Welcome, park managers!

This update has taken longer than we initially expected. We wanted to make sure we could reasonably polish new game mechanics while working on Early Access release features, and marketing in parallel. We apologise for the delay and hope you all enjoy the new update.

• NEW: Challenge & Sandbox Mode
  • Challenge and Sandbox are now separately available through the ‘New Game’ button within the main menu. Players are also able to create and set completely custom Sandbox games.
    
    A map selection screen has been added under the ‘New Game’ menu.

• NEW: Animal Welfare
  • Animals will now poop after eating, lowering the Cleanliness of the habitat.
    
  • Animals now require ideal paddock size and crowding, water, forest, biomes and cleanliness.

• NEW: Exhibit Score, Donations & Science Points
  • Improve the state of your habitat by watching out for animal welfare and working to maximize its potential Exhibit Score, increasing donations and science points production.
    
    To find an exhibit’s score, simply select the perimeter fence of a habitat.
    
  • Science points are used to unlock new dig sites and animals. You can collect them passively over time. Improve your habitats to improve science points production.

• NEW: Habitat Maintenance
  • Place a Dung Beetle Nest (found in Animal Care > Enrichment) to automatically clean paddocks.
    
  • Manually clean habitats by selecting the perimeter fence of an exhibit and pressing the clean action at the bottom of the menu.

• Animals
  • NEW ANIMAL: Iguanodon
    
  • NEW ANIMAL: Brachiosaurus
    
  • Added new additive animations to all the existing rigs
    
  • Brought back sleeping, grazing, broadcasting and running behaviors for all animals
  
  
• Levels
  • Added a new playable temperate map set in the UK
  
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added a new wooden fence: Tropical Bamboo
    
  • Added 1x1, 1x2 and 1x4 wall pieces
    
  • Added pillar wall pieces
    
  • New Prefab: Large Planter Modern 1 - found in Modular Pieces > Gardening
    
  • New Prefab: Large Planter Natural 1 - found in Modular Pieces > Gardening
    
  • New Prefab: Large Planter Natural 2 - found in Modular Pieces > Gardening
    
  • New Prefab: Large Planter Tropical 1 - found in Modular Pieces > Gardening
    
  • New Prefab: Animal House Backstage - found in Animal Care > Housing
    
  • New Prefab: Large Animal Stables - found in Animal Care > Housing
  
  
  
  
• Foliage
  • Arrowwood (x1)
    
  • Field Elm (x2)
    
  • Oak (x2)
    
  • Paper Birch (x4)
  
• Construction
  • Added the Path replacement feature
• UI/UX
  • Added state icons tied to various gameplay elements (e.g. lack of power in the park, animal placement, etc.)
    
  • Added ability to set the park name through the Management Menu, in the Overview section
    
  • Clicking on a biome icon in the animal habitat menu or enclosure habitat menu will automatically open the Landscaping Menu with the right biome settings
• Audio
  • Added night and dawn chorus ambience to the Scrubland map
    
  • Added Elephant family sounds to Mammoth
    
  • Additional vocal sfx and foley for Sauropods
    
  • Additional vocal sfx variation for Protoceratops
    
  • Additional modular sfx variation for wood materials
• Music
  • Added dynamic layering to certain music tracks; layers will come in or out based on the time of day, construction frequency, and animal proximity.
• Options
  • Added Anti-Alias Options: Off, FXAA, SMAA, TAA and CTAA
    
  • Added a ‘Controls’ section to the options menu, allowing users to set custom key bindings for the game’s controls

• Animals
  • Reduced vitality needs drain speeds for most species
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Adjusted vegetation color for plant feeders
    
  • Adjusted Concrete Path coloration
    
  • Adjusted emissive sign brightness
• Foliage
  • Painted foliage now adapts to terraforming changes, aligning to the underlying terrain
    
  • Every click or brush stroke will now place at least 1 foliage element
    
  • Adjusted amazonian and water lily colors
    
  • Adjusted kapok colors
    
  • Adjusted translucency of birch, sabal palmetto, coconut palm, kapok and samanea trees
  UI/UX
  • Overhauled game economy - decreased structure build and upkeep costs where applicable, while tying in exhibit donations and amenity income to the overall park balance. Hopefully these changes are going to make running a Challenge mode park a much more enjoyable experience
    
  • Players can now carry terraforming operations while having items selected
    
  • Improved animal navmesh visuals
    
  • Improved background visibility for the Options Menu
    
  • Slowed item scrolling speed in the building toolbox
    
  • Added a smoothing effect to the start of item rotation, allowing for finer degrees rotations
    
