Posts by Xul

Quote from Pat

Bei mir hat es auch schon geholfen das Tier in Quarantäne zu bringen.

Ja, das hat sicher den selben Effekt

Hauptsache, man kann das entsprechende Tier aus dem Gehege verlegen.

Wenn es schon verstorben ist, hat man ein echtes Problem...

Sehr merkwürdig...

Ich hätte ja auf einen Hohlraum unter dem Zaun getippt.

Aber wenn Du sagst, bei JEDEM Zaun in jedem Zoo wird das angezeigt, dann bin ich absolut ratlos. Ein Bug kann es nicht sein - dann hätten wir alle ja ständig diese falschen Anzeigen. Da muss irgendwas in Deiner Spielinstallation kaputt gegangen sein.

Wenn eine Datei Analyse auf Steam keine defekten Daten ergibt und eine Neuinstallation auch nichts ändert, kann nur noch Frontier helfen. Melden kannst Du das hier (musst Dich aber vorab registrieren...):

https://issues.frontierstore.n…sues/planet-zoo#main-menu

Das mit den „untätigen“ Angestellten passiert immer wieder mal und ist tatsächlich ein Bug.

Die einzige Lösung (die aber nur manchmal hilft): genau das Tier, dass gerade „behandelt“ wird, ins Handelszentrum verlegen und dann wieder zurück ins Gehege. Das löst meistens die Warteschleife, in welcher der Tierarzt hängt.

Wenn das Tier bereits verkauft wurde oder verstorben ist, hat man keine Chance!

Es können übrigens auch Tierpfleger oder Lehrer, welche Tiersprechstunden abhalten sollen, solche Phänomene zeigen. Da ist es dann praktisch unmöglich, diese Angestellten zu reaktivieren.

CineMatrix:

Die Wassertanks sind zunächst rein für die optischen Effekte für die Aquarien!

Wenn man nur den TV Bildschirm verwendet, sieht es aus, wie ein Film. Auch wenn man eine zusätzliche Glasscheibe davor setzt, wird es nicht viel besser. Baut man den Monitor aber in das Wasserbecken, hat man da die typischen „Unter Wasser“- Verzerrungen und es sieht aus, als würde man in ein Aquarium schauen. Ausserdem kann man dann die „Wasserblasen“-Düsen knapp vor den Monitor setzen und zusätzliche Effekte erzielen.

Das eigentliche Wasserbecken, wie man es oben auf dem Screenshot sieht, werden die Besucher nicht sehen. Inzwischen habe ich das aber komplett umgebaut und in eine Kaiman-Anlage mit zusätzlichen Beobachtungsfenstern angeschlossen. Da schwimmen jetzt die kleinen Reptilien rum, auch in den Bereichen hinter den Bildschirmen (natürlich ohne, dass man die Kaimane dort sieht). Hat den entscheidenden Vorteil, dass die Besucher jetzt auch da stehen bleiben und scheinbar die Aquarien betrachten. In Wirklichkeit schauen sie sich natürlich die Kaimane an, obwohl diese ja nicht sichtbar sind. Interessiert die Gäste aber zum Glück nicht und ich habe den gewünschten Effekt. Ohne irgendwelche Tiere im Wasserbecken würde kein Besucher in den oben abgebildeten Raum hinein gehen...

ich mach wieder Juror, wenn niemand Einwände hat

Salziger_Hering - mach mal einen Screenshot davon!

Den Begriff lese ich auch zum ersten Mal...

Meine Oma war das als junges Mädchen...

Manchmal passiert es, wenn man mehrere Bauteile gleichzeitig kopiert/einfügt oder verschiebt, dass diese nicht exakt zur "Weltachse" verschoben bzw. eingesetzt werden, sondern zur "relativen" Achse. Das kann man zwar umstellen im Tool, aber das hilft leider nicht immer!

Beim reinen kopieren/einfügen eines einzelnen Elements sollte es aber keine Probleme geben!

