Welcome, Park Managers and happy holidays!
Update 13 is now available! This releases introduces 2 new species, an overhauled building experience, reworked park rating system and more. Prehistoric Kingdom is also 30% off right now during the Winter sale!
Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.
Update 13 Content
New Species
Discover the furrociously lovable cave bear, Ursus spelaeus and the majestic Irish Elk, Megaloceros giganteus. Sharing a formation with ice age classics like the Mammoth and cave lions, these new additions are sure to feel right at home in Prehistoric Kingdom.
Park Rating Improvements & Guest Influx
The park rating system is now goal oriented, showing the player what exactly is required to move up a star. It's an average of the park's Animal Rating and Guest Rating, each with their set of goals to max out.
The rate at which guests enter is influenced by both your park rating and the park's appeal. Players can now hover over their guest population at the bottom of the screen to see how these factors impact their projected guest population as well as their arrival rate.
A small trend icon let's you know if you're gaining or losing guests at a glance!
Building Toolbox Updates
The building experience has been revamped with a new toolbox designed to better highlight the various construction options available to the player. The menu is now contextual and can be unpinned to maximize screenspace while building, dropping away.
Additional options such as showing small icons, filtering favorited items and toolbox pinning are now saved across all games, making it easier to configure your preferred way to play. Oh, and you can see every item in a single scroll!
When building with prefabs, items, paths or fences, a side panel appears to clearly list the available settings. For modular building, this includes new options: random rotation, random scale, incremental movement and flipping pieces on their X, Y or Z axis.
The styling menu now not only allows coloring per style, but can be filtered to only show modules, walls, roofs, lights or miscellaneous pieces. Oh, and it can be scaled vertically, too!
Guest Resting, Eating & Animal Viewing
As visitors explore the park in Update 13, their rest need will begin to drain. Benches and tables offer respite to guests, giving them a place to sit and catch their breath. Similarly, guests will now seek out benches after purchasing a meal! The restaurant module is a great demonstration of this, as visitors will actually use the booths.
We have improvements planned to make transitioning in and out of seating look better in extreme circumstances, as well as to address visitors dropping their burgers on the floor. Mm, delicious!
That's not the only change to visitors, though! They're now far more likely to view animals and will do so for longer amounts of time. Guests will have a higher chance of trying to view animals with lots Animal Points (detailed below) and will even try to stand approximately near animals to get a good view.
Guest & Staff Navigation Viewer
The management view has been updated to include a navmesh viewer for guests and staff, allowing players to see what's traversable and troubleshoot any issues.
New Scenery
26 adorably stylized animal signs have been added in Update 13! These illustrations are available for most creatures in the game.
For the hardcore builders out there, we've also added 17 new shape pieces based on community suggestions. They're joined alongside 5 brand new material styles: matte, metallic, plaster, wood and granite!
Expanded Temperate and Coastal Foliage
The temperate and coastal biomes have been expanded with over 35 pieces of additional foliage. For biome presets, the temperate shrubs and temperate field have been added for ease of creating realistic meadows and transitionary forest.
Smooth Camera Toggle
The camera settings menu has been updated to include a smooth camera toggle! This allows players to replicate our trailers and make their very own cinematics with slowed panning and rotation.
This setting also works while in screenshot mode, so it's easier than ever to get the shot of your dreams!
Update 13 Changes
In addition to the content above, here are some specific changes we've made to animal scoring and how the new attraction points work.
Animal Points
Viewable from the Nursery, Paleopedia or an animal itself, animal points are the perceived worth of a creature, made up of values such as the species base rating and any genetic mutations. Animals that are housed in mixed species exhibits will receive bonuses if they share a dig site, region and time period.
Animals with a high amount of animal points will typically attract more visitors to their enclosure due to their popularity.
This system replaces exhibit score in its entirety and is factored into the park rating. We'll be expanding all of this with the milestones mechanic in the future! Further information TBD.
Attraction Points
Attraction points measure the perceived worth of the facilities in your zoo. Granted by placing modules such as kiosks, restaurants, binoculars and statues, each level of park rating will require a higher amount of attraction points than the last.
We intend to add more attraction-oriented modules in the future!
Known Issues & Additional Notes
- Visitors will drop their burgers on the floor before using their telekinetic abilities to grab them.
- While placing an object, selecting an advanced movement option from the UI will not display the gizmo. This can be resolved by selecting another advanced option (e.g. movement, rotation, scaling) and then switching back to the desired tool. Alternatively, players can use the default keybind of V to access the advanced tools.
