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Taky
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« on: November 28, 2017, 12:54:03 PM »


UPDATE: Parkasaurus is in Early Access Now!







Hi there! Thanks for checking out Parkasaurus, we'll try to regularly update our progression. Feel free to Wishlist us on Steam, join our Discord, follow us on Twitter, and join in the conversation.

Parkasaurus challenges the player to plan, design and construct fabulous exhibits that maximize both the happiness of their Dinos, and the park guests’ satisfaction and willingness to spend money! Starting with only a dream and an abandoned park the player will discover groundbreaking  technologies, new attractions and a special bond with each of their Dinos, all captured in stunningly beautiful modernized 3D flat design graphics.





Who are we?
We're a team of two devs who have been around for a while making games. This is our first attempt at our own project. My partner is brilliant, I'm mediocre. This is probably 7th game we've made together, except this time, we're taking the scary plunge to make it public (and finish it Smiley

Steam Store Page (Come Wishlist us, it helps SO MUCH xoxo)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/591460/Parkasaurus/

Website
www.parkasaurusgame.com

Twitter
twitter.com/washbearstudio

Discord
https://discord.gg/washbear

Overview

As you can probably tell at this point, this is a zoo tycoon simulation park game. We love these types of games. But, for us, creating the habitats / biospheres seemed rote. In Parkasaurus we want you to take a lot of time making a perfect exhibit, each having to be tailored to whatever Dino you've adopted/hatched. The balance of the water for the plants have to be right, the exhibits have to be a suitable size, their shape should provide privacy. This is probably the main pillar of the game. Other than that we're hoping to have / or have macro park creation, having manage the business, employee management, and most importantly take care of your Dinos.


The other main tenant of the game I suppose, is how you treat your Dinos. For us, we love animals. Each Dino you get in Parkasaurus should mean something, you should know their name by heart, and you'll learn their individual quarks. Our hope is that players feel a bond between each of their dinos. Maybe one of them breaks out of the exhibit a lot? Maybe the other one poops alot. Who knows.

Status
We're in development. Trying to solve some fundamental design problems (would be to sound board them there), figuring out what features we NEED to have, and what has to get shelved. Trying to not have our wives leave us or burn completely out.

Anyway, if you got this far you're a hero and I hope you're willing to provide feedback as this game rattles along.

Updates
#1 : Privacy System Baby Steps
#2 : How to show ratios in a UI
#3 : Flowing water & Water pressure
#4 : Water movement with new Terrain tool
#5 : Dino Work Flow
#6 : Dynamic Biomes
#7 : Let's make Bio-Diversity great again
#8 : Exhibit Mechanics & Optimization
#8 : Exhibit Mechanics & Optimization
#9 : Shelter Upgrades
#10 : Oviraptor is the vote winner!
#11 : Tree / Bush Shader moving in the wind
#12 : In game computer work
#13 : Fence high-liting Shader
#14 : Ticket Booth logic
#15 : Collage of Internal Playtests
#16 : The bug are real : incoming waterfall from the sky
#17 : Awesome fence shader effect & feedback
#18 : Achelousaurus is the vote winner!
#19 : Upgrade Sets: Employee Lounge
#20 : Donation Mechanic
#21 : Baby Dinos & tall grass interaction
#22 : Privacy Heatmap : iteration 2
#23 : Dino running locomotion
#24 : New tile textures & FX
#25 : Terrain polish
#26 : Dino growth
#27 : Seismosaurus is the winner!
#28 : Dino pooping
#29 : Multi feeding features
#30 : More dino head gear
#31 : Garbage balancing
#32 : 1st pass dino rampaging
#33 : Security (Park Ranger)Tranquilizing
#34 : Upgrade Set : Science Building
#35 : Dino Portal rework
#36 : String Lights up and at 'em
#37 : Park Open & Close
#38 : Car & NavMesh
#39 : Toy System
#40 : Multi-Dino Exhibits
#41 : Dino Escapes
#42 : Dino Cam
#42 : Night Sky
#42 : Wintery
#43 : Employee Direction
#44 : Dino AI and imprintinng
#45 : FreeCam at Night
#45 : Terrain Generation
#46 : Brachio Snuggles
#46 : Privacy System Work
#47 : Dino Exhibit Expansion
#48 : Exhibit Terrain Modification
#49 : Early Access DateAnnouncement!
#50 : Improved Guest Reviews
#51 : Dinos Sleeping at Night
#52 : Dino Interactions
#53 : Free Cam Shader
#54 : Organic Dino Escapes
#55 : Upgrade Locks
#56 : Pause Button!
#57 : Mods Dino Textures
#58 : Navigation Mesh Overhaul
#59 : Optimization Results
#60 : New Year Review
#61 : Bugs Bugs Bugs
#62 : Decoration Heatmap
#63 : New Doors!
#64 : Splitting Navmesh Humans vs Dinos
#65 : Guest Energy Balancing
#66 : Workshop Implementation
#67 : World Map Integration
#68 : Reworking Dino Unlocking
#69 : Frontend Work
#70 : Halloween Patch
#71 : Halloween Items
#72 : Dino Traits
#73 : DNA Analyzer
#74 : Breeding!
#75 : Opening Hood on Privacy Mechanic
#76 : Ship Part System
#77 : More Dino Toys
#78 : Building Items under Items
#78 : Chain Light Tools
#79 : Office Improvmenets
#80 : Food Variety
#81 : Info Booths & Guest Direction
#82 : Dino Variety Meter
#83 : Missions with Cost Variety
#84 : Elevated Walkways
#85 : UI Updates
#86 : Par Times!
#87 : Launch Date Announcement