Was genau hier diesen Spalt verursacht, kann ich aus der Ferne daher leider nicht sagen. Einen Bug möchte ich eher ausschliessen, da das Bausystem im Raster schon ziemlich "alt" ist und von Planet Coaster übernommen wurde, das noch älter ist! Da wäre so ein eklatanter Bug den ganzen "Schönbauern" bestimmt schon einmal aufgefallen und es hätte jemand gemeldet...

Trotzdem kann ich natürlich nicht ausschliessen, dass ein bestimmtes Bauteil solche Fehler verursacht. In Planet Coaster gab es auch mal einen Bug, der Burgmauern nicht korrekt im Raster angepasst hat, wenn man diese um 90 Grad gedreht hat. Aber das ist längst behoben. Und das sah auch nicht so komisch aus, wie auf dem Screenshot.

Ganz schön viele Väter hier unterwegs...

Es ist ganz schön aufwändig, die Aquarien ansprechend zu platzieren

Ich muss alle Tricks beim Bauen anwenden, die ich so kenne

Aber mit dem Ergebnis bin ich zufrieden - die Großbecken wirken sehr realistisch (wenn auch vermtl. nicht auf dem Screenshot; ich mache aber erst ein Video, wenn es mehr zu sehen gibt...)

Falsches Forum!

Wir sind hier bei "Planet Coaster"...

Die letzten Screenshots sind eindeutig aus "Cities: Skylines" oder so...

Ich hab mal wieder was Neues angefangen...

Diesmal möchte ich einen "Aqua Zoo" mit vielen Aquarien, Vivarien, einer Tropenhalle und ein paar kleinen Aussenanlagen bauen.

Das Ganze soll praktisch in einem einzigen, großen Gebäude unterkommen...

Bis jetzt gibt es nur einen großen Vorplatz mit einem hübschen Wasserbecken in der Mitte.

Um diesen Platz herum wurde ein Flamingo Gehege angelegt, damit es nicht so langweilig wirkt...

Im Hintergrund sieht man schon die breite Treppe, die zum Hauptgebäude hinauf führt. Dort werden dann die ganzen Aquarien untergebracht.

Die ersten 4 kleinen Schaubecken sind schon installiert:

Viel mehr habe ich heute nicht geschafft.

Aber es gibt große Pläne für eine Krokodilanlage, ein Tropenhaus und eine Robben- und Otteranlage.

Das alles soll, wie gesagt, alles in diesem Gebäude untergebracht werden und später wird dann alles mit einem Glasdach überdacht...

sieht super aus!

Und viel besser, als die ursprüngliche Version mit der Oase...

Welcome to April’s Development Update!

In this shorter blog post we’ll be covering the usual; what our team’s been up to and what the community can expect to see in the future! Most of our work in April was done on the game’s backend, so there’s not much to visually cover this month.

Aviary Interior by Warpath.

After pushing our last update to the alpha, our main priority was upgrading our engine version, source control service and fixing all the lovely issues that can occur as a result of that.

Despite the expected and partial setback, a lot of exciting content started production in April. Art highlights include new music, vegetation assets, 3D building sketches, dinosaur sculpting and extra types of idle animations for the animals (e.g. sniffing and scratching).

As part of the on-going effort to improve our modular system, the grid is now super reliable! This should address a lot of the problems users experienced in alpha. Similarly, the backend for material switching and recoloring was rebuilt to allow for the new UI features. Check it out!

As you can see, it’s now possible to mass-select a building and change all swappable materials on the fly. This functionality is expected to apply to object recoloring, though we’ll save the details for a later date when that’s implemented.

On the management side of things, we started with exhibit data. This provides us with a jumping off point to start figuring out the calculations for things like animal needs and their overall welfare. Exhibits and how they’re scored are very much the driving force behind our management simulation, influencing everything from guest spawns to the park economy and rating. How you build and optimise your paddocks in Prehistoric Kingdom is a central component in ensuring your success as a player.

