PTB: Patch (1.8.30)

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

Welcome, Park Testers!

This release aims to address some of the issues reported by users on our Discord server and adds the last staff type for Update 11, Cashiers! These workers will manage the register at kiosks around the park, changing shift when additional cashiers are available. They are real, physical staff, just like Laborers and Keepers.

By default, Cashiers will be auto-hired from the Staff Center when the game detects kiosks that have no one assigned to them. This behavior can be disabled from the Park Services menu, or players can choose to manually hire Cashiers, just like the other staff types.



We've also finalized the Staff Gate design, adding 3 recolorable styles and height variations to support 1m and 6m fences. More styles will be added in the future!


Additional improvements have been made to modular building, including better rotation behavior free moving, aligning to surface and allowing for the advanced scaling or rotation of groups that do not contain modules.



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.

Full Patch Notes
Features

• 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.

Additions

• Animals
  • Added behavioral one shot animations to Plateosaurus species
• Staff
  • Added the ability to move staff
    
  • Laborers and Keepers now have unique uniform hats
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added Staff Gate 1m, 6m and 3 new styles

Changes

• 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
• Animals
  • Decreased overall sizes of all Plateosaurus species
    
  • Female Plateosaurus are now smaller than their male counterparts
    
  • Removed Edmontosaurus dialogue from Ugrunaaluk until new lines can be recorded
    
  • Fixed misspelling of Ugrunaaluk (previously Ugrunaluuk)
• Staff
  • Slightly buffed movement speed when jogging or transporting goods
• Guests
  • Improved guest interaction positioning
    
  • Eyes now reflect their environment
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Adjusted Arid Cobblestone path to improve tiling
• UI/UX
  • Further changes to the VO dialogue box design
    
  • Decreased scroll sensitivity in the Animal Nursery gallery
    
  • Improved save/load menu UX
    
  • Made several improvements to the modular placement system:
    • 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
      
    • 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.)
      
    • 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
• Rendering
  • Improved and optimized shadow quality across all settings

Bug Fixes

• Critical
  • Fixed a crash when hiring a new staff member
    
  • 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 a couple different crashes when closing the game
    
  • 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
• Gameplay
  • Fixed the animal placement action not registering an animal back into its enclosure if it was being moved, but subsequently the action was cancelled
    
  • Fixed the animal placement tooltip not correctly updating its text validity state
• Animals
  • Fixed a common issue that could leave animals stuck until game reload
• Staff
  • Staff will now check if the destination for a resource is accessible before starting an assignment to transfer that resource
    
  • Improved staff gate navigation precision
    
  • Laborers should no longer ping-pong resources back and forth between warehouses where the stock is disabled
    
  • Fixed Keepers getting stuck on dung mounds and returning to the compost heap in between every mound cleaned
    
  • Adjusted animations on various staff assignments to better fit the action taking place
    
  • Numerous fixes for props
    
  • Fixed staff props being left around in some cases
    
  • Fixed data for held props breaking on reloading the game
    
  • Fixed staff not being fireable if time is paused
    
  • Staff will no longer jog when they shouldn’t be
• Guests
  • Guests will now use binoculars more accurately
    
  • Fixed visitors not getting satisfied after using an amenity
    
  • Fixed guests needs not properly computing
• Buildings & Scenery
  • 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 Loading Bay having out of range delivery times
    
  • Fixed Loading Bay not respecting the disabled stock settings
    
  • Fixed FX pieces being walkable by guests
• 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
• UI/UX
  • 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
• Audio
  • Fixed inaudible Plateosaurus trossingensis broadcast
    
  • Fixed an issue where overlapping animal breaths got cut short
    
  • Fixed background static not getting destroyed when returning to main menu during dialogue

Performance

• Fixed a memory leak
  
• Optimized human rendering
  
• As mentioned above, shadow rendering has been optimized across the board