Full Patch Notes
Features
- NEW ANIMAL: Megaloceros giganteus
- NEW ANIMAL: Ursus spelaeus
- NEW FEATURE: Guest Sitting Guests will now stop at benches to rest or enjoy a delicious meal. This retroactively applies to all saves! A new ‘Rest’ overlay is available for checking on your guests' new need!
- NEW FEATURE: Improved rating and park goals
- Park Rating Stars are earned by achieving incremental goals
- Animal Points are given by every animal in your park based on the species, genetics, and ecology of the animal
- Removed Exhibit Score: the Ecology Bonus is now part of Animal Points, and cleanliness was always part of Animal Welfare (making it redundant)
- Attraction Points are currently given by shops and binoculars, but is planned be expanded in the future
- Park Appeal affects guest population, and is driven by Overall Park Rating, Amenity Prices, and Park Beauty
Additions
- Buildings & Scenery
- Added Stylized Animal Sign, coming in multiple animal designs:
- Acrocanthosaurus
- Ankylosaurus
- Apatosaurus
- Brachiosaurus
- Coelodonta
- Deinocheirus
- Dilophosaurus
- Dryosaurus
- Edmontosaurus
- Elasmotherium
- Iguanodon
- Leaellynasaura
- Mammuthus
- Megaloceros
- Microraptor
- Ouranosaurus
- Pachyrhinosaurus
- Parasaurolophus
- Protoceratops
- Psittacosaurus
- Smilodon
- Spinosaurus
- Triceratops
- Tyrannosaurus
- Ursus
- Velociraptor
- Added 5 material styles, including the old plastic style, to the shape pieces:
- Plastic (current material)
- Matte
- Metallic
- Plaster
- Wood
- Granite
- Added several additional shape pieces to expand the current selection:
- Cylinder Half
- Cylinder Hollow
- Cylinder Hollow Half
- Pyramid Octagonal
- Pyramid Pentagonal
- Pyramid Hexagonal
- Pyramid Triangular
- Sphere Half
- Torus Half
- Torus 2 (Thicker)
- Torus 3 (Thickest)
- Cone
- Cone Truncated
- Helix 1 (Thin & Spaced)
- Helix 2 (Thick & Close)
- Icosahedron
- Buckyball
- Added 2 Animal Silhouette signs for the new species:
- Megaloceros
- Ursus
- Added Stylized Animal Sign, coming in multiple animal designs:
- Foliage
- Added or updated the following Coastal plants:
- Coastal Manroot 1
- Coastal Manroot 2
- False Lily of the Valley 1
- False Lily of the Valley 2
- Maidenhair Fern 1
- Maidenhair Fern 2
- Maidenhair Fern 3
- Scots Pine 1
- Scots Pine 2
- Scots Pine 3
- Scots Pine 4
- Scots Pine 5
- Scots Pine 6
- Added the following Temperate plants:
- Beech Tree 1
- Beech Tree 2
- Beech Tree 3
- Beech Tree 4
- Beech Tree 5
- Beech Tree 6
- Beech Tree 7
- Beech Tree 8
- Daisy Grass 1
- Daisy Grass 2
- Daisy Grass 2
- Dandelion Grass 1
- Dandelion Grass 2
- Dandelion Grass 3
- Dandelion Grass 4
- Eared Willow 1
- Eared Willow 2
- Eared Willow 3
- Eared Willow 4
- Field Grass 1
- Field Grass 2
- Field Grass 3
- Flame Azalea 1
- Flame Azalea 2
- Flame Azalea 3
- Flame Azalea 4
- Flame Azalea 5
- Flame Azalea 6
- Flame Azalea 7
- Added the following Temperate biome presets:
- Temperate shrubs
- Temperate field
- Added or updated the following Coastal plants:
- UI/UX
- Added a ‘Smooth Camera’ toggle to the Camera Menu, switching between the default camera mode, and a smooth cinematic camera
- Added paleopedia page descriptions for Archaeopteryx, Brachiosaurus, Camarasaurus (all species), Dryosaurus, Torvosaurus (both species), Tyrannosaurus, Protoceratops, Velociraptor and their respective formations
- Updated the Building Toolbox menu with a fresh new look and improved functionality
- Every structure category now has an ‘All’ menu selection, allowing a quick visualization of the entire structure list set for that category
- Added ability to switch between large and small icon size for the Building Toolbox
- Added save preference functionality to structure favoriting - newly favorited structures will now carry over across all saves
- Added a set of contextual Building Action panels to the right hand side of the screen - these menus appear while any structural action is active and are highly contextual based on the current action type. Through these menus, several QoL features have been added to the building suite:
- Improved keybind tooltip readability
- Modular: random rotation and scale settings
- Modular: gimbal move increment
- Modular: gimbal Axis Flip, available during gimbal scaling. This allows quick mirroring on any local axis for the current objects
- Building Toolbox settings (‘Button Scale’, ‘Pin Toolbox’, and ‘Show Prefabs’) are now saved across all saves and game sessions
- Added a new keybind: Toggle Fences/Path Replacement Mode - bound to ‘R’ by default. When pressed, this keybind will toggle the current fence/path action from ‘Build’ mode to ‘Replace’ mode, and vice versa
- Updated the modular styling and coloring panel to be completely independent of the building toolbox, allowing for more screen real estate when changing modular pieces!
