Prehistoric Kingdom - Update 11 (EA 1.8.39)

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

Welcome, Park Managers!

Update 11 is now available! This massive releases introduces 3 new species (2 genera), staff, logistics, revised excavations, overhauled human art, the beginnings of our GUI overhaul and much more. This is definitely our biggest update ever!

Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's[discord.com] appropriate channel.



Update 11 Content
New Species Create beautiful habitats for the tiny Australian dinosaur, Leaellynasaura and two species of the Triassic classic, Plateosaurus.




Staff & Logistics Staff are here! Offering three types to hire (Keepers, Laborers and Cashiers), these people are essential to running your Prehistoric Kingdom.




Build the Loading Bay to import resources and begin your logistics network. Make use of the Compost Heap, Produce Stations and storage facilities to design an efficient park that can sustain the needs of your visitors and animals alike.



Updated Human Art & Basic Audio The humans of Prehistoric Kingdom have had a total overhaul! With a more stylized look and a new suite of animations, we're working to make them into a more vibrant and expressive part of the game. Crowds will now make basic sounds, providing new ambience for the park. In a later update, we'd like to make this more detailed!

We've also been able to fix a number of issues pertaining to donation boxes and how guests view animals, making the visitors of Update 11 significantly more interactive.

Both guests and staff can be selected, showing a small information panel with shortcuts to their management windows and some short summaries.


Excavations & Research Update Excavations and Research have been retooled to make use of Science Teams! These teams are assigned to fossil formations or research nodes, completing progress over time until the desired animals or research have been completed.

To access these features, players will need to build two new buildings: the Fossil Depot and Research Lab.

Each month, the Excavations menu will refresh, bringing a series of random events with it. Around the world, various dig sites will be experiencing a positive or negative event, impacting the cost and yields retrieved by Science Teams.


GUI Overhaul, Paleopedia & Help Menu In Update 11, we've begun to overhaul the game's GUI. You can see notable improvements with modular groups and selection, displaying a series of interactable widgets for modules that provide a function within the park.


The Paleopedia is now accessible from the left side of the screen, showing animal needs, information and the species found in the game's formations. A lot of the descriptions are missing due to the depth of research required, but we'll be adding more in future updates.


We've also overhauled the Help Menu with a fresh design, new articles and links that allow players to quickly grab relevant building pieces or jump to other articles. We HIGHLY recommend giving this a read to understand some of the new mechanics and ensure your experience runs as smooth as possible!


Fence Rework & Staff Gates Fence placement and the fence visuals have been rewritten from the ground up to provide a smoother experience and allow us to do more advanced mechanics (like animal breakouts) in the future.

Besides a miriad of quality of life improvements, a new module, Staff Gates, can also be attached to fences. Gates are a modular piece, meaning they can be used anywhere and allow prefabs to quickly snap to an exhibit.


Backstage Props To tie everything up for our creative builders out there, we've added a bunch of backstage props to the Basic Theme. We love how these came out and can't wait to see how lively your staff areas will look!



PSA: Park Changes!

• Fences and enclosures have been completely reworked! This may create some issues or inconsistencies in old saves that need to be resolved by players. We suggest rebuilding fence segments if this is encountered!
  
• Upon loading into a legacy save, the park will be empty of visitors to allow for the improved visitors to spawn!
  
• Arid benches have been flipped to be consistent with other bench pieces. This means that some benches will need to be changed!
  
• Kiosks and shops are now part of staff and logistics, so will need to be stocked and managed in order to function as they used to.

Known Issues & Additional Notes

• After loading, there is a modular glitch where random pieces will render in place of saved ones. This is not permanent and a reload should fix it.
  
• Staff hats and props can be slightly offset and floaty, we’ll be fixing this.
  
• Undo/redo does not work with group scaling and rotation.
  
• The Mini-Aviary widget currently lacks the option to adjust its environment. We'll be fixing this in the future!
  
