Welcome, Park Managers!

This follow up patch to Update 11 addresses some of the more immediate feedback given by the community. Additional patches are soon to come!



Amongst various changes to balance, guests and staff (particularly regarding travel speed and exploration distance), we've added a Sandbox conversion tool to Challenge Mode! This should help players whose parks are impacted by balance or calculation adjustments made throughout Early Access.

Going to Settings > Gameplay will now display the sandbox conversion button.



For more information about what other changes are coming in the next few weeks, please read our previous Dev Diary. Thanks!

• Animation issues with human props are still present
  
• The newly introduced fence-end arrows appear on load. Placing a fence and cancelling will make them disappear!
  
• Some visitors may disobey gravity at higher altitudes and continue walking forwards
  
• Staff wages may be having too big an impact on the economy, so we'll be awaiting feedback on that
  
• The sandbox toggles for staff and logistics are NOT currently implemented! Though the buttons have snuck into the build, we are still working on them and are being targeted for release ASAP.

• NEW GAMEPLAY OPTION: Convert to Sandbox
  When running a Challenge Mode game, going to Settings > Gameplay will now display a sandbox conversion button, allowing players to rescue problematic challenge games and continue in peace

• Balance
  • Increased starting cash when beginning a new Challenge game
    
  • Increased profitability of kiosks and restaurants by 200%
    
  • Reduced the placement cost of staff gates, park services, logistics and animal care modules
    
  • Reduced the upkeep cost of staff gates, park services and storage modules
    
  • Increased the placement cost of Loading Bays to $125,000
    
  • Increased the upkeep cost of Restaurants and Shop Large modules to $500
    
  • Small Donation Boxes now cap out at $3000 instead of $50,000
    
  • Compost Heap now converts 8kg of dung into 4kg of compost
• Animals
  • Can no longer leave dung piles in deep water
• Humans
  • Increased human movement speeds by 20-30%
• Staff
  • Increased staff movement speed while transporting resources by 50%
    
  • Staff now explore closer to visitor areas while idle
• Guests
  • Visitors no longer react to needs under their reaction threshold
    
  • Visitors' needs view has been modified to show their needs more accurately. Now Green -> Yellow represents their needs below reaction threshold, Yellow -> Red above.
    
  • Visitors with critical needs will leave the park a lot faster
    
  • Visitors will generally spend less time in the park, allowing more guests to cycle in and increase ticket revenue
    
  • Greatly increased the chance to explore the park when there’s nothing to do
• Enclosures
  • Excess dung will not display a state icon until the enclosure reaches 30% cleanliness
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Moved Visitor Spawner into Guest Amenities > Finances
    
  • A newly placed Loading Bay should no longer purchase new resources if there are available resources from a previously demolished loading bay
    
  • Loading Bay will now highlight overstock in red
• UI/UX
  • Moved park service structures into their own building menu category, park logistics structures are now more accessible
    
  • The fence info boxes in the building menu now properly display the fence’s strength
    
  • Offset Paleopedia images for Spinosaurus and Tarbosaurus so that they are centered
    
  • Enabled the ‘Open Paleopedia Entry’ button in the Nursery Menu’s animal preview screen
• Post Processing
  • Improved general image clarity and quality for TAA
    
  • Reduced visitor heatmap opacity significantly from 75% to 25%
• Audio
  • Slightly increased delay after Nigel’s Leaellynasaura intro
    
  • Adjusted crowd audio parameters

• Crashes
  • Fixed a navmesh-related crash
• Critical
  • Patched an issue with screenshot preview generation that stopped the save system from finishing
    
  • Re-enabled the Kökşetau Formation after it was mistakenly disabled!
    
  • Patched challenge mode cheat that would allow locked animals to be breedable through the paleopedia menu
    
  • Modular movement of existing pieces is not cross checked with the economy anymore, which fixes a long-standing issue where moving structures would not be allowed if the park balance could not cover the whole building cost. Sorry to have missed this one for so long!
    
  • PTB saves can now be overwritten (and upgraded) by same or newer release builds (Beware that PTB saves may sometimes retain PTB-related bugs, we suggest naming your saves appropriately if you play on the PTBs)
• Animals
  • Fixed an animal welfare issue where exhibit markers would be calculated towards the fence strength need
• Staff
  • Fixed a bug that caused humans but especially idle staff to spin when reaching a destination
    
  • Should be less likely to fall into cracks and clip up through walkways
    
  • Keepers should no longer be prevented from using compost heaps that other keepers are using
    
  • Fixed staff giving up on dung cleanup assignments directly after shoveling if there was only one mound to clean up
• Guests
  • Fixed some diffuse map mistakes in the female guest outfits
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Glass shadows have been disabled after being temporarily enabled in Update 11
    
  • Fixed Fruit Block not having staff interact points
• Construction
  • Fixed a bug that caused the modular grid to be incorrectly sized
    
  • Fixed gates snapping into fences causing breaks that prevent enclosures from forming
• UI/UX
  • Fixed various ‘Call Staff’ buttons not properly initializing, losing their supposed functionality
    
  • Fixed typos in the Help menu
    
  • Fixed Ugrunaaluk name typo (again)

• Fixed a major performance issue certain amenities could continuously try to generate queue lines
  
• Minor performance improvements
  
• Minor modular load performance improvements

Welcome to the June Development Update!

In case you missed it, Update 11 is out now on Steam! This is by far our largest update and adds a bunch of exciting changes to better the future of Prehistoric Kingdom. Staff are finally here alongside an entire logistics system, reworked human art, two beautiful genus of dinosaurs and lots of other changes. The patch notes are absolutely massive, so if you’ve got time, be sure to give them a look!


For the remainder of this post, we’ll be talking about what’s next for the game and going over the improvements we’d like to make based on player feedback!





Overall, we’re very pleased with the response to Update 11 and are glad to see players enjoying the direction we’re taking management in. As stated above, this was a really big update for the team and it’s sort of surreal to finally see staff walking around the parks. It’s helped build a lot of systems for us to improve and we’re excited that both staff and visitors will only get better from here.

Developing alongside the PTB (Public Test Branch) proved to be incredibly useful in reducing the amount of critical stability issues experienced at the launch Update 11 and is definitely something we’d like to do more of in the future. We weren’t able to catch everything, but what did slip through appears to impact a smaller subset of players and are mostly bugs related to things like the guest queuing system which came back online a day before release (oopsies).

In terms of balance, things aren’t quite where we’d like them to be. The feedback we’ve gotten over the last few days has been very valuable and the team have been thinking of ways to improve both the short and long term impact of staff and logistics. While some things can’t be addressed until Update 12 at the earliest, we are working on quality of life patches to improve the game’s flow in the meantime.




These are some of the most immediate changes we’re looking into to help improve Challenge Mode:

• Increase starting cash across all difficulties
  
• Add the Loading Bay and Staff Center to new saves by default (these can be moved or deleted)
  
• Increase the human movement speeds (both guests and staff arrive at their destination quicker)
  
• Reduce the amount of time individual guests spend in the park to improve the flow of ticket sales (the main source of income)
  
• Reduce the construction and upkeep cost of Park Service buildings (Animal Nursery, Fossil Depot, etc.)
  
• Split the building category ‘Park Infrastructure’ into Park Services and Park Logistics to make searching more convenient and better support future logistics modules
  
• Show the travel time/delay on modules that need to be stocked, indicating how long it actually took for a staff member to arrive
  
• Show the staff efficiency, indicating how many tasks they’re able to complete before going on break
  
• Add a ‘Convert to Sandbox Game’ button in the options menu, allowing players to rescue Challenge games that are struggling

We are also working to reintegrate notifications and give them a more defined role, serving as a way to communicate unlocks, changes within excavations, or any other one-off events that may have happened.


Anything that’s actually wrong with the park would instead get sent to the Park Issues screen, a comprehensive list of persistent problems that need to be solved. This is where you can easily find empty feeders, dirty habitats or find out which modules are inaccessible to guests. Clicking on the item, staff or animal will take the player directly to it.

Since the issues are all labeled, this menu should also address players not understanding certain state icons!


We believe that these two additions alone will drastically improve gameplay clarity and reactivity, especially with excavation events changing month to month.

They’ll be scattered across a few smaller patches rather than coming later in one big update. The earliest patch which includes sandbox conversion, human speed buffs, small balance changes and a bunch of fixes will be arriving in the next few days!

Larger additions like notifications and park issues are trying to be finished ASAP, but will take more time.



Beyond further improvements and support for Update 11, the team’s now beginning to shift to Update 12 and beyond. To kick off this next phase of development, we’re giving you another glimpse at one of the previously revealed dinosaurs for Update 12, the majestic Brontosaurus!


Arriving as an alternate genus to another Update 12 addition, Apatosaurus, this thunder lizard is sure to wow guests with its extravagant patterning and dorsal spines. Our Brontosaurus features a set of large keratinized spikes running down the sides of its neck, with the park scientists believing that they might’ve been used during disputes with other herd members.


One of our goals for Update 12 is to revisit a few systems like the Park Rating to see where it can be tidied up. With this proposed update to the management view, the park rating will display a clear breakdown of its components and current progress towards the next goal.


