Prehistoric Kingdom - Patch (EA 1.8.40)

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

Welcome, Park Managers!

This follow up patch to Update 11 addresses some of the more immediate feedback given by the community. Additional patches are soon to come!

Features

Amongst various changes to balance, guests and staff (particularly regarding travel speed and exploration distance), we've added a Sandbox conversion tool to Challenge Mode! This should help players whose parks are impacted by balance or calculation adjustments made throughout Early Access.

Going to Settings > Gameplay will now display the sandbox conversion button.



For more information about what other changes are coming in the next few weeks, please read our previous Dev Diary[www.prehistorickingdom.com]. Thanks!

Known Issues & Additional Notes

• Animation issues with human props are still present
  
• The newly introduced fence-end arrows appear on load. Placing a fence and cancelling will make them disappear!
  
• Some visitors may disobey gravity at higher altitudes and continue walking forwards
  
• Staff wages may be having too big an impact on the economy, so we'll be awaiting feedback on that
  
• The sandbox toggles for staff and logistics are NOT currently implemented! Though the buttons have snuck into the build, we are still working on them and are being targeted for release ASAP.

Full Patch Notes
Features

• NEW GAMEPLAY OPTION: Convert to Sandbox
  When running a Challenge Mode game, going to Settings > Gameplay will now display a sandbox conversion button, allowing players to rescue problematic challenge games and continue in peace

Changes

• Balance
  • Increased starting cash when beginning a new Challenge game
    
  • Increased profitability of kiosks and restaurants by 200%
    
  • Reduced the placement cost of staff gates, park services, logistics and animal care modules
    
  • Reduced the upkeep cost of staff gates, park services and storage modules
    
  • Increased the placement cost of Loading Bays to $125,000
    
  • Increased the upkeep cost of Restaurants and Shop Large modules to $500
    
  • Small Donation Boxes now cap out at $3000 instead of $50,000
    
  • Compost Heap now converts 8kg of dung into 4kg of compost
• Animals
  • Can no longer leave dung piles in deep water
• Humans
  • Increased human movement speeds by 20-30%
• Staff
  • Increased staff movement speed while transporting resources by 50%
    
  • Staff now explore closer to visitor areas while idle
• Guests
  • Visitors no longer react to needs under their reaction threshold
    
  • Visitors' needs view has been modified to show their needs more accurately. Now Green -> Yellow represents their needs below reaction threshold, Yellow -> Red above.
    
  • Visitors with critical needs will leave the park a lot faster
    
  • Visitors will generally spend less time in the park, allowing more guests to cycle in and increase ticket revenue
    
  • Greatly increased the chance to explore the park when there’s nothing to do
• Enclosures
  • Excess dung will not display a state icon until the enclosure reaches 30% cleanliness
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Moved Visitor Spawner into Guest Amenities > Finances
    
  • A newly placed Loading Bay should no longer purchase new resources if there are available resources from a previously demolished loading bay
    
  • Loading Bay will now highlight overstock in red
• UI/UX
  • Moved park service structures into their own building menu category, park logistics structures are now more accessible
    
  • The fence info boxes in the building menu now properly display the fence’s strength
    
  • Offset Paleopedia images for Spinosaurus and Tarbosaurus so that they are centered
    
  • Enabled the ‘Open Paleopedia Entry’ button in the Nursery Menu’s animal preview screen
• Post Processing
  • Improved general image clarity and quality for TAA
    
  • Reduced visitor heatmap opacity significantly from 75% to 25%
• Audio
  • Slightly increased delay after Nigel’s Leaellynasaura intro
    
  • Adjusted crowd audio parameters

Bug Fixes

• Crashes
  • Fixed a navmesh-related crash
• Critical
  • Patched an issue with screenshot preview generation that stopped the save system from finishing
    
  • Re-enabled the Kökşetau Formation after it was mistakenly disabled!
    
  • Patched challenge mode cheat that would allow locked animals to be breedable through the paleopedia menu
    
  • Modular movement of existing pieces is not cross checked with the economy anymore, which fixes a long-standing issue where moving structures would not be allowed if the park balance could not cover the whole building cost. Sorry to have missed this one for so long!
    
  • PTB saves can now be overwritten (and upgraded) by same or newer release builds (Beware that PTB saves may sometimes retain PTB-related bugs, we suggest naming your saves appropriately if you play on the PTBs)
• Animals
  • Fixed an animal welfare issue where exhibit markers would be calculated towards the fence strength need
• Staff
  • Fixed a bug that caused humans but especially idle staff to spin when reaching a destination
    
  • Should be less likely to fall into cracks and clip up through walkways
    
  • Keepers should no longer be prevented from using compost heaps that other keepers are using
    
  • Fixed staff giving up on dung cleanup assignments directly after shoveling if there was only one mound to clean up
• Guests
  • Fixed some diffuse map mistakes in the female guest outfits
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Glass shadows have been disabled after being temporarily enabled in Update 11
    
  • Fixed Fruit Block not having staff interact points
• Construction
  • Fixed a bug that caused the modular grid to be incorrectly sized
    
  • Fixed gates snapping into fences causing breaks that prevent enclosures from forming
• UI/UX
  • Fixed various ‘Call Staff’ buttons not properly initializing, losing their supposed functionality
    
  • Fixed typos in the Help menu
    
  • Fixed Ugrunaaluk name typo (again)

Performance

• Fixed a major performance issue certain amenities could continuously try to generate queue lines
  
• Minor performance improvements
  
• Minor modular load performance improvements