tracks. One that we’ve internally dubbed as “working” music, and the other that plays inside the Animal Nursery. There’s a whole selection of music being written for specific scenes within the game, and we cannot wait for you to hear more.

• Visitors on Main
  
• The Miracle of Life

Since we’re writing for an adaptive music system, what you’re hearing is the full mix (e.g. everything together). In-game this is split into different layers, allowing us to control the intensity of the music depending on player context and game rules.

The completed soundtrack will be purchasable (and delivered to eligible backers) once the body of work has been finished post Early Access launch.

Wetlands received its final few foliage items, introducing new ground plants to help bring your swampy desires to life. Horsetails, arrow arum, new reeds and the decorative pickerelweed all assist in filling out the marshy plains.

Our tall trees weren’t forgotten, though! The swamp cypress has been reworked from the ground up, adding four unique variants to the roster in the process.


Updated Wetland plants (papyrus not shown as it remains unchanged).

Cypress knees will also be available as a modular item for players who wish to take their wetland forests to the next level.

What creature would most definitely beat you in a thumb wrestle? The Iguanodon of course! Returning to the kingdom with a brand new look, this take on the classic dinosaur was inspired by a variety of real-world reptiles, incorporating a more retro and armoured appearance.




As you can probably guess, we’ve been experimenting with atmospheric effects and different types of weather, too. At this stage it’s something the team are hoping to include in some capacity for Beta and/or Early Access.

Before we conclude this month’s devlog, the team would like to briefly showcase the eating animation and temporary foley sounds for the T. rex. Details like adding visible chunks of meat are still on our to-do list, but we figured the community would still like to see it regardless.



With a seasoned bite like that, the steaks of owning a Tyrannosaur must be pretty high, no?


Recently, we confirmed three new animal species coming to Beta on our official Discord server.

The Woolly Mammoth, Pachyrhinosaurus and Torvosaurus will all make an appearance alongside the other creatures found in Alpha. There are a few more announcements to be made regarding the Beta roster, so stay tuned for future updates!





…

Soon.






Created by Evolution Square.


Created by Hiysta.


Created by Rudi Rennkamel.

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Thank you for reading April’s devlog!

We would once again like to take the time to thank everyone for their support during Alpha. With Beta on the horizon, we hope that the community is looking forward to a wealth of improvements and new content to play with. More info will be coming next month!

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome, park managers!

Like we mentioned last, this 2nd update tackles a variety of navigation and stability issues. Most fixes revolve especially around guests, which should stop ignoring player-created barriers and obstacles, for the most part. Or maybe not. They are free spirits.

• Animals
  
  • Relaxed navmesh constraints for Nasutoceratops and Styracosaurus, now allowing them to walk underneath archways.
    
  • Animals can no longer vocalize when sleeping and broadcasting.

• Guests
  
  • Improved pathfinding navmesh generation for guests.
    
  • Guests no longer path on and get stuck on top of rocks.
    
  • Guests should no longer fall through the floor.
    
  • Guests should no longer freeze in place for long periods of time.
    
  • Guests should no longer walk through obstacles and fences.
    
  • Deleting a path will now teleport the guests on it back to the park entrance.
    
  • If guests get stuck somewhere they shouldn’t be, they will be teleported back to the park entrance.

• Construction
  
  • Fixed issues that might have led to mis-aligned grid-bound wall pieces.
    
  • Fixed a modular issue that prevented selection for newly duplicated pieces.
    
  • Fixed the false bottom for Rock Cluster 1 and Rock Cluster 2.

• UI/UX
  
  • Changed FPS limit to account for VSync, and dynamically change depending on the screen’s refresh rate. By default, FPS limit in the option menu is now set to the max screen refresh rate, so users might need to re-apply changes.
    
  • Making a new save game will now show up in the save list immediately after.
    
  • Resolved lighting artifacts on distant terrain.

• Misc.
  
  • Fixed freezing when saving the game.

• UI/UX
  
  • Updated the group editing GUI, this should make it clearer that a modular group is currently being edited.
    
  • Disabled quick loading.

• Audio
  
  • Increased fade-in time on Tyrannosaurus broadcast when far away.

• Misc.
  
  • Drastically improved current Anti-Aliasing solutions. Not only does the default TAA look better, but FXAA and SMAA now provide viable options that improve upon the default. It is recommended to play around with these settings to get the most desired AA look.