  • Canceling a spline (fence/path) action while building a segment doesn’t completely disable the action, but instead will start a new action for a smoother experience
    
  • Removed ability to select modular pieces from separate groups while editing a group - only the pieces within the edited group are now selectable
    
  • Saved games can now load the correct month progress, which was previously overwritten
    
  • Reworked progress bar logic on the loading screen. This should more accurately display how close you are to finishing loading
• Rendering
  • Generally improved ambient coloring and color grading - color grading especially is now map specific, with the default scrubland level receiving a much warmer overall coloration
    
  • Vastly improved night and sunset rendering
    
  • Vastly improved shadow quality at most quality settings
    
  • Improved SSR Scaling at lower settings
    
  • Improved water depth interpolation - dramatically reduced sharp lines on the water’s surface where it shines, and in shallow water
    
  • Warmed up default sunlight colors
    
  • Tweaked quality presets to improve perf/quality balance
    
  • Increased post-processing vignette
    
  • Increased grass brightness in shaded areas
    
  • Improved loose rain streaks appearance when overlaying water shores
    
  • Rolled grass graphics back to Alpha level (purely a cosmetic change, with no major impact to gameplay or performance). Grass graphics are something we’re still playing with, so expect these to change and improve over time
    
  • Auto exposure now updates regardless of time scale, resolving over-exposed shots
    
  • Rocks now get glossier during rainfall
    
  • Improved glass fence reflectivity
• Audio
  • General mix adjustments
    
  • Entity sounds while in Management View are now louder with flatter dynamics
    
  • Time speed up audio cue now fades away
    
  • Updated sfx for small and medium plant placement
    
  • Updated sfx for dead, medium and large tree placement
    
  • Random bird calls on modular tree placement are now based on level biome
• Input
  • Re-binded right click drag to camera panning, whereas it was previously set to camera rotation

• Critical
  • Fixed a save/load bug that caused save times to always default to Year 1
• Animals
  • Fixed Camarasaurus not being able to eat from the tall pole feeder
• Foliage
  • Fixed selectability for Scots Pine 2 and 3
• UX/GUI
  • Fixed several selection graphic events conflicting with management view
    
  • Fixed nursery menu scrollbar defaulting to lowest available position
    
  • Fixed main board GUI sliding animation issues
    
  • Fixed a new game initialization issue that prevented the help menu from showing up
    
  • Fixed a bug that caused the animals to not play their walking animation within the nursery preview
    
  • Fixed nursery menu sort order, now displaying the nursery menu in front of any selected GUIs
    
  • Disabled access to incomplete land value management view
    
  • Fixed water intensity always defaulting to its max value, now the landscaping intensity slider will remember the last set amount
    
  • Fixed Loading Menu masking issue with loading buttons
    
  • Fixed spelling mistakes on various text elements and tooltips
    
  • Fixed a coloring menu issue where copying a color into the hex input field would result in a slightly different color
    
  • Fixed an indexing issue that caused the management overview menu’s labels to break after the first year
    
  • Fixed main menu GUI scaling issues
    
  • Fixed excavations world map jitter issues
• Audio
  • Fixed sky wind audio not looping
    
  • Fixed group placement audio not including foliage sounds
    
  • Fixed Camarasaurus not playing walking growls
    
  • Fixed Camarasaurus not playing foley while eating
    
  • Fixed Deinocheirus not breathing while sleeping
    
  • Fixed rain impact layers playing on animals not near the camera
    
  • Fixed Edmontosaurus and Lambeosaurus Nursery audio
    
  • Fixed action canceling sound event only triggering for modular actions
• Music
  • Fixed nursery theme not playing while in the nursery menu

• Massively optimized fence rendering
  
• Significant GPU optimizations for prepass rendering
  
• Small CPU optimizations for selection rendering
  
• Slight CPU optimizations for general rendering
  
• Fixed GUI related bug that caused massive lag spikes at certain times of day while having a group selected
  
• Slight rendering optimization for rain particle effects
  
• Considerable optimization for guest AI calculations
  
• Optimized sunset and sunrise rendering speed

• If you are working with an OLD SAVE, please read the following:
  
  • Due to the addition of exhibit statistics, old paddocks will need their perimeter fencing rebuilt
    
  • A new navmesh has been added for giant animals like the Brachiosaurus. Old saves do not have this mesh which will result in giant animals walking through visually innaccessible areas
• Brachiosaurus can have issues drinking. We are looking into this.
  
• A number of additive animations and returning behaviours do not have audio. This will be addressed in hotfixes and the launch update
  
• There is a known issue that unrealistically lowers the game to 10-15 FPS. If this occurs, please restart the game.
  
