Update 17 - Combat PTB Fix Patch 1 (1.17.74)

Steam post imageSteam post imageWelcome, Park Testers!

This PTB release addresses the most critical instability issues introduced in the last PTB update. It also delivers a first tuning pass on animal aggression behavior, resulting in more natural encounters - animals should now be more selective when choosing targets and in determining how they respond to potential threats.

In addition, we have improved combat animation smoothness and overall fidelity across the board. Animal hit reactions and staggers have been fixed and re-enabled, predator finisher animations have been introduced (only for Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus at the moment, with the other carnivores to follow), while throwing and stumble physics have all received additional polish.

How to Access the Public Testing Branch (Experimental!)

Steam post imageThe 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 appropriate channel.

Known Issues & Additional Notes

• Most of the animal state-locking issues should have now been resolved, but it's hard to say for sure. If you still encounter animals completely freezing in their current AI state, please report the issue, attaching a screenshot of the animal's AI brain (accessible by pressing Shift+B during selection)

• Several combat states are currently under various degrees of completion, with polishing expected to be occurring all throughout the PTB period:

  • Hunting is currently in the middle of being implemented, so you may find unexpected hunting behavior. Prey targeting is not incredibly selective at the moment, and predation behavior overwhelms predators' feeding choices. This will be tuned as we continue to work for the update's live release.

  • Some animals can move faster than we would like during combat encounters, especially younger individuals

  • Animal circle states and some attacks result in more or less clipping - we are going to do our best to reduce this as much as possible, though the dynamic nature of the combat system entails it will never be resolved in all capacities

  • Significant amounts of animal combat can seriously degrade AI performance. This is an area we are currently optimizing

• Several animals are still missing their full combat capabilities, currently being unable to attack. These animals are Muttaburrasaurus, Ouranosaurus, Psittacosaurus, Dryosaurus and Leaellynasaura.

• Much of the audio implementation for combat audio events, as well as combat music is currently unfinished, and actively being worked on. We expect the audio library for animal attacks and reactions to be expanded as PTB continues

• Some recent data misalignment has caused some animals' swimming capabilities to regress, causing surface positioning to be offset, often pushing individuals under water. We'll be fixing this soon

Full Patch Notes

Changes

• Animals

  • Fixed a minor data oversight that caused Triceratops to be smaller than it should have been

  • Re-tuned Marginocephalian weights and size measurements

  • Fixed several animal animation events causing AI issues:

    • Fixed an eating animation mistake in Triceratops that could cause it to be completely unable to eat or browse

    • Fixed an incorrectly set damage event in Smilodon ’s base attack animation that would cause it to deal no damage

    • Reconfigured interaction start events for many of the animal’s lunge attacks in an effort to get them to more reliably position themselves to target other individuals

  • Combat balancing:

    • Increased global damage dealt by 67%. Connecting attacks should now feel more impactful

    • Attacks will now deal less damage and knocks back less if they have hit another animal’s tail

    • Carnivores should now be less bloodthirsty, as their 'fight other species' behaviors are more heavily directed towards niche competitors, as opposed to just any other animal

    • Animals that are exhibiting the aggressive nest defense behaviors now exclude their own mates, which is required for animals with the ‘Both Parents’ parenting behavior to work

    • The ‘Prey defend with family’ behavior should now exclude members of the same social group. This change should prevent females of certain species from attacking sparring males during the mating season

    • Adjusted prey defense behaviors against nearby, non-attacking predators, so that defending animals wouldn't target individuals with a higher or overwhelming threat potential. This should also prevent young animals from attacking opponents many times their danger level, simply because they were close

    • Bully herbivores will no longer casually spar with animals which are of negligible threat

    • Animals exhibiting the infant cannibalization behavior should not longer target their offspring

    • Female mammoths are now calmer, with only adult male mammoths now bullying others during mating seasons

    • Animals which can bully other individuals while in their mating seasons have been corrected so that they may target everyone except for females of their species. It was previously incorrectly set to exclude males of their species

    • Passive giant defenders (Argentinosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Camarasaurus lentus, and both Paraceratherium species) have had their temperament tuned, and will now not bully other animals during mating season. At the same time, they have a small chance of defending themselves against non-aggressive predators, if they get close enough

    • Skittish prey animals will no longer spar with their siblings

    • Several animals have had their Lethality changed in order to balance their total damage output:

      • Panthera, Smilodon, and Ursus have received a lethality buff

      • Paraceratherium and Juxia have received a lethality nerf

  • Further tuning for animal locomotion and combat animation:

    • Animal throwing has received a new layer of polish to improve physicality and fidelity, with heavier animals not spending as much time in the air or being thrown as far

    • Stumbling has been balanced so that it can happen less often on quadruped animals, with the tripping likelihood being completely gated by low

    • Better locomotion configuration for big cats

    • Increased running speed for Panthera

    • Smoothed over combat locomotion for Paraceratherium

    • Major improvements to large bipedal herbivore locomotion accuracy (affects zig-zagging for Plateosaurus, Muttaburrasaurus and Ouranosaurus)

  • Reworked AI Drink logic to fix a number of instabilities that could stop animals from drinking properly, especially terrain water

  • Eating state now controls browsing and carcass consumption behavior directly

• Humans

  • Fixed a number of rare bugs in human AI and navigation that could cause humans to skip important steps and sometimes result in floating people who walk through everything

• Save/Load

  • Tightened up save failure dialog reporting so that users may get a better idea of what went wrong with saves failing, complete with error codes

• UI/UX

  • Important warning dialogs are now enforced on screen so that they would always be visible when needed

  • Save/Load entry GUI now reports time played

Bug Fixes

• Critical

  • Fixed animals missing their hit reactions when taking damage

  • Fixed finisher animations not playing for animals that have this capability (Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus)

  • Fixed animals’ navigate and wander states so that they could reconcile with having their animations interrupted

  • Fixed one instance of animals getting completely frozen during their flee state

  • Fixed an error that could stop an animal from dying from afflictions properly

  • Fixed a small issue resulting in vivariums losing their plants when the biome selection would be changed

  • Fixed Animals Fleeing or Chasing could get stuck without a valid path after an interruption

  • Lots of fixes to Animal AI State life cycle, should improve general stability

• Animals

  • Animal hit reaction times are significantly improved, especially for animals not in combat

  • Generally improved animal attack positioning

  • Animal head targeting should be much more responsive to changing targets

  • Fixed Gallimimus animation problem causing it to incorrectly walk backwards indefinitely

  • Group leaders holding with group behavior is now enqueued after roaming, and re-validates group leadership authority

  • Fixed cloned animals believing themselves to be siblings when checking for aggression targets

  • Animal Brain viewer now shows correct coloration for states, providing more accurate debug information

  • Fixed infant mesh vertex normals for Panthera and Smilodon

• Staff

  • Fixed player requested medical care action remaining on animals after the requested care has been provided, leading to vets being idle

• UI/UX

  • Fixed enclosure building automatically forcing camera tracking

• Music

  • Fixed the main menu music not playing in the main menu