• Animals
  
  • Added grazing behaviours to Nasutoceratops and Styracosaurus.
    

• Buildings & Scenery
  
  • Added 1m and 2m Stairs to the ‘Walls’ modular menu. Like other wall pieces, their texture and model change based on the selected material.
    
    
  • Added path snapping to building entrances. While this is a temporary solution until foundation snapping is fully implemented, it should aid with connecting areas of the park together.

• UI/UX
  
  • Added a navmesh preview to the management view menu (which can be accessed through the dashboard on the left side of the screen). Selecting an animal will display its traversal area. NOTE: This is not a completed feature. At the moment, the preview is only generated for a short radius around an animal. In the future, we also plan to give the selected animal a highlight graphic for ease of use.
    
    
  • Added camera edge scrolling and respective settings in the 'Camera' section of the options menu.
    
  • Animals are now placeable on modular items, if the navmesh is valid.

It is a known issue that audio for ceratopsid grazing currently plays independent of the game's current time scale. This will be addressed in the future.
Since we've done major changes to the ways navmeshes are generated on load, loading a save created prior to this patch might take a little longer than usual. This will only occur for the first time loading said save.

We hope you'll enjoy the changes we brought to the table with this patch! While we might release fix patches here and there, this is going to be the last major update until Beta. We regret that animal eating and drinking has not been included throughout Alpha, as it would have required core improvements of the animal locomotion system in order to deliver more satisfactory results. Simply put, we feel it's a better idea to move promptly onto full-time Beta development, and make the needed improvements during this period.
As always, you can rest assured we will be showing off more progress through our future devlogs.

Welcome to March’s Development Update!

In this month’s devlog we’ll be taking a look at what we’ve been working on, what the community’s been up to and the response to our latest release!


Created by Rudi Rennkamel.



To start, we want to thank everyone who has participated in the alpha (roughly 1,300 people). You’re all building some amazing stuff and the team is extremely happy to hear the excitement in the community.

Detailed in our last livestream, there’s a number of additions and improvements we’re working on for the alpha. Since then, the team’s decided to reschedule the addition of the Viewing Platform and building state icons for beta so that we can properly introduce their mechanics at a more appropriate time. Overall, we’re expecting support for alpha to come to an end in early April, though this may be extended if major issues arise.



On a more musical note (pun intended), our composer and sound designer Byron began writing and planning out the new soundtrack earlier in March. This time around we’re aiming to create a very dynamic score, one that’s adaptive and built around a layered music system. We’ve learned a lot about modern audio implementation over the last year, and we really wanted to do the potential of this game’s music justice.

Though a lot of the original melodies and motifs will carry over in some form or another, we hope you look forward to hearing some fresh work in the upcoming beta.





As you may have already seen in alpha footage, our visitors are able to fully navigate in, on and around modular structures. This is a real game changer, as it means that guests do not solely rely on paths to get around your park.

Naturally, this also allows users to build custom bridges without the need for elevated paths! If there’s a navigable area between a guest and their destination, they’ll use it.


Created by @leafzproduction

This functionality extends to guest pathfinding in general, allowing them to walk along building foundations as if a path were underneath them.



Pathfinding is something that will be continually tweaked over time, and we already have a bunch of ideas on how to improve it. It’s got huge potential and we can’t wait to make it the best we can.

Thanks to great feedback from our lovely alpha players, we’ve started working on some tweaks and updates to our user interface. Please note that these changes will not be available until beta.


UI Concept Art (Nursery Update)

For the Nursery, we noted that some players struggled to find the animal creation box. With these adjustments, we hope to make that area more digestable as the “main” workspace. Some more miscellaneous enhancements were made too, tweaks like centralizing the animal’s name and various balances to the overall piece.

When it comes to construction, however, there were a few things that we needed to communicate better:

• When am I editing a group?
  A new screenborder, group header and dedicated exit button will appear when a player enters a group. A subtle audio cue will also play.

• What are the keybinds?
  On-screen keybinds will be bigger and more specific to what the user is actually doing, eliminating excess visual noise and hopefully inspiring new players to give them a glance. If you’re a master though, these floating keybinds can be turned off in the options menu.

For the toolbox in general, we’ll be splitting it into two components for centralized access: settings, and customization. What appears in the respective windows will be context sensitive, dependant on what’s currently ready for placement or what’s selected in the world.