• There is a known issue that causes prefab icons to load empty or white (this does not affect the actual prefabs!). If this occurs, please restart the game.

A hotfix patch will be arriving in a few days to address various issues.

Thumbnail screenshot from Discord user Grimnir.

Save the date, Park Managers! PREHISTORIC KINGDOM stomps into Early Access April 27th 2022, available for $29.99 USD!

The full Early Access trailer will premiere next week on April 21st, narrated by the one and only Nigel Marven. Showcasing all the prehistoric animals featured in the upcoming release and our 3 playable maps, you won't want to miss this long awaited overview of Prehistoric Kingdom’s Early Access! Keep a look-out on our socials for the big reveal.

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Welcome to the March Update!

In this month’s post we’ll be sharing some new features that will be introduced before Early Access launch, and briefly discussing some technical challenges we’ve had to overcome before the next update is released.



Due to unfortunately-timed technical issues over the last few weeks, we had to delay the long-awaited poop update.

Most of the content for the patch is now finished and currently being tested. We've merged the next two main updates together, but some final implementations will still need to be completed before the patch and new features are ready to go live. Closed Beta players can expect this update shortly, before Early Access is released in April.

If you weren’t already aware, a public roadmap highlighting some of our upcoming plans can be found over on Trello and has been updated to align with our current plan for Closed Beta and Early Access launch.

...

Let’s take a look into some of the headlining features coming in the Closed Beta 0.4 update. Like all patches, the full changelog will be available on Steam upon its release.

Coming to Closed Beta is Brachiosaurus! This colossal creature will certainly draw plenty of guests to your park to witness its towering scale.




Big thumbs up for Iguanodon! Even with its unconventional looks, we think this classic duck-billed herbivore will become a fan favourite in every park.




A number of new additive animations have also been included for all the animals in Beta. These play while wandering around and add a bit more life to the creatures.

In 0.4, the first wave of animal welfare will make its way into your parks. Players will need to tend to the unique habitat requirements of each species and ensure they have access to food sources.

With food there must also come poop, a detractor in habitat cleanliness and score. You can read more about poop mechanics in our previous blog post.



Failing to care for welfare will lower a paddock’s exhibit score and the park rating, making it harder to make money and science points.

In the future, poor animal welfare will lead to illness and eventually death.

By clicking on a habitat's perimeter fence, players can view its Exhibit Score and Habitat statistics. It’s here that you’ll find information on how well designed a paddock is, how large it is, and more.

At the beginning of each month, players will be rewarded the total worth of Exhibit Score in the park via Science Points. This resource can be spent unlocking animals or skins in the Excavations menu.

Bring prehistory back to the United Kingdom with the all new Temperate map. 9 new foliage variants have also been included to expand the visual diversity of our Temperate line up.


Temporary foliage cover.

You can also see our recently added State Icons in the image above, communicating facilities or paddocks in need of attention.

Beginning in Beta 0.4, players will be able to start a Challenge or Sandbox game from the updated New Game menu. Customizable settings available in the patch include:

• Starting Cash (includes infinite toggle)
  
• Starting Science Points (includes infinite toggle)
  
• Infinite Power
  
• Animal Habitat Welfare
  
• Unlock All Animals

More options will be added to Sandbox as new mechanics are introduced. All previous saves will be converted to Sandbox mode upon the arrival of Beta 0.4 for compatibility reasons.


...

Set in the sunny paradise of Costa Rica, the upcoming Tropical map provides stunning scenery and deep, humid forests perfect for your prehistoric menagerie. This locale will be available at the launch of Early Access.



Like we teased last month, Psittacosaurus will be coming to Early Access with three distinct species; each donning various facial horns and spikes. Today, we’re revealing the biggest species, P. sibiricus!



Of course, it’d be a missed opportunity to not give you all another look at the smallest parrot lizard, Psittacosaurus sp. The team hopes you’re just as excited as we are to watch these little gremlins wander their habitats.



You asked for help. We listened. An introductory tutorial will be included with the Early Access launch and narrated by the legend himself, Nigel Marven. This tutorial will be a masterclass in Prehistoric Kingdom basics; from Animal Welfare to Turning A Profit - you’ll be an expert Park Manager in no time!

Speaking of Nigel, at launch, he’ll also be providing players with an assortment of facts (over 90 lines!) for all your newly bred species. Occasionally, he may even pop up when revisiting old species to provide more information.

Below you can hear an early preview of meeting our lovely Parasaurolophus for the first time, featuring one of three facts. There’s a bunch of audio processing and effects yet to be done, but we thought we’d showcase a little bit of the dialogue before the game’s release next month.