One of the things we didn’t get time to add back into Update 11 was clothing variation! Update 12 will correct this by not only including alternate outfit colors, but introducing props for visitors to use like hats and phones.

Tutorials have been a hot topic amongst new and returning players for some time now, and so we’d like to finally discuss our approach for the future.

First, let’s talk about the requirements. We need a tutorial system that is easily accessible, walks the player through mechanics at their own pace and that can be easily expanded or changed at any point in development. For this reason, we’ll be pivoting to a system that can be accessed during a Sandbox or Challenge game.

The idea is to have guided tutorials accessed through the Help menu, covering small chunks of the game to keep it digestible. These tutorials would be text based, highlighting buttons or elements on the screen to guide the player. The tutorial box would be movable so that it never covers an important UI element.

Below is an example piece of concept art showing how a tutorial might progress:

We don’t have an exact ETA for this, so for now we recommend reading the newly updated Help menu included in Update 11. We’ve written a bunch of articles that should help players wrap their head around the new mechanics. Most articles include shortcuts to quickly build specific modules or jump to another page!


As nice as it was at the time, the original tutorial scenario became increasingly buggy with each major update and was quickly outdated as new mechanics got introduced. To fulfill the needs of today, it’d have to be rebuilt from the ground up.

We aren’t opposed to revisiting scenarios again in the future (we love them just as much as you do!) but the dev time required to build and maintain them isn’t on the table right now. Realistically, it makes the most sense to try again once the game has left Early Access and things aren’t in flux.

We’d like to quickly mention that we’ll be cleaning up and improving the game’s official prefabs. Looking forward, we would like our prefabs to feel unified, easily accessible and ensure that all the themes are represented across the guest amenities and viewing attractions.

We understand that there are players out there who may not enjoy modular building or simply find it too overwhelming, so in redoing our prefabs we’re taking this opportunity to create something that we hope is more appealing for that plug-and-play experience.



Created by ThatOneGlitch


Created by Pombo agiota


Created by Krex



Thank you for reading June's dev diary!

It’s been a big month for the team, so we hope you can forgive the shorter dev diary. We’re eager to read more of your thoughts and dish out further changes to Update 11.

- The PK Team

• Facebook
  
• Twitter
  
• Discord
  
• Reddit
  
• YouTube

Welcome, Park Managers!

Update 11 is now available! This massive releases introduces 3 new species (2 genera), staff, logistics, revised excavations, overhauled human art, the beginnings of our GUI overhaul and much more. This is definitely our biggest update ever!

Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.




Create beautiful habitats for the tiny Australian dinosaur, Leaellynasaura and two species of the Triassic classic, Plateosaurus.




Staff are here! Offering three types to hire (Keepers, Laborers and Cashiers), these people are essential to running your Prehistoric Kingdom.




Build the Loading Bay to import resources and begin your logistics network. Make use of the Compost Heap, Produce Stations and storage facilities to design an efficient park that can sustain the needs of your visitors and animals alike.



The humans of Prehistoric Kingdom have had a total overhaul! With a more stylized look and a new suite of animations, we're working to make them into a more vibrant and expressive part of the game. Crowds will now make basic sounds, providing new ambience for the park. In a later update, we'd like to make this more detailed!

We've also been able to fix a number of issues pertaining to donation boxes and how guests view animals, making the visitors of Update 11 significantly more interactive.

Both guests and staff can be selected, showing a small information panel with shortcuts to their management windows and some short summaries.


Excavations and Research have been retooled to make use of Science Teams! These teams are assigned to fossil formations or research nodes, completing progress over time until the desired animals or research have been completed.

To access these features, players will need to build two new buildings: the Fossil Depot and Research Lab.

Each month, the Excavations menu will refresh, bringing a series of random events with it. Around the world, various dig sites will be experiencing a positive or negative event, impacting the cost and yields retrieved by Science Teams.


In Update 11, we've begun to overhaul the game's GUI. You can see notable improvements with modular groups and selection, displaying a series of interactable widgets for modules that provide a function within the park.


The Paleopedia is now accessible from the left side of the screen, showing animal needs, information and the species found in the game's formations. A lot of the descriptions are missing due to the depth of research required, but we'll be adding more in future updates.


We've also overhauled the Help Menu with a fresh design, new articles and links that allow players to quickly grab relevant building pieces or jump to other articles. We HIGHLY recommend giving this a read to understand some of the new mechanics and ensure your experience runs as smooth as possible!


Fence placement and the fence visuals have been rewritten from the ground up to provide a smoother experience and allow us to do more advanced mechanics (like animal breakouts) in the future.

Besides a miriad of quality of life improvements, a new module, Staff Gates, can also be attached to fences. Gates are a modular piece, meaning they can be used anywhere and allow prefabs to quickly snap to an exhibit.


To tie everything up for our creative builders out there, we've added a bunch of backstage props to the Basic Theme. We love how these came out and can't wait to see how lively your staff areas will look!

• Fences and enclosures have been completely reworked! This may create some issues or inconsistencies in old saves that need to be resolved by players. We suggest rebuilding fence segments if this is encountered!
  
• Upon loading into a legacy save, the park will be empty of visitors to allow for the improved visitors to spawn!
  
• Arid benches have been flipped to be consistent with other bench pieces. This means that some benches will need to be changed!
  
• Kiosks and shops are now part of staff and logistics, so will need to be stocked and managed in order to function as they used to.

• After loading, there is a modular glitch where random pieces will render in place of saved ones. This is not permanent and a reload should fix it.
  
• Staff hats and props can be slightly offset and floaty, we’ll be fixing this.
  
• Undo/redo does not work with group scaling and rotation.
  
• The Mini-Aviary widget currently lacks the option to adjust its environment. We'll be fixing this in the future!
  
• Adding gates to enclosures can rarely result in the enclosure not registering. Replacing all fences can fix this.
  
• Plateosaurus currently lacks Nigel dialogue and will be added when we are able to record next!

• NEW ANIMAL: Leaellynasaura
  
• NEW ANIMAL: Plateosaurus trossingensis
  
• NEW ANIMAL: Plateosaurus gracilis
  
• NEW FEATURE: Logistics Loop
  Place the Loading Bay and hire staff to get started. Spread the park inventory with storage facilities and grow your own food with Produce Stations using the compost from Compost Heaps!
  
• NEW FEATURE: Staff
  Hire staff to manage the needs of guests and animals.
  • NEW STAFF TYPE: Laborers
    Laborers refill guest facilities and transfer both goods and produce to storage facilities around the park.
    
  • NEW STAFF TYPE: Keepers
    Keepers refill animal feeders and clean habitats, transporting dung to Compost Heaps.
    
  • NEW STAFF TYPE: Cashiers
    Cashiers work at kiosks, interacting with visitors. After a while, cashiers will need to change shifts if other cashiers are available.
• NEW FEATURE: Revised Excavation Loop
  Animal unlocking has been heavily updated to employ a more RNG based system based on science teams traveling to excavation sites around the globe and researching animal genomes

• Gameplay
  • Added the Eumeralla Formation
    
  • Added the Trossingen Formation
    
  • Added the Löwenstein Formation
    
  • Added monthly RNG excavation events! These events will affect each excavation’s cycle time, cost, and even fossil yield rate
    
  • Added negative land value influence to bathroom modules
• Animals
  • Added detail maps to most animals, offering subtle surface detail upon close inspection
• Staff
  • Added the ability to move staff
    
  • Staff can now be called to prioritize assignments related to a module or enclosure
• Guests
  • Added appropriate clothing for each map climate
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added empty states for the enrichment feeders, Blood Pumpkin, Fruit Block, and Termite Mound
    
  • Added animation to the Tall Plant Feeder
    
  • Added black fades to the bathroom modules, Fossil Depot, Visitor Spawner & Staff Structure entry
  • points
    
  • Added Silhouette Signs for Plateosaurus & Leaellynasaura
    
  • Added new basic fence: Basic Chainlink Fence
    
  • New Staff Management & Logistic modules:
    • Staff Gate 1m
      
    • Staff Gate 2.5m
      
    • Staff Gate 4m
      
    • Staff Gate 6m
      
    • Staff Center
      
    • Loading Bay
      
    • Goods Storage Small
      
    • Goods Storage Large
      
    • Produce Storage Small
      
    • Produce Storage Large
      
    • Compost Heap
      
    • Produce Station (Mix Feed, Plants, Fruit, Meat, Fish, Insects)
  • New Park Management modules:
    • Fossil Depot
      
    • Research Station
  • Added over 19 new basic/backstage props!
    • Liquid Barrel
      
    • Plastic Bowl
      
    • Cooling Box
      
    • Plastic Box
      
    • Plastic Box Tub
      
    • Wooden Box
      
    • Construction Cone
      
    • Construction Floor Sign
      
    • Dry Erase Board 1
      
    • Dry Erase Board 2
      
    • Keeper Spade
      
    • Ladder 1
      
    • Ladder 2
      
    • Shipping Container
      
    • Shipping Crate
      
    • Shipping Pallet
      
    • Staff Shelf 1
      
    • Staff Shelf 2
      
    • Staff Sink
  • Binocular modules are now useable by guests
• UI/UX
  • Added guest and staff selection, with a dedicated selection panel showing relevant information for each
    
