Welcome to May’s DevLog!
This month we continued to chop away at the game’s enormous amount of art, make some great progress with the programming side of Prehistoric Kingdom, and art (as we’ve all come to expect). As per usual there’s some big topics of discussion, so let’s get right into it!
June will be extremely exciting for us as we finally and properly integrate terraforming and get started on our refined building systems. All other departments? Business as usual! We’ll be continuing to work on the same tasks listed in last month’s DevLog.
Terraforming Progress
As to be expected the terraforming that we want to achieve for Prehistoric Kingdom is quite difficult as it’s untraditional to most game engines. However, while we continue cooking up the adaptive terrain shader, link up everything to the UI and work out the expected kinks, we’ll leave you with some extremely exciting and early looks at the structures that can be sculpted by players…
May has undoubtedly been an exciting and fantastic month for the art team with all the new stuff being worked on and prepared for the first pass on the building systems and animal additions that will be coming up in conjunction with our first Early Access pre-alpha for VIP Backers.
Building Concept Art & Models
Buildings! Lots of buildings! Next to the creatures it must be said that we really love working with our concept artist and modeller to bring the architecture and structures of Prehistoric Kingdom to life. For May we took a focus on the infrastructure and guest amenities that will inhabit your park.
Gift Shop
The gift shop is your guests’ favorite place to purchase prehistoric-themed souvenirs and assorted gifts. Do not fret, as we will make sure the balloons and the dino-present statue look as cute as possible when it comes to the ingame model.
Food Stash
Coming in a variety of food groups, the Food Stash is recommended for small or medium sized creatures. Its vertical design is useful for constructing a paddock with tight spaces.
Ranger Station
Responding to emergency situations, the Ranger Station houses a car, transport truck, and helicopter to subdue escaped animals and carry guests to safety.
Central Hub
The Central Hub is a large building designed to educate guests about the park and its prehistoric inhabitants. As this structure is categorised as an attraction, it draws crowds to its rooftop theatre and viewing deck. To really push the attention of detail in Prehistoric Kingdom you’ll see a few information signs popping up around your park to breath a little more life into the world.
Dynamic Animal Physics
We’ve always wanted to take our animals just that little bit further and today we’re happy to announce that creatures will be featuring dynamic physics to better simulate fat, flesh, fur, and feathers in ways that we simply couldn’t before.
Our Brachiosaurus, for example, features a large fleshy fat deposit running down the majority of its neck. Thanks to this new system we’re able to properly simulate the unique area of the animal’s body and have it constantly react and adapt to its movement; regardless of animation.
An even better area to look at would be how feathers will move on our floofier friends such as the Gallimimus. It’s a far less rigid movement and helps to envision how we imagined these critters moving with fluffy integument.
Animation
With fifty creatures currently learning how to walk we stepped back for a moment to assess how we were going to cover such a vast range of animals in the most effective way possible. For us, this means setting up shared rigs that are built around the main family groups going into the game.
While similar species and genus will retain the same general movement style (which was to be expected even with personalised animation sets), we’re making individual changes on a per animal basis to ensure that nothing looks off or imperfect compared to related genuses. As a whole this allows us to put way more detail into base animations and ensure that they are the best they can possibly be for the project. It’s extremely important to note however that certain species may feature distinct animations and actions that are unique only to them, so there’s no need to worry about everything looking the same. Apart from that it’ll make adding future content additions that much more easier.
You can take a look at some of the newest animations for our Tyrannosaurus (large theropod rig) and Baryonyx (spinosaurid rig) below.
https://youtu.be/Zm45tnSI__s
https://youtu.be/SkJXW_F26qc
https://youtu.be/Q7r24RhE7wI
https://youtu.be/rRQI0J1j518
Nothing super crazy to show here! UI for this month was mainly focused on management, options menu, and bringing our old save/load menu up to scratch with the newer style.
New Creatures
This month we’ve got some classic faces appearing fresh off the back of their concept art. Give a warm welcome to Bison latifrons, Iguanodon bernissartensis, Parasaurolophus walkeri, and the fearsome Acrocanthosaurus atokensis!
New Skins
Since last time you saw our favorite big cat, we went ahead and made several improvements to both the mesh and the textures of Smilodon. We worked predominantly on the feline’s face, bringing its proportions closer to what the animal probably looked like. Moreover, the model now features shape-keys (sets of geometry data that can smoothly transition to each other) that allow it to close its eyes (like all the other animals we have), but also retract its claws, yawn, show aggression, and even display pregnancy! Exciting times for mammal lovers, indeed.
Ontogeny Sequences
May gave us some time to revisit a familiar face and incubate some new hatchlings and babies to show off to everyone. This time it’s a lizard boi, demon gecko, duck thing, teetho, and a little moo-moo. We’re proud of our naming conventions.
Alt. Skins
Much like April we focused on pumping out a wide variety of skins across a number of animals. While there’s again too many fit neatly into one post, here’s some of our favourites!
We’ve gone ahead and decided to improve our Tyrannosaurus by giving it an additional scaly design, moving the feathered Highlands look to its floofier cousin Yutyrannus.
Allosaurus also received some much needed love this month with a complete animal overhaul that will greatly improve its body proportions and overall look in the future. You will see more of the updated model in future posts.
Like we did for Tyrannosaurus and the following Acrocanthosaurus, we removed some of the feathered designs, favoring more likely scaly designs. In the case of Allosaurus, scales are all that remain, with the two previous feathered skins having left us to join feather heaven.
Our projected release roadmap is expected to span over 2018 and 2019 to deliver a valued product to our backers and fans alike. Currently, we’re looking at the following structure for how we present and develop the game. Please note that is a rough outline and does not detail every specific item and piece of content!
Pre-Alpha 1 Creation (Q3 2018)
The first official private pre-alpha for VIP backers will set the basis for Prehistoric Kingdom’s creative gameplay. Terraforming, revised fencing/path systems, 17 animals and a brand new map provides a thorough look into the games tone and atmosphere.
Pre-Alpha 2 Management (Q1 2019)
Core and expanded management features such as visitors, finance, security, and resource management will be integrated alongside new animals and buildings.
Alpha Progression (Q2 2019)
Released to Kickstarter backers who donated to appropriate tier levels, Alpha introduces progression aspects to gameplay as well as overlay tools and shaders that will help provide information about your exhibits and park.
Beta Backer Testing (Early Summer 2019)
Beta presents itself as the very last large scale testing of Prehistoric Kingdom before being pushed to the store platforms. Featuring the majority of animals, buildings, systems, and features that will be available within the live game, we’ll be working together to squish as many bugs as possible!
Early Access Launch Public Release (Summer 2019)
Prehistoric Kingdom will be available to the public on Steam and the Crytivo store.
We want to be as transparent as possible with everyone and outline our current development plans so that all of our backers and fans can understand where we’ll be headed. If plans or the schedule changes for whatever reason, we want everyone to be on the same page so that no one feels left in the dark or like they don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. At the end of the day, it’s a big game. Hopefully this provides a little bit more clarity, and we cannot wait to show more. Features or dates may shift back and forth but in the end it’s to bring the absolute best that we know we can!
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That’s it for May!
Thank you for reading this month’s DevLog and make sure to join us once again in June for another exciting update! Feel free to follow our social media platforms below to stay in touch and never miss an announcement.
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If you would like to check out our past blog posts, you can head to the official one here!