[2023] Prehistoric Kingdom - Update 8 (Public Test)

Welcome, Park Managers!

Today, we're inviting you to play Update 8 on the Public Testing Branch! This is an experimental, opt-in version of the game that can be accessed in order to provide feedback, report bugs and help us test before a major release is ready to ship.

We will be releasing hotfixes, improvements and further polishing Update 8 to ensure that this egg has been fully incubated.

How to Access the Public Testing Branch

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.

About Update 8 This update brings a huge amount of important changes to the game, including completely rewritten animal locomotion and AI, and a brand new species. The team has also addressed a number of technical issues, bugs and stability fixes that we hope will improve the experience for players.

In rewriting animals from the ground up, we have dramaticaly improved their performance across the board. Much of their code is multi-threaded and designed to spread the workload over as many CPU cores as possible.

This has been a massive undertaking and while there are still improvements and polish to be made to the animals, we cannot understate how important this process has been for the future of the game. As the team works towards future updates, we have even more optimizations coming that will further polish what has been introduced in Update 8.

Optimization continues to be a goal of ours that we are constantly chipping away at with every update, so we thank you for patience and hope that parks with a large number of animals should feel more scalable.

Update 8 Features
New Species Meet the park's newest arrival, Velociraptor! This small, carnivorous dinosaur boasts an impressive coat of feathers, decorating its body with elegant wings, a tail fan and a particularly eye catching mohawk.

Velociraptor can be found as a two star animal in Challenge Mode, making it the perfect candidate for an upcoming park.


Animal Rewrite Animals have had their locomotion and AI rewritten from the ground up, giving them new ways to move around, create decisions more organically and introduce some much needed optimizations.

This new foundation has been designed to be as technically modular as possible and will allow the team to more easily support sophisticated AI behaviors like herding, hunting and combat in the future. Through upcoming patches, we will continue improving the quality of our animals.

Genetic Mutations & Improved Variation In this update, creatures bred from the Animal Nursery now have a chance to be born as an albino, melanistic or leucistic mutation. These mutations are procedurally generated, allowing any skin to mutate and retain their underlying design.

Animals with genetic mutations are rated higher than those that aren't, giving exhibits a nice bump in score if mutations are present.



On top of genetic mutations, all skins now have enhanced individual variation, offering subtle or drastic variation depending on the animal. We hope players will grow an even bigger attachment to the animals in their park with this change!


Guest Queuing & Improved Decision Making When waiting to ineract with a module, guests will now form small queues to reduce crowding issues in the park.



We've managed to resolve a number of underlying issues with guests that should greatly improve their decision making and how they choose to get around the park. As a result, guest flow and traffic should resolve better and promote a healthier economy.

Park Beauty Park Beauty is a new gameplay factor that helps influence the park rating. Modules such as power generators, animal nurseries and even dirty habitats create a negative area of influence, lowering the Park Beauty if they overlap with guest visibility.

To combat this, players can block guest sightlines using fences or modular pieces; occluding the area of influence.


Park Beauty can be increased by building gardens, decorated buildings and constructing high scoring habitats that are visible to guests.


Update 8 Content
Tropical Biome Overhaul The Tropical biome has been overhauled with 34 foliage items, including a mix of new plants as well as updates to previous species.



New Biome Presets & Seasonal Arrowwood For this SPOOKY holiday season, we've added two seasonal presets to the Temperate biome! Players can finally paint seasonal variants for the birch, field elm and holm oak in their habitats.

To make the forests really come alive, we also added seasonal variants for the arrowwood bushes, offering a crimson counterpart to the original green versions. We can't wait to see how players decide to use these plants!


Water Troughs In Update 8, players can now build small or large water troughs for animals to drink from. For all the thirsty animals out there, this one's for you!



Updated Materials The modern stone brick wall style has had a major revision in Update 8. The new material is higher fidelity and sports a more geometrically consistent look to fit with the modern theme.


The modular rock pieces have also received a texture and material upgrade to make them appear more grounded with grit and edgewear that was missing from the previous iterations. We can't wait to see how great your environments will look!


Update 8 Quality of Life
Automatic Foliage Removal Modular and path placement actions will automatically remove terrain-bound vegetation from underneath them, making it much easier to expand the park.


