PTB: Update 14 Begins Testing!

Welcome, Park Testers, to this very special public testing update!

This early version of Update 14 includes baby animals, seamless growth, animal herding and first person mode. We are expecting to launch this update on April 24, so there'll be a lot of time for bug fixing and adding all the missing animations and sounds.

While this is all still very work in progress, we are looking for feedback in these areas:

• Animal growth speeds (too fast/slow?)
  
• Animal food intake (do babies eat too frequently/not enough?)
  
• Staff reliability (are staff doing their jobs?)

There's quite a lot that's changed, so be sure to read the full patch notes below to see everything that's new!

PTB Features

Up first, baby animals and seamless growth! This feature is available for 49 out 58 species with all of them at varying stages of completion.

Players can choose to breed animals at any age or even stunt their growth early, preventing them from maturing into adults. Various growth speed options further allow you to tweak just how long it takes for babies to grow up!




Animals are also now capable of creating herds and family units, moving together and following the group leader's actions. Until reaching adolescence, baby animals can be adopted by an older individual, following them until they're ready to join a social group.

This is especially enjoyable to watch with our work in progress locomotion V3, an enhanced movement system that aims to smooth out transitions and give every species a trot animation. Herding and locomotion are areas that we'll continue to work on until full release, so expect to see some oddities.


You can also get up close and personal with the brand new First Person Mode! Open gates, sit on benches and look through binoculars as you rediscover your park from a new perspective.



What is NOT included in this PTB?

As of this release, the following animals do not have their ontogeny enabled. They will be added as their baby skins are finalized:

• Acrocanthosaurus
  
• Carcharodontosaurus
  
• Torvosaurus tanneri & gurneyi
  
• Brachiosaurus
  
• Argentinosaurus
  
• Muttaburrasaurus
  
• Iguanodon
  
• Styracosaurus
  
• Scelidosaurus

When it comes to audio, we will be working to give every animal unique baby calls and add their various chirps throughout the PTB. Adolescent animals have not been given much attention yet, so expect them to sound much like adults for now. Unique baby animations are also missing audio.

Broadly, here's a list of the various things that we want to add or change for the final Update 14 release:

• Retake Paleopedia/Animal Info Sign screenshots for alt species that have been updated
  
• Updating animal thumbnails to include babies, male/female skins and genetic mutations
  
• Updating genetic variation and mutations to look better
  
• Updating tutorials to include information about ontogeny
  
• Fix Nursery idle animations
  
• Fix swim animation speeds being overly fast for all species
  
• Add help articles for no food, no water and restricted growth park issues
  
• Add more detailed information about social needs and behavior in the Paleopedia

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[discord.com] appropriate channel.

Known Issues & Additional Notes

• Note: social group formation works best for animals that are contained within a habitat
  
• Critical: modular lighting is not recolorable
  
• Critical: animals are teleporting quite a lot according to early testers, please let us know if you can find steps to reproduce this reliably
  
• Issue: herding cohesion is currently broken, so animals can end up standing too close together
  
• Issue: animal avoidance is currently broken, so animals can end up walking through each other
  
• Issue: animals in a herd can get stuck constantly getting up/down if they don't need to rest but their herd leader wants to. This should resolve itself eventually, however
  
• Issue: animals can sometimes snap into their walk cycle or other animations instead of doing so organically
  
• Issue: additive animations can trigger during one shots or right before animals go to eat/drink/rest. We would like to stop this from happening to prevent jank
  
• Issue: many species may have bad color variation or ugly mutations. We are currently going through them one by one using a new method which looks better
  
• Issue: animal animations in the Animal Nursery are currently broken due to the addition of babies, we will be fixing this
  
• Issue: the game may freeze every so often, we are currently investigating the cause of this issue

Full Patch Notes
Features

• NEW FEATURE: SEAMLESS ANIMAL ONTOGENY
  Animals can now be incubated in the Animal Nursery at any point in their ontogeny (growth cycle), and seamlessly grow into adulthood. Incubation gameplay has been re-balanced to make adult animals less economically viable in the early game.
  
  Throughout their growth, animals change in real time:
  
  • Proportions - younger animals are usually lankier, sporting larger extremities and facial features in rapport to the body
    
  • Skin & Coloration - all the baby animals have different patterning and colorations when young, gradually transitioning those into their adult colors. Some babies, like most theropods, are feathered even if the adults aren’t!
    