- Color controls are now relative to piece types, giving more granular control over the coloration of each piece style
- Updated the Management View menu and included a new park rating report to match the new rating additions
- Added a Guest Navigation view - allowing guest navmesh visualization
- Added a Staff Navigation view - allowing staff navmesh visualization
- Added explanatory tooltips to several gameplay GUI elements in the Management View menu, detailing various systems within the game
- Added a Projected Park Population report tooltip that appears when hovering the park guest count on the main board
- Added a trend icon next to guest population that shows when the projected number of guests is higher or lower than your current amount
- Clicking the finances, staff, animals and guest numbers at the bottom of the HUD will open up their respective management menus
Changes
- Gameplay
- Removed individual price categories for different food and gift brands, unified into two simple categories
- Added price setting for Binocular modules
- Animals
- Lowered shininess of Coelodonta fur
- Animal overall welfare has been reworked to better consider each component of an animal’s life
- Animal needs drain slower
- Animal excretion amount lowered
- Adjusted minimum exhibit sizes for the following species’ default grouping size:
- Charonosaurus: 5,550m2 → 4,340m2
- Deinocheirus: 3,400m2 → 1,575m2
- Edmontosaurus annectens: 14,000m2 → 6,125m2
- Edmontosaurus regalis: 33,440m2 → 10,425m2
- Iguanodon: 13,580m2 → 4,030m2
- Juxia: 6,220m2 → 1,100m2
- Lambeosaurus: 11,400m2 → 2,500m2
- Muttaburrasaurus: 6,524m2 → 2,796m2
- Nasutoceratops: 3,600m2 → 1,400m2
- Ouranosaurus: 7,920m2 → 3,300m2
- Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis: 18,800m2 → 13,100m2
- Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai: 11,780m2 → 6,570m2
- Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum: 5,500m2 → 2,400m2
- Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus: 9,845m2 → 2,737m2
- Parasaurolophus walkeri: 9,510m2 → 3,538m2
- Styracosaurus: 6,000m2 → 2,400m2
- Ugrunaaluk: 6,220m2 → 2,860m2
- Staff
- Removed staff unhappiness for now, we have plans to reintroduce it with more gameplay in the future
- Guests
- Adjusted guest population cap and spawn rates as a function of Park Rating and Park Appeal
- Guests should now look at animals much more frequently, with higher Animal Points resulting in more frequent visits
- Guests now view animals for significantly longer
- Guests now consider the number of binoculars vs animals when selecting how to view them
- Guests will now only view animals when they can get close to their enclosure
- Guests now leave line queues if they think they are waiting too long
- Guests should be less likely to stand on something that is not the correct part of the navmesh
- Shopping behavior is no longer a need that builds up over time, instead guests will shop after having positive park experiences
- Guests should now walk faster in general, and even faster still when they have a pressing need
- Guest AI will no longer ‘explore’ for overlong periods
- Buildings & Scenery
- In addition to benches and tables having interaction points, the Restaurant now has functional tables. Guests will get in line to purchase food, then take it to a table to sit and eat. Guests will also attempt to find nearby seating after purchasing from Food Kiosks or Vending Machines
- Guests will now get in line to make a purchase after viewing products on shelves in the Gift Shop
- Kiosks now have an exit point slightly to the right of the register interaction point, which helps clear up traffic jams when guests try to leave the kiosk. Guests moving from the register to this exit point are able to move through navmesh obstacles for that short distance, making it possible to build queue line ropes/barriers to direct the line, while still allowing guests to leave without walking backwards through the queue
- Large bathrooms now have an internal capacity of 8 “stalls” for guests to use
- Slightly reduced nav-cutting size of flat feeders
- Environment
- Updated sunrise/sunset ambient light to be brighter and warmer, reducing pitch black shadows
- Updated Tanzania map lighting to be more consistent with other maps and appear less harsh
- Updated environmental reflections to include fog
- Adjusted clouds to appear less saturated and overblown during sunrise/sunset
- Slightly brightened grass in the shade
- Foliage
- Updated wind settings on older trees and removed wind from various cactus species
- Adjusted global wind simulation to look more lively