Cinematic Camera A cinematic camera tracking mode is available for non-mini exhibit animals, toggleable through the animal info panel at anytime.

When selecting a newly bred species, the cinematic camera is automatically enabled to coincide with Nigel’s voice lines. Players can disable this functionality in the options menu (per save).

Nigel's Hints If your animals or habitats have been neglected, Nigel will occasionally chime in to point out issues that need to be addressed. There are 76 new contextual lines across a variety of possible triggers.

PSA: Exhibit & Navigation Changes

Exhibit Size Requirements The minimum exhibit size requirement has been removed from the game. This means animals will no longer need an arbitrary exhibit size to make them happy. Instead, animals only care about exhibit crowding.

Exhibit crowding compares the physical size of animals against the rest of their habitat. As additional creatures are added, the crowding level will increase. Small animals take up less space, while large animals take up more.

We hope this change makes habitat construction more intuitive and less restrictive!

Exhibit Water Requirements Due to the addition of the water troughs, the minimum painted water requirement has been removed or reduced for the following animals:

• Brachiosaurus
  
• Camarasaurus
  
• Coelodonta
  
• Coelophysis
  
• Dilophosaurus
  
• Dryosaurus
  
• Edmontosaurus kuukpikensis
  
• Juxia
  
• Mammuthus
  
• Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum
  
• Paraceratherium
  
• Protoceratops
  
• Psittacosaurus
  
• Smilodon
  
• Tarbosaurus

Animals with no minimum painted water requirement do not need lakes in their habitat to be happy.

Navmesh Regeneration Due to navigation changes introduced in Update 8, players will have to regenerate their navmesh upon loading old saves. This will increase the time it takes to initially load an old save, but resaving your park will prevent the navmesh from being regenerated again.

Known Issues & Additional Notes

• Additive animations (e.g. vocalisations, looking around, stretching) require a bit more work before they can be added onto the new locomotion system. This is a high priority for us and we will be rolling out this feature ASAP!
  
• Animal grazing has been disabled while we develop a more dynamic solution that can work in tandem with the new locomotion system
  
• Animals do not animate while in the Nursery
  
• Animals may transition out of eat/drinking unnaturally fast
  
• Animals do not have footstep sounds
  
• Animal navigation view has been disabled while we develop a new implementation
  
• Animal IKs are a work in progress and will be improved with upcoming hotfixes
  
• Some animal interactables can be scaled freely, which may impact their usability or give unnatural results.
  
• There are some issues with desynched data between modular objects and foliage, most commonly experienced when performing undo/redo actions. We are working on a fix for this!
  
• There is a chance for prefabs containing utility or feeder modules to be split in two after performing a specific series of actions. We are actively investigating this issue!
  
• There are some issues impacting the effectiveness of dung beetle nests. Habitats can be manually cleaned out while a hotfix is worked on.
  
• There are some issues present in the tutorial that the team is actively investigating

Full Patch Notes
Features

• NEW ANIMAL: Velociraptor
  • Added Velociraptor mongoliensis, found in the Djadochta Formation! Thanks to its small size, this speedy thief can be one of your starting animals in Challenge Mode.
• NEW: Animal Locomotion Fully Rewritten
  • Animals can now walk in any direction as needed and will seamlessly speed up or down as required. This is our foundation to support more sophisticated AI behaviors and will continue to receive further polish improvements in upcoming patches
• NEW: Animal AI & Decision Making Fully Rewritten
  • Completely overhauled the technical AI backend for animals. This will allow us to more easily expand upon AI-related animal behaviors in the future!
• NEW: Animal Genetic Mutations
  • Players can now randomly breed albino, melanistic and leucistic animals with the improved variation system
• NEW: Guest Queuing and Decision Making Improvements
  • Guests will now create small queues when waiting to use various facilities. Pathfinding and decision making should also be improved
• NEW: Park Beauty
  • Improve beauty around the park to help raise your rating, blocking guest line of sight to infrastructure and dirty habitats with fences or modular pieces. Park beauty can be significantly raised by building gardens and decorated structures!
• NEW: Nigel's Hints
  • Nigel will now chime in to point out animal related management issues. There are 76 new contextual lines across a variety of possible triggers.