  • Animations - young animals move around differently, using their own bespoke locomotion animations. Most species even have specific play actions
    
  • SFX - animal sound scales with maturity, with infants sounding chirpier and higher pitched than their adult counterparts
    
  • Behavior - as babies, animals form clutches and follow their adopted family around the park
  Through the Animal Nursery and various game settings, players are now able to control:
  
  • Animal Neoteny
    
  • Animal Growth Speed
• NEW FEATURE: Animal Herding and Social Groups
  Animals now form social groups! Depending on the species, they’ll follow their group leader and synchronize behavior (eating, drinking, resting, etc.) to varying degrees. Infants can also be adopted by adult animals, though they won’t contribute to a social group until reaching adolescence. If infants cannot find an adult, they’ll stick together regardless.
  
• NEW FEATURE: First Person Mode
  A first person mode has been added to the game, accessible from the camera menu (bottom right of the main HUD). This new game mode allows for two alternative play styles:
  
  • GUI ON: toggleable by having the game GUI on screen. This allows for the full creativity suite while in first person
    
  • Full interaction: normal Prehistoric Kingdom gameplay is disabled, while new interaction is unlocked: the player can interact with fence gates, seating, binoculars, and more!
• NEW CHANGE: Animal Locomotion v3
  Animal locomotion has been improved once more with the intent to tidy up and polish the movement introduced in Update 9. The following have been changed/added:
  • All animals now have trot animations
    
  • All animals now have baby animations
    
  • Animals will now move between walk, trot and run more discretely, preventing animation blending from happening for too long
    
  • Animals will now generally transition between all animations more seamlessly
    
  • Animals will now have a chance for zoomies, causing them to run around their paddock. This is more likely as a baby and varies per species
    
  • Animals are less prone to slowing down while moving forward
• NEW CHANGE: Animal Socialization and Awareness
  Animals of the same species will now talk to each other, issuing a call and response. This cannot happen if animals are unable to see one another. If their welfare is too low, animals will play a sad call. If their welfare is extremely low, they’ll play an angry call.
  
• NEW CHANGE: Improved Animal Sexual Dimorphism
  Many species such as Triceratops, Styracosaurus and the Mammoth now feature physical sexual dimorphism, giving females shorter tusks, horns and a more gracile appearance
  
• NEW CHANGE: Improved Animal Alt Species
  Updated the models and proportions for the following animals to make them more distinct:
  
  • Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus
    
  • Charonosaurus, Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus and walkeri
    
  • Juxia, Paraceratherium bugtiense and transouralicum
    
  • Psittacosaurus sp, sibiricus and mongoliensis
    
  • Smilodon fatalis and populator
    
  • Camarasaurus grandis, lentus and supremus
    
  • Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis, lakustai and perotorum
    
  • Elasmotherium and Sinotherium
    
  • Plateosaurus trossingensis and gracilis

Additions

• Gameplay
  • With the addition of animal ontogeny, we restructured the Biology research tree to account for various new animal features. The following research items were added:
    • Accelerated Ontogenic Synthesis - improves pricing and timing requirements for breeding full adult animals
      
    • Induced Androgenesis - ability to breed male animals in the Animal Nursery
      
    • Rapid Genetic Replication - multiplies the breeding speed of animals in the Animal Nursery by 100%
      
    • Hyper Genetic Replication - multiplies the breeding speed of animals in the Animal Nursery by 200%
      
    • Suppressed Ontogeny - enables stopping an animal’s growth at a chosen moment in its growth cycle
      
    • Ontogenic Regulation - enables modifying an animal’s growth cycle speed
      
    • Capacity Protocol #1 - Increases the Animal Nursery capacity to 10 slots
      
    • Capacity Protocol #2 - Increases the Animal Nursery capacity to 15 slots
      
    • Dynamic Replication Allocation - Increases the Animal Nursery capacity to 60 slots
  • Added new Park Issue for staff not being able to access an enclosure
    
  • Added new Park Issue for animals not having enough room to grow
    
  • Added new Park Issue for shops not having a cashier present
    
  • Added new Park Issue for not having a Compost Heap in the park
    
  • Checklist Park Issues now have click-through behavior to quickly place the required module
• Animals
  • Animals will now consider their vertical reach when deciding which feeders they can use (primarily affecting the Tall Feeder). This is influenced by their current size, so infant sauropods will need ground food to start out with. Animals which can access high food sources will prefer them
    
  • Added an idle shake and additive head throw animation to Megaloceros
• UI/UX
  • Animal portrait icons now better reflect the animal’s current visual state, with distinct icons for each skin, sex, age, and genetic skin mutation. This is applied throughout the entire GUI
    
  • Added a Biology panel to the Animal Info Menu, reporting current animal statistics such as age, maturity, length, mass, etc.
    