  • Added interaction point visualization on any and all modules that sport animal/human interaction points. These helpful arrows are available during construction actions
    
  • Lighting within modular groups can now be turned on during the day by switching on the ‘Always Keep Lights On’ in the lighting tab of each group’s selection menu
    
  • Added the Paleopedia
    
  • Shops now display a ‘missing stock’ state icon when low on stock
    
  • Added a ‘Remove Vegetation’ toggle to the modular building toolbox. If disabled, players will be able to place modular items without automatically removing vegetation
• Audio
  • Added basic crowd audio
    
  • Added a “woosh” when the camera is moved or rotated at high speeds
    
  • Added Nigel dialogue to the following animals:
    • Charonosaurus
      
    • Elasmotherium
      
    • Juxia
      
    • Leaellynasaura
      
    • Muttaburrasaurus
      
    • Panthera atrox
      
    • Panthera spelaea
      
    • Tarbosaurus
      
    • Sinotherium

• Balance
  • Animal Info Signs no longer have guest entertainment value
    
  • Rebalanced animal ratings across the board
    
  • Rebalanced fence strengths across the board, with more fence types being available in the early game
    
  • Enclosure Size and Crowding requirements for animals have been readjusted
• Gameplay
  • For the time being, visitors will be deleted from the park when loading a save from previous versions
    Jeep Depot, Research Station, Staff Center, Nursery Large, Nursery Medium and Nursery Small can now only be placed once in every park, due to being tied to specific game mechanics
    
  • Halved occlusion multiplier for Park Beauty, making it a bit trickier to completely negate negative land value
    
  • The research system now shares the excavation system’s science teams, employing said teams to unlock research projects
• Animals
  • The animal and exhibit crowding calculations have been re-tuned, taking into account the desired exhibit space each animal has (in sync with the values shown in the Paleopedia)
    
  • Removed Edmontosaurus dialogue from Ugrunaaluk until new lines can be recorded
    
  • Fixed misspelling of Ugrunaaluk (previously Ugrunaluuk)
    
  • Sinotherium is now correctly assigned to the Neogene period
    
  • Adjusted animation speed on the unique Protoceratops idle animation
    
  • Updated default expression for Panthera atrox and spelaea
    
  • Improved nasal seam on Pachyrhinosaurus species
• Guests
  • Fully reworked art
    
  • Human animation system reworked from the ground up
    
  • Improved guest visibility points, guests should now be more reactive to the animals in the enclosures around them
    
  • Guests will actively make donations again
    
  • Guests will appear more lively by often looking around the park as they stroll
    Improved guest interaction positioning
    
  • Eyes now reflect their environment
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Updated the ‘Prehistoric Kingdom Visitor Entrance Stone Age’ prefab to not contain tropical themed pieces
    
  • Updated several Fence visuals
    
  • Adjusted Arid Cobblestone path to improve tiling
    
  • Added a Gates section to the Enclosures menu
    
  • Gate to fence snapping improvements
    
  • Gate to fence group snapping (any gate!)
    
  • Added support for gates to play open and close sounds
    
  • Adjusted organic prop coloring on Flat Fruit Feeder and Produce Stations
    
  • Minor piece texture changes/improvements across the board, including adjustments to reflectivity of many metal pieces and props to be less blinding/wet looking.
    
  • Replaced Brick visuals in the Basic theme with a higher fidelity texture.
    
  • Rotated Arid Benches 180 degrees for parity with the rest of the benches (May affect some prefabs, apologies in advance!)
    
  • Converted most light sources into spotlights to reduce light leak and potentially improve performance. Those that use spotlights now feature a cookie (makes it look like light is emitting from a bulb!). This will impact how lighting appears in your prefabs!
    
  • Reduced light emitted from halloween candles
    
  • Simplified collision on a number of lighting props
    
  • Added shop visual fill effects
• Environment
  • Improved snow coloring during different times of day, visibility should now be much better during a snowy night
    
  • Adjusted Boreal map lighting
    
  • Adjusted Desert map lighting
    
  • Adjusted Tropical map lighting
    
  • Adjusted scattering atmospherics to further reduce overblown sunrise/sunset
    
  • Shortened Grassland biome grass rendering distances
• Construction
  • Completely overhauled fence rendering and placement
    
  • Can no longer place fences shorter than 2 meters. Does not limit snapping or intersection behavior
    
  • Fence placement snapping now scales with distance to the camera, will make building large enclosures much easier
    
  • Enclosures are now selected after they are completed for the first time
• UI/UX
  • Completely overhauled the modular group and piece selection menus, with a heavy focus on widget access and modularity. The main function of each relevant module can now be accessed at every level of the modular selection
    
  • Side quick access menus (Weather & Time, Paleopedia, etc) now show up in front of the Management Menu
    
  • Changed the shape of state icons and changed the inaccessible module icon to show blocked guests
    
  • Updated the voice line panel, and gave Nigel different outfits based on the map that’s currently being played on!
    
  • Decreased scroll sensitivity in the Animal Nursery gallery
    
  • Improved save/load menu UX
    
  • Made several improvements to the modular placement system:
    1. Rotation deltas are now always calculated based on the adjacent normal up axis, never the object’s up axis: this means objects will be rotated vertically no matter their local orientation
       
    2. Scaling and rotation checks are much more robust, the game shouldn’t allow you to scale and rotate pieces which aren’t meant to. This fixes the ability to create huge/tiny modules (e.g. Aviary, Kiosks, etc.)
       
    3. Scaling is now allowed in group placement actions, being completely consistent across the board
  • The animal holder menu now automatically comes up when breeding new animals through the Nursery
    
  • Updated graphics and coloring to the animal info panel
    
  • Updated layout, flow and functionality for several pieces of the GUI (wip)
    • Main Action Board
      
    • Management Menu and all its sub-menus (e.g. excavations, animal menu, etc.)
      
    • Modular Editing Overlay
      
    • Weather Menu
      
    • Animal Nursery Holder
  • Moved the Animal Nursery Menu into the Management Menu
    
  • Terraforming menu now displays updated biome icons to match animal info panels
    
  • Huge improvements across the board when it comes to GUI layout updating and refreshing
• Rendering
  • Improved and optimized shadow quality across all settings
    
  • Improved frustum and occlusion culling for wall/roof pieces
    
  • Addressed culling issues for a variety of pieces
• Audio
  • Adjusted Nigel’s VO processing
    
  • Selecting Panthera in the Nursery will play the lion roar instead of Smilodon
    
  • Extended or reduced audible distance on various animal sounds
    
  • Adjusted surface interaction sounds to randomize volume and lowpass for additional variation
    
  • Adjusted small herbivorous dinosaur eating sounds
    
  • Adjusted field reverb, distance attenuation and distance model to better serve tycoon gameplay and allow for easier game mixing. This may result in overall louder animals!
    
  • Feathered and furred bodies will emit rain impact sounds during a storm, but not as much as scaled or leathery animals
    
  • Changed placement material sounds for new logistics/infrastructure buildings, donation boxes, blood pumpkin and moss roof style

• Crashes
  • Fixed two crashes in nav queries
    
  • Fixed hard crash relating to visitor visualization
    
  • Fixed a couple different crashes when closing the game
    
  • Fixed a crash when terraforming near the edge of the map
    
  • Fixed a rare crash when animals would check for a place to stand
    
  • Fixed a rare crash in pathfinding
    
  • Fixed a crash that occurred during Mac emulation
• Critical
  • Fixed errors that prevented any saves containing visitors from loading properly
    
  • Adjusted save system to prevent players accidentally deleting all of their saves by saving with no input name (UI block as well as additional checks to ensure a save target is actually correct!)
    
  • Fixed an animal holder duplication bug that occurred when canceling animal placement
    
  • Added a potential fix for a bug that would cause animal previews in the Nursery Menu to not dispose/load correctly, leading to duplicate previews
    
  • Fixed tropical entrance on the ‘Parque Nacional Arenal’ map not being accessible by guests
    
  • Further fortified the research system’s initialization, adding extra safeties and checks
    
  • Hardened how some systems initialize so that they work consistently
    
  • Fixed multiple exceptions that broke various tools and menus
    
  • Fixed various modules being unplaceable
    
  • Fixed logistics memory errors
    
  • Fixed a temporary deadlock issue (would cause the game to pause for 1 second, when changing feeder type)
    
  • Revised fence placement logic to make enclosure detection much more reliable
    
  • Fixed a bug that caused loading to break when Documents/Prehistoric Kingdom/Modular Prefabs folder was not creatable or accessible
    
  • Added a fix for size limit on modular save files
    
  • Fixed a blackscreen issue that would persist through reloading a save, now those saves should be recoverable!
    