In time, we’ll be expanding the dialogue to include alerts and pointing out potential problems with the park.

The team’s very interested in creating additional characters for Prehistoric Kingdom and developing playable scenarios beyond the initial tutorial, so we hope you enjoy your first taste at what could be!

Finally, we’re very excited to share that the release date for Early Access will be announced in a new trailer coming out next month! We want to thank everyone for their patience and assure you all that Early Access is still scheduled to be released in late April 2022, so keep an eye on our socials for the new trailer premiere!



Created by Mrs TeaRex.


Created by Warpath.


Created by Mr.Mugman.

...

Thank you for reading March’s dev diary!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this month's development update. Our team has been working incredibly hard in the lead up to Early Access as we eagerly await the next chapter to Prehistoric Kingdom that can be shared with everyone worldwide!

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome to the February Update!

In today’s post we’ll be exploring parts of our next Beta update and delving into what our busy team’s been working on. If you weren’t already aware, a public roadmap highlighting some of our upcoming plans can be found over on Trello.



Extra wall pieces and pillars will soon be added in our next update, allowing for new shapes and wall combinations. In addition to pillar pieces for all the wall materials, players will also be greeted to 1x1, 1x2 and 1x4 panels to create more intricate parts in their builds.




As you can see above, there are a number of unique pillar models depending on their assigned material.

In our next update, players will need to consider the welfare of their animals and the quality of their habitat. Beyond expected necessities like food and water, Exhibit Cleanliness is a new and important feature with big consequences for your overall exhibit and zoo rating.

While pooping, animals will drop small dung particles onto the ground and create mounds. While the particles disappear after a short amount of time, dung mounds will build up over time as animals continue to poop nearby. Players can minimise poops by supplying High Quality feed to their creatures.



Excessive faeces can greatly detract from a paddock’s Exhibit Score and will begin to make animals unhappy.



To manage Exhibit Cleanliness, players can either schedule a habitat for cleaning or employ some very lovable friends; the Dung Beetles! Found within the Animal Care category, the Dung Beetle Nest is a small item that will automatically clean piles of poop within its radius.



Park Managers wanting to operate large income zoo's will need to pay attention to their Exhibit Scores, a new value used to keep track of how attractive a habitat is to visitors. Higher scores lead to better donations and collectable science points.


UI Concept Art with placeholder numbers.

To maximise Exhibit Score, players have a number of options at their disposal:

• Total Animal Ratings: the collective value of all animals in the habitat.
  
• Decorations: the number of decorative scenery objects in the habitat.
  
• Ecology: housing animals from the same time period and country.

These perks can be offset by poor exhibit management, however. Visible dung, carcasses and repeated species found elsewhere in the park will drop the overall Exhibit Score.

Players must also attempt to maximise the Total Welfare and Visibility of a habitat to secure the best possible Exhibit Score.

With Early Access just around the corner the team continues to collect important feedback, improving gameplay experience through updates and prepping for Early Access launch. It’s been wonderful to see the community grow over the last few months and we can’t wait for everyone to have access to Prehistoric Kingdom!

We’re currently looking for additional animators to join the team and help further develop Prehistoric Kingdom. If you’re interested in working on creature animation, please send your portfolio over to us on Twitter via DMs or to our email address (info@prehistorickingdom.com).

So, what’s coming beyond the next update? Right now, our environment team is hard at work on the upcoming Temperate map (British, ‘innit). 9 foliage variants will be arriving alongside the new locale, offering more variety for the temperate biome.



We’re also very pleased to finally unveil the long awaited Psittacosaurus redux. These little critters will be available in one of our final updates before launching into Early Access, arriving with three alternate species. We can’t wait for you to meet them all!






Created by SimplySavannah.


Created by Warpath.


Created by So_Bad.

...

Thank you for reading February’s dev diary!

We expect the next update for Closed Beta to launch in Early March, with Early Access scheduled for a late April release.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome to the December & January Development Update!

Happy New Year, 2022! In this combined Dev Diary we'll be discussing December’s Closed Beta improvements and some exciting future developments for upcoming major game updates.

After our short holiday break, the team is back preparing new content that’ll be ready to drop during February.



While we work on introducing Animal Welfare into the game’s current beta build, new animal feeders (Blood Pumpkin & Fruit Block) provide enrichment for the animals at your prehistoric zoo.



There are a number of new additions to building items for creative builders to expand their guest facilities. Additional doors, lights, tables and chairs have now been included as Modular Pieces.