  • Added a Social panel to the Animal Info Menu, displaying information about the animal’s current social and family groups, if relevant
    
  • Added an icon to the Animal Info Menu header to indicate the animal’s sex
    
  • Added selection cycling buttons to the Animal Info Menu header, allowing players to quickly switch between animals of the same species if the animal isn’t contained, or animals of its exhibit if the animal is contained
    
  • Added a confirmation window that appears when selling animals, notifying the player of the refund sale price
    
  • Animal Management Menu: added the ability to select multiple animals and sell them with a single click
    
  • Animal Management Menu: added a ‘Most Popular Animal’ widget on the left sidebar, displaying brief information about your park’s most popular animal and focusing it on click
    
  • Animal Management Menu: the ‘Locate’ button on the habitat headers now actually selects and focuses the relevant enclosure/habitat
    
  • Added new keybind: ‘Toggle First Person Mode’ set by default to LeftControl+T
    
  • Added new keybind: ‘Switch Item Next’ set by default to RightBracket
    
  • Added new keybind: ‘Switch Item Previous’ set by default to LeftBracket
• Audio
  • Added a number of new UI sounds to various buttons and sliders to improve the user experience, replacing many of the old sounds
    
  • Added ambient building sounds to the Fossil Depot, Research Station and Staff Center modules
    
  • Added growls to T. rex eat
• Music
  • Added dynamic variants to many tracks, changing the musical fullness/arrangement depending on the time of day, park rating, weather or building activity
    
  • Added dynamic and semi-procedural pause music (around 25 minutes of material that plays randomly and adjusts layers depending on player input and location)
    
  • Added 2 new Ambient tracks:
    • It’s Yours (2:52)
      
    • Night Life (3:56)
  • Added 2 new Building tracks:
    • Evolution (1:55)
      
    • World’s Greatest Potential (3:43)
  • Added piano variants to 2 Ambient tracks:
    • The New World (1:42)
      
    • Perniciem (2:10)
  • Entering first person mode will cause music to sound radio-like and filtered. This can be turned off in the game options

Changes

• Balance
  • Animals have received a substantial round of rebalancing:
    • All animal costs have been re-tuned, with a higher overall cost ceiling. Animal pricing is now fully automated, with costs being mathematically based on the animal’s mass and perceived popularity
      
    • Animal pricing is now plastic, changing in real-time over the animal’s age and taking into account the animal’s appeal. High appeal animals are now worth more in-game money, which is reflected when selling individuals
      
    • Rebalanced animal base appeal points to be mathematically based on the animal’s mass and perceived popularity
      
    • Animal base appeal now slightly varies for each individual, based on their current mass
      
    • Increased animal starvation and dehydration time by 2x and 1.5x respectively, making animals eat/drink less frequently
  • Base price for science projects (excavations, research items) is about x2 higher
    
  • Additional funding levels in the Excavations Menu now have a higher cost, but also a higher fossil yield
• Gameplay
  • Excavation system: animals can now be found in multiple excavation sites. When a species is unlocked in a specific site, that will update in all the other sites that species is present in. This currently extends to:
    • Kökşetau Fm. has been replaced with Kozhamzhar Fm. where Elasmotherium and Mammuthus can be found.
      
    • Psittacosaurus mongoliensis is now found in Dushihin Fm. and Jiufotang Fm.
      
    • Edmontosaurus regalis is now found in Prince Creek Fm. and Horseshoe Canyon Fm.
      
    • Vilyuy River has been re-added to the game, containing Coelodonta
      
    • Yamal Peninsula has been re-added to the game, containing Mammuthus and Elasmotherium
  • Animal creation: each animal instance now progresses asynchronously in the Nursery Holder
    
  • Added the ‘Animal Aging’ gameplay setting: this can completely disable animal aging in Sandbox Mode
    
  • Added the ‘Animal Ontogeny Speed Multiplier’ gameplay setting: this is a global value that affects all
  • animal growth speeds in Sandbox Mode, as long as their growth speed isn’t set to ‘Realistic’
• Animals
  • Animal AI now has a more advanced planning and execution model, allowing them to “think” about new things while still performing their current state, which prevents them from constantly being interrupted by thoughts they can’t currently execute on anyway
    
  • Animals will perform animation one shots at the end of their pathfinding, rather than stopping randomly
    
  • Animal locomotion speeds more accurately reflect their raw animations, leading to overall faster and more alive feeling animals
    