  • Fixed a rare animal unlock load bug that would break loading
• Gameplay
  • Fixed the animal placement action not registering an animal back into its enclosure if it was being moved, but subsequently the action was canceled
    
  • Fixed the animal placement tooltip not correctly updating its text validity state
    
  • The tutorial was disabled again, after being mistakenly left available. We are currently working on a more intuitive tutorial system, about which we will be sharing more details in the future!
• Animals
  • Fixed a common issue that could leave animals stuck until game reload
    
  • Fixed Coelophysis, Leaellynasaura, Protoceratops, Psittacosaurus and Velociraptor getting stuck while eating or drinking
    
  • Fixed Camarasaurus species using flat plants feeder
    
  • Fixed Argentinosaurus and Brachiosaurus social call animation
    
  • Fixed Tyrannosaurus eating exit animation
    
  • Fixed Paraceratherium broadcast not playing
    
  • Fixed animals placed outside an enclosure not registering as an escaped animal
    
  • Fixed a seam on the Muttaburrasaurus belly
• Guests
  • Improved guest need processing logic
    
  • Fixed visitors not getting satisfied after using an amenity
    
  • Guests need visual overlays will now render even if time is paused
    
  • Visitors will now have more precise placement when using facilities around the park
    
  • Fixed a bug where sandbox mode would disable many guest capabilities
    
  • Will now choose nearby interaction points more intelligently
    
  • Fixed exploration behavior, previously could generate giant crowds at particular locations.
    
  • Fixed guest needs flickering
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Prevented invalid fences from loading
    
  • Fixed donation box recolorability
    
  • Fixed several shop related modular items not rendering correctly
    
  • Fixed bathrooms disappearing on minimum graphics
    
  • Fixed various materials using the wrong shader version
    
  • Fixed waterfall particle cutoff and reduced overall opacity, added depth fade to remove billboard artifacts when intersecting with geometry
    
  • Fixed FX pieces being walkable by guests
    
  • Fixed normals on plant and fruit feeders
    
  • Fixed various bugs related to Animal Information Signs not detecting nearby enclosures
    
  • Fixed LOD rendering for Bathroom Sign Square
    
  • Fixed a rare error causing the selection outline to not work on certain modules, if their style was changed
    
  • Fixed a selection issue with the Rock Basalt 1 piece
• Water
  • Fixed light/color flickering on painted water
    
  • Fixed shadow settings not being applied properly, resulting in worse GPU performance on lower settings
    
  • Fixed a bug that caused constant shadow flickering when time of day is enabled
• Construction
  • Fixed animal containment bugs when updating enclosure layouts
    
  • Intersecting fence placements can no longer override the max fence length limit
    
  • Fixed a bug where it was possible to create fences with the same start and end point
    
  • Improved enclosure detection, will now correctly handle situations where the main fence posts form a polygon outside the enclosed area
    
  • Fixed a potential issue that could have been causing animals to be lost when enclosures were modified
    
  • Fences loaded from legacy saves are now put through a more sophisticated version upgrade algorithm, addresses issues with enclosure detection
• Terraforming
  • Fixed numerous issues with modular undo/redo, particularly terrain flattening logic
    
  • Fixed a bug with the water remove brush where it would generate horrific janky edges near the shoreline
    
  • Fixed a bug where undo/redo would just delete a huge chunk of water
• UI/UX
  • Fixed a UX issue with the Management View button at the bottom of the main board
    
  • Fixed the animal preview in the Animal Nursery
    
  • Fixed the Modular Styling menu not being interactable in all relevant circumstances. It should now be accessible whenever a modular object with styles is being edited/placed
    
  • Cannot access the save game button, if the current save name input is empty
    
  • Fixed save/load menu scroll content not properly updating on search
    
  • Fixed a bug where save previews would all break if a single save had a corrupt or invalid save preview
    
  • Fixed several GUI initialization errors
    
  • Fixed one issue causing the camera to accidentally restrict zoom behaviour
    
  • Fixed the Nursery Holder animal elements’ animations not updating with different time scales
    
  • Fixed overview settings button not properly toggling off once entering the pause menu
    
  • Fixed layouts in the structure filter menu not refreshing correctly
    
  • Fixed main menu bugging out upon exiting a save[
    
  • Fixed Animal Info Signs not detecting nearby species after loading a save
    
  • Fixed a typo in the Elasmotherium info sign
    
  • Fixed an issue that would cause Screenshot Mode to remain open when opening a building menu
• Rendering
  • Glass rendering happens later to render VFX pieces through it, may improve visuals
    
  • Fixed fly particle rendering
• Audio
  • Fixed an issue where overlapping animal breaths got cut short
    
  • Fixed background static not getting destroyed when returning to main menu during dialogue
    
  • Fixed brick walls using wood placement sounds
    
  • Fixed offset audio on Protoceratops unique idle animation
    
  • Fixed alt species specific sounds for Juxia
• Misc.
  • Fixed _TEMPSAVE string stacking multiple times on save files

• Loading performance has been improved with additional multi-threading
  • This especially affects the Canada map or any save with a lot of pieces
• Improved modular system performance in a few areas
  • Primarily addressed slowdowns when working with pieces that had many tens or hundreds of thousands of instances on the map (trees on canada for instance)
    
  • Memory efficiency improvements
• Save system upgraded with better read/write performance and a fix for having too many files in a save (caused workshop upload issues)
  
• Save/load menu performance improved
  
• New fences are more efficiently rendered and consume considerably less memory
  
• Fixed a memory leak
  
• CPU Optimizations
  
• Numerous Memory optimizations
  
• Minor optimizations and stutter reduction
  
• Modular memory usage reduced
  
• Optimized human rendering
  
• As mentioned above, shadow rendering has been optimized across the board

Welcome, Park Testers!

This PTB release targets a few of the last major issues with Update 11, notably guest donations and guests reacting to animals. After a final round of fixes, we will be releasing Update 11 IN A FEW HOURS and following it up with hotfixes!


The Public Testing Branch (PTB) is a version of Prehistoric Kingdom that can be opted-into on Steam, containing experimental and potentially breaking changes. With the help of the community, we're able to hunt down various issues and gather feedback before pushing a an update to the public version of Prehistoric Kingdom.

1. Right click Prehistoric Kingdom in your Steam Library
   
2. Go to Properties
   
3. Betas
   
4. Select 'ptb_public_testing'

Please note that it is not recommended to play Public Testing Branch parks on earlier versions of the game. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.

• Modular glitch where random pieces will render in place of saved ones
  
• Staff hats and props can be slightly offset and floaty
  
• Group scaling and rotation undo/redo doesnt work

• Staff
  • Staff can now be called to prioritize assignments related to a module or enclosure
• Audio
  • Added basic crowd audio

• Balance
  • Animal Info Signs no longer have guest entertainment value
• Animals
  • The animal and exhibit crowding calculations have been re-tuned, taking into account the desired exhibit space each animal has (in sync with the values shown in the Paleopedia)
• Guests
  • Improved guest visibility points, guests should now be more reactive to the animals in the enclosures around them
    
  • Guests will actively make donations again
    
  • Guests will appear more lively by often looking around the park as they stroll
• Environment
  • Improved snow coloring during different times of day, visibility should now be much better during a snowy night

• Critical
  • Fixed an enclosure animal registering issue caused by canceling a new animal placement action
    
  • Fixed a critical indexing issue that caused science teams to not properly unlock when rating was gained
    
  • Fixed tropical entrance on the ‘Parque Nacional Arenal’ map not being accessible by guests
• Guests
  • Improved guest need processing logic
    
  • Guests need visual overlays will now render even if time is paused
    
  • Visitors will now have more precise placement when using facilities around the park
    
  • Fixed a bug where sandbox mode would disable many guest capabilities
• Staff
  • Fixed gates closing before staff could enter them causing them to spin and lose their way
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Prevented invalid fences from loading
• UI/UX
  • Fixed an issue that caused the guest needs view ‘Education’ and ‘Entertainment’ buttons to have switched functionality
    
  • Fixed a UX issue with the Management View button at the bottom of the main board

• Fixed a severe performance regression introduced by a compilation error in the last update

Welcome, Park Testers!

This release aims to address some of the issues reported by users on our Discord server and adds the last staff type for Update 11, Cashiers! These workers will manage the register at kiosks around the park, changing shift when additional cashiers are available. They are real, physical staff, just like Laborers and Keepers.

By default, Cashiers will be auto-hired from the Staff Center when the game detects kiosks that have no one assigned to them. This behavior can be disabled from the Park Services menu, or players can choose to manually hire Cashiers, just like the other staff types.



We've also finalized the Staff Gate design, adding 3 recolorable styles and height variations to support 1m and 6m fences. More styles will be added in the future!


Additional improvements have been made to modular building, including better rotation behavior free moving, aligning to surface and allowing for the advanced scaling or rotation of groups that do not contain modules.




The Public Testing Branch (PTB) is a version of Prehistoric Kingdom that can be opted-into on Steam, containing experimental and potentially breaking changes. With the help of the community, we're able to hunt down various issues and gather feedback before pushing a an update to the public version of Prehistoric Kingdom.

1. Right click Prehistoric Kingdom in your Steam Library
   
2. Go to Properties
   
3. Betas
   
4. Select 'ptb_public_testing'

Please note that it is not recommended to play Public Testing Branch parks on earlier versions of the game. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.

• NEW STAFF TYPE: Cashiers
  Cashiers work at kiosks, interacting with visitors. After a while, cashiers will need to change shifts if other cashiers are available.