• Adding gates to enclosures can rarely result in the enclosure not registering. Replacing all fences can fix this.
  
• Plateosaurus currently lacks Nigel dialogue and will be added when we are able to record next!

Full Patch Notes
Features

• NEW ANIMAL: Leaellynasaura
  
• NEW ANIMAL: Plateosaurus trossingensis
  
• NEW ANIMAL: Plateosaurus gracilis
  
• NEW FEATURE: Logistics Loop
  Place the Loading Bay and hire staff to get started. Spread the park inventory with storage facilities and grow your own food with Produce Stations using the compost from Compost Heaps!
  
• NEW FEATURE: Staff
  Hire staff to manage the needs of guests and animals.
  • NEW STAFF TYPE: Laborers
    Laborers refill guest facilities and transfer both goods and produce to storage facilities around the park.
    
  • NEW STAFF TYPE: Keepers
    Keepers refill animal feeders and clean habitats, transporting dung to Compost Heaps.
    
  • NEW STAFF TYPE: Cashiers
    Cashiers work at kiosks, interacting with visitors. After a while, cashiers will need to change shifts if other cashiers are available.
• NEW FEATURE: Revised Excavation Loop
  Animal unlocking has been heavily updated to employ a more RNG based system based on science teams traveling to excavation sites around the globe and researching animal genomes

Additions

• Gameplay
  • Added the Eumeralla Formation
    
  • Added the Trossingen Formation
    
  • Added the Löwenstein Formation
    
  • Added monthly RNG excavation events! These events will affect each excavation’s cycle time, cost, and even fossil yield rate
    
  • Added negative land value influence to bathroom modules
• Animals
  • Added detail maps to most animals, offering subtle surface detail upon close inspection
• Staff
  • Added the ability to move staff
    
  • Staff can now be called to prioritize assignments related to a module or enclosure
• Guests
  • Added appropriate clothing for each map climate
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added empty states for the enrichment feeders, Blood Pumpkin, Fruit Block, and Termite Mound
    
  • Added animation to the Tall Plant Feeder
    
  • Added black fades to the bathroom modules, Fossil Depot, Visitor Spawner & Staff Structure entry
  • points
    
  • Added Silhouette Signs for Plateosaurus & Leaellynasaura
    
  • Added new basic fence: Basic Chainlink Fence
    
  • New Staff Management & Logistic modules:
    • Staff Gate 1m
      
    • Staff Gate 2.5m
      
    • Staff Gate 4m
      
    • Staff Gate 6m
      
    • 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
  • Binocular modules are now useable by guests
• UI/UX
  • Added guest and staff selection, with a dedicated selection panel showing relevant information for each
    
  • Added interaction point visualization on any and all modules that sport animal/human interaction points. These helpful arrows are available during construction actions
    
  • Lighting within modular groups can now be turned on during the day by switching on the ‘Always Keep Lights On’ in the lighting tab of each group’s selection menu
    
  • Added the Paleopedia
    
  • Shops now display a ‘missing stock’ state icon when low on stock
    
  • Added a ‘Remove Vegetation’ toggle to the modular building toolbox. If disabled, players will be able to place modular items without automatically removing vegetation
• Audio
  • Added basic crowd audio
    
  • Added a “woosh” when the camera is moved or rotated at high speeds
    
  • Added Nigel dialogue to the following animals:
    • Charonosaurus
      
    • Elasmotherium
      
    • Juxia
      
    • Leaellynasaura
      
    • Muttaburrasaurus
      
    • Panthera atrox
      
    • Panthera spelaea
      
    • Tarbosaurus
      
    • Sinotherium

Changes

• Balance
  • Animal Info Signs no longer have guest entertainment value
    
  • Rebalanced animal ratings across the board
    
  • Rebalanced fence strengths across the board, with more fence types being available in the early game
    