Additions

• Gameplay
  • Modular and path placement actions now automatically remove wild vegetation from underneath them
    
  • Added a cinematic camera tracking mode to all animals, toggleable through the animal info panel, and automatically triggered when first selecting a newly bred species, coinciding with Nigel’s voice lines. This feature can be disabled in the Options Menu
• Animals
  • Added multiple new one-shot behaviors to animals previously missing them:
    • Nasutoceratops
      
    • Pachyrhinosaurus
      
    • Styracosaurus
      
    • Triceratops
      
    • Protoceratops
      
    • Coelodonta
      
    • Paraceratherium
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added Large & Small Water Dish, new drinking interaction points for animals
    
  • Added Velociraptor Silhouette piece
• Foliage
  • Added Temperate Seasonal Forest and Seasonal Birch Forest presets
    
  • Added Arrowwood Seasonal 1, 2 and 3
    
  • Added Kapok 2,3 and 4
    
  • Added Banana 2, 3 and 4
    
  • Added Fan Palm 2 and 3
    
  • Added Elephant Ear 2 and 3
    
  • Added Ladyfinger Palm 1 and 2
    
  • Added Jungle Cover 1 and 2
    
  • Added Monstera 2 and included the species into the tropical brush
    
  • Added Palm Grass 2 and included the species into the tropical brush
• Audio
  • Added broadcast and social response calls to the following animals:
    • Argentinosaurus
      
    • Brachiosaurus
      
    • Camarasaurus
      
    • Dryosaurus
      
    • Psittacosaurus
      
    • Smilodon
  • Added broadcast variations to Triceratops
    
  • Added social variations to Deinocheirus
    
  • Added missing sound when Psittacosaurus yawns to sleep
    
  • Added missing sounds to Mammoth behavioral animations
    
  • Entities that are steeply above or below the camera are now muffled, focusing the soundscape on animals that are within view
• GUI
  • Added a brand new animal info panel that will be part of a game-wide UI revamp
    
  • Added options to either change auto-save frequency or disable it entirely, which can be found in the Gameplay Settings

Changes

• Gameplay
  • Removed minimum exhibit size requirements from all animals as the crowding need made it redundant
    
  • Removed or reduced minimum water requirement for the following animals:
    • Brachiosaurus
      
    • Camarasaurus
      
    • Coelodonta
      
    • Coelophysis
      
    • Dilophosaurus
      
    • Dryosaurus
      
    • Edmontosaurus kuukpikensis
      
    • Juxia
      
    • Mammuthus
      
    • Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum
      
    • Paraceratherium
      
    • Protoceratops
      
    • Psittacosaurus
      
    • Smilodon
      
    • Tarbosaurus
  • Close-up animal orbiting will now more closely focus an animal’s eyes instead of its jaw/throat
    
  • Instant animal incubation will now work even during paused time
• Animals
  • Updated Smilodon's basic 'Dauntless' skin
    
  • Improved fidelity on Smilodon’s eye texture
    
  • Improved fuzziness for several animals’ fur and feather coats
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Metallic animal statues will no longer glow at night
    
  • Topiaries now cannot be navigated through
    
  • Transparent glass panels no longer cast shadows
    
  • Replaced Modern Stone Brick Wall texture, being higher fidelity & more appropriate for the Modern theme
    
  • Updated all Igneous rock’s textures for higher visual fidelity
    
  • Updated Igneous rock snow overlay texture to be closer to the terrain snow
    
  • Updated LOD distance and material reflection on all bone/skull props
    
  • All bone/skull props can now be properly recolored
• Environment
  • Overhauled Tropical map (old saves not affected)
    
  • Overhauled Scrubland map (old saves not affected)
    
  • Overhauled lighting across all maps
    
  • Replaced Tropical Dirt with a new leaf litter texture
    
  • Adjusted Tropical Sand to appear more granular and less saturated
    
  • Adjusted Tropical Grass to better match the new foliage
    
  • Adjusted Desert Sand to appear less saturated
• Foliage
  • Adjusted all plant colors for a more consistent look
    
  • Adjusted wind simulation settings for almost all foliage to add more ambient sway
    
  • Replaced the previous Kapok, Coconut Palm, Fan Palm, Elephant Ear, Banana Tree and Monstera
    
  • Removed Samanea from the Tropical biome and moved it to Gardening Trees
    
  • Moved seasonal trees from Gardening Trees to the Temperate biome as paintable entities
    