• Animals
  • Added behavioral one shot animations to Plateosaurus species
• Staff
  • Added the ability to move staff
    
  • Laborers and Keepers now have unique uniform hats
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added Staff Gate 1m, 6m and 3 new styles

• Gameplay
  • For the time being, visitors will be deleted from the park when loading a save from previous versions
    
  • Jeep Depot, Research Station, Staff Center, Nursery Large, Nursery Medium and Nursery Small can now only be placed once in every park, due to being tied to specific game mechanics
• Animals
  • Decreased overall sizes of all Plateosaurus species
    
  • Female Plateosaurus are now smaller than their male counterparts
    
  • Removed Edmontosaurus dialogue from Ugrunaaluk until new lines can be recorded
    
  • Fixed misspelling of Ugrunaaluk (previously Ugrunaluuk)
• Staff
  • Slightly buffed movement speed when jogging or transporting goods
• Guests
  • Improved guest interaction positioning
    
  • Eyes now reflect their environment
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Adjusted Arid Cobblestone path to improve tiling
• UI/UX
  • Further changes to the VO dialogue box design
    
  • Decreased scroll sensitivity in the Animal Nursery gallery
    
  • Improved save/load menu UX
    
  • Made several improvements to the modular placement system:
    • Rotation deltas are now always calculated based on the adjacent normal up axis, never the object’s up axis: this means objects will be rotated vertically no matter their local orientation
      
    • Scaling and rotation checks are much more robust, the game shouldn’t allow you to scale and rotate pieces which aren’t meant to. This fixes the ability to create huge/tiny modules (e.g. Aviary, Kiosks, etc.)
      
    • Scaling is now allowed in group placement actions, being completely consistent across the board
  • The animal holder menu now automatically comes up when breeding new animals through the Nursery
• Rendering
  • Improved and optimized shadow quality across all settings

• Critical
  • Fixed a crash when hiring a new staff member
    
  • Fixed errors that prevented any saves containing visitors from loading properly
    
  • Adjusted save system to prevent players accidentally deleting all of their saves by saving with no input name (UI block as well as additional checks to ensure a save target is actually correct!)
    
  • Fixed a couple different crashes when closing the game
    
  • Fixed an animal holder duplication bug that occurred when canceling animal placement
    
  • Added a potential fix for a bug that would cause animal previews in the Nursery Menu to not dispose/load correctly, leading to duplicate previews
• Gameplay
  • Fixed the animal placement action not registering an animal back into its enclosure if it was being moved, but subsequently the action was cancelled
    
  • Fixed the animal placement tooltip not correctly updating its text validity state
• Animals
  • Fixed a common issue that could leave animals stuck until game reload
• Staff
  • Staff will now check if the destination for a resource is accessible before starting an assignment to transfer that resource
    
  • Improved staff gate navigation precision
    
  • Laborers should no longer ping-pong resources back and forth between warehouses where the stock is disabled
    
  • Fixed Keepers getting stuck on dung mounds and returning to the compost heap in between every mound cleaned
    
  • Adjusted animations on various staff assignments to better fit the action taking place
    
  • Numerous fixes for props
    
  • Fixed staff props being left around in some cases
    
  • Fixed data for held props breaking on reloading the game
    
  • Fixed staff not being fireable if time is paused
    
  • Staff will no longer jog when they shouldn’t be
• Guests
  • Guests will now use binoculars more accurately
    
  • Fixed visitors not getting satisfied after using an amenity
    
  • Fixed guests needs not properly computing
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed donation box recolorability
    
  • Fixed several shop related modular items not rendering correctly
    
  • Fixed bathrooms disappearing on minimum graphics
    
  • Fixed various materials using the wrong shader version
    
  • Fixed waterfall particle cutoff and reduced overall opacity, added depth fade to remove billboard artifacts when intersecting with geometry
    
  • Fixed Loading Bay having out of range delivery times
    
  • Fixed Loading Bay not respecting the disabled stock settings
    
  • Fixed FX pieces being walkable by guests
• Water
  • Fixed light/color flickering on painted water
    
  • Fixed shadow settings not being applied properly, resulting in worse GPU performance on lower settings
    
  • Fixed a bug that caused constant shadow flickering when time of day is enabled
• UI/UX
  • Fixed the animal preview in the Animal Nursery
    
  • Fixed the Modular Styling menu not being interactable in all relevant circumstances. It should now be accessible whenever a modular object with styles is being edited/placed
    
  • Cannot access the save game button, if the current save name input is empty
    
  • Fixed save/load menu scroll content not properly updating on search
    
  • Fixed a bug where save previews would all break if a single save had a corrupt or invalid save preview
• Audio
  • Fixed inaudible Plateosaurus trossingensis broadcast
    
  • Fixed an issue where overlapping animal breaths got cut short
    
  • Fixed background static not getting destroyed when returning to main menu during dialogue

• Fixed a memory leak
  
• Optimized human rendering
  
• As mentioned above, shadow rendering has been optimized across the board

Welcome, Park Testers!

This latest patch for the PTB introduces staff, random excavation events, and two species of Plateosaurus! We've written some basic guides below to help players find their way around the new mechanics while we renovate the help menu, notifications and park issues. For a detailed look at staff and their new buildings, check out the latest Dev Diary.

Over the next few weeks, you'll be able to see Update 11 take on its final form as we continue to round out issues, improve gameplay clarity and reintegrate features.

1. Build a Staff Center found in the Infrastructure category.
   
2. Open the Staff Management menu by selecting your new group or by pressing the Park Services button (hexagon icon) in the bottom left of the main HUD.
   
3. When inside the Staff Management menu, players can see a hiring list for all roles or specific roles.
   
4. Hired Keepers and Laborers will emerge from the Staff Center.
   
5. At this stage in development, staff are very hands off. As long as you have enough people and the correct facilities, they will do their best to restock the park and clean habitats.

All buildings/modules below are found in the Infrastructure > Logistics category!

1. To get resources into the park, build a Loading Bay.
   
2. Resource distribution can be improved by building Goods Storage or Produce Storage modules in key areas. Laborers will take resources to kiosks and storage modules while Keepers will take resources to animal feeders.
   
3. To clean habitats, build a Compost Heap for Keepers to deliver poop. Any poop stored inside will be converted into compost.
   
4. To create your own animal feed, build Produce Stations. These must be fueled by compost (transferred by Laborers) to efficiently create food.

The Public Testing Branch (PTB) is a version of Prehistoric Kingdom that can be opted-into on Steam, containing experimental and potentially breaking changes. With the help of the community, we're able to hunt down various issues and gather feedback before pushing a an update to the public version of Prehistoric Kingdom.

1. Right click Prehistoric Kingdom in your Steam Library
   
2. Go to Properties
   
3. Betas
   
4. Select 'ptb_public_testing'

Please note that it is not recommended to play Public Testing Branch parks on earlier versions of the game. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.

• We are in the midst of overhauling notifications and park issues. Once complete, this will have a massive impact on game feel and clarity for both staff and excavations!
  
• Cashiers are not implemented as a staff type yet. This will not impact the functionality of your kiosks as they will continue to work without staff for now.
  
• The 'Call Staff' button on various UI panels are not yet functional.
  
• Many of the old UI elements have not been updated.
  
• Visitor clothing color variation has not been developed yet.
  
• Donation boxes are currently not recolorable, we are working on a quick fix. The shop signs rendering is also glitched, which we are addressing in the same hotfix patch.

• NEW ANIMAL: Plateosaurus trossingensis
  
• NEW ANIMAL: Plateosaurus gracilis
  
• NEW FEATURE: Logistics Loop
  Place the Loading Bay and hire staff to get started. Spread the park inventory with storage facilities and grow your own food with Produce Stations using the compost from Compost Heaps!
  
• NEW FEATURE: Staff
  Hire staff to manage the needs of guests and animals.
  • NEW STAFF TYPE: Laborers
    Laborers refill guest facilities and transfer both goods and produce to storage facilities around the park.
    
  • NEW STAFF TYPE: Keepers
    Keepers refill animal feeders and clean habitats, transporting dung to Compost Heaps.

• Gameplay
  • Added the Trossingen Formation
    
  • Added the Löwenstein Formation
    
  • Added monthly RNG excavation events! These events will affect each excavation’s cycle time, cost, and even fossil yield rate
    
  • Added negative land value influence to bathroom modules
• Animals
  • Added detail maps to most animals, offering subtle surface detail upon close inspection
• Guests
  • Added appropriate clothing for each map climate
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added empty states for the enrichment feeders, Blood Pumpkin, Fruit Block, and Termite Mound
    
  • Added black fades to the bathroom modules, Fossil Depot, Visitor Spawner & Staff Structure entry points
    
  • Added Silhouette Signs for Plateosaurus & Leaellynasaura
    
  • Binocular modules are now useable by guests
• UI/UX
  • Added guest and staff selection, with a dedicated selection panel showing relevant information for each
    
  • Added interaction point visualization on any and all modules that sport animal/human interaction points. These helpful arrows are available during construction actions
    
  • Lighting within modular groups can now be turned on during the day by switching on the ‘Always Keep Lights On’ in the lighting tab of each group’s selection menu
    
  • Added a dedicated Excavations section to the Paleopedia
    
  • Added paleopedia pages for Microraptor and Archaeopteryx
    
  • Added paleopedia page descriptions for Edmontosaurus regalis, Edmontosaurus annectens, Ugrunaluuk, Triceratops prorsus, Triceratops horridus
    