UI Concept Art (Modular Toolbox, Keybinds, and Group Editing Overlay)


UI Concept Art (Modular Toolbox Customization)

This change will give players the ability to select multiple items in a group and change the textures of walls, roofs and rocks at the same time, something that isn’t allowed in the current UI.

Remember though, this is context senstive! If a roof piece is selected, only the Roof Material panel will appear for customization. What does or doesn’t show is entirely based on what you’re doing.

To help with general usability, building state icons will be added during beta to better display what’s needed from the player at a moment’s notice. These remain a consistent size on screen, but scale down over distance.

We should note that these are reserved for things that require your attention or that are time-sensitive, we don’t want to overwhelm the player with non-critical information. Passive things like incubation timers are in a friendly bubble, and bad things are in red-black hexagons.


Concept Art (Building State Icons)

It’s big, it’s bold and it honks! Meet our redesigned Lambeosaurus, a surprise change that wasn’t properly unveiled until alpha’s launch. This animal has quickly become a favourite amongst alpha players with its unique calls and vibrant skin variation.




Apart from a bunch of lovely new designs, we tweaked a number of key features like its facial anatomy and of course, the new giant tail! This one’s for you, Big Paul.



In case you haven’t seen any gameplay from the alpha, there have been loads of fantastic content creators covering it in extreme detail. Though we sadly can’t showcase everybody, these are some great starting points!







Looking at our release roadmap, this is where the game is headed in 2021.

It’s very important to note that these are estimated dates as we are taking community feedback into account during both alpha and beta. We want to release a stable product for Early Access and we will take the time necessary to do so if it ensures a more premium experience.

Our next milestone, beta, will be introducing a bunch of improvements, new features and animals on top of the six available in alpha. This is very exciting for us, as with every major release our project feels more and more like a game.

Some mechanics that were closely tied to staff (e.g. animal food production) have been pushed back as an update post-EA launch to help ease the development schedule. As always, we’ll be providing insight into what’s changing or what’s being added in future devlogs.




Created by ChasmosaurLuke.


Created by JurassicRiley.


Created by TheBeachDog.


Created by Zekin.


Created by LionRider.


Created by OfManyVoices.

...

Thank you for reading March’s devlog!

Alpha’s been brilliant so far, and the team is hard at working on some new hotfixes and patches that’ll be out very soon. Once again, thanks so much to all of our supporters - whether you’ve been with us for years or days, we’re happy you’re here.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome, park managers!

After taking the week-end off, we're back working around the clock to address the most urgent issues reported by the community in the last few days. Today's update revolves around massive memory optimizations, and several UX improvements, especially with regards to the modular system.

• Animals
  
  • Fixed an issue that caused animal IKs not to update if time was stopped or if they were being moved, eliminating a lot of the janky leg stretching.

• Guests
  
  • Guests now avoid walking inside Mini-Aviaries.

• Construction
  
  • Fixed issue with multiple terrain masks multiplying their intensity together (especially noticeable on paths and path junctions).
    
  • Fixed terrain masks for paths and reduced their radius, as they were too large. This should allow players to terraform and paint water far closer to paths than previously allowed.
    
  • Fixed selection collision for several items, including tarps, awnings and mulch pieces.
    
  • Fixed several modular bugs hidden under the hood, some of these should hopefully prevent selection states getting stuck. If selection issues persist, please keep reporting them on our Git Issues page.

• UI/UX
  
  • Fixed an issue with Vsync setting where it would fail to apply.
    
  • Camera controls and several other keybinds (such as M for movement), don’t fire when using renaming inputs.

• Misc.
  
  • Resolved game references to old, unused assets.

• Construction
  
  • Reduced terrain mask radius for buildings.
    
  • Modular pieces can now collide with fences.

• Guests
  
  • Reduced general guest density by ~75%.

• UI/UX
  
  • Transitioned user action cancellation to Right Mouse Up instead of Right Mouse Down. This makes it possible to rotate the camera through RMB and not accidentally cancel an action (for those users that don’t utilize MMB to orbit with the camera).
    
  • Refined sensitivity for gizmo snapping rotation.
    
  • Clicking anywhere outside of the HUD while in advanced editing will now apply the current edit.

• Animals
  
  • Added social vocal animations to Nasutoceratops, Styracosaurus and Tyrannosaurus.
• Construction
  
  • Added a Chainlink piece to the 'Structural Elements' modular menu. This piece has world-space textures, so its visual fidelity should remain high no matter its scale.

