Prehistoric Kingdom - 1.1 now available!

Welcome, Park Managers and Happy Holidays!

The latest Early Access update is here and it’s our biggest patch yet! Featuring 3 new species, guest management and more, there’s never been a better time to jump into Prehistoric Kingdom.

If you’re yet to play the game or think it’d make a great gift, Prehistoric Kingdom is currently 25% off during the Steam Winter Sale!

1.1 Features

Animals

Say hello to Coelophysis, Dilophosaurus and Scelidosaurus! These three are the latest dinosaurs to join Prehistoric Kingdom’s roster, ushering in a new collection of early game animals from the Triassic and Jurassic.

We’ve also added ambient behavioral animations to 14 animals as part of our ongoing efforts to make the creatures more lively. These animations can play whenever an animal is idling or resting, performing a small action like looking around, sniffing or even playing!

Most of these creatures have also received a unique animation in addition to any actions shared across the family. Check the full patch notes below for a list of what species can perform behavioral animations!

Guest Gameplay

In this update, players will now have to consider guest needs! Over the next few weeks, we will be deepening and balancing guest related gameplay.

Ensuring visitors are catered to will increase your park rating and keep them in the zoo for longer. Modules such as kiosks, toilets and information signs can be placed throughout the park for guests to interact with and improve their welfare.

Visitors will spend cash when interacting with kiosks and vending machines, putting more of an emphasis on keeping up with their demands to make a profit. If you’re not careful with how you’ve laid out your park, this can cause traffic jams in high density areas! Our new avoidance algorithm ensures guests will actively path around each other while trying to find the shortest way to their destination.

To help find out what the park needs, this update also adds a new section to the Management View. Players will be able to switch between previews for the 6 different needs, with Accommodation modules coming down the line.

In-game, you can find Management View on the left hand side of the screen.

Guests will also travel to view exhibits from paths and modular structures, seeking out areas that provide animal visibility.

Observing animals will actively contribute to a guest’s entertainment need, while binoculars can be used to let visitors see further into a habitat.

In the future, we will be making this system more advanced to better account for visual obstructions and provide more Management View options for readability.

As this is all still a work in progress, guests can be found climbing on top of surfaces or falling off buildings. We are working on a new collision system we hope to introduce as soon as possible. We expect this to arrive early next year, with a total guest art, animation and audio overhaul coming later in 2023.

Localization

Six new languages can be picked from in the Interface Settings: French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, and Simplified Chinese.

We will continue to update our translations based on user feedback in future updates and may consider additional languages.

1.1 Content

Explore the scorched sands of the new Jordan desert map and build stunning zoos with over 100 scenery pieces from the Arid building set.

If the heat’s got you beat, take a stroll under the blissful shade of our new desert plants. With 24 foliage items like the Date palm and Joshua tree, they’re the perfect companions for desert dwelling dinosaurs.

There are loads of wonderful items waiting to be used in creative ways. Whether it’s a forgotten desert temple or a bustling bazaar we can’t wait to see what you build!

Modular pieces and plants aren’t the only additions, however! Brand new fences and a shingle roof set have also been included in 1.1.

Holiday Content

To help wrap up the year, the team’s put together a handful of holiday items that you can use to show your festive spirit! Baubles, snow pieces, a jolly old sleigh and even more pieces are ready for you to put up around the park.

Known Issues

• Paths stacking and clipping is currently broken, resulting in awkward layering behavior. We are actively looking into this issue!
• Guests may be pushed through objects, fall off buildings or stand on top of surfaces. We have a solution for this, however it needs more development time before it’s ready
• Additive animal animations can play on top of behavioral idle and resting animations, resulting in unnatural movement or clipping through the ground. Animals as a whole will be overhauled and expanded upon in 2023
• There is a small chance that some users may experience a severe FPS drop when selecting an animal in the Nursery. If this issue persists, please download your latest graphics drivers. We are looking into this issue.

Full Patch Notes

Features

• NEW: New Animals
  • Restore the early Mesozoic with 3 new animals, Coelophysis, Dilophosaurus and Scelidosaurus!
  • New dig sites: Chinle Formation, Charmouth Mudstone Formation and the Kayenta Formation

• NEW: Expanded Animal Animation Library
  • Several behavioral animations have been added to our first wave of animals when idling and resting.