  • Enclosure Size and Crowding requirements for animals have been readjusted
• Gameplay
  • For the time being, visitors will be deleted from the park when loading a save from previous versions
    Jeep Depot, Research Station, Staff Center, Nursery Large, Nursery Medium and Nursery Small can now only be placed once in every park, due to being tied to specific game mechanics
    
  • Halved occlusion multiplier for Park Beauty, making it a bit trickier to completely negate negative land value
    
  • The research system now shares the excavation system’s science teams, employing said teams to unlock research projects
• Animals
  • The animal and exhibit crowding calculations have been re-tuned, taking into account the desired exhibit space each animal has (in sync with the values shown in the Paleopedia)
    
  • Removed Edmontosaurus dialogue from Ugrunaaluk until new lines can be recorded
    
  • Fixed misspelling of Ugrunaaluk (previously Ugrunaluuk)
    
  • Sinotherium is now correctly assigned to the Neogene period
    
  • Adjusted animation speed on the unique Protoceratops idle animation
    
  • Updated default expression for Panthera atrox and spelaea
    
  • Improved nasal seam on Pachyrhinosaurus species
• Guests
  • Fully reworked art
    
  • Human animation system reworked from the ground up
    
  • Improved guest visibility points, guests should now be more reactive to the animals in the enclosures around them
    
  • Guests will actively make donations again
    
  • Guests will appear more lively by often looking around the park as they stroll
    Improved guest interaction positioning
    
  • Eyes now reflect their environment
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Updated the ‘Prehistoric Kingdom Visitor Entrance Stone Age’ prefab to not contain tropical themed pieces
    
  • Updated several Fence visuals
    
  • Adjusted Arid Cobblestone path to improve tiling
    
  • Added a Gates section to the Enclosures menu
    
  • Gate to fence snapping improvements
    
  • Gate to fence group snapping (any gate!)
    
  • Added support for gates to play open and close sounds
    
  • Adjusted organic prop coloring on Flat Fruit Feeder and Produce Stations
    
  • Minor piece texture changes/improvements across the board, including adjustments to reflectivity of many metal pieces and props to be less blinding/wet looking.
    
  • Replaced Brick visuals in the Basic theme with a higher fidelity texture.
    
  • Rotated Arid Benches 180 degrees for parity with the rest of the benches (May affect some prefabs, apologies in advance!)
    
  • Converted most light sources into spotlights to reduce light leak and potentially improve performance. Those that use spotlights now feature a cookie (makes it look like light is emitting from a bulb!). This will impact how lighting appears in your prefabs!
    
  • Reduced light emitted from halloween candles
    
  • Simplified collision on a number of lighting props
    
  • Added shop visual fill effects
• Environment
  • Improved snow coloring during different times of day, visibility should now be much better during a snowy night
    
  • Adjusted Boreal map lighting
    
  • Adjusted Desert map lighting
    
  • Adjusted Tropical map lighting
    
  • Adjusted scattering atmospherics to further reduce overblown sunrise/sunset
    
  • Shortened Grassland biome grass rendering distances
• Construction
  • Completely overhauled fence rendering and placement
    
  • Can no longer place fences shorter than 2 meters. Does not limit snapping or intersection behavior
    
  • Fence placement snapping now scales with distance to the camera, will make building large enclosures much easier
    
  • Enclosures are now selected after they are completed for the first time
• UI/UX
  • Completely overhauled the modular group and piece selection menus, with a heavy focus on widget access and modularity. The main function of each relevant module can now be accessed at every level of the modular selection
    
  • Side quick access menus (Weather & Time, Paleopedia, etc) now show up in front of the Management Menu
    
  • Changed the shape of state icons and changed the inaccessible module icon to show blocked guests
    
  • Updated the voice line panel, and gave Nigel different outfits based on the map that’s currently being played on!
    