Enjoy more trees and plants with the new Boreal Biome and all its substrates: Snow, Withered Grass, Gravel & Rock. This new scenery addition inspired many Winter Wonderland parks over the festive season.

This update also saw the addition of the Douglas Fir, Alaskan Cedar, Alpine Currant and Alpine Bearberry.



The PK team is expanding! In December we welcomed new members to the team to speed up production and to increase our social media presence. With Early Access in April (only a few months away!) we’ll continue to provide regular content updates to get direct feedback and thoughts from the community that have Closed Beta access.

Animal socializing and behaviors will play a big part in managing a successful zoo and keeping your prehistoric animals happy! We're very eager to introduce our animal welfare mechanics in the lead up to Early Access and continue to flesh out their presence in the park.

As a start, the team’s currently working on exhibit management features such as dung. Everybody poops, and your prehistoric animals are no exception.


Some herbivore dung. This is some crappy work!

In terms of gamemodes, we’ve begun creating dedicated Challenge and Sandbox experiences alongside our new map selection screen. From here, players will pick where in the world they want to build their Prehistoric Kingdom and how they want to play.



Finally, Prehistoric Kingdom will soon be greeted by a returning species that our animal artists have taken extra care in developing. Players with access to the Closed Beta can look out for this creature in one of the upcoming major game updates before Early Access launch.


Weird looking cat.



Created by Warpath.


Created by Bumbee.


Created by Draco Agamicus.

...

Thank you for reading December-January’s dev diary!

We’d like to thank all of our current players for providing their feedback in this crucial stage of development. We have many exciting weeks ahead, and we can't wait to share everything with you!

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome, park managers!

With Christmas officially upon us, we felt there was no better way to close 2021 off with a festive holidays content patch!

• Animals
  
  • New Animal Enrichment: Blood Pumpkin
    
  • New Animal Enrichment: Frozen Fruit Block
• Buildings & Scenery
  
  • New Guest Facilities: Modern Table (x4)
    
  • New Props: Table Umbrella (x2)
    
  • New Official Prefabs: Shaded Table Modern (x4)
    
    
  • Lamp Decorative Hanging (x2)
    
  • Lamp Decorative Straight (x2)
    
  • Lamp Decorative Vertical (x2)
• Foliage
  
  • Alaskan Yellow Cedar (x3)
    
  • Douglas Fir (x3)
    
  • Alpine Bearberry (x3)
    
  • Alpine Currant (x3)
• Biomes
  • Added the Boreal Biome with all its substrates: Snow, Withered Grass, Gravel & Rock
• Audio
  • Speeding up time will now play time-specific sound events for better feedback

• Buildings & Scenery
  • Introduced collision checks for bins, benches, and tables
    
  • Decreased default scale for Wheelbarrow
• Foliage
  • Updated icons for Scrubland foliage
• Rendering
  • Reduced bright blue hues in the screen-space reflections
    
  • Reflection probes now account for clouds
    
  • Generally improved water rendering, particularly sky color reflection accuracy
    
  • Improved underwater graphics
• Audio
  • Certain entity sounds now remain audible when time is sped up e.g. animal growls, calls, etc.
    
  • General mix adjustments for when the game is sped up

• Critical
  • Fixed power node refreshing events to trigger at the expected times - previous performance improvements had accidentally messed this up
    
  • Should have fixed a critical selection error that caused double clicking to lock up player input
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed saved light coloring resetting on new placement
• Rendering
  • Resolved distant atmospheric flickering
    
  • Fixed downscaled resolution for underwater effects
    
  • Fixed animal outline popping up on demolition actions
• Construction
  • Fixed flashing grid on modular action end
• UX
  • Fixed weather transitions not applying correctly on different timescales

• Slightly improved performance of rain particle effects
  
• Improved water CPU efficiency

The team will take a short winter vacation, but we'll be back in full swing come early January, so see everybody then!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Welcome, park managers!

In this small patch we've targeted some main optimizations that should hopefully scale decently well with larger builds, as well as some much requested quality of life features.
The work on those fronts doesn't end here however: high on our priorities are further guest and animal optimizations, as well as better gameplay integrations of existing systems - power is on the line for further updates, with the eventual inclusion of status pop-ups making game readability more straight forward.

