Prehistoric Kingdom

[GojiraGuy1954]

Welcome to January's Development Update!

After a wonderful holiday break, the team returned mid-January to continue working on Prehistoric Kingdom. In this time, it turns out we crossed a rather exciting milestone... we've shipped 100,000 units since launching in April last year!

With your ongoing support we want to make 2023 a more consistent and even bigger year for us, targeting meaningful gameplay additions and improvements with our usual sprinkling of modular pieces and creativity. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us so far!

To start the year off, let's dive straight into development progress and take a look at some of the things we're cooking up behind the scenes.




Where We're At

Good news! The next patch is almost ready to drop. This one is mostly focused on addressing various issues found in the last update, including a bunch of bug fixes as well as huge performance improvements during nighttime thanks to our new light impostors.

Though this patch does address some trouble spots with visitor navigation, we're going to continue working on this aspect of guests. Seeing them dance on tables and disregard common decency is humorous, but it's a side effect of modular pathfinding that requires a more complex solution.
Simply removing walkable areas above a certain height or steepness can include a number of knock-on effects that would make some player builds inaccessible to guests. We will continue to research and develop a robust solution to combat this, but in the meantime, we'd like to thank you for tolerating our hooligans.

Moving on to new gameplay additions, the research system is almost done! We'll be shipping it as soon as it's ready for release after the next update.


Placeholder values and numbers.

Throughout the year, we will be including new types of items, modules and mechanics to expand upon the initial selection of researchables. This is a system that we want to grow and foster over time, evolving the progression of Challenge mode as the game expands during Early Access.

After the research tree is released, we'll be shifting most of our attention to the animals. There's a lot of work to be done in polishing and developing them further with new features, so, let's talk about that!

What's in the Pipeline?


Animals

In 2023, we want to do a lot more for our animals, introducing new gameplay features alongside a number of exciting species. This upcoming roster has a great mix of familiar and lesser celebrated faces, highlighting the diversity of prehistoric life on this planet.

To start, let's take a sneak peak at two animals coming this year. If we told you too much about them, it might just spoil the theme of our next big update! We can't wait to read all your speculation.





Beyond updated locomotion and new ways for the animals to interact (e.g. herding, chasing/fleeing), we also plan to tackle everybody's favorite Hollywood moment, animal breakouts.

These escapes will cause your park rating to plummet and spark fear in guests around the park. We'll have more information on breakouts in the future!


Genetic Mutations

Genetic mutations are coming to Prehistoric Kingdom in 2023! The team has proudly developed a semi-procedural approach that allows us to create albino, melanistic and leucistic variants all through shader.


An albino and melanistic Tyrannosaurus.

A huge benefit of this approach is that every skin can mutate. Rather than using a generic "albino" or "melanistic" texture, we came up with a powerful solution that is both memory efficient and highly variable.

The procedural nature means that there's an astoundingly high degree of individuality and randomness. Note the extreme difference in brightness, color and pattern visibility on these two albino T. rex!



The effect of this variation is especially present in leucistic specimens, adding a unique splash of shading to otherwise familiar skins. Cookies and cream, anyone?


A leucistic Tyrannosaurus.

Some art is still required for this system work as intended across all our current species, so genetic mutations will be arriving later this year. Stay tuned for more information!


Guest Art Update

For the last few months, we've been working to design a more appealing and cohesive art direction for our guests. We sat down with our concept artist, Ida, to talk a little about the process and what we ended up settling on.

"The basic idea was that the guests should be pleasant and fun to look at. They'd need to appear interesting and diverse when looking at them directly or from afar as a crowd when you're trying to manage other aspects of your park.    It was also important to us that the guests look expressive and are able to emote in a way that's easy for the player to interpret.    I tried out a lot of different styles, from realistic to very stylized, just to get a sense of what would fit in-game with the dinosaurs and assets we already have made. We ended up settling for something in-between that will hopefully make the guests feel way more lively while still fitting the world."

— Ida, Concept Artist

Below is a concept sheet showcasing our collection of male/female presenting faces as well as some of their outfits. Depending on which map you're playing on, guests will enter the park wearing clothes best suited to the environment.

