Welcome to September’s development update!

It’s that time again for another look into some of the things that were worked on during the last month. Some non-project related events meant that some of our team members had other matters to tend to in September but nonetheless everyone is doing okay and we are back to show some of our exciting content. This update is a little shorter than usual, but we hope that its content more than makes up for that!



Programming has been back into full-swing after our unexpected and continued waiting on SpeedTree and some other third party tasks. While the development schedule may have shifted, we have been doing our best to continue working on other components and features in the meantime.

With some better news, however, the foliage and water painting are almost complete! Although we currently can’t import the new trees and foliage due to lack of Unity support, our programmers have been experimenting with some stock pieces and we’re blown away by the results.


In-Engine environment painting work-in-progress result using stock and old demo assets.

Please keep in mind that everything used is a placeholder development asset and will either be replaced or made far prettier in the future!


For reference, here is the foliage painting system that currently exists in the pre-alpha demo:



While it wasn’t necessarily bad, it didn’t behave as expected and resulted in players having to click over and over again. Foliage rendering caused a substantial drop in frame rate which meant that dense forests were hard to create smoothly. Thankfully, these issues have all but been eliminated.

Today, we’d like to present the foundations of Prehistoric Kingdom’s new foliage rendering system.





As you can see below the intensity of the brush can be altered, resulting in an increasingly sparse placement of trees.



And of course we couldn’t forget the ability to place individual trees by lowering the brush size to its minimum value.




Yes, it’s finally here! Eagerly awaited by fans and developers alike, the water brush is a quick and easy way to paint water directly into an exhibit.





It’s definitely taken some time to get to this stage, but we think that everyone can agree in that it was worth it purely for the results.


Now with a short and less gif-heavy update, we decided to jump ahead while waiting for SpeedTree to get started on the framework for the new and improved resource system. It’s mainly mathematics and programming at the moment but once we get some UI hooked up we’ll be ready to show it off!






The Off-Road Safari allows your guests to get up close and personal with animals by driving directly through exhibits via a set path.



Building a Restaurant is a great way to avoid queues and serve quality food to your hungry patrons. With a warm two-story design and plenty of seating options, the atmosphere is sure to light up your park’s night life. Players can rename the sign on the building in the properties window.



In the “unlikely” event of an emergency, the Large Underground Bunker is capable of holding up to 500 guests. Much like its smaller counterpart, injured guests can be treated for wounds.

Like our past buildings, any improvements or adjustments from the concept art will be made in the modelling process so everything above is sure to look even better!




In our continued efforts to improve the look and feel of the game, our UI designer has gone back and tidied up the main HUD elements.



It’s not too much of a departure from what we had previously, but it certainly helps give players more screen space when building their park – not to mention its sleeker look. New overlay and access buttons have been added to the top left of the screen, as well as some new icons for fencing and funds. As always the UI colour can be changed by players in the settings menu.




Our composer was quite busy this month but he still managed to sneak in a little preview of something he’s been working on over the past week. It’s currently unfinished, untitled, and very much a work in progress but the final version should be ready for listening in the next DevLog!

http://prehistorickingdom.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/PK_TrackWIP2.mp3?_=1



This month brings one new creature and some alterations to an old classic. Please enjoy the new renders of some of our personal favourites; Dilophosaurus wetherilli and Ursus spelaeus – the cave bear!






In September we made some changes to our old demo animals to make them look closer to their fossilised counterparts.

Velociraptor mongoliensis first debuted in its current state back in 2016. Upon further inspection, our feathery friend had some definite anatomy issues that needed to be addressed!



One request we are often asked pertains to one species of a very well known genus; Triceratops. With some magical developer wizardry, Triceratops horridus will be joining the ensemble as an alt. species for Triceratops prorsus. Since we’ve decided to use textures to quickly swap between the two, no differences will be found in the frill or body. As for the general anatomy and body plan, we updated it to resemble more recent reconstructions of the creature.




Straight from the nursery and incubation chambers our park scientists have provided us with some more growth charts for a few new creatures. Today we’re proud to show off our geckos, fluff cubs, and lanky chicken bois.








With eight months worth of alternate skins shown since Kickstarter, we’re down to the very last one. There’s a few being saved for their eventual reveal on the model (such as a certain feathered tyrant), but we hope you’ve enjoyed waiting to see what Early Access design comes next!





All of our Early Access Thyreophora – including a new Sauropelta skin!

Believe it or not, we’re down to only three more animals that still need to be revealed. As the total number of finished animals begins to increase all future model reveals will be the alternate skin designs fully realised onto our critters. Stay tuned for next month’s exciting animal showcase as we unveil the last few remaining mammals!

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Thank you to our amazing backers and fans for continuing to support our project!