Music

This month we’ve got two work-in-progress samples from the game’s soundtrack to tease you with! Though there’s currently 11 minutes of goodness behind the scenes, we wanted to give everyone a small taste of what’s to come.

Below you can find two types of tracks. One that we’ve internally dubbed as “working” music, and the other that plays inside the Animal Nursery. There’s a whole selection of music being written for specific scenes within the game, and we cannot wait for you to hear more.

• Visitors on Main
• The Miracle of Life

Since we’re writing for an adaptive music system, what you’re hearing is the full mix (e.g. everything together). In-game this is split into different layers, allowing us to control the intensity of the music depending on player context and game rules.

The completed soundtrack will be purchasable (and delivered to eligible backers) once the body of work has been finished post Early Access launch.

Foliage Showcase

Wetlands received its final few foliage items, introducing new ground plants to help bring your swampy desires to life. Horsetails, arrow arum, new reeds and the decorative pickerelweed all assist in filling out the marshy plains.

Our tall trees weren’t forgotten, though! The swamp cypress has been reworked from the ground up, adding four unique variants to the roster in the process.

Updated Wetland plants (papyrus not shown as it remains unchanged).

Cypress knees will also be available as a modular item for players who wish to take their wetland forests to the next level.

Animal Showcase

What creature would most definitely beat you in a thumb wrestle? The Iguanodon of course! Returning to the kingdom with a brand new look, this take on the classic dinosaur was inspired by a variety of real-world reptiles, incorporating a more retro and armoured appearance.

As you can probably guess, we’ve been experimenting with atmospheric effects and different types of weather, too. At this stage it’s something the team are hoping to include in some capacity for Beta and/or Early Access.

Eating Preview

Before we conclude this month’s devlog, the team would like to briefly showcase the eating animation and temporary foley sounds for the T. rex. Details like adding visible chunks of meat are still on our to-do list, but we figured the community would still like to see it regardless.

With a seasoned bite like that, the steaks of owning a Tyrannosaur must be pretty high, no?

Beta Animals Confirmed So Far

Recently, we confirmed three new animal species coming to Beta on our official Discord server.

The Woolly Mammoth, Pachyrhinosaurus and Torvosaurus will all make an appearance alongside the other creatures found in Alpha. There are a few more announcements to be made regarding the Beta roster, so stay tuned for future updates!

Thank you for reading April’s devlog!

We would once again like to take the time to thank everyone for their support during Alpha. With Beta on the horizon, we hope that the community is looking forward to a wealth of improvements and new content to play with. More info will be coming next month!

Until next time,

- The PK Team

Welcome to March’s Development Update!

In this month’s devlog we’ll be taking a look at what we’ve been working on, what the community’s been up to and the response to our latest release!

Created by Rudi Rennkamel.

To start, we want to thank everyone who has participated in the alpha (roughly 1,300 people). You’re all building some amazing stuff and the team is extremely happy to hear the excitement in the community.

Detailed in our last livestream, there’s a number of additions and improvements we’re working on for the alpha. Since then, the team’s decided to reschedule the addition of the Viewing Platform and building state icons for beta so that we can properly introduce their mechanics at a more appropriate time. Overall, we’re expecting support for alpha to come to an end in early April, though this may be extended if major issues arise.

On a more musical note (pun intended), our composer and sound designer Byron began writing and planning out the new soundtrack earlier in March. This time around we’re aiming to create a very dynamic score, one that’s adaptive and built around a layered music system. We’ve learned a lot about modern audio implementation over the last year, and we really wanted to do the potential of this game’s music justice.

Though a lot of the original melodies and motifs will carry over in some form or another, we hope you look forward to hearing some fresh work in the upcoming beta.

Guests: Modular Pathfinding

As you may have already seen in alpha footage, our visitors are able to fully navigate in, on and around modular structures. This is a real game changer, as it means that guests do not solely rely on paths to get around your park.

Naturally, this also allows users to build custom bridges without the need for elevated paths! If there’s a navigable area between a guest and their destination, they’ll use it.