• Foliage
  • Bald Cypress (x4)
    
  • Swamp Beech (x1)
• UI/UX
  • Added keybind for quick modular grid toggle - G
    
  • Added a GUI tooltip to modular actions, giving users better indication of the current modular action being performed
    
  • Added modular attaching functionality - a new piece will automatically be added to a group if its placement is in collision range
• Audio
  • Large ornithomimid family sounds added to Deinocheirus
    
  • Vocalization audio added to Parasaurolophus
    
  • Surface interaction foley added to large theropod and ornithomimid rest/sleep animations
    
  • Nursery preview audio added to Camarasaurus, Deinocheirus, Torvosaurus, Mammoth, Pachyrhinosaurus, Parasaurolophus and Protoceratops

• UI/UX
  • The building menu toolbox is now enabled by default, regardless of current player activity
    
  • The modular styling toolbox is now enabled by default whenever the player cycles through modular selection. Hopefully this will make it easier to access the full range of material editing
    
  • Added ability to double click a modular group to quickly begin editing mode and select the hovered piece
    
  • Increased max. amount of styles displayed in the modular styling GUI to 5, allowing players to change more than one material at once on a broader piece selection
    
  • Generally revamped UX for the modular power status, it should now be much easier to accurately read upon the energy status of a group
    
  • Enabled quick nursery shortcut found in the Nursery Holder menu
• Rendering
  • Updated several biomes grass colors

• Critical
  • Fixed critical modular group data caching issues, which led to incorrect power readings in the past, among others
• Graphics
  • Fixed black splotches on the distant ocean
• AI & Animals
  • Fixed animals walking on the spot
• UI/UX
  • Fixed issue that caused Escape input events to trigger at the wrong time for modular group deselection
    
  • Fixed issue that prevented the building menu to reset properly if it was upscaled
    
  • Fixed bug that caused selection outlines to disappear on piece redo, if the group was selected

• Fixed some null logging for the animals, players should see slightly better animal optimization
  
• Improved modular rendering efficiency, with larger park performance scaling slightly better. At the same time, rendering queues should now clear out if complex groups are not rendering anymore.
  
• Optimized several CPU processes, mostly tied to modular groups and power processing. CPU usage on larger parks should be smaller
  
• Improved grass CPU performance

We hope you'll enjoy this update! We've got another patch planned for the next few days, to coincide with current festivities. Afterwards, the team is gonna be taking a holiday break, with regular updates returning in January.

Happy Holidays!

Welcome, park managers!

Thank you all so much for your feedback over the first week of Beta. We'll be working hard to add new content and improve Prehistoric Kingdom before our Early Access release in April, 2022.

• Buildings & Scenery
  
  • Backstage Door 1
    
  • Backstage Door 2
    
  • Modern Door 1
    
  • Modern Door 2
    
  • Modern Door 3
    
  • Rustic Door 1
    
  • Rustic Door 2
    
  • Rustic Door 3
    
    
  • FX Fire
    
  • FX Waterfall & Splash
    
  • FX Smoke
• Foliage
  • Redwood variants (2, 3, 4)
    
  • Scots Pine variants (2, 3)
• Construction
  • Added Ctrl+A as a keybind to quickly select all the pieces inside an edited group
    
  • Added quick modular object scaling functionality - hold Left Alt to scale an object, tap to reset its scale
• Audio
  
  • Small Ceratopsian family sounds added to Protoceratops
    
  • Readded foliage painting audio
• Music
  
  • Added new idle/wonder track

• Animals
  
  • Improved animal pathfinding at lower framerates
• Buildings & Scenery
  
  • Removed noise from rough statue material
    
  • Reduced emissive brightness of brand signs
• Foliage
  
  • Adjusted horsetail shading and impostors
• UX/Balance
  
  • Updated Help menu text to include Excavations and remove Alpha references
    
  • Added quick Excavations access toggle on the left side of the screen
    
  • Reduced excavation sites purchasing costs
    
  • Increased income from guest facility usage
    
  • Fixed UI issue that caused the wrong cost to be displayed in the preview panel of some modular items
    
  • Added ability to disable weather transitions through the weather menu
    
  • Set item rotation snap default to disabled
• Rendering
  
  • Adjusted fog distances and general level haziness
    
  • Adjusted grass color saturation and alpha cutoff
    
  • Adjusted AO effects
• Audio
  
  • 3D sound size now shrinks over distance to better spatialize animals when not up-close
    
  • Adjusted distance attenuation on small Ceratopsian sounds
    
  • Reduced volume of sleeping Mini-Aviary creatures
    
  • Random wildlife now use distant reverb instead of local area
• Music
  
  • Soundtrack volume should be more consistent across tracks

• Critical
  
  • Loading a new level will now reset the terrain, setting a much prettier scenery overall
• Buildings & Scenery
  
  • Fixed wrong pieces on the round stone walls
    
  • Fixed inverted normals on the vertical wooden wall style
• Construction
  
  • Fixed a critical issue that caused prefab placement corruption
    
  • Fixed issue that caused mini aviary animals to disappear once the mini aviary style is changed
    
