Hello again, everyone!
Last Wednesday, we finally released the new and improved Prehistoric Kingdom Pre-Alpha Demo - a collaboration of 11 months of unpaid work from a team that can be found all over the world. While we are still humbled by the positive reception and thank you all dearly for supporting us, there are obvious issues with the game which we are working hard at to fix! Most notably we have added grass removal for paths and buildings, as well as improving how terraforming behaves with fences, paths, and more. We have a very large, text filled blog post to get through today, so please enjoy the patch notes below.
PRE-ALPHA DEMO V.0.1.4.3 PATCH NOTES
FIXES:
- Fixed AI getting stuck in swimming state
- Velociraptor infants should now be able to properly eat/drink.
- All AI eating/drinking behaviours have been improved.
- AI should no longer die of thirst/hunger if resources are available to it.
- AI should no longer try to path to places they cannot reach.
- AI pathfinding has been improved, and will continue to be improved in further patches.
- Dinosaurs should no longer randomly climb structures.
- Can no longer terraform under buildings/fences/paths.
- Terraforming will now properly exit build mode if used while building.
- Fixed demolition bug where buildings/feeders/fences were not being demolished properly.
- Fixed rendering glitch when selecting/deselecting buildings for demolition.
- Fixed corrupt save files as a result of saving the game while infants are in the nurseries.
- Fixed bug that corrupted fence positions when saving.
- Save games are now archived into a single PKS file for easier sharing.
- Infants no longer become adults when loading a save.
- Fixed performance issue when loading saves with lots of buildings.
- Close buttons now work on property windows.
- Fixed permanent fence and path previews when entering demolition/terraforming modes
- Fixed white artifacts on Gallimimus skins.
- Fixed random glare effects.
- Various other minor fixes and adjustments.
CHANGES:
- Changed wind turbine placement hitboxes.
- Changed decorative rock colliders.
- Edited large water trough to account for infants.
ADDITIONS:
- Dinosaurs can now take shelter during storms.
- Dinosaurs can be picked up and moved.
- Grass is properly removed from paths and buildings.
- Added colliders to trees (meaning vehicles can crash into foliage).
Things and Tips You Might Have Missed!
Dinosaurs:
- Did you know that there’s a chance of random genetic mutation? There is a 2% chance of a melanistic mutation, and 1% for an albino!
- All dinosaurs, young and old, have full swimming capabilities.
- By disabling the Single Instance button in the Nursery, you can select multiple individuals to be placed. Alternatively, this can be done by pressing Select All.
Building:
- You can switch between buildings and animals of the same type by pressing the object rotation keys (check your keybindings in the options menu!).
- Having to click on the UI to change the editing gizmo can get pretty annoying - that’s why we mapped a key (default is ‘X’) just for that.
- Speaking of rocks, the game will save the dimensions and rotation of your next placement if you have Save Next Coords enabled in the Building Menu. Likewise, enabling Single Instance will only place one rock, and disabling Editing Gizmo will stop it from showing up immediately (but can be still edited by clicking on the placed rock).
- Vehicles can be driven inside paddock’s by placing a Gate. These can be found under Fences and will automatically adapt to the selected fence type.
Vehicles:
- Vehicles tend to get battered around when you drive recklessly or attempt to murder your beautiful creations (yes, we both know who you are). By returning to the Vehicle Depot., you can restore the Staff All-Terrain to its original condition.
- If you ever find yourself lost on the island (and we don’t blame you!), the cars can be easily returned by clicking on your Vehicle Depot. and pressing the Restore Positionbutton.
Gameplay:
- You can disable automatic camera adjustment when building by disabling it under Options > Gameplay.
- Don’t like the day/night cycle? No problem! By heading into Options > Gameplay, you can disable the automatic cycle and even set the game to a permanent time of day.
- Want to spice up how your UI looks? Under Options > Gameplay you can choose between five colours; chrome, dark blue, light blue, orange, and red.
- If you haven’t guessed already, quite a lot about the game can be changed in the Options menu!
Miscellaneous:
- The Pre-Alpha Demo also includes random weather patterns! If you stick around for long enough, you might just experience rain, and even thunderstorms.
- By digging down with the terraforming tools, you will eventually hit the water table. Animals are able to drink and swim in this.
- Who doesn’t love taking a nice screenshot? For this reason, we’ve added three image effects sliders to the Options menu; Bloom, Tilt-Shift, and Vignette.
- If you want to see who helped build Prehistoric Kingdom, the Credits can be found in the main menu - featuring the developers, testers, and friends who have worked on the game.
The Future of the Project
Updating the Demo
Two words; Jurassic Patch.
