May 31, 2019
Prehistoric Kingdom - Shadow Raven Studios
Welcome to May’s development update!
Featuring new content and previews for what’s currently in the pipeline, the team has prepared a variety of goodies to sink your ravenous teeth into. There’s much to come in the next few months, so let’s get straight into the discussion.
May brought a new host of exciting opportunities and development obstacles to overcome. Due to asset limitations of the Unity engine, we had to delegate time to finding solutions before being able to create new development builds. This was unfortunately a large and unforeseen issue, so efforts had to go into figuring that out if we wanted to be able to play the game outside of the engine.
Apart from looking into our main issue above, the crew’s had their own oddities and life to attend to during the month which is to be expected. We’re set to begin working on something pretty cool that’ll come to fruition in a few months, so we hope you’re looking forward to seeing that. There’s a lot of big things coming up and the team couldn’t be more excited!
Level Design
Placed right in the middle of the temperature scale, the temperate continental island offers a generous amount of flat terrain around its centralized mountain range. With accents of color dotted around the map thanks to the native foliage of the climate – what better place to build your Prehistoric Kingdom?
Guest System
During May we got started on basic visitor implementation ahead of the Management schedule for reasons we’ll reveal at a later date (wow, secrets!).
As a way to bring diversity and life to a park’s guest population, the randomization system is working extremely well to produce various results from an assortment of age demographics, body weight, height, ethnicities, and clothing options. Since this is our first pass on guests in the game, please understand that they’re very much a work in progress and aren’t completely representative of how they’ll look further in development.
In a few months we’ll start the next step of giving visitors basic AI navigation before they inevitably get their own needs during Pre-Alpha 2.
Animal Shader
Big fidelity improvements were brought to animals this month with the development of a new animal shader. Scaly or feathered; this is the best the creatures of Prehistoric Kingdom have ever looked in-game.
Beyond the expected visual improvements, new support has been added for body wetness, reflective eyes, body translucency, and more.
Random skin colouring makes a return from the demo with individuals possessing variation in the darkness of their body when compared to other members of their species! This simple feature allows large herds of creatures to feel more individualised and helps to break up the monotony (in addition to random sizes between fully-grown creatures).
Over time we plan to add new features to the shader such as disease overlays, damage wounds, and battle scars.
Another month, another species spotlight! Showcasing the diversity of our climates, each animal has their own unique exhibit personality and requirements to meet.
Temperate Continental Foliage
Holding many familiar trees found all across the world, temperate continental includes common foliage such as bamboo, magnolias, oaks, and willow trees.
We can’t wait to see what parks and paddocks players create with these contemporary staples!
New Decorative Fences
Although not initially planned (what were we thinking?!), we’ve added hedges to the game with two variants: tall and short.
Along with the green trimmings above, Nathan built two more asset variants for creative players to make use of: the rope fence!
Animation
During May, we weren’t able to get the Ankylosaur rig finished in time for this blog post. To put it simply, we were unable to complete the animation reel due to the time we’ve spent trying to fix the Unity asset bundle problems and complete additional work on other parts of the game. Instead of delivering a rushed and unpolished rig preview, we’ll be revealing the animation reel featuring Sauropelta during June.
Until then, thank you for understanding and we hope you look forward to having two animation reels next month!
Music
In addition to developing new sounds for the Sauropelta, Byron began work on a new ambient piece! You can listen to a short excerpt of the work in progress below:
https://soundcloud.com/byronmckay/preview-ambient-05
Since our posts leave little room for surprises in the final game, we’ve decided to keep future music track reveals to previews only. There’s a lot of content going into Prehistoric Kingdom, so we’d like to at least keep some of it a surprise!
Animal Redux
Continuing the trend set by other feathered creatures like the Yutyrannus and Guanlong, Cindy revamped the textures for Thescelosaurus and Nothronychus! These herbivorous dinosaurs are appropriately fluffy and look far better than their original counterparts.
As a reward for providing proper care towards your prehistoric creatures, animals can be awarded with additional star ratings! More popular and attractive to guests, prestige is hard to attain but can be highly rewarding.
What is it?
Prestige is earned by successfully keeping a creature’s mood above 90% for an extended period of gameplay.
Acting as a passive background reward, each additional star will multiply an animal’s popularity with guests and in turn help contribute more to your overall park rating. By introducing prestige, it allows early game animals such as Dryosaurus and Psittacosaurus to not become totally redundant with time as long as they’re highly satisfied with their conditions.
Earning Prestige
To qualify for prestige stars, the player must ensure that the animal has a high exhibit satisfaction and that all needs have been met. If these two conditions are reached, the animal will begin the gradual process of earning an additional five stars over time.
Every animal has its own internal stats behind the scenes that we use to fine-tune its effectiveness in the park, so no, a five star Coelophysis will not have equal worth to a five star Tyrannosaurus.
Losing Prestige
On the flipside, prehistoric attractions can lose their star rating at the hands of poor management. In the event of… “visitor casualties,” the critter responsible for killing a guest will immediately accumulate negative prestige – reducing the number of guests that actively view the paddock containing the animal.
The longer an animal is left ill with disease or escaped from their exhibit, all additional stars will begin to disappear entirely. Some diseases and weather conditions are prone to freaking out dinosaurs and mammals alike, so be sure to research vaccines and check the weather forecast!
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If you would like to check out our previous blogs, you can head to the official one here!
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