It seems like only yesterday that the Jurassic Patch was released and development on the full game began. We’re striving to make October even more productive and deliver on a tycoon experience that we can be proud of. It truly is a group effort and we couldn’t be doing what we are now without you.
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• Facebook.
  
• Twitter.
  
• Discord.
  
• YouTube.

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

This is the first update in quite a while and it's a BIG one.

TLDR; rebalanced block P costs, lots of new weapon types for modders, significant optimizations for better frame rate and a smoother ride.

General Improvements:
* Block P costs have been re-balanced
* Significant performance, precision, and stability updates when editing very large structures.
* 'x' now properly stops the player ship from rotating when in key rotation mode
* tooltips are now properly updated after scaling a block
* World streaming and generation is now smoother. Improve performance when copying clusters and when allocating new clusters using a new port connection copying algorithm and pooled allocator for cluster structures.
* Use a different, more accurate method for sleeping between frames and update steps (smoother animations).
* Improve targeting for cannons and rockets, particularly when the velocity difference between the firing ship and target is significant.
* update Chinese translation (Thanks to community members Uiharu, Fgdfgfthgr, tang hao, liilili, Magnus siiftun1857 Frankline, and others). Improve Chinese and Japanese text wrapping.
* Significantly reduce the memory used by each game block by moving constant fields into a central, shared location. This also makes it easier to add new block fields in the future.
* Significant physics engine cpu and memory optimizations.
* Graphics transformation optimizations. Particle effect spawning optimization
* Significant healing laser optimizations
* New block sleeping optimization reduces CPU usage of inert blocks.
* OPTIMIZATIONS
* Fix several rare editor related crashes
* Weapon ranges are now displayed in the binding screen
* Lots of random crash fixes

Tournament:
* The AI now ignores weapons bound as either "point defense" or "auto-fire" when determining what range to engage at. Players can bind auxiliary weapons to either of these two binding slots to prevent them from interfering with AI positioning.
* AI will now use the fire mode ("fire all" or "ripple fire") from the primary weapon binding for its weapons.
* Weapons bindings are now easier to edit in sandbox mode. Just press 'b' without closing the console.
* AI now properly considers weapon boosters when calculating weapon range/damage in several places.

Modders:
* New "fragment" cannon field allows recursively defined projectiles that split into more projectiles.
* New cannon field "pattern" can be set to "random" (default), "spiral", "wave", or "constant" to change the way projectiles are distributed through the "spread" angle.
* New cannon/laser field "barrelTaper" allows modifying turret barrel aesthetics.
* New cvar kSensorRangeMultiplier allows modders to increase the sensor range of all ships (default is 2200 units). Particularly useful for mods that also increase kLiveRadius.
* audio.lua mods can now load sounds from the base game directory without having to copy the sound file into their mod
* Hold down "control" to display the prettier construction mode tooltip when in the sandbox (instead of the more verbose sandbox tooltip)
* level_save command now requires a -f switch to overwrite and existing level file. Add level_remove command.
* Allow setting block "health" and "mass" directly instead of setting "durability" and "density"
* Add new cvar kWriteJSON which causes the game to export ships and write other data files in easily parsable JSON format instead of the default lua-esq format. The game can now import ships and other data files in JSON format.
* Fix issue where multiple glsl shader #includes were sometimes garbled
* Add ability to glue several translation strings together in lua files. For example, blurb=_("foo") _("bar") will translate "foo" and "bar" separately and then glue the results together.
* Add new features ALWAYSFIRE and NEVERFIRE which cause weapons to either always fire or never fire (ignored even by AI). Useful for cosmetic lasers, etc.
* Extend the ONEUSE flag to work with SHIELD, LAUNCHER, and FACTORY/SELFFACTORY.
* Add PALETTE feature to allow placing blocks in the faction palette even if they are not in a ship (see also NOPALETTE).
* Add turretLimit block field to allow turrets that only partially rotate
* Increase maximum custom block scale from 10 to 32. Increase maximum number of vertices per shape from 16 to 32.
* Allow new kCVar += N syntax which helps mods conflict less
* Add new triangle based (instead of point based) particle rendering mode which is slower but works better with very large particles. To enable set kParticleTris=1.
* Add new feature LAUNCHER_BARRAGE which can be added to LAUNCHER to cause all missiles to fire at once.
* Add cvar kMainMenuBattleFactions and friends to allow controlling the contents of the main menu battle

10月1日，暗黑风ARPG类网游《烈焰战纪》强势登陆！

传承暗黑玩家的意志，烈焰不删档正式开启！

感谢所有玩家一直以来对烈焰战纪的关注、喜爱和支持！从今天开始大家将踏上一个充满挑战、充满热情，澎湃又刺激的征途！无论你是一往无前的探索解谜、挑战BOSS角色突破、还是招兵买马集结战团，生活休闲建造家园，都能在烈焰战纪寻找到自己的归宿！

不删档首测说明：

1.服务器开放时间
- 10月1日14：00正式开放

2.开放服务器
- 星星之火（多线）

0.11.0.7 is a bit bigger than the previous hotfixes and includes some reasonably significant performance and stability gains. If performance was your Achilles heel, give it a try!