Yes. The Jurassic Patch is the main content update that is expected to hit Steam “Soon™”. In other words, we do not have an ETA on its arrival. But we do however have a very clear idea on what to expect, so hold onto your butts!
- 4 NEW Animals from the Morrison Formation (Allosaurus, Camarasaurus, Stegosaurus, Dryosaurus).
- Enhanced Nursery UI.
- Improved AI & Interactions.
- New Placeable Objects.
- Lite-Challenge Mode.
“But Mr. and Mrs. Developers, what are the new objects?!” we hear you cry! They’re a surprise, but we are very confident that you will all enjoy what we have planned. Regarding the Lite-Challenge Mode, it will act as a taste of basic management that follows the current Sandbox mode goal (build a park that isn’t designed for guests but rather a reserve). This means that players will have to deal with money, complete missions/objectives to earn money, wrangle a monthly upkeep, and ship resources to the island in order to sustain their animals and build structures. The AI will be getting an improvement too, leading to the much anticipated hunting and herding! To accommodate our new additions to the demo roster, we’ve overhauled the Nursery UI (as detailed below). Stay tuned for more info!
“Okay, that nice and all, but what can we expect in the meantime?” Bug fixes, mostly. With today’s patch, we’re hoping to eliminate the majority of the issues that users have experienced in the demo. And while in a perfect world that’d be all done and dusted, we’ll continue checking the #pk-bug-reporting channel on our Discord server and try to add some quality of life improvements.
In terms of updates, there might be one or two more blog posts before we go to Kickstarter (which will be preluded by the Jurassic Patch). Behind the scenes, we are hoping to stream more often and interact with the community directly, but due to the global location of our team it is incredibly hard to find an appropriate time where a large portion of the development team is available at once.
Redesigning the Nursery
As development picked up its pace over the last few weeks before releasing the demo, we realized that we were going to have to look at a new approach to how users will navigate the user interface for our Nursery building. Combining our intentions for the future and looking at user feedback, we are hoping that this new design will mitigate issues such as being unable to find certain animals (for example, we have found that some are unable to find the Triceratops) and will make the future animal additions far easier to recognise.
Non-final concept art of the new Nursery UI. Text + Icons are a work in progress.
Breakdown of the user interface.
Type Selection (Purple)
- Choose between terrestrial, aerial, and aquatic creatures.
Preview Window (Red)
- Rotate an animated preview of the selected animal.
- Displays a brief summary of the creature’s length and weight.
- Use the search bar to find animals directly.
- ‘Favourite’ a selected creature to easily find it again under filters.
- Move the white slider to dynamically set or preview an animal’s age.
- Click the left and right arrows to switch to the next or previous animal.
Creature List (Green)
- Selecting the dropdown ‘Filters’ will display a variety of settings (e.g. Time Period, Climate) to filter out undesired animals.
- All relevant creatures will be shown along a slidable bar.
“Quick Stats” (Turquoise)
- Shows the animal’s popularity/rating out of five stars (don’t worry, the Tyrannosaurus only has four here to show what it looks like!).
- Brief summary of where the animal is found and when it lived.
- Core statistics about the animal which will be highlyimportant to consider when breeding a creature (e.g. diet, space required, aggression).
Description (Blue)
- Basic overview and summary of the animal and its in-game behaviour.
Animal Sequencer (Orange)
- This area has the same functionality as the current demo.
Animal Holder (White)
- This area has the same functionality as the current demo.
Community Spotlight
We have seen some amazing things built so far in the demo! Because of this, we wanted to share some of the screenshots and builds that have impressed us the most. With longtime players of multiple tycoon games becoming interested in our project, we only expect to become more blown away by the creativity of our community each and every day.
Fountain - Created by Narwhaler
Estuary with Mangroves - Created by T_L
Small Paddock - Created by DrBylund
T. rex on the Hill - Created by Gale
Cave - Created by Ammonite
Sleeping Tyrannosaurs - Created by YourCasualFox
Smile! - Created by Byron (Developer)
Addressing the News
We would like to reconfirm our dedication to Prehistoric Kingdom. We are confident that it'll give our players a unique and fun experience. Because of this, we tip our hats, and greatly look forward to where we want to take the game.
Until Next Time…
We are both humbled and pleased with the reception to our initial Pre-Alpha demo. The feedback given over the last week has been crucial for our understanding towards player interaction, usability, and expectations. There could not have been a better result, and we hope that you, our supporters, are as excited as we are regarding the future of Prehistoric Kingdom.
With Kickstarter on the horizon, we hope to begin explaining the game in a broader sense. To the now 6000 (and counting) players who have played the demo, and thousands more who have watched gameplay on YouTube, we thank you deeply. If you’d like to keep up to date with the game, we have an Official Discord Server: https://discord.gg/3pRpYTE