• Reduced the game’s memory usage by ~30-35%. You should experience less crashes loading into a new game. This should hopefully fix many issues loading modular groups and items from existing saves.
  
• Added an FPS limit option to the graphical settings, which should decrease GPU consumption for some machines. Further rendering optimizations are still ongoing.

In the odd case your saves don't show up on the load menu when you start the game, worry not, they are still there! A restart should fix the issue until we can look at it in a future patch.

Going forward, you can expect more work to be put into animal and guest AI, which should be our focus for the next few updates.

Welcome, park managers!

Prehistoric Kingdom’s Closed Alpha has finally arrived! An early version of the game is now available to play for eligible alpha tier backers and early adopters. If you should have access and currently don’t, please consult our previous blog post to find your key.

If you’re having issues, please get in touch with Crytivo support so we can get your key delivered to you! Any delayed keys or problems with receiving them is an honest mistake and we want to make sure everybody who needs a key gets one.

Now, let’s get into the details!



These are our core features currently available in the alpha, offering a small selection of sandbox and work-in-progress challenge mode features for you to play with.

We are so excited to see what the alpha players come up with. Even from our VIPs we’ve seen some insane builds thanks to our suite of creative tools and extended functionality like full modular pathfinding on both the animals and guests - how cool is that?!

The visitors can be a little funky to look at (all male guests went to the same barber!), but their pathing capabilities are what counts here. Their visuals and animations will be drastically improved with time.



Everything has room for improvement and alpha is no exception! Over the next few weeks we’ll be providing stability fixes and a handful of content additions such as absent animal behaviours like eating and drinking.

On the user experience front, building state icons are one of the things we’ll be adding to better signify structures that require power or buildings that have reached guest capacity. Currently, the power status of a building is only displayed in the Management View or in its UI popup when selected, so it’s definitely something we’ll be improving.

As discussed in a recent livestream with Crytivo, we’ve provided an updated roadmap for our release schedule as well as what you can expect to see from beta.

It’s very important to note that these are estimated dates as we are taking community feedback into account during both alpha and beta. We want to release a stable product for Early Access and we will take the time necessary to do so.



We’ll also be adding a few more animals into the beta on top of our current six present in the alpha.

As we’re still working on setting up support for custom keybinds in-game, please refer to the sheet below for various inputs. Building actions do have on-screen prompts, however! Players can also access a Help menu by pressing F1 or by navigating to the left side of the screen.



Though we are already aware of various issues in the build, we felt that these were the most pressing to notify alpha players about to prevent duplicate reports.

Animals

• Certain slopes may cause quadrupeds to be angled weirdly.
  
• Returning to a quadruped from a distance may cause its body IKs to briefly freak out.
  
• Creatures may get stuck or stop moving. Picking up and replacing the animal should fix them.
  
• IK issues can cause creatures to jitter or render their animations at a lower frame rate.

Creative

• Painting water at different heights can cause slight water plane “bleeding” on large slopes when placed directly next to each other. This can be fixed by smoothing the slope.
  
• Hard slope limits haven’t been introduced for terrain tools like raising and roughen, resulting in unnaturally sharp pillars or “spikes” if used excessively.
  
• Some terrain tools can be a little too quick at max intensity (raise, roughen).
  
• Forests can become overly dense at max brush intensity very quickly.
  
• Modular grid visualization can become offset. This is purely visual and does not alter the building mechanics.
  
• Due to its massive size, there can be unintended edge cases with the modular system. For more specific details, please refer to the GitHub.

Misc.

• Saving is still somewhat experimental! Please make multiple saves to ensure you do not lose progress.
  
• Cancelling actions can cause painted trees to disappear for a single frame.
  
• Paths can experience lots of visual artifacts, especially on slopes. This will improve throughout Alpha.

To report more issues or UX suggestions, please visit here.

Due to some issues we’ve disabled planar reflections until we can get them ready for general use. We’ve implemented makeshift screen-space reflections for now, though you may notice missing data in areas that should be reflected as black. This is a temporary workaround until more time can be spent on improving it.

There’s also a lot of audio and related systems to cover, which means certain actions like modular group duplication, water bodies and guest crowds are silent. Some of these areas will be updated with sounds during alpha support.

...

If you have any further questions, please be sure to contact Crytivo’s support or get in touch with us through Twitter, Facebook or Discord.