Created by @leafzproduction

This functionality extends to guest pathfinding in general, allowing them to walk along building foundations as if a path were underneath them.

Pathfinding is something that will be continually tweaked over time, and we already have a bunch of ideas on how to improve it. It’s got huge potential and we can’t wait to make it the best we can.

UI: Improvements & Changes

Thanks to great feedback from our lovely alpha players, we’ve started working on some tweaks and updates to our user interface. Please note that these changes will not be available until beta.

UI Concept Art (Nursery Update)

For the Nursery, we noted that some players struggled to find the animal creation box. With these adjustments, we hope to make that area more digestable as the “main” workspace. Some more miscellaneous enhancements were made too, tweaks like centralizing the animal’s name and various balances to the overall piece.

When it comes to construction, however, there were a few things that we needed to communicate better:

• When am I editing a group?

A new screenborder, group header and dedicated exit button will appear when a player enters a group. A subtle audio cue will also play.

• What are the keybinds?

On-screen keybinds will be bigger and more specific to what the user is actually doing, eliminating excess visual noise and hopefully inspiring new players to give them a glance. If you’re a master though, these floating keybinds can be turned off in the options menu.

For the toolbox in general, we’ll be splitting it into two components for centralized access: settings, and customization. What appears in the respective windows will be context sensitive, dependant on what’s currently ready for placement or what’s selected in the world.

UI Concept Art (Modular Toolbox, Keybinds, and Group Editing Overlay)

UI Concept Art (Modular Toolbox Customization)

This change will give players the ability to select multiple items in a group and change the textures of walls, roofs and rocks at the same time, something that isn’t allowed in the current UI.

Remember though, this is context senstive! If a roof piece is selected, only the Roof Material panel will appear for customization. What does or doesn’t show is entirely based on what you’re doing.

Building State Icons

To help with general usability, building state icons will be added during beta to better display what’s needed from the player at a moment’s notice. These remain a consistent size on screen, but scale down over distance.

We should note that these are reserved for things that require your attention or that are time-sensitive, we don’t want to overwhelm the player with non-critical information. Passive things like incubation timers are in a friendly bubble, and bad things are in red-black hexagons.

Animal Showcase

It’s big, it’s bold and it honks! Meet our redesigned Lambeosaurus, a surprise change that wasn’t properly unveiled until alpha’s launch. This animal has quickly become a favourite amongst alpha players with its unique calls and vibrant skin variation.

Apart from a bunch of lovely new designs, we tweaked a number of key features like its facial anatomy and of course, the new giant tail! This one’s for you, Big Paul.

Beta & Early Access Roadmap

Looking at our release roadmap, this is where the game is headed in 2021.

It’s very important to note that these are estimated dates as we are taking community feedback into account during both alpha and beta. We want to release a stable product for Early Access and we will take the time necessary to do so if it ensures a more premium experience.

Our next milestone, beta, will be introducing a bunch of improvements, new features and animals on top of the six available in alpha. This is very exciting for us, as with every major release our project feels more and more like a game.

Some mechanics that were closely tied to staff (e.g. animal food production) have been pushed back as an update post-EA launch to help ease the development schedule. As always, we’ll be providing insight into what’s changing or what’s being added in future devlogs.

Thank you for reading March’s devlog!

Alpha’s been brilliant so far, and the team is hard at working on some new hotfixes and patches that’ll be out very soon. Once again, thanks so much to all of our supporters - whether you’ve been with us for years or days, we’re happy you’re here.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

Welcome to February’s Development Update!

With much anticipation, it’s finally time to talk about alpha release plans and all the new content we’ve been working on behind the scenes. There’s a lot of important information in this one folks, so make sure you read it thoroughly.

Explore the game’s core creative systems and basic economy management with a mix of challenge and sandbox mode features. Get up close with the mighty Tyrannosaurus or the lovable Microraptor and design their habitats without environmental limits.

The initial alpha release includes the following:

Animals

• 6 Animals;

Tyrannosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Lambeosaurus, Styracosaurus, Nasutoceratops and Microraptor, including alt skins or species.