Please note that as this is a concept sheet for our 3D artists to reference, the guests below do not feature any hair. We will also be removing all handlebar moustaches from the game. Not sorry.



The guest art overhaul will be coming later this year alongside new animations and audio to truly enhance the crowds of Prehistoric Kingdom. A number of interactions like sitting on benches, throwing trash away, and of course, animations when using kiosks or seeing their favorite animals are on our radar, too.




Created by Extinct Bricks.


Created by luci257.


Created by Blue Raptor.



Thank you for reading January's dev diary!

As always, we will continue to release our monthly dev diaries, keeping the community informed and up to date with where we're headed and what you can expect to see.

If you would like to provide feedback and report bugs during your experience, please head over to our official Discord or use the in-game report tool. For now, please enjoy the next update and we'll see you in February for the latest dev diary!

Until next time,

- The PK Team

[GojiraGuy1954]

I think these two new animals might be Paraceratherium and a spikless skin for Diplodocus (or a new sauropod entirely?)

[GojiraGuy1954]

[GojiraGuy1954]

Game updated

[GojiraGuy1954]

Prehistoric Kingdom - Update 5 (EA 1.1.214)



Welcome, Park Managers!

Update 5 is here! This patch introduces the research system, tutorial improvements and a number of quality of life additions. You can find a rundown of everything that's new in the full patch notes below.

Over the next few months we plan to make even more strides in tidying up the game's flow and addressing some pain points alongside more mechanics. Stay tuned for our next dev diary to learn more about what's coming in the future!

Please provide your feedback and bug reports through the in-game tool or our official Discord server.

Update 5 Features
Research

Research is a new gameplay mechanic we're introducing to Challenge mode (optional in Sandbox). Throughout your journey building the park, you'll need to research new types of modules, themes, fences and upgrades to create the ultimate Prehistoric Kingdom.

This is a mechanic we will be heavily expanding upon as more updates come to the game. For example, we have a power management update slated to release in the next few months which adds a dedicated "Energy" section to the research tree.



This update also removes Science Points from the game. Anything that previously used this currency is now purchased with money.

When starting a new Challenge or custom Sandbox mode game, players will now have to choose their initial building theme. This impacts what fences, paths, prefabs, styles and modular objects players will start with. The remaining modular themes will need to be researched!



Structure Filtering

Structure Filtering allows players to quickly select what type of items they want to display in the building toolbox. This is handy for filtering out unwanted plant biomes or themes.



Range Graphics

Range graphics have been added to power generators, animal info signs, dung beetles and binoculars. These will show up when placing certain modules to indicate their area of effect.




New Gameplay Settings

Incubation Speed

With the introduction of the research system, different animal species will now incubate at varying speeds. For sandbox games, we've added a new gameplay setting that allows you to multiply how long incubation takes. This means that setting the slider to 0 will result in instant incubation!

Please note that editing this setting will only affect animals that were incubated after your changes.



Guest Welfare

This latest update also adds the ability for players to enable or disable guest welfare needs in sandbox mode. Simply deselect the 'Guest Welfare' toggle when starting a new game or from the settings menu.





We've updated the landscaping brushes to better indicate what tool the player is currently using, changing its colors and adding a depth ring when painting water.

Once the player begins an action like terraforming or water painting, the brush will now become transparent to better show what's happening.



Full Patch Notes

[GojiraGuy1954]

Welcome to February's Development Update!

In this post, we'll be discussing some changes to the roadmap and delve into Prehistoric Kingdom's next update. As we've just released Update 5, this dev diary will be a little more information heavy.

Speaking of the now-released update, this latest one adds the Research system, various range graphics and a bunch of little changes to Challenge Mode. Please check out the patch notes to see everything new in Update 5!





Where We're At

The team is concurrently working on a handful of updates that we hope to release in the first half of 2023, focusing on new gameplay features and further development on animal AI.

While saying is easier than doing, this year we're trying to be more frequent and consistent in our updates. The Research system, even if its initial offerings were quite basic, was our first step towards that goal in addition to the two other patches released in February. We want to better maintain the game by releasing fixes and general updates in a more frequent manner between larger releases, targeting additions that help the game find a better footing while we work on the big stuff.