• NEW: Improved Guest AI & Management
  • Improved guest navigation - guest AI can now recognize and avoid walking into other guest instances
  • Guests now spend their own money on amenities in individual economic interactions with amenities
  • Guest needs and motivation: guests have needs to be met, and will leave the park if their requirements aren’t satisfied! Make sure you’ve got ample amenity and entertainment coverage in your park by making use of the new Guest Needs View
  • Animal visibility: guests can navigate towards visibility points to get a better look at their favorite animals - this system is still early in its development, so it will receive more complexity passes as we update it

• NEW: Desert Map
  • Explore the red sands of Bahr Harin, our first desert locale

• NEW: Desert Biome
  • Build your desert habitats with 9 new species of vegetation (24 plants total) and 4 additional terrain types

• NEW: Game Localization
  • Prehistoric Kingdom has now been translated to 6 new languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian and Simplified Chinese!

Additions

• Animals
  • Added several behavioral idle and resting animations to the first wave of species below. Animals marked with * also have a unique idle or rest animation.
    • Argentinosaurus
    • Brachiosaurus
    • Camarasaurus
    • Coelophysis*
    • Deinocheirus*
    • Dilophosaurus*
    • Dryosaurus*
    • Edmontosaurus*
    • Iguanodon*
    • Parasaurolophus*
    • Psittacosaurus*
    • Scelidosaurus*
    • Smilodon
    • Tyrannosaurus*

  • Added new additive animations
    • Smilodon (licking x2)

• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added 5 Fences (Arid Pillar Fence, Arid Wooden Fence, Arid Clay Fence, Basic Ironbar Fence, & Tropical Stone Brick Fence)
  • Added 5 Arid Wall styles (Adobe Clay, Arid Tiles, Arid Cobblestones, Arid Stone Bricks, Stained Metal)
  • Added 2 Roof styles (Modern Shingle Tile Roof & Arid Clay Roof)
  • Added new Roof Ridge Cap pieces to go on top of your slanted roofs (4x1, 4x2 and 4x4 for all roof styles)
  • Added 4 Paths (Arid Cobblestone Path, Arid Herringbone Path, Arid Sandstone Brick Path, Arid Tile Path)
  • Added 3 Arid Arch Doorways (recolorable)
  • Added 5 Arid Pillars (recolorable)
  • Added 4 Arid Pillar Bases (recolorable)
  • Added 3 Arid Pillar Bricks (recolorable)
  • Added 2 Arid Slanted Pillars (recolorable)
  • Added 3 Arid Pillar Tops (recolorable)
  • Added 4 Arid Roof Ornaments (recolorable)
  • Added 2 Arid Wall Ornament Arches (recolorable)
  • Added 5 Arid Wall Ornaments (recolorable)
  • Added Wall Facade Set (3 styles, recolorable)
  • Added 3 Djadochta Murals
  • Added 4 Arid Doors (recolorable)
  • Added 8 Arid Windows (recolorable)
  • Added 3 Arid Bins (recolorable)
  • Added 3 Arid Benches (recolorable)
  • Added 2 Arid Tables (recolorable)
  • Added 5 Arid Railings (recolorable)
  • Added 4 Arid Lamps (2 Wall Lamps, 1 Hanging Lamp, 1 Ground Lamp) (recolorable)
  • Added 3 Silhouette Signs (Dilophosaurus, Scelidosaurus & Coelophysis)
  • Added Holiday Candy Cane (recolorable)
  • Added 2 Holiday Gift Boxes (recolorable)
  • Added Holiday Sleigh
  • Added Holiday Ball Decoration (5 styles) (recolorable)
  • Added Holiday Bell (recolorable)
  • Added Holiday Bow (2 Styles) (recolorable)
  • Added Holiday Star (recolorable)
  • Added 4 Holiday Gingerbread pieces (Crowny, Dryosaurus, Parasaurolophus & Decorated Tree)
  • Added 3 Holiday Snowflakes (recolorable)
  • Added 3 Holiday Tinsel pieces (2m, 2m hanging & ring) (recolorable)

• Foliage
  • Added 2 Barrel Cactus (gardening plant only)
  • Added 3 Bloodwoods
  • Added 3 Date Palms
  • Added 4 Joshua Trees
  • Added 2 Organ Pipe Cactus
  • Added 2 Prickly Pear Cactus
  • Added 2 Saguaro Cactus
  • Added 3 Saxaul
  • Added 3 Yucca

• Audio
  • Added rare social calls to Coelodonta
  • Added additional broadcast variations to Iguanodon
  • Added ambient Nursery sounds to Coelodonta, Dryosaurus, Psittacosaurus and Smilodon

