Welcome to February’s development update!
Today, we’ll be diving into what the team’s been up to over the past month and introduce you to a new team member. Work behind the scenes has continued to grow more exciting by the day as we buckle down on features and content pipelines. Let's get into the discussion!
New Hire!
Joining the Prehistoric Kingdom team, we’d like you to introduce the project’s newest programmer, Seth! He’ll be overseeing developments such as water painting and assisting us where possible to spread the workload more evenly.
You’ll be seeing more progress from him in the coming months while we move onto new parts of the game!
Development Progress
One of our goals this month was to accelerate and optimize development tasks to better utilise the time left until Early Access as an opportunity to clean up a handful of features that aren’t essential to the core game at launch.
Because of this change, we’re ready to move onto the second phase of development! With Seth taking care of features like water painting, Matt and Mau are able to proceed with other aspects of the game. Our goal for 2020 is to provide a playable and polished alpha with a beta release following shortly after depending on player feedback.
Below you’ll find our new monthly development report. Since it’s difficult to quantify an adaptive development cycle via percentages, each month we’ll display cards listing what we’ve been up to. Those marked with a love heart represent a bespoke piece of development that we want to highlight!
Animal Implementation & Improvements
Allosaurus served as our new benchmark for animal testing during February, introducing a few changes for creatures going forward.
One of the items on our list is a new blend system! Each animal has its own set of additive fidgets that layer on top of animations to create more interest when moving. You can check out the work-in-progress below:
Another important step we took this month was adding support for eye movement in our rigs! Instead of a dead glassy stare, the animals will subtly dart their eyes around with supplementary squinting and blinking depending on the animation.
Eye Movement Test
It’s a small change with big implications for personality and character. Without this, it’d be almost impossible to effectively portray the gaze of certain mammals like felines and bears.
Modular Building
The modular building system continues to receive new functionality and polish thanks to the collaboration between Mau and Nathan. Pieces can be automatically stacked on top of each other or aligned directly to a surface - available for use with any object type, even walls!
In February we also added recolourable plaster, wood and glass sets to test how scalable our workflow is for creating new material pieces in a timely manner. As expected, a good foundation makes adding new texture sets fairly easy within a short amount of time.
With this in mind, we've been able to start making more interesting builds!
Viewers with keen eyes may have noticed an update to our user interface format! The new HUD shows more placeable objects onscreen at once whilst retaining our existing aesthetic. We took this opportunity to make the menu resizable for ease of use - a long-requested feature from the dev team!
Atmospherics & Lighting Update
There’s something missing from our world… atmospherics! We’ve added distant atmospherics and height fog to provide our levels with greater visual depth across all times of day.
February’s species spotlight revealed two classic dinosaurs, Allosaurus and Triceratops. Grumpy in every way, both critters require a large amount of space and strict habitat preferences to be successfully contained.
Animation
Using its large claws to hunt for fish, Baryonyx is a staple of the UK’s prehistoric history. Housing an array of conical teeth, its specialised diet is a common trait amongst spinosaurids.
Always willing to share a picnic basket, the cave bear carries many resemblances to extant species. Found across Europe and Asia, this creature is smaller than the famous short-faced bear.
Animal Redux
Fan favourite dinosaurs Allosaurus and Triceratops received touchups and alterations for their in-game debut courtesy of Cindy. Lis helped out on both species, designing new looks for A. europaeus and T. prorsus respectively.
Be sure to check out the Allosaurus and Triceratops on Cindy’s ArtStation for a better look!
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Thank you for reading February’s Devlog!
As the project moves into the second phase of development we thank everyone deeply for their patience and outgoing support for Prehistoric Kingdom. There are many great things on the horizon with many surprises still to come. What will they be? Only time will tell!
- The PK Team