Thank you for all your support so far. For those of you joining us in the alpha, we hope you enjoy your time with it! Once everyone has had enough time to understand our tools and the way the game is played, we’re expecting to see some truly fantastic stuff.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome to our Alpha Information Update!

This is a quick post providing an update on key distribution and pre-orders. Please read this carefully as we want to ensure you receive your key in time for alpha on March 19th!

...

For those of you who purchased Ranger Alpha or the previous alpha tiers (Ranger, Tycoon) via the Crytivo store, you will be receiving new Steam keys in the coming days. Any existing keys you may have used will be revoked as new ones are going to be automatically assigned to your account.

To find your key, you’ll need to log into the Crytivo website using your account and proceed to the dashboard. In the games library you will be able to locate your new key for Prehistoric Kingdom.

Backers who bought through Kickstarter, please visit the Crytivo website. From here you will need to sign in and select Forgot Password, then enter the email address you used with Kickstarter. If you have already migrated your account in the past, this step isn’t necessary.

Once your account has been migrated, you can proceed to the dashboard. In the games library you will be able to locate your new key for Prehistoric Kingdom.

After March 19th, all tiers on the Crytivo store will no longer be available to pre-purchase. If you would like to be part of alpha and beta testing (or to simply grab a copy in advance), this is the final call until Early Access launches later this year.

...

If you have any further questions, please be sure to contact Crytivo’s support or get in touch with us through Twitter, Facebook or Discord.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome to February’s Development Update!

With much anticipation, it’s finally time to talk about alpha release plans and all the new content we’ve been working on behind the scenes. There’s a lot of important information in this one folks, so make sure you read it thoroughly.







Save the date, Prehistoric Kingdom’s alpha will be available March 19th!

Explore the game’s core creative systems and basic economy management with a mix of challenge and sandbox mode features. Get up close with the mighty Tyrannosaurus or the lovable Microraptor and design their habitats without environmental limits.

The initial alpha release includes the following:

• 6 Animals;
  Tyrannosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Lambeosaurus, Styracosaurus, Nasutoceratops and Microraptor, including alt skins or species.
  
  
• Multi-Level Pathfinding;
  Use the modular system to create corridors, platforms and ramps for your animals to navigate around.
  
  
• Various Behaviours;
  Animals can engage in a variety of basic behaviours like eating, drinking, grazing, resting, socialising and broadcasting. Some animals will be updated to include absent behaviours shortly after alpha’s release.

• Terraforming Suite;
  Carve the terrain with six distinct tools: raise, lower, smooth, flatten, roughen and erosion. Get your feet wet with up to three paintable water materials and varying depths.
  
  
• 4 Paintable Biomes;
  Tropical, Temperate, Scrubland and Wetland are available to paint terrain and forests with. Use the brush intensity to create subtle and stylish gradients between textures to add some more realism to the park.
  
  
• 13 Structures;
  Bring your Prehistoric Kingdom to life with a selection of buildings from the Animal Care, Infrastructure, Guest Facilities and Enclosure categories.
  
  
• 250+ Modular Items;
  Get custom with over 250 modular items, pieces and plants to build designs of your own specificity. Use the Modern styling to pick from 7 wall textures or 4 roof designs.
  
  
• Paths & Fences;
  Choose from 12 fences and 7 path materials using an intuitive spline-based construction system. Enable terraced fence placement to create a uniquely staggered look.
  
  
• Saving & Loading;
  Save your park and build it up over time. As with the nature of alpha, saved games will likely break upon entering beta and early access launch.

Due to more extensive development being required, some previously planned features like object/wall recoloring and undo/redo will be unavailable until beta or early access launch.

• Basic Economy;
  Provide for supply and demand with guest facilities and attractions. Offset the costs of construction, animal production and building upkeep by turning a profit.
  
  
• Basic Power Management;
  Connect and power your park with basic power management. Failure and reboot mechanics have been disabled for alpha.
  
  
• Basic Visitors;
  What’s a park without guests to wander the paths? Additional animations, AI, enhanced model variation and guest related gameplay will be arriving in beta and early access launch.

In terms of what you can expect for support during alpha, we’re only looking to tackle stability issues and bug fixes. We’ll be making note of player feedback and talking with the community the entire time, but any new or upcoming content we show in devlogs won’t be available until beta or early access release unless explicitly stated.