  • Shops now display a ‘missing stock’ state icon when low on stock
    
  • Added a ‘Remove Vegetation’ toggle to the modular building toolbox. If disabled, players will be able to place modular items without automatically removing vegetation
• Audio
  • Added a “woosh” when the camera is moved or rotated at high speeds

• Balance
  • Rebalanced animal ratings across the board
• Gameplay
  • Rebalanced fence strengths across the board, with more fence types being available in the early game
    
  • Halved occlusion multiplier for Park Beauty, making it a bit trickier to completely negate negative land value
    
  • The research system now shares the excavation system’s science teams, employing said teams to unlock research projects
• Animals
  • Sinotherium is now correctly assigned to the Neogene period
    
  • Adjusted social and exhibit space needs displayed in the paleopedia for all animals
    
  • Adjusted animation speed on the unique Protoceratops idle animation
    
  • Improved nasal seam on Pachyrhinosaurus species
    
  • Adjusted Leaellynasaura skin color variation
• Construction
  • Can no longer place fences shorter than 2 meters. Does not limit snapping or intersection behavior
    
  • Fence placement snapping now scales with distance to the camera, will make building large enclosures much easier
    
  • Enclosures are now selected after they are completed for the first time
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Adjusted organic prop coloring on Flat Fruit Feeder and Produce Stations
    
  • Minor piece texture changes/improvements across the board, including adjustments to reflectivity of many metal pieces and props to be less blinding/wet looking.
    
  • Replaced Brick visuals in the Basic theme with a higher fidelity texture.
    
  • Rotated Arid Benches 180 degrees for parity with the rest of the benches (May affect some prefabs, apologies in advance!)
    
  • Converted most light sources into spotlights to reduce light leak and potentially improve performance. Those that use spotlights now feature a cookie (makes it look like light is emitting from a bulb!). This will impact how lighting appears in your prefabs!
    
  • Reduced light emitted from halloween candles
    
  • Simplified collision on a number of lighting props
    
  • Adjusted collision on staff and logistics modules
    
  • Added shop visual fill effects
• Environment
  • Adjusted Boreal map lighting
    
  • Adjusted Desert map lighting
    
  • Adjusted Tropical map lighting
    
  • Adjusted scattering atmospherics to further reduce overblown sunrise/sunset
    
  • Shortened Grassland biome grass rendering distances
• UI/UX
  • Completely overhauled the modular group and piece selection menus, with a heavy focus on widget access and modularity. The main function of each relevant module can now be accessed at every level of the modular selection
    
  • To provide an improved user experience, the paleopedia picture now switches off whenever a user action is running, switching back on afterwards, provided the ‘Show Picture’ option is enabled
    
  • Side quick access menus (Weather & Time, Paleopedia, etc) now show up in front of the Management Menu
    
  • Changed the shape of state icons and changed the inaccessible module icon to show blocked guests
    
  • Updated the voice line panel, and gave Nigel different outfits based on the map that’s currently being played on!
    
  • Temporarily disabled the Help Menu while we work on brand new help articles
• Rendering
  • Improved frustum and occlusion culling for wall/roof pieces
    
  • Addressed culling issues for a variety of pieces
• Audio
  • Extended or reduced audible distance on various animal sounds
    
  • Adjusted surface interaction sounds to randomize volume and lowpass for additional variation
    
  • Adjusted small herbivorous dinosaur eating sounds
    
  • Adjusted field reverb, distance attenuation and distance model to better serve tycoon gameplay and allow for easier game mixing. This may result in overall louder animals!
    
  • Feathered and furred bodies will emit rain impact sounds during a storm, but not as much as scaled or leathery animals
    
  • Changed placement material sounds for new logistics/infrastructure buildings, donation boxes, blood pumpkin and moss roof style

• Critical
  • Fixed a crash that occurred when closing the Time & Weather Menu
    
  • Further fortified the research system’s initialization, adding extra safeties and checks
    
  • Fixed a crash when terraforming near the edge of the map
    
  • Fixed two crashes in nav queries
    
  • Fixed a few cases of new features breaking loading
• Animals
  • Fixed Coelophysis, Leaellynasaura, Protoceratops, Psittacosaurus and Velociraptor getting stuck while eating or drinking
    
  • Fixed Camarasaurus species using flat plants feeder
    
  • Fixed Argentinosaurus and Brachiosaurus social call animation
    
  • Fixed Tyrannosaurus eating exit animation
    
  • Fixed Paraceratherium broadcast not playing
    
  • Fixed animals placed outside an enclosure not registering as an escaped animal
    
  • Fixed a seam on the Muttaburrasaurus belly
• Guests
  • Will now choose nearby interaction points more intelligently
    
  • Fixed exploration behavior, previously could generate giant crowds at particular locations.
    
  • Fixed guest needs flickering
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fence shadows fixed
    
  • Fence demolition red highlight has been restored
    
  • Fixed normals on plant and fruit feeders
    
  • Fixed feeders not having their visuals set when first placed and infinite food is turned off
    
  • Fixed enrichment feeders not being loaded as feeders, having no fill amount
    
  • Binocular modules have their visibility cones turned back on
    
  • Fixed various bugs related to Animal Information Signs not detecting nearby enclosures
    
  • Fixed LOD rendering for Bathroom Sign Square
    
  • Fixed a rare error causing the selection outline to not work on certain modules, if their style was changed
• Construction
  • Fixed animal containment bugs when updating enclosure layouts
    
  • Intersecting fence placements can no longer override the max fence length limit
    
  • Fixed a bug where it was possible to create fences with the same start and end point
    
  • Improved enclosure detection, will now correctly handle situations where the main fence posts form a polygon outside the enclosed area
    
  • Fixed a potential issue that could have been causing animals to be lost when enclosures were modified
    
  • Fixed fences not costing any money
    
  • Fences loaded from legacy saves are now put through a more sophisticated version upgrade algorithm, addresses issues with enclosure detection
    
  • Visitor entrance collision now correctly updates when loading legacy saves
• UI/UX
  • Fixed several GUI initialization errors
    
  • Fixed one issue causing the camera to accidentally restrict zoom behaviour
• Audio
  • Fixed brick walls using wood placement sounds
    
  • Fixed offset audio on Protoceratops unique idle animation
    
  • Fixed alt species specific sounds for Juxia
• Misc.
  • Fixed fly particle rendering

• CPU Optimizations
  
• Numerous Memory optimizations
  
• Visitor rendering performance improvements

Welcome to the May Development Update!

n this blog post, we’ll be detailing our current progress on Update 11 and talking about our plans for the next few updates.





Plateosaurus AND staff will be coming to the Update 11 PTB soon!

The next PTB release will include access to an early version of staff gameplay - featuring laborers and keepers! Their visuals are still a heavy work in progress, featuring non-final animations and materials, but their gameplay is mechanically functional.

Although we explained how staff and logistics work in a previous dev diary, we’ll quickly go through it again here with new in-game screenshots and gifs.

It all begins with the Loading Bay - a module that imports resources for animals and guests. This building can only hold a small amount of items, relying on staff to distribute supplies throughout the park.



When resources have been collected by staff, a truck will depart to replace your missing inventory, returning later in the month. Downtime between deliveries can be improved by purchasing up to two additional trucks per Loading Bay.



Since the Loading Bay can run out of room, you’ll need to eventually expand your storage. Storage modules for goods and produce can be strategically placed around the park to shorten delivery times in the long term.



In Prehistoric Kingdom, this is a physical process. Laborers will walk from the Loading Bay to storage modules, transporting the required goods. There is no global “park-wide” resource pool, each storage building has its own internal stock and demands physical interaction from a Laborer or Keeper in order to retrieve a resource.



Players can selectively block certain resource types when selecting a storage module, allowing you to flexibly customize how things are stored without having to clinically micro-manage everything. Blocking a resource that’s already in storage will have it removed by a Laborer.



The Laborer’s primary role is to transport resources around the zoo, taking meals and merch from the Loading Bay or Goods Storage in order to restock kiosks, restaurants and gift shops so that visitors have products to buy.

As mentioned, these staff members also take the responsibility for moving resources between storage modules. They like to move it, move it!



Keepers take produce from the Loading Bay, storage modules or Produce Stations. They’ll enter habitats via the new Staff Gates and restock feeders, providing your animals with food.



You can see a work in progress refill below! We intend to make Keepers push wheelbarrows once it’s all finished.



Seeing staff running around exhibits really gives us an appreciation for how big these animals were (and highlights how massive these feeders are!).



Of course, after animals have eaten, they’ll also poop! Keepers ensure habitats stay clean by taking dung to the nearest Compost Heap for conversion into compost.



Compost is delivered to Produce Stations by Laborers. It’s with these modules that players can grow their own food supply, converting compost into edible plants, fruit, meat, fish or insects for the animals.



Without compost, Produce Stations will continue to generate food, but will do so at a heavily reduced rate. You’ll need a decent amount of poop to keep these things going, but the gains are worth it!

Once staff go live on the PTB, we’ll be taking notes on balance while development continues on Update 11. We aren’t expecting to have them absolutely perfect out the gate, and there’s a lot of work still to be done on guiding players through this entire system.