  • Animals will now remain in a single move animation (Walk, Trot, Run) rather than sitting at an awkward blend between two
    
  • Updated neck posture for Megaloceros eating and grazing animations
    
  • Updated various locomotion animations for:
    • Coelodonta
      
    • Dilophosaurus
      
    • Coelophysis
      
    • Dryosaurus
      
    • Psittacosaurus
      
    • Edmontosaurus
      
    • Lambeosaurus
      
    • Iguanodon
      
    • Parasaurolophus
      
    • Nasutoceratops
      
    • Pachyrhinosaurus
      
    • Styracosaurus
      
    • Triceratops
      
    • Tyrannosaurus/Tarbosaurus
      
    • Acrocanthosaurus
      
    • Carcharodontosaurus
      
    • Torvosaurus
      
    • Deinocheirus
      
    • Paraceratherium/Juxia
  • Improved model weight painting quality for most animals
    
  • Improved estimated data for animal mass
    
  • Improved navmesh margins to reduce animals getting stuck on tight corners
    
  • Animal selection input is now far more accurate
    
  • Improved genetic color variance across all species, with more accurate albinism and melanism, and several new leucism coloration types
• Guests
  • Guests will now spawn and use only one contiguous park area, whichever is largest. Multiple spawners are still valid, but only those which are connected to this largest area. Previously it was possible to create multiple disconnected sections of a park, and guests would become confused trying to navigate to attractions in another area. This affects module accessibility, the visitor navmesh preview, and the visitor areas used for Park Beauty calculation
• Environment
  • Improved distant terrain rendering quality by accounting for texture bump in the resampling mechanism: this means more distant ground textures will appear more detailed
    
  • Improved terrain texture fidelity, lowering the scale of most textures to look better next to babies and small animals. This may result in more tiling in specific circumstances, but we feel this is a worthy sacrifice
    
  • Desaturated wetland sand texture and adjusted the wetness of mud
    
  • Decreased visual clutter of snow particles
    
  • Reverted lighting clamping during the early morning and late evening
    
  • Night is now less overwhelmingly blue with better visibility in moonlight and while looking top down
• Foliage
  • Updated kapok and coconut palm impostors
    
  • Reduced alpha cutoff for distant coconut palms and tree ferns, allowing them to maintain their silhouette and better cast shadows
    
  • Slightly increased wind simulation intensity
• UI/UX
  • Reduced minimum brush size for terrain painting to 2, from 5
    
  • UI Transparency now can’t be accessed while the Management Menu is open
    
  • Improved sun lighting transition when going into the Management Menu
    
  • Issue state icons now have 1:1 parity with park issue notifications
    
  • Staff and Visitor inaccessibility park issues will not show up if there are no staff centers or visitor spawners
    
  • The Loading bay and Storage buildings will no longer generate Module Logistics Unfulfilled park issues
    
  • Notification popups can now show over the management menu
    
  • Overview popup audio now only triggers the first time a new popup is created
    
  • Modular gimbal GUI: clamped at the edges of the screen
    
  • Modular gimbal GUI: further offset positioning so that the buttons don’t overlap with the gimbal editing axes
    
  • Animal Paleopedia: the ‘Thoughts’ page now preview character voice lines
    
  • Changed behavior of the bottom-left park stats buttons to open/close their relevant menus based on current context
    
  • Clearing all notifications in the Notification Menu now automatically closes the panel
• Post-Processing
  • Reduced SSR roughness, resulting in less-green foliage during rain
• Audio
  • Adjusted entire audio mix, resulting in an overall louder and more cohesive experience
    
  • Adjusted Nasutoceratops social response calls to better fit the animation
    
  • Drag sounds for fences, paths and modular objects are now more responsive
    
  • Park Services ambience is now ducked when assigning Science Teams to excavations/research or hiring staff
• Music
  • Extended 1 Ambient track:
    • The New World (1:53 > 2:23)
  • Updated the mix and arrangements of several tracks to match the styling of Volume 1’s soundtrack release. Most current in-game music will receive similar updates!
    • 4 Ambient tracks: All For Them, A Walk In The Park, Dawn Chorus, The New World, Perniciem
      
    • 3 Building tracks: Visitors On Main, Ingenuity, Build Sleep Repeat
  • Changed gameplay music algorithm to be entirely based within FMOD
    
  • Music now sounds more distant, echo-y and lacks low frequencies at nighttime
    
  • Music will not stop playing when entering the Park Services dashboard and will instead sound distant
    
