PTB: Update 11 Begins Early Testing!

Welcome, Park Testers!

An early, in-development version of Update 11 is now available to opt-into on the Public Testing Branch! This release includes the adorable Leaellynasaura and many work in progress changes to the game. Staff, logistics and in-depth Excavations ARE NOT included and will be added to the PTB once their systems have developed further.

We're aiming to make continued use of the PTB throughout 2024 so that players have a way to check out what we're working on, even in a basic state.

If you are looking for a polished experience, we strongly suggest you do not opt-into the PTB! Update 11 is in-development!

Here are some specific things that we'd like to get feedback and bug reports on:

• PTB Save Directory: The Public Test Branch will save games to a separate directory ('__PTB__') in order to reduce potential save conflicts. We've made some other changes to the save system, so please report ANY issues that you encounter!
• Fence Rework & Staff Gates: Fence placement and mesh generation has been overhauled to allow for the addition of staff gates. Enclosures are very work in progress as a result, potentially to leading to cases where they may fail to register or don't appear in the animal overview menu.
• Excavations System: The basic version of our new Excavations system allows players to unlock animals. Please let us know if any issues are experienced, though given its primitive state we don't expect much here.
• GUI Updates: New UI elements have been added with more coming throughout the PTB. We've disabled notifications which means inexperienced players may have difficulty navigating the game and some elements such as the Weather menu are in a different location. The Animal Nursery can be accessed from the Park Services menu, but there's temporarily less visual feedback when creating animals (we are working on new notifications!). There's a lot of work to be done in restoring game feel and guiding the player experience!
• Guest Art: Some of the updated guest art is in! These are still very much a work in progress, currently lacking clothing color variation and male visitors (we're working on their animation set!).

How to Access the Public Testing Branch (Experimental!)

The Public Testing Branch (PTB) is a version of Prehistoric Kingdom that can be opted-into on Steam, containing experimental and potentially breaking changes. With the help of the community, we're able to hunt down various issues and gather feedback before pushing a an update to the public version of Prehistoric Kingdom.

1. Right click Prehistoric Kingdom in your Steam Library
2. Go to Properties
3. Betas
4. Select 'ptb_public_testing'

Please note that it is not recommended to play Public Testing Branch parks on earlier versions of the game. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.

Known Issues & Additional Notes

• We're anticipating some potential crashes from loading old parks. If this is discovered, please send your crash logs to our Discord server's appropriate channel.
• All staff and logistics buildings are NON-FUNCTIONAL! This is intended until we add staff and logistics.
• Enclosures from existing save files are not yet registering as valid exhibits. We are working on this!
• The staff gates feature temporary art and will be updated in the future.
• The UI is a massive work in progress, featuring old and new panels.
• Many UI features such as notifications have been temporarily disabled while we rework them.
• When incubating an animal, there's no visual feedback. We intend to show a small notification entering the Animal Holder, but this is not implemented.

As always, we kindly thank you for your patience!

Full Patch Notes

Features

• NEW ANIMAL: Leaellynasaura

Additions

• Gameplay
  • Added the Eumeralla Formation

• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added new basic fence: Basic Chainlink Fence
  • New Staff Management & Logistic modules (non-functional!):
    • Staff Gate 2.5m
    • Staff Gate 4m
    • Staff Center
    • Loading Bay
    • Goods Storage Small
    • Goods Storage Large
    • Produce Storage Small
    • Produce Storage Large
    • Compost Heap
    • Produce Station (Mix Feed, Plants, Fruit, Meat, Fish, Insects)

  • New Park Management modules:
    • Fossil Depot
    • Research Station

  • Added over 19 new basic/backstage props!
    • Liquid Barrel
    • Plastic Bowl
    • Cooling Box
    • Plastic Box
    • Plastic Box Tub
    • Wooden Box
    • Construction Cone
    • Construction Floor Sign
    • Dry Erase Board 1
    • Dry Erase Board 2
    • Keeper Spade
    • Ladder 1
    • Ladder 2
    • Shipping Container
    • Shipping Crate
    • Shipping Pallet
    • Staff Shelf 1
    • Staff Shelf 2
    • Staff Sink

• Audio
  • Added Nigel dialogue to the following animals:
    • Charonosaurus
    • Elasmotherium
    • Juxia
    • Leaellynasaura
    • Muttaburrasaurus
    • Panthera atrox
    • Panthera spelaea
    • Tarbosaurus
    • Sinotherium

Changes

• Animals
  • Updated default expression for Panthera atrox and spelaea

• Guests
  • Fully reworked art (work-in-progress)
  • Human animation system reworked from the ground up (work-in-progress)

• Buildings & Scenery
  • Updated the ‘Prehistoric Kingdom Visitor Entrance Stone Age’ prefab to not contain tropical themed pieces
  • Updated several Fence visuals

• UI/UX
  • Updated layout, flow and functionality for several pieces of the GUI (wip)
    • Main Action Board
    • Management Menu and all its sub-menus (e.g. excavations, animal menu, etc.)
    • Modular Editing Overlay
    • Weather Menu
    • Animal Nursery Holder

  • Moved the Animal Nursery Menu into the Management Menu
    
  • Terraforming menu now displays updated biome icons to match animal info panels
    
  • Huge improvements across the board when it comes to GUI layout updating and refreshing
• Audio
  • Adjusted Nigel’s VO processing
  • Selecting Panthera in the Nursery will play the lion roar instead of Smilodon

Bug Fixes

• Critical
  • Fixed a bug that caused loading to break when Documents/Prehistoric Kingdom/Modular Prefabs folder was not creatable or accessible
  • Added a fix for size limit on modular save files
  • Fixed a rare crash when animals would check for a place to stand
  • Fixed a rare crash in pathfinding
  • Fixed a blackscreen issue that would persist through reloading a save, now those saves should be recoverable!
  • Fixed a rare animal unlock load bug that would break loading
  • Fixed a crash that occurred during Mac emulation

• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed a selection issue with the Rock Basalt 1 piece

• Terraforming
  • Fixed numerous issues with modular undo/redo, particularly terrain flattening logic
  • Fixed a bug with the water remove brush where it would generate horrific janky edges near the shoreline
  • Fixed a bug where undo/redo would just delete a huge chunk of water

• UI/UX
  • Fixed a typo in the Elasmotherium info sign
  • Fixed an issue that would cause Screenshot Mode to remain open when opening a building menu

Performance

• Loading performance has been improved with additional multi-threading
  • This especially affects the Canada map or any save with a lot of pieces

• Improved modular system performance in a few areas
  • Primarily addressed slowdowns when working with pieces that had many tens or hundreds of thousands of instances on the map (trees on canada for instance)
  • Memory efficiency improvements

• Save system upgraded with better read/write performance and a fix for having too many files in a save (caused workshop upload issues)
  
• Save/load menu performance improved
  
• New human animations are more memory efficient
  
• New fences are more efficiently rendered and consume considerably less memory