We've learnt a lot from 2022 and that extends that to our animal roster. There are a lot of amazing prehistoric creatures in our backlog, so we've made some adjustments to help release them. Throughout the year we'll be including animals in our big, themed updates as you'd expect - just like the Desert one back in December. However, we also have them sprinkled throughout 2023 to occasionally coincide with a few smaller gameplay updates. The team hopes that by the end of the year, there should be quite a few new faces running around your parks. You might just meet one of them very soon!

In February, we were also able to have two new members join the team! They've been settling in, helping to balance parts of the game and begin work on some new developments. This includes modular grass masking, a huge quality of life change that auto-removes grass under certain pieces such as floors and feeders.

With everything said, we've updated our Trello roadmap to better reflect where we're headed and what we'd like to do. Keep in mind that everything is subject to change and that there are no public dates, treat it more as a step by step process.


Animals

Right now, we are heavily overhauling the technical side of animals - improving their locomotion, AI, and responsiveness. We're putting more resources into them than ever before!

In parallel to all the coding, the animation team have been creating the new animations required for this revamped locomotion system. Strafes, walking backwards, turning on the spot while walking and even trotting are all part of our endeavor to create more convincing and responsive animal movement. You can see some of our tests below.





This includes swimming, too! This upcoming traversal feature has been designed to use the same types of animations, allowing animals to strafe or go backwards even when in the water. It's all intentionally built to fluidly go between states rather than rigidly stop-start!





It's important to stress that we're not simply retreading old ground. Everything is being done in service of developing future behaviors like socializing, herding, hunting and combat. All of your bug reports, feedback and requests have been an important part of designing what we want from this next stage of our animals.

As much as we're sure you'd love to see the monotony of animation tables, mixers and a lot of editor tooling, not too much is ready for presentation at this stage. It is, however, a massive update and it will take time. We will continue to share progress as the systems evolve.

What's in the Pipeline?

Let's talk about Update 6! This is our next gameplay update and we're expecting it to launch this month in March with everything mentioned below.

Donation Boxes

Donation boxes are a module that allow guests to donate directly to the park. Strategically placing them in high traffic areas near good scoring exhibits will help net a greater number of donations.

However, donation boxes have a limited monthly capacity! This means that once they're filled up, guests can no longer use that box. At the end of each month, their earnings will be automatically collected and the boxes will be emptied. Players can research bigger donation boxes to help raise the potential of their monthly donation income.





For those of you who are familiar with Challenge mode, you might know that donations are already a thing! Well... sorta. You see, donations in the current game provide a consistent flow of cash as long as there's an animal in the habitat. It was one of those systems that we knew was going to get a second pass to improve the game's simulation and management.

Our goal with this new iteration is to make donations feel more organic and help to reward players in a more meaningful way.

Updated Rocks & Styling

In Feb, the art team got around to remaking all our rocks to better compliment our other assets, dubbing these ones as "igneous". This is all part of our grand plan to introduce new varieties like smooth, beachy rocks or jagged, stratified rocks.

The new versions make use of a tiling detail texture to preserve their upclose fidelity no matter how big or small you've scaled them. We've also included two brand new cladding pieces that are perfect for building flatter shapes like floors and walls.

It was important for us to keep the general shapes fairly close to our current rocks in order to preserve player builds. Some adjustments may be required depending on how you've used them in the past, but for the most part they're pretty close! We're still working on how they look, so there will be some visual differences in the final release.



Now, let's not take this next part for granite. This update will also be adding moss, sand and snow styles for rocks! These three substrates will always appear on the top side of a rock no matter how you rotate or scale them. Each substrate is fully recolorable so if red snow or purple sand is your jam, you're welcome!






New Animal

That's right, the first animal of 2023 is right around the corner! We're keeping it a secret for a little while longer, but if you're lucky, you might just get a new Species Spotlight trailer as we get closer to the release of this update.

As mentioned earlier, we are still deep into overhauling the technical side of the animals. This will (hopefully!) be the last creature to use the current animal systems before everybody is updated in a few months.






Created by Atiel.


Created by luci257.


Created by joseph.af95.