  • Decreased scroll sensitivity in the Animal Nursery gallery
    
  • Improved save/load menu UX
    
  • Made several improvements to the modular placement system:
    1. Rotation deltas are now always calculated based on the adjacent normal up axis, never the object’s up axis: this means objects will be rotated vertically no matter their local orientation
       
    2. Scaling and rotation checks are much more robust, the game shouldn’t allow you to scale and rotate pieces which aren’t meant to. This fixes the ability to create huge/tiny modules (e.g. Aviary, Kiosks, etc.)
       
    3. Scaling is now allowed in group placement actions, being completely consistent across the board
  • The animal holder menu now automatically comes up when breeding new animals through the Nursery
    
  • Updated graphics and coloring to the animal info panel
    
  • 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
• Rendering
  • Improved and optimized shadow quality across all settings
    
  • Improved frustum and occlusion culling for wall/roof pieces
    
  • Addressed culling issues for a variety of pieces
• Audio
  • Adjusted Nigel’s VO processing
    
  • Selecting Panthera in the Nursery will play the lion roar instead of Smilodon
    
  • Extended or reduced audible distance on various animal sounds
    
  • Adjusted surface interaction sounds to randomize volume and lowpass for additional variation
    
  • Adjusted small herbivorous dinosaur eating sounds
    
  • Adjusted field reverb, distance attenuation and distance model to better serve tycoon gameplay and allow for easier game mixing. This may result in overall louder animals!
    
  • Feathered and furred bodies will emit rain impact sounds during a storm, but not as much as scaled or leathery animals
    
  • Changed placement material sounds for new logistics/infrastructure buildings, donation boxes, blood pumpkin and moss roof style

Bug Fixes

• Crashes
  • Fixed two crashes in nav queries
    
  • Fixed hard crash relating to visitor visualization
    
  • Fixed a couple different crashes when closing the game
    
  • Fixed a crash when terraforming near the edge of the map
    
  • Fixed a rare crash when animals would check for a place to stand
    
  • Fixed a rare crash in pathfinding
    
  • Fixed a crash that occurred during Mac emulation
• Critical
  • Fixed errors that prevented any saves containing visitors from loading properly
    
  • Adjusted save system to prevent players accidentally deleting all of their saves by saving with no input name (UI block as well as additional checks to ensure a save target is actually correct!)
    
  • Fixed an animal holder duplication bug that occurred when canceling animal placement
    
  • Added a potential fix for a bug that would cause animal previews in the Nursery Menu to not dispose/load correctly, leading to duplicate previews
    
  • Fixed tropical entrance on the ‘Parque Nacional Arenal’ map not being accessible by guests
    
  • Further fortified the research system’s initialization, adding extra safeties and checks
    
  • Hardened how some systems initialize so that they work consistently
    
  • Fixed multiple exceptions that broke various tools and menus
    
  • Fixed various modules being unplaceable
    
  • Fixed logistics memory errors
    
  • Fixed a temporary deadlock issue (would cause the game to pause for 1 second, when changing feeder type)
    
  • Revised fence placement logic to make enclosure detection much more reliable
    
  • 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 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
• Gameplay
  • Fixed the animal placement action not registering an animal back into its enclosure if it was being moved, but subsequently the action was canceled
    
  • Fixed the animal placement tooltip not correctly updating its text validity state
    
  • The tutorial was disabled again, after being mistakenly left available. We are currently working on a more intuitive tutorial system, about which we will be sharing more details in the future!
• Animals
  • Fixed a common issue that could leave animals stuck until game reload
    
  • Fixed Coelophysis, Leaellynasaura, Protoceratops, Psittacosaurus and Velociraptor getting stuck while eating or drinking
    
  • Fixed Camarasaurus species using flat plants feeder
    
  • Fixed Argentinosaurus and Brachiosaurus social call animation
    
  • Fixed Tyrannosaurus eating exit animation
    
  • Fixed Paraceratherium broadcast not playing
    
  • Fixed animals placed outside an enclosure not registering as an escaped animal
    
  • Fixed a seam on the Muttaburrasaurus belly
• Guests
  • Improved guest need processing logic
    
  • Fixed visitors not getting satisfied after using an amenity
    
  • Guests need visual overlays will now render even if time is paused
    
  • Visitors will now have more precise placement when using facilities around the park
    
  • Fixed a bug where sandbox mode would disable many guest capabilities
    
  • Will now choose nearby interaction points more intelligently
    
  • Fixed exploration behavior, previously could generate giant crowds at particular locations.
    