- Adjusted elephant grass coloring to better fit with the rest of the foliage
- Adjusted shading on boreal fireweed and labrador tea to appear less round
- Adjusted sizes for temperate arrowwoods 1 and 2 for better leaf size consistency, making them smaller overall
- Reduced wind during rain
- UI/UX
- Updated building tutorial screenshots to show the new building toolbox
- Updated biome preset icons for temperate foliage and coastal pines
- Updated the enclosure info panel to reflect the new rating changes
- Updated the animal rating info panel to reflect the new rating changes
- Opening the Terraform Menu now clears all non-animal selection
- Changed help link buttons on the Park Issues items to instead be displayed on the issue header
- Converting a Challenge game to Sandbox will now properly update the Weather Menu settings
- Improved camera tracking calculations to better focus on animals’ heads or guests’ faces when up close
- Post-Processing
- Adjusted auto-exposure to improve the game’s base brightness and increase visibility when in dark areas. This is most noticeable in dense forests, buildings and at nighttime
- Adjusted bloom to have less spread and appear less intense. Most noticeable on metal objects such as feeders. It now mostly acts as light bleed for dark areas
- Looking at navigation in the Management View no longer tints the screen blue, making the navmesh more visible
- Rendering
- Improved selection outline clarity
Bug Fixes
- Crashes
- Fixed a crash that could occur when deleting a fence section if that fence had been loaded in overlapping another fence section
- This enforcement of fence proximity rules may break existing enclosures which had gates and fences trying to occupy the same space!
- Fixed improper process scheduling that could lead to a rare crash
- Fixed a crash that could occur when deleting a fence section if that fence had been loaded in overlapping another fence section
- Critical
- Fixed the “Sabre Toothed Cat” and “Three Horned Face” Steam achievements not properly triggering
- Added better keybind validity checks, to ensure certain controls can’t be mapped to specific keybinds, affecting both saved bindings, as well as new user settings. This measure fixes selection problems some users have reported
- Fixed a long standing resolution saving bug that would cause the game window resolution to reset any time a level was loaded
- Gameplay
- Fence placement undo and redo now properly changes the park balance
- Animals
- Fixed Brachiosaurus drink intro
- Reworked interactable access which should help address animals not always using interactables after modifying them
- Staff
- Fixed staff going on eternal breaks
- Fixed rare navigational issue that prevented staff from moving
- Fixed keepers being able to walk through obstacles to clean up dung if there was no navigable path
- Fixed keepers getting stuck in an infinite loop of offloading dung if the assignment for that dung pile had previously been attempted and failed
- Brought back staff end-of-assignment reaction animations
- Fixed Auto-Hire-Cashiers not hiring anyone at the moment the toggle is activated
- Fixed Staff Placement only showing correct placement validity while the mouse is moving
- Guests
- Fixed Visitor Welfare being incorrect at roughly 75% of the desired value
- Fixed a bug that caused guests to be unable to see animals
- Fixed guests falling out of a queue line occasionally
- Fixed guests getting stuck because they thought that roofs were walkable area
- Fixed a bug that caused guests to have a slightly lower opinion of animals than they were supposed to
- Adjusted nav recovery timeout to reduce cases where humans get truly stuck
- Foliage
- Fixed incorrect alphabetical ordering for Coastal biome trees in the terraforming menu
- Construction
- Fixed a major bug that caused modular piece colors to desynchronize after deletions
- UI/UX
- Fixed a GUI Input oversight that would cause toggles to turn on graphically but otherwise not trigger their intended behavior upon right clicks or middle clicks
- ‘Animals ready for release!’ localization element is now capitalized and exclamatory
- Fixed camera min/max zoom not being properly enforced while the camera was in tracking mode
- Rendering
- Improved synchronization of human and prop animation
- Generally improved human animation system
- Fixed outline desync when camera field of view changes
Performance
- Numerous small memory improvements
- Human animation is more optimal
- Many performance improvements to the building menu, especially for the search function
- Slightly improved save loading speed
- Minor CPU Optimizations