Thank you for reading February's dev diary!

The last few months of development have felt especially productive for the team. As stated above, we will continue to strive for more frequent updates to better maintain the live game. Please stay tuned for more information in March while we carry on developing the next update.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

[GojiraGuy1954]

[GojiraGuy1954]

Prehistoric Kingdom - Update 6 (EA 1.1.3)



Welcome, Park Managers!

Update 6 is here! The highlights for this patch include the reworked donation system, rock styling and a brand new animal! You can find a rundown of everything that's new in the full patch notes below.

As mentioned in our previous dev diary, the team has been working on a number of updates concurrently in an effort to better space out our release schedule. We've worked very hard to get this update out in a timely fashion, so we hope that everyone enjoys all the new content available in Update 6.

If you're yet to play the game or think it'd make a great gift, we'd like to mention that Prehistoric Kingdom is currently 20% off on Steam!

Please provide your feedback and bug reports through the in-game tool or our official Discord server.

Update 6 Features

Animals

Possibly the largest mammal to ever walk the Earth, Paraceratherium is our latest arrival! This animal features two alternate species (transouralicum, bugtiense) and the small, alternate genus, Juxia. We're incredibly proud to finally include this classic animal in Prehistoric Kingdom!

Donation Boxes

Donation boxes are a module that allow guests to donate directly to the park. Strategically placing them in high traffic areas near good scoring exhibits will help net a greater number of donations.

However, donation boxes have a limited monthly capacity! This means that once they're filled up, guests can no longer use that box. At the end of each month, their earnings will be automatically collected and the boxes will be emptied.

Players can research bigger donation boxes to help raise the potential of their monthly donation income.



New Rocks & Styling

The art team have remade all our rocks to better compliment our other assets, utilizing a different art direction with new visual features like detail normals to preserve their fidelity.

Moss, sand and snow styles are also now available for rocks! These three substrates will always appear on the top side of a rock no matter how you rotate or scale them.



Please note that while we've tried to keep the general shapes fairly close to our current rocks, some build adjustments may be required depending on how you've used them in the past.

Mangroves

Three variants of mangroves are now available for the Wetland biome, the perfect companions for your swamp-dwelling animals!



Automatic Grass Masking

Placing select items such as feeders, modules, walls, floors and roof pieces will automatically mask-out grass from the surrounding area. This functionality extends to water, too!



Known Issues & Additional Notes

• Terrain painting can cause an extreme drop in framerate. This is highly unexpected and is currently under investigation.
• Many digsites are unintentionally available to unlock during the early game. We are working to resolve this as soon as possible.
• After placement, some Paraceratherium may temporarily contort their bodies to a disturbing degree. This behaviour was previously observed with Dilophosaurus and Scelidosaurus.
• Donation boxes are still being balanced, we'd appreciate community feedback to get them working nicely!
• Donation boxes are currently not recolorable. This is a system issue that will need to be addressed in the future
• We will be working to improve the economy over the coming weeks

Read the Full Patch Notes here!

[Kapitaenosavrvs]

A nice Update! I just checked it out. I really love the Rocks

[GojiraGuy1954]

H @HD-man

Images of a Dromaeosaur (Most likely Velociraptor)






Likely to release in May

[GojiraGuy1954]

Tomorrow marks ONE YEAR since we've been in Early Access! To celebrate, we'll be releasing a brand new update. Check out one of the modules coming in tomorrow's release - the Shopping Center!  🎁

[GojiraGuy1954]

Welcome, Park Managers and happy one year anniversary!

Thank you to everyone who has played, supported and given feedback to Prehistoric Kingdom. It's crazy to think it's already been a full year, but here we are!

In this update, we've expanded the power system, added new modules and made a lot of important quality of life changes. There have also been some substantial optimizations and stability fixes, though our work on this front continues. Be sure to read the full patch notes!

As a brief aside, we'd like to quickly touch on the next release, Update 8. This update is going to be quite a major one for the game, including a brand new species and completely reworked animal locomotion. Due to the amount of ongoing work required, the update is expected to go live in June.

It's imperative that all of the new backend is efficient and allows us to safely expand it to include future behaviors and improved AI. Thank you all for your patience!