We’re treating alpha and beta as distinct milestones so that we’re not simultaneously implementing features and shipping them to a live branch without extensive internal testing or supporting content. By staggering additions between the two milestones we’re able to focus on feedback that’s specific to what we currently offer rather than diluting results.

...

• For alpha backers who went through Kickstarter, we’re currently trying to establish a reliable and automated distribution method to ensure contributors receive their key (and other rewards in the future). We will have specifics available prior to alpha’s release via a news update.
  
  
• Regarding general availability, we will eventually be removing the Alpha tier over on the Crytivo store. An announcement will be made to specify when exactly that’ll happen.
  
  
• Once purchased, there is no “end” to alpha playtime. It’s always accessible and will upgrade to the beta.
  
  
• Alpha isn’t the early access launch! That is arriving later in 2021.
  
  
• Screenshots, streams and videos from alpha can be shared! Show us what you’re making, we’d love to see it.

It’s almost time to release alpha and we couldn’t be more excited! Our VIPs have had access for a bit over a month now, leaving us with a lot of great feedback and creations to admire.

On the dev side of things, each part of the team has been creating, iterating and implementing a bunch of things so that they’re ready in time. Both planar reflections and water shading continue to improve and a whole bunch of audio has been implemented too, including an overhauled set of UI sounds.


Improved water rendering and reflections.

The visuals for our power management are starting to come together, as well. A change in color grading and some temporary but effective highlights for the power radius helps to show the range of generators to the player. These’ll get extra visual polish in the future, though they’re more than workable for now.

For our feathery friend, the Microraptor received new wing textures and an alula (a bird's “thumb”) to improve its fidelity and correct an anatomical issue.







With much excitement, we’re pleased to say that animals are now able to navigate modular buildings! This is a huge deal for us as we weren’t sure if it was something we’d be able to do. Thanks to one of our programmers, Matt, creatures can successfully walk around walls and utilize both ramps and platforms if the space is big enough.

We really wanted a level of interaction between modular pieces and our creatures, so to finally see it come to fruitition through pathfinding is simply fantastic.





As a result, there are so many more opportunities for creative builds. It can’t be understated how much of a game changer this is for the team (literally), and we cannot wait to see how players implement this functionality into their habitats.

Sound found its way to our vocalisation behaviours early in February, adding audio to the social call/response, sad and broadcast calls. We’ve created a short showcase video demonstrating the new animations and sounds for our Edmontosaurus. Take a look!



We’ve also been working on our distance model to help ground the distant sounds of broadcasts within the park and deliver important information like an animal in distress.

The field elm, oak and sabal palmetto were added to the temperate and scrubland biomes to introduce more verticality. We’re especially fond of the new palmetto, it’s great for honing in that prehistoric look.


The field elm (left) and oak (right).


Three size variants of the sabal palmetto.

Including all variants, this brings our number of foliage assets available in alpha up to 70.

Throughout February, we began implementing high quality custom wall and roof materials to replace our previous Modern texture set. Moving to a more advanced workflow (both in implementation and asset creation), this has allowed us to bring out a greater level of detail with a minimal performance trade off - increasing texture resolution by over two times.


Modern textures on the modular wall pieces (glass not shown).


Some of the wall and roof materials will become recolorable at a later date.

We’re aiming to transfer all of our existing buildings over to this new technique by alpha’s release so that Modern textures are one to one across the game.


All animals need a place to sleep and there’s no comfier spot than a hay bed! These items are used to define custom resting spots within a habitat or modular build.





Though the weakest of the bunch, Glass Fences are a stylish way to increase habitat visibility. They come in 1, 2.5 and 4 meter heights, making them the ideal window to another world.



Concrete Fences are strong, providing a thick slab of stone and internal steel to hold more aggressive animals. These come in 1, 2.5 and 4 meter variants.





Bringing the total up to 12 types, that’s all the modern fences for now. There are a few wall variants and new materials that we’d like to add down the line, but for the time being we’re quite content with the core lineup.



Brachiosaurus is one of the biggest dinosaurs coming in Early Access! With its neck fully raised, this gentle giant was almost 14 meters tall - a necessary adaptation for browsing trees.






Created by Dinobob.


Created by Dinomans.


Created by bautii.

...

Thank you for reading February’s devlog!

Make sure you follow our social platforms to stay up to date with all things Prehistoric Kingdom. Remember, March 19th is the big day for our alpha release! We look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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