Mesozoica

[E.D.G.E. (PainterRex)]

It must take real skill to manage to shrink wrap a whale....

I am just wondering, what part of the whale is shrinkwrapped, and how should it look?

Also what is dinosaur shift?

[stargatedalek]

It must take real skill to manage to shrink wrap a whale....

I am just wondering, what part of the whale is shrinkwrapped, and how should it look?

Also what is dinosaur shift?

The fins are shrink wrapped, look where they meet the body. They look like cliche mosasaur flukes (which tbh are also to thin for mosasaurs).

Dinosaur Shift is a visual novel I've been working on, since I don't have anything besides mountains of code and unrefined concept art to show for it at the moment I'm just using the icon as a placeholder signature.

[E.D.G.E. (PainterRex)]

Look at this, this model is pretty accurate so it seems.....quite odd....

[Brontozaurus]

On one hand, finally they made a model that overdoes it with the wrinkles. On the other hand, it's still a little shrinkwrapped, especially around the head.

TBH the fact that Mesozoica pumps out models at such a rate is something else that seems a little suspicious to me. Where's the rest of the game? Sure there was that glimpse in the kickstarter, and there's been a few screencaps here and there, but the emphasis is so heavy on the creature models that it feels like progress elsewhere isn't going so well.

(as an aside, I know PK sort of does this but more than a few of theirs are shown in the game, plus they have the tech demo, so they're leaps and bounds ahead)

Also why do they need so many models anyway? They've got like five different rexes now.

[E.D.G.E. (PainterRex)]

On one hand, finally they made a model that overdoes it with the wrinkles. On the other hand, it's still a little shrinkwrapped, especially around the head.

TBH the fact that Mesozoica pumps out models at such a rate is something else that seems a little suspicious to me. Where's the rest of the game? Sure there was that glimpse in the kickstarter, and there's been a few screencaps here and there, but the emphasis is so heavy on the creature models that it feels like progress elsewhere isn't going so well.

(as an aside, I know PK sort of does this but more than a few of theirs are shown in the game, plus they have the tech demo, so they're leaps and bounds ahead)

Also why do they need so many models anyway? They've got like five different rexes now.

Well apparently, so i have heard, the creator/manager of Mesozoic is the one that started the rift in the original prehistoric kingdom (jurassic genetics) and is why half of the original team left and started Prehistoric Kingdom. I have heard rumors/confirmed to be true, that the whole reason that this guy created Mesozoic is to show-up the prehistoric kingdom group. So I think that Mesozoic is not a completely legitimate game....but they have just got over 50.0000 on their kickstarter, so they may be actually trying to make a game this time....For now I shall continue to post new updates as they come...

[stargatedalek]

The company that holds the license for the game is fake, it went out of business shortly before Mesozoica became a thing. Whether this is to make them look competent so no-one thinks they're losers or whether it's to make them look competent to they can scam people remains to be seen.

[fabricious]

I did not pay all too much attention to this whole mesozoica thing until now. But I just saw an image of the Allosaurus model and immediately recognized the pattern from Walking With Dinosaurs. I tried telling Robert about how they can get into real trouble with plagiarism, just received a lot of half-assed excuses and how the model 'is not 100% the same', he always tried to get me to back the game, even sent me a private message on facebook and immediately blocked me afterwards. I don't really like the idea of backing plagiarism, and right now I am intrigued to get in contact with the company who designed and animated the WWD dinosaurs. Silly, childish behavior, what the hell.

[E.D.G.E. (PainterRex)]

I did not pay all too much attention to this whole mesozoica thing until now. But I just saw an image of the Allosaurus model and immediately recognized the pattern from Walking With Dinosaurs. I tried telling Robert about how they can get into real trouble with plagiarism, just received a lot of half-assed excuses and how the model 'is not 100% the same', he always tried to get me to back the game, even sent me a private message on facebook and immediately blocked me afterwards. I don't really like the idea of backing plagiarism, and right now I am intrigued to get in contact with the company who designed and animated the WWD dinosaurs. Silly, childish behavior, what the hell.

Well, they also stole the colors from the dinosaur revolution t.rex, he has a point with not being 100% the same, but these are far too close to the "inspiration" All of Mesozoica's people return messages with sarcastic remarks even when they are scientifically inaccurate, i.e. tylosaur's tail fluke issue.

[PaleoMatt]

The mesozoica team are the most shady developers ever. They block people when they tell them about innacurrices and the guy who already had something called Mesozoica (who wanted to take them to court) was blocked too.

[Brontozaurus]

And then there was the whole thing with them leaking Dakotaraptor early.

[CityRaptor]

Not to mention that their Dakotaraptor looks like a Skeksis.

[stargatedalek]

So the pre-alpha released, they want $30 for it, it has 20 of the 41 species they claimed the pre-alpha release would have, and is overall a barely functioning pile of placeholder stock assets. You genuinely get more content from the entirely free Prehistoric Kingdom demo.

Instead of functioning mechanics they added loot boxes (using in-game currency) to unlock everything.

They also made this factually incorrect chart because they thought claiming to have more content than games over a decade in age would make them look better (and they had to lie just to claim that!).

[Brontozaurus]

So the pre-alpha released, they want $30 for it, it has 20 of the 41 species they claimed the pre-alpha release would have, and is overall a barely functioning pile of placeholder stock assets. You genuinely get more content from the entirely free Prehistoric Kingdom demo.

Instead of functioning mechanics they added loot boxes (using in-game currency) to unlock everything.

They also made this factually incorrect chart because they thought claiming to have more content than games over a decade in age would make them look better (and they had to lie just to claim that!).

I see they still haven't learned to use spellcheck. 

But in all seriousness, their graph really is a pile of garbage:

* Pretty sure one of the expansions in ZT2 let you drive a jeep around.
* ZT2 let you change the colour of buildings, which has to count as modular. Same with being able to change the names of everyone in your park. Also, side note, I don't get Mesozoica's obsession with making everything 'modular'.
* I swear people were sharing save games on the old JPOG and ZT forums I used to be on.
* I'm sorry but did you even SEE the modding community for JPOG and ZT2?
* Knocking JPOG and ZT2 for not being supported by the Steam Workshop is a bit unfair considering it didn't actually exist when either of them came out.

Admittedly I'm impressed that their game actually came out; I was pretty sure it was all going to be The Stomping Land 2.0. And it does generally look nice in the videos I've seen. But I'm just so unimpressed with how the company conducts itself.

[WarrenJB]

I understand the idea of risk and reward mechanics in (some types of) gaming, but I'm struggling to think how it's applied to a 'DNA system', and what one of those is.

[stargatedalek]

I understand the idea of risk and reward mechanics in (some types of) gaming, but I'm struggling to think how it's applied to a 'DNA system', and what one of those is.

They mean loot boxes. Literally just loot boxes.

[Brontozaurus]

I understand the idea of risk and reward mechanics in (some types of) gaming, but I'm struggling to think how it's applied to a 'DNA system', and what one of those is.

In JPOG, the 'risk and reward DNA system' was amber, since you could get way more DNA out of it than a good fossil, but unlike fossils you didn't know what dinosaur DNA you were getting until the sequencing was done. Because you could buy amber from the market (instead of waiting for your dig teams to rarely excavate it), you were risking your investment on something that could turn out to be useless if you already had 100% of the DNA for a dinosaur.

JPOG's DNA system was a way of upgrading your dinosaurs; more DNA means your dinosaurs lived longer. Mesozoica's DNA system is just 'buy a box, get a whole dinosaur or a skin'. At least they're not charging real money for it.