One of the funny quirks that staff currently have is that they’ll freely navigate wherever they want. They’ll always take the quickest path to their destination, even if it means going off-road. This is something that we’d obviously like to improve, but regardless, they’ll get the job done even if it means wandering through a desert for now.



Another thing we’d like to quickly draw attention to are the staff gates! These are modular objects that can be used anywhere, they are not exclusive to fences. This means that you can create functioning staff-only areas which can be essential for maintaining high park beauty.



On that note, we absolutely love seeing staff move about the zoo. It completely changes how we build and makes us want to spend more time constructing backstage areas.

As part of our ongoing UI improvements, we’ve completely revamped the interface for selecting modular groups and items. It’s refreshed, minimalized and highly contextual to the group’s contents or selected pieces.

Clicking on a group now shows all the module information inside, allowing players to easily view things like Loading Bay contents, storage modules or change an animal information sign. You can collapse each widget individually or hold the shift key to collapse all the widgets at once.





These widgets will show up while editing a group, too! Simply select the item you want to view and the widget will appear, exactly like on the group menu. No more jumping back and forth.



When selecting a group with lights, you’ll be able to access a brand new lighting tab. From here, players will have the option to permanently toggle their lights on, regardless of the time of day. Indoor exhibit builders, rejoice!



Since the last dev diary, we’ve added the Paleopedia to the PTB. This can be accessed at any time from the left side of the screen, making it perfect for habitat construction or learning more about your creatures.



From the home page, players can filter the search results by biome, time period, continent, diet and even animal size.



In the future, we will be expanding the Paleopedia to include articles for dig sites and eventually paleobotany! It’s important to learn more about our prehistoric world and we hope the Paleopedia can be a resource for that with time.

As a small improvement to the animal visuals, we’ve added detail maps to almost every species. This is a subtle layer of bumpy skin and scratches that sit on top of the existing art assets. It’s not noticeable at a distance, but helps greatly when observing animals up close.



Beyond the expected polish needed for staff, there’s a few things we’d like to do. For one, we’ll need to do a lot of work on funneling/teaching players about the new mechanics. We’ve been designing a new help menu with updated articles to detail how everything in the game works and will also be revamping the game’s notification system to be more helpful, providing suggestions and better information about what’s wrong.

In terms of staff, we still need to implement cashiers and then focus on balance until we’re out of PTB. Keep your eyes on our socials to find out when Update 11 will be ready!



Update 12 will be a content focused release, acting as a development buffer while we work on Update 13. It’s going to include a new map, building theme and include three animals: Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus and Hell Creek’s very own armored tank, Ankylosaurus!



This update will have a focus on making visitors smarter and properly utilize our suite of new animations to make guests feel more lively. We’ve had to upgrade our animation tech for Update 11, so it’ll be great to properly stretch its muscles here.

As a continuation of staff management, we’ll be adding another new mechanic - messages! Through this menu, players will be able to negotiate employee salaries, try to keep staff onboard and interact with the administration team. We feel that this’ll be a great way to humanize staff and make their lives more than just a UI element. Check out the concept art below!





Like Update 11, this will be a large mechanical update focused on the animals! We’re aiming to improve their AI and behaviors with awareness, sociality and herding. There’s not too much else to say at this stage but we can’t wait to share more.



Created by Incog


Created by luci257


Created by f95_mo



Thank you for reading May’s dev diary!

We cannot wait to finish Update 11 as even in its current state, you can see it coming together. The team especially feels that with the next few major updates, the game will really begin to feel cohesive thanks to ongoing UI revamps and continued development into management mechanics.

- The PK Team

• Facebook
  
• Twitter
  
• Discord
  
• Reddit
  
• YouTube

Welcome, Park Testers!

This PTB release fixes a number of player reported issues with continued polish made to the current PTB features.

It also introduces a work in progress version of the Paleopedia - an encyclopedia featuring animal information and habitat statistics! A lot of information is either missing or temporary (e.g. paddock calculator, social needs, animal life cycle stats) so don't worry about that too much.


Some improvements have been made to the behaviour of fence gates, but please let us know if you run into other issues with the fence system.


The Public Testing Branch (PTB) is a version of Prehistoric Kingdom that can be opted-into on Steam, containing experimental and potentially breaking changes. With the help of the community, we're able to hunt down various issues and gather feedback before pushing a an update to the public version of Prehistoric Kingdom.

1. Right click Prehistoric Kingdom in your Steam Library
   
2. Go to Properties
   
3. Betas
   
4. Select 'ptb_public_testing'

Please note that it is not recommended to play Public Testing Branch parks on earlier versions of the game. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.

• Due to splitting the animal species into their own genera, some info sign screens might load up with the wrong animal on display. Simply resetting the animal screen and saving should resolve the issue.

• UI/UX
  • Added the Paleopedia (please note a lot of the values and stats are temporary!)

• Balance
  • Enclosure Size and Crowding requirements for animals have been readjusted
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added a Gates section to the Enclosures menu
    
  • Gate to fence snapping improvements
    
  • Gate to fence group snapping (any gate!)
    
  • Added support for gates to play open and close sounds
• UI/UX
  • Updated graphics and coloring to the animal info panel

• Critical
  • Fixed hard crash when placing objects near the edges of the map
    
  • Fixed hard crash relating to visitor visualization
    
  • Hardened how some systems initialize so that they work consistently
    
  • Fixed multiple exceptions that broke various tools and menus
    
  • Fixed various modules being unplaceable
    
  • Fixed logistics memory errors
    
  • Fixed a temporary deadlock issue (would cause the game to pause for 1 second, when changing feeder type)
    
  • Revised fence placement logic to make enclosure detection much more reliable
• Gameplay
  • Re-enabled nursery holder animals saving/loading
    
  • The tutorial was disabled again, after being mistakenly left available. We are currently working on a more intuitive tutorial system, about which we will be sharing more details in the future!
• Animals
  • Fixed Leaelly IK
• Guests
  • Fixed a bug that caused guests to use incorrect textures
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed fence terracing
• Construction
  • Habitat Markers are now correctly made invisible when loading a game
    
  • Fixed fence terracing
    
  • Can no longer place fences intersecting a gate module
    
  • Can no longer place fences that exit the map boundaries
• Rendering
  • Glass rendering happens later to render VFX pieces through it, may improve visuals, please give feedback :)
• UI/UX
  • Fixed the Nursery Holder animal elements’ animations not updating with different time scales
    
  • Fixed overview settings button not properly toggling off once entering the pause menu
    
  • Fixed buggy module placement after placing a gate
    
  • Fixed layouts in the structure filter menu not refreshing correctly
    
  • Fixed main menu bugging out upon exiting a save[
    
  • Fixed Animal Info Signs not detecting nearby species after loading a save
• Misc.
  • Fixed _TEMPSAVE string stacking multiple times on save files

• Minor optimizations and stutter reduction
  
• Loading performance improved
  
• Modular memory usage reduced

Welcome, Park Testers!

An early, in-development version of Update 11 is now available to opt-into on the Public Testing Branch! This release includes the adorable Leaellynasaura and many work in progress changes to the game. Staff, logistics and in-depth Excavations ARE NOT included and will be added to the PTB once their systems have developed further.

We're aiming to make continued use of the PTB throughout 2024 so that players have a way to check out what we're working on, even in a basic state.


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

• PTB Save Directory: The Public Test Branch will save games to a separate directory ('__PTB__') in order to reduce potential save conflicts. We've made some other changes to the save system, so please report ANY issues that you encounter!
  
• Fence Rework & Staff Gates: Fence placement and mesh generation has been overhauled to allow for the addition of staff gates. Enclosures are very work in progress as a result, potentially to leading to cases where they may fail to register or don't appear in the animal overview menu.
  
• Excavations System: The basic version of our new Excavations system allows players to unlock animals. Please let us know if any issues are experienced, though given its primitive state we don't expect much here.
  
• GUI Updates: New UI elements have been added with more coming throughout the PTB. We've disabled notifications which means inexperienced players may have difficulty navigating the game and some elements such as the Weather menu are in a different location. The Animal Nursery can be accessed from the Park Services menu, but there's temporarily less visual feedback when creating animals (we are working on new notifications!). There's a lot of work to be done in restoring game feel and guiding the player experience!
  
• Guest Art: Some of the updated guest art is in! These are still very much a work in progress, currently lacking clothing color variation and male visitors (we're working on their animation set!).

The Public Testing Branch (PTB) is a version of Prehistoric Kingdom that can be opted-into on Steam, containing experimental and potentially breaking changes. With the help of the community, we're able to hunt down various issues and gather feedback before pushing a an update to the public version of Prehistoric Kingdom.

1. Right click Prehistoric Kingdom in your Steam Library
   
2. Go to Properties
   
3. Betas
   
4. Select 'ptb_public_testing'

Please note that it is not recommended to play Public Testing Branch parks on earlier versions of the game. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.

• We're anticipating some potential crashes from loading old parks. If this is discovered, please send your crash logs to our Discord server's appropriate channel.
  
• All staff and logistics buildings are NON-FUNCTIONAL! This is intended until we add staff and logistics.
  
• Enclosures from existing save files are not yet registering as valid exhibits. We are working on this!
  
• The staff gates feature temporary art and will be updated in the future.
  