  • Fixed modular grid graphic sizing issue
• UX
  
  • Save game previews now display a more accurate overview of the park, including rendered modular items
    
  • Fixed animal naming
    
  • Fixed modular grid graphic offset when entering modular edit mode
    
  • Fixed issue causing the animal navmesh preview graphics to get stuck when exiting overview mode
    
  • Fixed screenshot mode initializing with wrong values
• Audio
  
  • Fixed random wildlife layers not panning left and right
    
  • Fixed issue that caused action audio to get stuck on a loop
    
  • Fixed item placement not sending to stereo reverb channels
• Music
  
  • Fixed soundtrack carrying over into the main menu
    
  • Fixed soundtrack cutting out during musical pauses or low dynamics

• Improved rendering performance during night-time, framerate should now be more consistent regardless of time of day
  
• Reduced drawing distances for some items, this should hopefully improve performance for lower end machines
  
• Reduced shadow cascade count, creating a slight rendering performance boost
  
• Slightly reduced overall rendering cost of clouds, while improving lower setting cloud graphics

VFX particles currently render through fog, creating odd depth issues depending on the viewing angle and weather conditions. As this is an issue relating to the engine, we do not have an ETA for a fix, though placing solid objects behind particles (e.g. rocks) can help to alleviate depth problems.

Thumbnail screenshot from Discord user Warpth.

Welcome, park managers!

Closed Beta is finally here! This latest release offers a unique array of species, building tools, decorative items and more. For a more indepth look at what’s included and how eligible backers can access Beta, check out our previous blog post. If you’re interested in some of the highlights, read on!

• 14 Animals
  Discover Archaeopteryx, Camarasaurus, Deinocheirus, Edmontosaurus, Lambeosaurus, Microraptor, Nasutoceratops, Pachyrhinosaurus, Protoceratops, Parasaurolophus, Torvosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Styracosaurus and the Woolly Mammoth.
  
  
• Expanded Creativity
  A number of additions and changes have been made to the modular building system including recolorable items, point snapping, reworked styling, foliage painting and over 150 new pieces.
  
  
• Prefabs
  Edit and build with a number of official prefabs! Get creative and build your own using the highly customizable modular building system.
  
  
• Day/Night Cycle & Weather
  Watch the days go by with the freshly added day/night cycle and weather systems.

The game will receive numerous tweaks, hotfixes and content updates to get Prehistoric Kingdom ready for Early Access launch. Though this process will require some patience, we’re very excited to work with the community in developing the game further.

The importance of good management and a rounded, core gameplay loop is something we certainly haven’t forgotten about as it’s essential to any great simulation game. We’d like to have done more, but we simply aren't where we wanted to be due to budgetary constraints. Currently, development feels the fastest it’s been because of our improved circumstances and ability to pay for more of the team’s time.

If you’re interested in seeing what’s in the works for Prehistoric Kingdom, you can visit our new Trello page to view the biggest content updates coming before Early Access launch.



In the meantime, here’s just some of the ongoing improvements we’ll be making in the next few weeks:

• Animal Improvements
  We’ll be focusing on polishing animals across the board, tidying up their IKs, improving pathfinding and adding new behaviours/animations. The team’s committed to fleshing out our animals and doing the best we can to make them feel alive. What’s a zoo game without great animals?
  
  
• Modular Improvements
  Due to completely overhauling the modular system, some quality of life features like box select are unavailable. We’re aware that this can be very inconvenient for a lot of builders so we'll be working hard to resolve these issues as quickly as possible.
  
  VFX Particles have also been temporarily disabled due to incompatibilities with the modular prefabs. These will be readded very soon!
  
  
• Further Audio Integration
  There are a number of missing or temporary audio elements for animals, modular items and various actions. Underwater audio has been disabled until it can activate reliably.
  
  
• Power Management Visuals
  Power management visualization graphics are currently missing due to system changes and need to be reimplemented. We’ve disabled power outages/reboot mechanics until we can better communicate this to players.
  
  
• Tree Implementation
  Wetland trees are currently missing due to system changes and need to be reimplemented. After some color tweaks and an optimization pass, they should be back in your games as soon as possible. Boreal foliage is completely absent and will be re-added at a later update with brand new assets.
  
  
• Foliage Painting & Path Undo/Redo
  Paths are the last major system left to be supported by undo/redo and could not be finished in time for Beta’s launch. As we very recently finished moving foliage painting over to the modular system, it is also not supported by undo/redo.
  