• Music
  • Added a new ambient track

• UI/UX
  • Added ‘Holiday Props’ category
  • Added ‘Holiday Signs’ category
  • Added ‘Silhouettes’ category
  • Added a Guest Needs view in the management view menu, allowing users to select specific category and visualize which visitor instances haven’t had their needs met, while also highlighting relevant amenity structures

• Options
  • Added a language option in the Interface Settings menu, allowing users to select their GUI language

Changes

• Animals
  • Added the Desert biome to Brachiosaurus, Camarasaurus (grandis, lentus supremus), Dryosaurus, Protoceratops, Psittacosaurus (mongoliensis) and Torvosaurus (tanneri)
  • Adjusted the play chance of busy or noisy additive animations across all animals
  • Animal eyes now show more environment reflections
  • Fixed weight paint issues for Brachiosaurus and Psittacosaurus

• Buildings & Scenery
  • Replaced the Modern Metal Panel Roof textures for higher visual fidelity that is more in line with the rest of the building sets
  • Texture improvements to Modern Asphalt & Modern Wood Roofs for higher visual fidelity
  • Modified several roofs (Modern Metal Panel, Modern Wood, Modern Asphalt) meshes to include 3D ridges/trims on their models (included on the Gable, Round & Corner roof pieces)
  • Construction Tape pieces are now recolorable
  • Adjusted point light position on Decorative Lamp items
  • Moved all holiday/seasonal props into a new ‘Holiday Props’ category
  • Moved all holiday signage into a new ‘Holiday Signs’ category
  • Moved animal silhouettes into a new ‘Silhouettes’ category
  • Due to a transform misalignment in the Binoculars piece, the forward direction on this object was flipped. We’ve accounted for that in Official Prefabs, but players might have to change their orientation manually in saves created before this update

• Gameplay & Balancing
  • New Game menu now defaults to Normal difficulty instead of Easy
  • Updated calculation for park rating: gave slightly more weight to exhibit score, making low value exhibits drag down the general rating more with this update
  • Modular placement stacking now also registers fences, allowing users to stack modular objects such as screen on top of existing enclosures

• Environment
  • The snow terrain texture is now brighter and more fluffy to match the new snow pieces

• Save/Load
  • The auto-save slot now only appears in the Load menu, preventing users from accidentally overriding the wrong save slot
  • New saves now account for time of day

• Audio
  • Added missing sounds to previously implemented Iguanodon and Tyrannosaurus behavioral animations
  • Added missing sounds to a variety of additive animations
    • Argentinosaurus
    • Brachiosaurus
    • Camarasaurus
    • Coelodonta
    • Dryosaurus
    • Psittacosaurus
    • Smilodon

  • Hadrosaur species now use more distinct growls in non-additive animations
    • Iguanodon
    • Lambeosaurus, Parasaurolophus (shared)

  • Hadrosaur breathing is quieter and less bassy
• Graphics
  • Improved distant path texture visual fidelity

• UX
  • Opening the ‘Enclosures’ and ‘Fences’ building categories won’t display an irrelevant Styling Toolbox context anymore
  • After player feedback, we’ve set the modular track toggle to disabled, to prevent camera motion when selecting a modular group
  • Exhibit Score Bonuses and Penalties are now hidden when not applicable, to reduce visual clutter

• GUI
  • Improved Power Management View labeling and values, for a clearer read-out of the park’s power situation

Bug Fixes

• Critical
  • Fixed numerous crashes
  • Fixed a critical error preventing a handful of users from accessing the main menu upon start-up
  • Fixed an error causing the camera to be stuck on enclosure selection, when starting a new action
  • Fixed animal naming resetting to the previous name
  • Added safe-guards to the saving code, reducing occasions where the game could get stuck in the loading state
  • Fixed animal skins being accessible for non-purchased excavation sites in the Excavations Menu

• Scenarios
  • Fixed zone marker graphics not coming up during the tutorial scenario

• Save/Load
  • Fixed a loading issue with Animal Info Screens set to display Mini Exhibit animals

• Guests
  • Fixed two bugs that could cause guests to walk through enclosures and other game objects

• GUI
  • Fixed several kiosk themes not being available in the modular style menu

Performance

• Optimized several game systems, freeing up more than 1ms of main thread time
• Addressed several memory leaks throughout the game’s systems
• Introduced significant optimizations to the group selection GUI by including more accurate group object scans - most significant with larger, more complex groups
• Fixed multiple crashes