• The UI is a massive work in progress, featuring old and new panels.
  
• Many UI features such as notifications have been temporarily disabled while we rework them.
  
• When incubating an animal, there's no visual feedback. We intend to show a small notification entering the Animal Holder, but this is not implemented.

As always, we kindly thank you for your patience!

• NEW ANIMAL: Leaellynasaura

• Gameplay
  • Added the Eumeralla Formation
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added new basic fence: Basic Chainlink Fence
    
  • New Staff Management & Logistic modules (non-functional!):
    • Staff Gate 2.5m
      
    • Staff Gate 4m
      
    • Staff Center
      
    • Loading Bay
      
    • Goods Storage Small
      
    • Goods Storage Large
      
    • Produce Storage Small
      
    • Produce Storage Large
      
    • Compost Heap
      
    • Produce Station (Mix Feed, Plants, Fruit, Meat, Fish, Insects)
  • New Park Management modules:
    • Fossil Depot
      
    • Research Station
  • Added over 19 new basic/backstage props!
    • Liquid Barrel
      
    • Plastic Bowl
      
    • Cooling Box
      
    • Plastic Box
      
    • Plastic Box Tub
      
    • Wooden Box
      
    • Construction Cone
      
    • Construction Floor Sign
      
    • Dry Erase Board 1
      
    • Dry Erase Board 2
      
    • Keeper Spade
      
    • Ladder 1
      
    • Ladder 2
      
    • Shipping Container
      
    • Shipping Crate
      
    • Shipping Pallet
      
    • Staff Shelf 1
      
    • Staff Shelf 2
      
    • Staff Sink
• Audio
  • Added Nigel dialogue to the following animals:
    • Charonosaurus
      
    • Elasmotherium
      
    • Juxia
      
    • Leaellynasaura
      
    • Muttaburrasaurus
      
    • Panthera atrox
      
    • Panthera spelaea
      
    • Tarbosaurus
      
    • Sinotherium

• Animals
  • Updated default expression for Panthera atrox and spelaea
• Guests
  • Fully reworked art (work-in-progress)
    
  • Human animation system reworked from the ground up (work-in-progress)
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Updated the ‘Prehistoric Kingdom Visitor Entrance Stone Age’ prefab to not contain tropical themed pieces
    
  • Updated several Fence visuals
• UI/UX
  • Updated layout, flow and functionality for several pieces of the GUI (wip)
    • Main Action Board
      
    • Management Menu and all its sub-menus (e.g. excavations, animal menu, etc.)
      
    • Modular Editing Overlay
      
    • Weather Menu
      
    • Animal Nursery Holder
  • Moved the Animal Nursery Menu into the Management Menu
    
  • Terraforming menu now displays updated biome icons to match animal info panels
    
  • Huge improvements across the board when it comes to GUI layout updating and refreshing
• Audio
  • Adjusted Nigel’s VO processing
    
  • Selecting Panthera in the Nursery will play the lion roar instead of Smilodon

• Critical
  • Fixed a bug that caused loading to break when Documents/Prehistoric Kingdom/Modular Prefabs folder was not creatable or accessible
    
  • Added a fix for size limit on modular save files
    
  • Fixed a rare crash when animals would check for a place to stand
    
  • Fixed a rare crash in pathfinding
    
  • Fixed a blackscreen issue that would persist through reloading a save, now those saves should be recoverable!
    
  • Fixed a rare animal unlock load bug that would break loading
    
  • Fixed a crash that occurred during Mac emulation
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed a selection issue with the Rock Basalt 1 piece
• Terraforming
  • Fixed numerous issues with modular undo/redo, particularly terrain flattening logic
    
  • Fixed a bug with the water remove brush where it would generate horrific janky edges near the shoreline
    
  • Fixed a bug where undo/redo would just delete a huge chunk of water
• UI/UX
  • Fixed a typo in the Elasmotherium info sign
    
  • Fixed an issue that would cause Screenshot Mode to remain open when opening a building menu

• Loading performance has been improved with additional multi-threading
  • This especially affects the Canada map or any save with a lot of pieces
• Improved modular system performance in a few areas
  • Primarily addressed slowdowns when working with pieces that had many tens or hundreds of thousands of instances on the map (trees on canada for instance)
    
  • Memory efficiency improvements
• Save system upgraded with better read/write performance and a fix for having too many files in a save (caused workshop upload issues)
  
• Save/load menu performance improved
  
• New human animations are more memory efficient
  
• New fences are more efficiently rendered and consume considerably less memory

Welcome to the April Development Update!

In this bite-sized blog post, we’ll be providing more information about the Update 11 PTB (Public Test Branch) and showcasing some important changes to the fence system. If you’d like to learn more about Update 11 as a whole, be sure to check out last month’s development diary!



To keep it brief, development on Update 11 is going well! The logistics system is essentially complete but pending integration with staff and more UI elements. Staff themselves are coming along with a lot of work being done on their models and animations. Although staff and logistics won’t make the initial PTB release for Update 11, we’re pleased with how they’re developing and look forward to sharing more with you soon.

The first version of Update 11 will be hitting the Steam PTB on May 10th. This build will contain the following features:

• New species: Leaellynasaura
  
• New modules
  
• New basic/backstage props
  
• Improved fences & staff gates
  
• Improved Excavations system
  
• Improved GUI flow

We’ll be rolling out logistics and staff related gameplay to the PTB as their development continues. In the meantime, players will have access to the new staff related modules such as the Loading Bay, Staff Center and Fossil Depot to prepare parks and create custom prefabs.

One of the other changes we’ve made is to the Animal Nursery. Like the Fossil Depot, there will only be one Animal Nursery module per park, with the menu now accessible from the Park Services menu. The current module designs will eventually be converted into props, with a new building and Nursery UI revamp coming down the line.


The current Nursery menu will be found in the same place as Excavations, Research and Finances!

As always, the PTB will include experimental changes and won’t reflect the final Update 11 release. The team will be working to add more content, polish and progressively finalize the update. This year, we’re aiming to utilize the PTB more frequently so that players can check in to see what we’re up to, even if it’s in-development.



Over the years, fences and enclosures have accumulated a lot of tech debt due to having some of the oldest code in the game. They were so old, in fact, that they actually predate the modular building system! With staff needing to access enclosures pretty soon, we had two options:

1. Bandaid gates onto the old code and rework fences down the line.
   
2. Rework fences now but delay Update 11’s PTB to May 10th.

We chose the second option, and in a little over a week, our awesome programmers not only rebuilt the fence system from the ground up, but improved performance AND added support for modular staff gates. On the technical side, these new fences are way less rigid to work with and have allowed the team to add some excellent quality of life improvements for our users.

For example, when placing fences, they’ll now collide and snap to existing sections rather than clipping through them.



The maximum segment length has been increased, making it easier to create circular habitats. There’s also a new line indicator that appears once the max length is reached.



If touching an existing segment, angle snap now uses its local direction, rather than defaulting to the world grid. This means that if you’ve been building fences at a strange angle and decide to use angle snap (e.g. 45°, 90°), the game will automatically account for it.




When replacing fence designs, the preview is now real time! You can see an example below (ignore our debug dev material).



Modular staff gate modules can be attached to fences, updating in real time (temporary gate art). These will eventually allow staff to pass into enclosures once they are included in Update 11.



All of this is on top of fences not only rendering faster, but taking up waaay less memory too! Thanks to this new infrastructure, it’s going to be so much easier for us to tackle things like fence maintenance and animal breakouts in the future. These improvements have been needed for a long time and we couldn’t be happier to finally get it out of the way.

In Update 11, we’re adding a bunch of new backstage props as part of the basic theme. With staff coming soon, we wanted to provide a few more items to help make the zoo feel more real!




Looking to the immediate future, everything discussed below will not be available in the initial Update 11 build coming to the PTB, but will instead be added progressively.

During the Update 11 PTB, a new sauropodomorph will be marching its way into your parks! Please welcome the broad lizard, Plateosaurus.



Unlike its younger relatives currently featured in the game, this Triassic dinosaur was bipedal, featuring short forelimbs with sharp claws. Our scientists have observed extreme size variation in adult specimens of Plateosaurus, making this species a particularly diverse bunch to look at!

Plateosaurus will be released later in an Update 11 PTB patch.



During the Update 11 PTB, we’ll be overhauling the Animal Nursery with a fresh design and new behavior.

Our goal is to move away from showing a general or ‘default’ specimen and aim to instead display the actual individual that’ll be bred. This means that you’d be able to see potential mutations, size and skin variation prior to creation. Each time you create an individual, the next one will appear different.



As you can see in the UI concept art above, all of the habitat stats are missing! That’s because everything you need to satisfy your animals has been moved to the Paleopedia, an upcoming database that can be accessed from anywhere in the park.



Since a lot of the species descriptions are currently being written, we’ll be adding them into the Paleopedia at a later date. Here’s an early look at how that looks, though!





Created by Incog


Created by luci257


Created by gemini98



Thank you for reading April’s dev diary!

Don’t forget that the initial PTB for Update 11 goes live May 10th! We’re excited to have you with us on this journey and look forward to continuing development on Update 11.

- The PK Team

• Facebook
  
• Twitter
  
• Discord
  
• Reddit
  
• YouTube