  • Fixed guest needs flickering
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Prevented invalid fences from loading
    
  • Fixed donation box recolorability
    
  • Fixed several shop related modular items not rendering correctly
    
  • Fixed bathrooms disappearing on minimum graphics
    
  • Fixed various materials using the wrong shader version
    
  • Fixed waterfall particle cutoff and reduced overall opacity, added depth fade to remove billboard artifacts when intersecting with geometry
    
  • Fixed FX pieces being walkable by guests
    
  • Fixed normals on plant and fruit feeders
    
  • Fixed various bugs related to Animal Information Signs not detecting nearby enclosures
    
  • Fixed LOD rendering for Bathroom Sign Square
    
  • Fixed a rare error causing the selection outline to not work on certain modules, if their style was changed
    
  • Fixed a selection issue with the Rock Basalt 1 piece
• Water
  • Fixed light/color flickering on painted water
    
  • Fixed shadow settings not being applied properly, resulting in worse GPU performance on lower settings
    
  • Fixed a bug that caused constant shadow flickering when time of day is enabled
• Construction
  • Fixed animal containment bugs when updating enclosure layouts
    
  • Intersecting fence placements can no longer override the max fence length limit
    
  • Fixed a bug where it was possible to create fences with the same start and end point
    
  • Improved enclosure detection, will now correctly handle situations where the main fence posts form a polygon outside the enclosed area
    
  • Fixed a potential issue that could have been causing animals to be lost when enclosures were modified
    
  • Fences loaded from legacy saves are now put through a more sophisticated version upgrade algorithm, addresses issues with enclosure detection
• 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 UX issue with the Management View button at the bottom of the main board
    
  • Fixed the animal preview in the Animal Nursery
    
  • Fixed the Modular Styling menu not being interactable in all relevant circumstances. It should now be accessible whenever a modular object with styles is being edited/placed
    
  • Cannot access the save game button, if the current save name input is empty
    
  • Fixed save/load menu scroll content not properly updating on search
    
  • Fixed a bug where save previews would all break if a single save had a corrupt or invalid save preview
    
  • Fixed several GUI initialization errors
    
  • Fixed one issue causing the camera to accidentally restrict zoom behaviour
    
  • Fixed the Nursery Holder animal elements’ animations not updating with different time scales
    
  • Fixed overview settings button not properly toggling off once entering the pause menu
    
  • Fixed layouts in the structure filter menu not refreshing correctly
    
  • Fixed main menu bugging out upon exiting a save[
    
  • Fixed Animal Info Signs not detecting nearby species after loading a save
    
  • Fixed a typo in the Elasmotherium info sign
    
  • Fixed an issue that would cause Screenshot Mode to remain open when opening a building menu
• Rendering
  • Glass rendering happens later to render VFX pieces through it, may improve visuals
    
  • Fixed fly particle rendering
• Audio
  • Fixed an issue where overlapping animal breaths got cut short
    
  • Fixed background static not getting destroyed when returning to main menu during dialogue
    
  • Fixed brick walls using wood placement sounds
    
  • Fixed offset audio on Protoceratops unique idle animation
    
  • Fixed alt species specific sounds for Juxia
• Misc.
  • Fixed _TEMPSAVE string stacking multiple times on save files

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 fences are more efficiently rendered and consume considerably less memory
  
• Fixed a memory leak
  
• CPU Optimizations
  
• Numerous Memory optimizations
  
• Minor optimizations and stutter reduction
  
• Modular memory usage reduced
  
• Optimized human rendering
  
• As mentioned above, shadow rendering has been optimized across the board