Update 9 (EA 1.6.4)

**Update 9 (EA 1.6.4)** was the ninth content, and second major update to Prehistoric Kingdom.

This patch introduces 4 new animals, swimming, a new map, biome, as well as a new selection of font styles.

This release also adjusts our version numbers to better reflect our original versioning scheme, which we were too silly to follow through on. Oopsies!

Your patience this year has been greatly appreciated, and we look forward to sharing our plans for Prehistoric Kingdom with you in January's Dev Diary in 2024. For all the details on what's changed in Update 9, please be sure to read the full patch notes at the bottom of this post!

- The PK Team

## Update 9 Features

### Animals

Expand your kingdom's collection with 4 brand new species: Ouranosaurus, Muttaburrasaurus, Carcharodontosaurus and Spinosaurus!

 ***Spinosaurus aegyptiacus*** | **Cretaceous** | Hailing from Cretaceous North Africa, Spinosaurus gets its name from the tall spines that make up the iconic sail it is known for.

### Swimming

Take the plunge with swimming! This new behaviour allows animals to cross rivers and explore deep water bodies by swimming across the surface.

Every species has varying degrees of water affinity, meaning that some animals like Spinosaurus frequently try to seek out water, while other species will try to avoid it all costs.

### New Map: Tanzania

Build in the heart of the savanna with our new map set in the grassland biome. With sparse vegetation and flat terrain, this location is perfect for builders!

### New Biome: Grassland

Adding 9 new types of plants, the grassland biome is one of our most versatile climates yet. Alongside classic trees like the Acacia, the grassland biome also comes with, well... grasses!

### New Fonts

A collection of new styles are now available for the modular letter pieces. Coming in a range of different themes, these fonts are the perfect way to change up your park's signage.

## PSA: Navigation Changes

Due to the introduction of water-based locomotion, all navmeshes will have to be regenerated! This means that upon initial load, your saved games may take longer to enter. Please resave your games once loaded in.

We have also made slope limit changes to the navmesh, so if you had animals that we were previously stuck in surprising places (e.g. rocks, roofs) you'll have to move them back down to an appropriate area.

## Known Issues & Additional Notes

* We will be fixing as many crashes as possible as they're reported. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.
* Muttaburrasaurus is missing Nigel voicelines! We will be adding them next year when we do our next recording session with Nigel
* We’re still tuning the render distance for small objects, so some items may disappear sooner than expected
* Animals do not animate while in the Nursery due to the new locomotion system. They will animate again in the future
* Animal IKs are a work in progress and will be improved in future updates
* Animals may jitter when resting or sleeping in shallow water
* Guests can pick some pretty funky paths! We're in the middle of reworking our technical backend for path choices, so this will be fixed in a following update

## Full Patch Notes

### Features

#### New Animals

* Muttaburrasaurus
* Ouranosaurus
* Carcharodontosaurus
* Spinosaurus

#### New Animal Behavior: Swimming

* Take a plunge with swimming! Every species has varying degrees of water affinity, meaning some love swimming while others will try to avoid water at all costs

#### New Map: Ngorongoro Crater

* Set in a beautiful Tanzanian crater, this map offers flat landscapes with sparse forests and grasses

#### New Biome: Grassland

* Explore the new grassland biome with a variety of trees and small shruberry, including highly versatile grass pieces

### New: Text Fonts

* Change up the vibe of your park signage with a collection of new font styles

### Additions

#### Gameplay

* Added new excavation sites in Africa and Australia:
	+ Elrhaz Formation
	+ Kem Kem Group
	+ Winton Formation

#### Animals

* Added mannerism additive animations to animals previously missing them:
	+ Dilophosaurus
	+ Scelidosaurus
	+ Velociraptor
* Added swimming to all animals: any creature is now able to freely navigate the surface of the water. Animals have buoyancy, making submerging smooth and natural
* Animals are able to avoid and seek water navigation depending on their species, making certain animals more water-averse while Spinosaurus and Deinocheirus, among others, love getting their feet wet!
* Animals now get visibly wet when entering the water or swimming, with the visual being based on the waterline height relative to body size
* Added new animal names from Hausa, Arabic, ancient Egyptian and assorted Aboriginal

* Buildings & Scenery
	+ Added several Font styles spread across all themes in the game
	+ Added Silhouette pieces for Muttaburrasaurus, Ouranosaurus, Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus
	+ Added Human Keeper Silhouette piece
* Foliage
	+ Added Acacia 1, 2, 3
	+ Added American Tarwort 1, 2
	+ Added Digitaria Dry Grass 1, 2
	+ Added Digitaria Grass 1, 2
	+ Added Elephant Grass 1, 2 (found in gardening!)
	+ Added Pampas Grass 1, 2, 3
	+ Added Triodia Dry Grass 1, 2
	+ Added Triodia Grass 1, 2
	+ Added Marula 1, 2, 3

### Changes

#### Balance

* Buffed the Diesel Generator and Solar Panel

#### Gameplay

* New games will always default to Sunny weather for the first three months

#### Animals

* Animals can now be placed in water
* Increased run movement speed for most animals to better match how they were pre-Update 8
* The ‘Vibrant’ Edmontosaurus skin now has subtle iridescence
* Decreased overall genetic skin mutation chance

#### Buildings & Scenery

* Changed the way fonts are colored by separating emissivity into its own coloring buffer for greater control - the first color slot purely controls their coloration whereas the ‘glowiness’ is now controlled in the second color buffer
* Added emissive coloring to the 2nd slot for Silhouette pieces
* Fixed Pachyrhinosaurus Silhouette piece
* Improved the water VFX pieces

#### Environment

* Increased choppy water’s transparency and made it more tropical blue
* Adjustments to underwater fog colors

#### UI/UX

* Map selection is now automatically randomized every time the New Game menu is opened in the main menu

#### Audio

* Brought back animal footstep audio events from prior game versions
* Wading sounds when walking through water should better reflect the size of the animal
* Footstep terrain materials should sound more correct for small animals
* Adjusted the camera’s water entry/exit sounds to be softer at slow speeds
* Adjusted some ambient frequencies while underwater or during rain
* Adjusted sharp frequencies on small metal fence placement
* Stopped ambient birds from playing while in the Nursery
* Ambient animal sounds in the Nursery are now more audible

### Bug Fixes

#### Critical

* Fixed a major memory leak in pathfinding, should help with the excessive performance loss over time while playing!
* Fixed various smaller memory leaks

#### Animals

* Fixed an animation bug that could cause animals to get stuck

#### UI/UX

* Improved globe scaling in the main menu so that the map selection globe won’t overlay on other GUI elements anymore
* Fixed a building menu issue causing the ‘Enrichment’ and ‘Gardening’ sections to not properly load
* Fixed an issue causing the time of day and weather cycles to not automatically loop in Challenge Mode
* Fixed an issue causing the destruction icon and notification to not properly refresh themselves after repairing structures

#### Rendering

* Fixed a visual glitch resulting in shadows not updating properly for different modular styles

#### Audio

* Fixed an issue introduced in Update 8 that prevented some niche audio events from triggering (tail, throat, etc)
* Fixed an issue introduced in Update 8 that would cause some sounds to end abruptly
* Fixed offset audio for Edmontosaurus unique behavioral one shot

### Performance

* Massively improved modular loading performance, overall reducing loading times and responsiveness
* Improved draw distances of modular objects to be more optimal and to better reflect individual piece scale
* CPU Optimizations
* Minor Memory Optimizations
* Particle Effects Optimized