• Multi-Level Pathfinding;

Use the modular system to create corridors, platforms and ramps for your animals to navigate around.

• Various Behaviours;

Animals can engage in a variety of basic behaviours like eating, drinking, grazing, resting, socialising and broadcasting. Some animals will be updated to include absent behaviours shortly after alpha’s release.

Creative

• Terraforming Suite;

Carve the terrain with six distinct tools: raise, lower, smooth, flatten, roughen and erosion. Get your feet wet with up to three paintable water materials and varying depths.

• 4 Paintable Biomes;

Tropical, Temperate, Scrubland and Wetland are available to paint terrain and forests with. Use the brush intensity to create subtle and stylish gradients between textures to add some more realism to the park.

• 13 Structures;

Bring your Prehistoric Kingdom to life with a selection of buildings from the Animal Care, Infrastructure, Guest Facilities and Enclosure categories.

• 250+ Modular Items;

Get custom with over 250 modular items, pieces and plants to build designs of your own specificity. Use the Modern styling to pick from 7 wall textures or 4 roof designs.

• Paths & Fences;

Choose from 12 fences and 7 path materials using an intuitive spline-based construction system. Enable terraced fence placement to create a uniquely staggered look.

• Saving & Loading;

Save your park and build it up over time. As with the nature of alpha, saved games will likely break upon entering beta and early access launch.

Due to more extensive development being required, some previously planned features like object/wall recoloring and undo/redo will be unavailable until beta or early access launch.

Management

• Basic Economy;

Provide for supply and demand with guest facilities and attractions. Offset the costs of construction, animal production and building upkeep by turning a profit.

• Basic Power Management;

Connect and power your park with basic power management. Failure and reboot mechanics have been disabled for alpha.

• Basic Visitors;

What’s a park without guests to wander the paths? Additional animations, AI, enhanced model variation and guest related gameplay will be arriving in beta and early access launch.

Important & Additional Info

In terms of what you can expect for support during alpha, we’re only looking to tackle stability issues and bug fixes. We’ll be making note of player feedback and talking with the community the entire time, but any new or upcoming content we show in devlogs won’t be available until beta or early access release unless explicitly stated.

We’re treating alpha and beta as distinct milestones so that we’re not simultaneously implementing features and shipping them to a live branch without extensive internal testing or supporting content. By staggering additions between the two milestones we’re able to focus on feedback that’s specific to what we currently offer rather than diluting results.

...

• For alpha backers who went through Kickstarter, we’re currently trying to establish a reliable and automated distribution method to ensure contributors receive their key (and other rewards in the future). We will have specifics available prior to alpha’s release via a news update.

• Regarding general availability, we will eventually be removing the Alpha tier over on the Crytivo store. An announcement will be made to specify when exactly that’ll happen.

• Once purchased, there is no “end” to alpha playtime. It’s always accessible and will upgrade to the beta.

• Alpha isn’t the early access launch! That is arriving later in 2021.

• Screenshots, streams and videos from alpha can be shared! Show us what you’re making, we’d love to see it.

Development Report

It’s almost time to release alpha and we couldn’t be more excited! Our VIPs have had access for a bit over a month now, leaving us with a lot of great feedback and creations to admire.

On the dev side of things, each part of the team has been creating, iterating and implementing a bunch of things so that they’re ready in time. Both planar reflections and water shading continue to improve and a whole bunch of audio has been implemented too, including an overhauled set of UI sounds.

Improved water rendering and reflections.

The visuals for our power management are starting to come together, as well. A change in color grading and some temporary but effective highlights for the power radius helps to show the range of generators to the player. These’ll get extra visual polish in the future, though they’re more than workable for now.

For our feathery friend, the Microraptor received new wing textures and an alula (a bird's “thumb”) to improve its fidelity and correct an anatomical issue.