Development blog post here:

https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/0-11-0-7-performance-hotfix/

Cheers,
Quasar

Hey, Everyone! SufF3R here, with a brief update. The team has been busy working out way through the game, and we wanted to share a few updates with you all. In the recent months, our focus has been getting the game closer and closer to a first playable. We've made some tremendous progress with Cal, Muit, and Hawk joining us recently, but there's much more that needs to be done before we're ready to share our progress with you. 

While we're getting there, here are a few works-in-progress shots of the Night of the Living Dead map nay0r has been working on. 

In the screenshots below, you'll see a few shots of two rooms within the chapel. In the basement, what once was a place to dress the deceased has now become a make-shift hospital for survivors.

 

The upper room of the chapel has also been re-appropriated to be used as a place to store bodies.



Our boy, MzK, has also been working on finishing the animations for the MP5, MK18 (reworked), and the DT11. Please note that these renders were captured in a test environment and the crosshair and setting is for animation purposes and will NOT be in the final game.

MP5

MK18 (Reworked)DT11

We're working away to make a game we'll be proud of, and a game that you'll enjoy. So we honestly appreciate your patience with us as we keep ramping production up! That's it for now, we've got a lot to go, and we'll commit to continuing to share our progress with you all.

Stay tuned for a little something special happening on Hallows Eve...

Share your thoughts with us and join the conversation on discord at http://discord.gg/nmrih

Match Engine Changes:

• Changes to the player rating /10 system (players will receive extremely high and extremely low ratings less frequently)
  
• Fixes and some additions to the Match Commentary
  
• Minor balancing changes including:
  
• Less straight Red cards being issued; and
  
• Less penalties awarded; and
  
• Less goals disallowed

Other Changes and Bug Fixes:

• TV Rights now earned after requesting matches for blocks of 5 minutes rather than blocks of 15 minutes
  
• Players who are retiring at the end of the current season cannot be purchased from the pool
  
• Ethnic group name subtype information now has an influence over the First and Last names given to newly created players (note: it only provides an increased chance that these will align, not guarantee it. Note: for many Nationalities we don't have or have very limited Ethnic group subtype information at present). If you would like to assist with contributing to improve the data we have please see the 'Want to Help?' Steam Discussions pinned post
  
• Some updates to the player names database
  
• PFA is now an active FA
  
• Rather than the auto-sign player (when you don't have enough players to field a team for a match) signing the best free player available according to the number of total attribute points, it now signs a random free player instead
  
• Fixed an extremely rare bug with the pre-match autoselect that could cause a match to fail if a user has a senior official match, and has enough players to field a team for that match, but if that user doesn't have enough players to field a team if you exclude goal keepers not currently included in the users senior squad

Minor Changes to TV Rights and addition of Perpetual FA
https://steamcommunity.com/app/468070/discussions/1/1739968490570642854/

Want to Help?
https://steamcommunity.com/app/468070/discussions/1/1290691937730912567/

As players get deeper and deeper into the Azurite Mine, some further adjustments have become necessary. We expect to deploy these changes this week, when we next restart the realm. The team has written a Development Manifesto to outline the details of these changes.

Click here to read more.

Minor update with fixes for:
◙ Tutorial intro ship sequence
◙ Humvee driving through hedge in Farmland map
◙ Black Hawk enters train map through rebel zone setting off alarm
◙ Rare satellite initializing screen issue
◙ Lift not working when in underground scientist mission

Hello again!

With September ending comes another content patch of 30 classic puzzle, spread out with the usual ratio (half small, 1/3 medium, 1/6 big).

French and English users will also notice something we were very not keen on adding; a pop-up asking for a review. We thoroughly appologizes for this and the moment you close it, it'll be gone forever. Our game is hurting for reviews due to how limited an application is on Steam until a certain number is accumulated, but that is no reason for your enjoyement to be affected by it. Feel free to close it and not give it a second thought. Also, if you do feel like giving us a review, we'd be delighted for you to speak your mind, as it is through criticism that IP 2.0 was born from IP.

We thank you so much for giving us your time.

See you all next month for more content!

·修复人物特性未能正确识别的BUG
·修复人物在深谷中时年龄不会变化的BUG
·修复New_Setting错误导致新建人物报错的BUG

（非常抱歉，帮我重构这部分代码的程序员已被我打包寄往冰岛，今天我会针对这部分代码产生的BUG进行持续修复，请大家注意及时更新游戏。）