  • Music will lower in volume when at ground level if the player is not building
    
  • Intro music will now fade in at a lower volume when starting or loading a game

Bug Fixes

• Critical
  • Fixed ambient audio duplicating itself upon specific circumstances, potentially crashing audio or the game
    
  • Fixed a critical GUI exception causing the staff management menu to not properly populate itself with staff entries, when certain staff members have null assignments
    
  • Fixed an issue causing the park name text in the Management View menu to default to “Prehistoric Kingdom” upon loading a save, instead of the saved park name
• Gameplay
  • Fixed staff placement rotation input not working if time is paused
    
  • Fixed certain Park Issues not correctly responding to sandbox settings such as disabling Logistics or Dung
    
  • Fixed a bug which would prevent a visitor spawner from being usable if it was placed on its own, even after being connected to path
    
  • Fixed an issue where unloaded animals in the Nursery would overlap with other animals
• Animals
  • Fixed an animal shader issue that could cause certain skins to wrongfully display iridescence
    
  • Fixed certain animals such as sauropods being unable to reach their max speed
    
  • Fixed Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus neck snap on its rearing animation
    
  • Fixed sauropod rolling animations extending longer than intended
    
  • Fixed Psittacosaurus eat exit animation
    
  • Fixed Pachyrhinosaurus snapping resting animations
    
  • Reduced wiggling animation inaccuracies on various animations
    
  • Fixed animals using high browsing eat animations when taking from ground feeders
    
  • Fixed animals not always being able to drink from shallow water
    
  • Fixed animals getting their needs drained significantly on first placement if you had previously sold other animals in the park
• Staff
  • Deep rework of Staff Dispatch, which now keeps track of all “Job Sites” such as feeders, shops, enclosures etc. and continuously validates that the correct assignments are being sent out to staff. Should prevent the dreaded lazy staff behavior that has plagued them since their release
    
  • Fixed a logical error that allowed laborers to fill feeders if that was one stop in a multi-stop transport assignment
• Audio
  • Fixed guests getting stuck in a Donation Task if it wasn’t completable on the first try
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed selection collision for Research Station
• UI/UX
  • Fixed a collision problem on the coastal map causing the camera’s behavior to be unpredictable at certain positions and angles
    
  • Fixed camera jitter during zoom in/out while tracking a moving object
    
  • Fixed a timing issue causing certain GUI tooltips to stick on screen
    
  • Fixed a minor issue causing the modular style panel from not disappearing when opening the management menu from within modular selection
    
  • Fixed tooltip still being open in screenshots
    
  • Fixed tooltip text for the animal water preference bar reporting the incorrect preferred values
    
  • Fixed timesliced processing on animal breeding within the Nursery Holder, leading to more accurate animal creation timing
    
  • Fixed Shara Murun Formation being named Sharamuran Formation
    
  • Fixed Landscaping Menu issue causing the selected biome preset to not paint the correct foliage when the menu would be opened for the first time in a session
    
  • Fixed a weather menu bug causing the ‘Cycle Weather’ toggle to be auto-selected upon closing the menu
    
  • Modular gimbal GUI: fixed first-frame-glitch effect when entering modular edit mode
    
  • Modular gimbal gizmo: fixed washed out graphics, restored full colors
    
  • Fixed layout refreshing in the options menu, when changing sandbox settings
    
  • Fixed slider handles in the options menu
    
  • Fixed slider handles in the screenshot menu
    
  • Fixed slider handles in the landscaping menu
    
  • Fixed Module Inaccessible park issues from showing up when a feeder or shop is simply empty
    
  • Fixed an instance of layout glitching for overview pop-ups
• Audio
  • Fixed numerous UI buttons with incorrect sound events
    
  • Fixed Carcharodontosaurus broadcast being inaudible beyond 64 meters
    
  • Fixed missing audio events for a few Triceratops, Velociraptor and Paraceratherium animations
    
  • Fixed offset audio events for Coelophysis
    
  • Fixed potential issue where multiple skin layers could repeat over themselves
    
  • Fixed an issue causing the modular ‘moving’ sound to be stuck on during grid placement
• Music
  • Corrected overly aggressive file compression for brass in The Miracle of Life, eliminating a ringing sound

Performance

• Decreased spikes to GUI rendering when accessing UI transparency and screenshot mode
  
• Improved physics engine performance related to animal selection
  
• Slightly improved modular processing CPU performance
  
• Made significant improvements to the Animals Management and Staff Management menus performance, with list creation being deferred over multiple frames