Animal Implementation

Modular Pathfinding

With much excitement, we’re pleased to say that animals are now able to navigate modular buildings! This is a huge deal for us as we weren’t sure if it was something we’d be able to do. Thanks to one of our programmers, Matt, creatures can successfully walk around walls and utilize both ramps and platforms if the space is big enough.

We really wanted a level of interaction between modular pieces and our creatures, so to finally see it come to fruitition through pathfinding is simply fantastic.

As a result, there are so many more opportunities for creative builds. It can’t be understated how much of a game changer this is for the team (literally), and we cannot wait to see how players implement this functionality into their habitats.

Audio

Sound found its way to our vocalisation behaviours early in February, adding audio to the social call/response, sad and broadcast calls. We’ve created a short showcase video demonstrating the new animations and sounds for our Edmontosaurus. Take a look!

We’ve also been working on our distance model to help ground the distant sounds of broadcasts within the park and deliver important information like an animal in distress.

Foliage Showcase

The field elm, oak and sabal palmetto were added to the temperate and scrubland biomes to introduce more verticality. We’re especially fond of the new palmetto, it’s great for honing in that prehistoric look.

The field elm (left) and oak (right).

Three size variants of the sabal palmetto.

Including all variants, this brings our number of foliage assets available in alpha up to 70.

Building Showcase

Throughout February, we began implementing high quality custom wall and roof materials to replace our previous Modern texture set. Moving to a more advanced workflow (both in implementation and asset creation), this has allowed us to bring out a greater level of detail with a minimal performance trade off - increasing texture resolution by over two times.

Modern textures on the modular wall pieces (glass not shown).

Some of the wall and roof materials will become recolorable at a later date.

We’re aiming to transfer all of our existing buildings over to this new technique by alpha’s release so that Modern textures are one to one across the game.

Hay Beds

All animals need a place to sleep and there’s no comfier spot than a hay bed! These items are used to define custom resting spots within a habitat or modular build.

Fences

Though the weakest of the bunch, Glass Fences are a stylish way to increase habitat visibility. They come in 1, 2.5 and 4 meter heights, making them the ideal window to another world.

Concrete Fences are strong, providing a thick slab of stone and internal steel to hold more aggressive animals. These come in 1, 2.5 and 4 meter variants.

Bringing the total up to 12 types, that’s all the modern fences for now. There are a few wall variants and new materials that we’d like to add down the line, but for the time being we’re quite content with the core lineup.

Brachiosaurus is one of the biggest dinosaurs coming in Early Access! With its neck fully raised, this gentle giant was almost 14 meters tall - a necessary adaptation for browsing trees.

Thank you for reading February’s devlog!

Make sure you follow our social platforms to stay up to date with all things Prehistoric Kingdom. Remember, March 19th is the big day for our alpha release! We look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

Quote from Marcellino Martina

Das Man beim Gelände bearbeiten größere Berge Glätten kann. Sonst werden die Gehege viel zu Groß so wie das Jetzt ist.

Was hat die Topographie denn mit der Größe eines Geheges zu tun

Bzw. was hindert Dich daran, größere Berge zu glätten? Mit dem Terrain Editor ist das bei max. Pinselradius doch in Sekundenschnelle erledigt...

Quote from user

Die Stichfrage brachte keine Entscheidung, beide Kanditaten lagen auch hier richtig!

Da ich Los-entscheide blöd finde, gibt es zwei Schlauberger diesen Monat.

Künftig werde ich das auch so machen.

Das finde ich eine sehr gute Entscheidung

Durch Losentscheid zu gewinnen bzw. zu verlieren ist immer blöd!

Ne Bier-Frage als Stichfrage...

Das wäre peinlich für mich, wenn ich das nicht wüsste

Kann ich nur hoffen, dass NastyBoy ein Anti-Alkoholiker ist

Edit: ist er offenbar nicht...

Wie gesagt, schau Dir den Radius auf der Heatmap an!

So „riesig“ ist der nicht bei den Wasseranlagen.

Vielleicht musst Du nur den Weg um ein paar Meter versetzen...