  • Removed shadows from foliage impostors to reduce shadow casters in the scene and smooth out transitions
• Audio
  • Animals
    • All animal sounds are now attached to bones, preventing cases where sounds could previously be “left behind” by animals walking away
      
    • Retooled animal breathing audio to dynamically respond to an animal’s speed, exhaustion and more without relying on animation states
      
    • Various adjustments to distance attenuation including reduced distance falloff on animal sounds for better clarity during top-down gameplay
  • Ambient Soundscape
    • Smoothed out a number of transitions across the ambient soundscape
      
    • Ambient soundscape aesthetic now changes depending on the time of day, with night sounding less bright than day
      
    • Improved weather frequency balance across different camera heights
      
    • Improved random wildlife spawning as well as their audible presence in the world
      
    • Adjusted responsiveness and speed sensitivity of underwater entry sounds
  • Mix
    • Various adjustments to the volume of some animal sounds and UI elements
      
    • Various adjustments to the stereo spread and spatialization of placement and terraforming sounds
    Reverb
    • All reverb now remains active even when time is paused (provides a less flat experience when placing objects or listening to ambience)
      
    • Field reverb no longer reflects low frequencies and creates more realistic early reflections
      
    • Distant reverb now takes prominent effect further away and can be passively activated by loud sounds over a certain threshold (noticeable on animal broadcasts or mammoth trumpets)
• Visuals
  • CTAA implementation has been fixed, resulting in substantially better anti-aliasing
    
  • Improved graphical fidelity of mist atmospherics
    
  • Drastically improved overcast and storm visuals
    
  • Reduced large scale ambient occlusion intensity
    
  • Reduced ambient reflections during midday and day/night transitions for a more natural look
    
  • Glass graphics now display ambient reflections and render properly during atmospherics conditions
• GUI
  • Structure items and prefabs are now always displayed in the GUI, even if their theme hasn’t been unlocked yet. Instead, they will show up with a ‘lock’ overlay and a tooltip pointing you to their respective research item
    
  • The ‘Remove Vegetation’ toggle in the Landscaping menu can now be toggled off, switching the plant action back to add mode
    
  • Improved Notification Popup behavior, with pop-ups now being bundled into broader categories, minimizing the amount of repeating notifications
• Tutorial
  • A pop-up indicator will now more promptly alert the player of existing objectives

Bug Fixes

• Critical
  • Drastically improved user action stability - on the event of a faulty action, the game will more safely shut down the action, preventing players from getting hardlocked into action states
    
  • Fixed multiple minor memory leaks
    
  • Fixed another research unlock initialization edge case
    
  • Fixed an issue in the Waste system that could cause loading hangs
    
  • Water Remove Brush previously didn’t refresh the terrain water drinking system
    
  • Fixed a number of small bugs that could break loading
• Animals
  • Potentially fixed an old issue causing certain animal skins to display exploding fur/feather coats
    
  • Fixed a number of incorrect idle positions across animal animations
    
  • Improved navmesh check during animal placement
    
  • Drastically improved natural drinking point generation stability
• UX
  • Stopped stutters from spinning the camera view
    
  • Fixed the camera stutter during animal tracking mode
    
  • Fixed an issue causing the weather transitions to be timescale independent
    
  • Fixed an issue with the red and green power indicator arrows being turned on at the same time in the power management view, indicating conflicting results
    
  • Fixed issue causing Screenshot mode to not initialize properly when started while a management menu is open
    
  • Fixed a minor button collision issue in the main menu
• Audio
  • Fixed camera height audio parameter not using its full range
    
  • Fixed issue that prevented wildlife sounds from playing on the Tropical map
    
  • Fixed large skin loop foley from playing on small animals
    
  • Fixed an issue that prevented field reverb from creating a stereo image (all entity sounds should now appear wider)

Performance

• Animal IKs rewritten to be fully multi-threaded (more optimizations coming here!)
  
• Animal AI rewrite computes the AI across all CPU threads now
  
• Visitor AI now uses CPU threads more effectively
  
• Optimized animal audio processing
  
• Optimized distant tree rendering
  
• Optimized foliage colliders
  
• Optimized foliage texture resolution
  
• A number of minor systems also use multi-threading now

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.