[GojiraGuy1954]

Dev Diary for April

Update 8 Animal (Velociraptor)


Genetic Mutations



Update 9 Animals

[GojiraGuy1954]

Dev Diary for May

Leucistic Acrocanthosaurus


Acrocanthosaurus Variations


Velociraptor Sickle Claw

[GojiraGuy1954]

H @HD-man

Dev Diary for June

Paleo Plants


Velociraptor



Tropical Biome Rework






Produce Stations

[HD-man]

Velociraptor

I especially like the Mirage skin. The dimorphism reminds me of my favorite artworks of Deinonychus ( https://www.deviantart.com/jd-man/journal/SD-My-favorite-artworks-of-Deinonychus-948529444 ). Too bad the spotlight isn't longer

[GojiraGuy1954]

Dev Diary for July

[GojiraGuy1954]

The park's newest guest will be arriving from the land down under... Can you hear the thunder? Say hello to Muttaburrasaurus!

This iconic Australian dinosaur lived during the early Cretaceous period, measuring in at around 8 meters long. Despite walking on only two legs, Muttaburrasaurus can be seen adopting a quadrupedal stance while drinking or going to lay down.
Like other members of its group, this animal is best characterized by its large, protruding nose, giving way to some particularly snuffly vocalizations and snorts! Muttaburrasaurus will be making its way into your parks once Update 9 is released.




Dev Diary for August

Artbook + Mini-OST




Animal Swimming

[GojiraGuy1954]

Dev Diary for September


Update 8 Recap

Animal Locomotion Overhaul


New Animal Interactions (& Water Trough)




Genetic Mutations




Park Beauty


Guest Needs


Tropical Biome Rework


Map Vegetation Overhauls
- Tropical



- Scrubland



New Modern Stone Brick Wall Texture


Cinematic Camera Tracking Option


Auto Foliage Removal




Update 9 Overview

Animals

This patch will be dropping with 3 new animal species, featuring the big-nosed Australian icon, Muttaburrasaurus. Joining this animal are some not yet revealed mystery creatures, some of which should hopefully scratch a fan-favorite off your wishlist. You'll see hear more about these remaining species closer to the release of Update 9...

Grassland Biome

In terms of landscaping, this update will of course include the Grassland biome - a gorgeous selection of grasses dominated by a variety of acacia and marula trees. This is a highly versatile biome and will be retroactively added to animals like Smilodon.

Grassland Map

We'll also include a brand new map set deep in the heart of a Tanzanian crater. This flat landscape is perfect for those looking for an easy building experience due to its lack of dense foliage or extensive waterways.

[GojiraGuy1954]

Dev Diary for October

Update 8 Release

In case you missed yesterday's announcement, Update 8 is now live on the Public Testing Branch! This is an experimental, work-in-progress release that includes Velociraptor, rewritten animal locomotion, AI and much more. As you can understand, this dev diary will serve more as a general status report due to the update having just come out.

To access the Public Testing Branch:

1. Right click Prehistoric Kingdom in your Steam Library

2. Go to Properties

3. Betas

4. Select 'ptb_public_testing'

This is an extremely large update with some significant changes, so we highly suggest reading the patch notes to understand what's currently included in Update 8 so far.

Update 9: New Species

Best known for its shark-like teeth and impressively tall stature, one of the largest theropods to ever roam the Earth is coming to Prehistoric Kingdom in Update 9. We'd like you to meet the one and only Carcharodontosaurus(car-car-oh-don-toe-sore-us)!



This ferocious predator's name is not only a mouthful, but was actually inspired by the great white shark's scientific name; Carcharodon! We reckon your guests will be screaming to see this dinosaur in action.





Update 10: New Species

Update 10 will be a particularly exciting time for the game, introducing a completely new building theme, a new map and two mammals that we think you'll really love! That's right, more mammals.

The first of which is none other than the Cave Lion! This creature is one of our absolute favorites thanks to their streamlined mane and thicker coats that give them a different look to their African relatives.



The team will be including both the Eurasian Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea) and the American Cave Lion (Panthera atrox) as alternate species in Update 10.

P. spelaea


P. atrox