  
• Save/Load Times
  Larger parks may experience long load times with a dense modular piece count. This issue is being investigated, so we’ve temporarily reduced the object density of our starting map to keep load times down.
  
  
• Performance Improvements
  Excessive lights can lead to decreased performance at night. There are a lot of optimizations that still need to be made to a number of systems.

...

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.

We hope those who play have fun and enjoy what’s currently available in Beta. The team is very eager to improve the game and add new content and management opportunities.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Welcome to November’s Development Update!

In today’s post, we’ll be discussing some of Beta’s day one content and how to access it. Prehistoric Kingdom’s Closed Beta will be arriving on December 6th with an expected launch time of 1PM PST.

• If you are an eligible backer or early adopter who does not yet have Prehistoric Kingdom in their Steam library, please make a Crytivo account with the EXACT email you used to back the game on Kickstarter. You will be given a Steam key on December 6th.
  
• If you already own Prehistoric Kingdom in your Steam library, the game will automatically update to Beta on December 6th.

• 14 Animals
  Archaeopteryx, Camarasaurus, Deinocheirus, Edmontosaurus, Lambeosaurus, Microraptor, Nasutoceratops, Pachyrhinosaurus, Protoceratops, Parasaurolophus, Torvosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Styracosaurus and the Woolly Mammoth.
  
  
• Basic Needs
  Animals need to eat and drink! Provide them with feeders and water sources to stop them from going extinct. Again.
  
  
• New Pathfinding & Animations
  Animals now turn dynamically as part of their wandering behaviour, introducing noise and variation to their walking patterns.
  
  A handful of animals such as the Tyrannosaurus also have new additive and idle behaviours like scratching, sniffing and many more. These behaviours will be given to other animals over time to expand their liveliness.

• Modular System Rewrite
  The modular system has been completely rewritten from the ground up with efficient render optimizations and feature flexibility in mind.
  
  Our previous iteration could not support the full scope of our planned additions, especially when concerning prefabs and performance. Though modular performance on day one may not feel that different from alpha, it’s far more scalable in the long term.
  
  
• Modules
  Modules are new modular pieces that provide function and utility within the park. These can include guest kiosks, dynamic animal statues, animal nurseries, power generators and more.
  
  With 10 Modules available in Beta, fully custom and interactive buildings are now a reality for Prehistoric Kingdom.
  
  
• Modular Prefabs
  Build and create modular prefabs for easy use in your park and other saves! Share with your friends by uploading your builds online (Steam Workshop support coming later).
  
  Official prefabs are also available for those who are less creatively-inclined. We’ll be expanding and improving official prefabs as more pieces are added to the game.
  
  
• Modular Styling Improvements
  Styling has been reworked for better use and reliability. Contextually swap themes, materials and mesh variants at the click of a button!
  
  
• Modular Recoloring
  Show your inner artist with modular recoloring! A staggering amount of items are recolorable, with many including multiple masks and patterns. The world is truly your canvas.
  
  
• Modular Point Snapping
  Place pieces on or within modular grid corners with the new point snap utility. Perfect for railings, pillars, beams and more. We think a lot of builders will take a quick liking to this feature!
  
  
• Modular Foliage Painting
  Thanks to community feedback, the foliage brush has been completely overhauled. Featuring snazzy new painting and removal animations, players can now paint modular trees directly onto the terrain. Move, scale and rotate to your heart's content!
  
  Depending on what trees are toggled in the UI, players can selectively remove certain plants from their painted environments without the fear of destroying everything - very useful for dense scenes like forests.
  
  
• New Themes, Styles & Items
  Over 150 new items have been added to Beta (500+ total!) along with over 60 different styles found across a number of modules and customizable pieces. There’s a lot of content to sink your teeth into and this number will only continue to grow throughout Beta and beyond.
  
  
• Undo/Redo
  With undo and redo, no mistake is permanent. Fences, paths, terrain, water and the modular system all support this much needed feature.

• Finances
  On the surface, the financial management isn’t too dissimilar from Alpha, though the groundwork for future gameplay integrations with loans and exhibit donations has been laid out. It’s there, but it’ll see more substantial use as Beta improves.
  
  
• Excavations
  Use science points to unlock new animals and genetic skins with excavations! Discover new dig sites by increasing the park’s rating.
  
  
• Basic Science Points
  Passively accumulate science points over time to unlock new species. This system will receive a large update during beta once exhibit scoring has been implemented.

...

Thank you for reading November’s dev diary!

We hope you’re just as excited as us to begin the journey into Beta. We’ll be providing the community with a follow-up post on December 6th, so stay tuned for that.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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