« Last Edit: August 23, 2020, 04:40:49 AM by Taky » Logged

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Al_B
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« Reply #1 on: November 28, 2017, 02:23:52 PM »

Are you planning this for like Mobile, PC or Both. Looks like it might be fun!
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orzlab
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« Reply #2 on: November 28, 2017, 02:34:58 PM »

Please tell me that the dinosaurs can eat/step on the visitors!  Well, hello there!
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JoPed
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« Reply #3 on: November 29, 2017, 06:04:27 AM »

Normally I would never play A game it that genre, but the graphics make me wanna play this!  Wink

Also on a somewhat unrelated side note, games are never really 100% finished Tired. But I really hope this gets published. 
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Taky
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« Reply #4 on: November 29, 2017, 01:50:42 PM »

Update #1 : Privacy System Baby Steps


Today I got the exhibit privacy system up and running, and although that felt good, it has seemed to bring on an avalanche of questions which I thought were answered. The heatmap code is the same being used for exhibit “wetness”. The way I saw it, there were two obvious (maybe more) ways to decrease privacy for an exhibit:

  • An exhibit with an adjacent path would be taken as zero privacy (red)
  • An exhibit would be green, until a guest arrived to look - at which case the guest would influence that part of the exhibit to not be private (red)

I tried both ways, and while I like the realism of b) - it is cool seeing a heatmap change with the movements of the guests, it was hard to adjust the shape of the exhibit to improve privacy if it was always green (no guests) or jostling guests (jostling heatmap).

Of course now I need to finalize the system of: at what point does the Dino go retreat from a low privacy value (do I count pings for each guest that sees dino, or is it simple a base value matched against the overall privacy of the exhibit). Who knows.
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Taky
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« Reply #5 on: November 29, 2017, 01:55:20 PM »

@Al_B PC first. Ya, I agree, it definitely could fit mobile but my concern is two fold 1) our nav mesh system takes resources, and although my partner (who is a genius) tells me he can get it going at 60fps on a shitty computer (mine), not sure how that'd  be on a phone. 2) Making money on mobile seems...hard

@orzlab I'm pumped to talk / explore / figure this out. But yes, we want Dinos to eat guests, but in a hilarious fun way. (our Dinos are your best friends, except, they eat your guests occasionally)

@JoPed We are 100% focused to get this out...as long as they don't turn off our electricity (our #1 bill to be paid...)
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HiddenNatureDsn
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« Reply #6 on: November 29, 2017, 10:56:17 PM »

This looks vibrant and like a lot of fun, even for someone like me that doesn't play too many sims.  I love me some dinos though.  Can't wait to see more!
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« Reply #7 on: November 30, 2017, 02:26:30 AM »

I haven't played any tycoon games in a long time, but this one is making me want to ! Following.
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Taky
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« Reply #8 on: December 01, 2017, 09:27:47 AM »

Update #2 : How to show ratios in a UI

One aspect of creating a biosphere for a Dino is the BioDiversification between trees-plants-rocks (each are biome specific). This morning I was experimenting with how do you show the player ratios? So, for ex. say a Dino has an ideal ratio of 2:1:1 (tree:plant:rock), and if the player wants to max out the matching between Dino-Biosphere, the need that ratio.


Two approaches I tried was Bar graph vs Spider graph. In the gif, the player is placing 2 trees and 1 rock, you can see the graphs change accordingly.


I'm not sure which is better. I think Spider graphs are REALLY cool, but maybe they aren't as intuitively understandable for a player? A big plus for bar graphs is it will be easier (I think) to show "buffer" bars. So, a buffer bar would mean a player would have some wiggle room to not get the exact ratio of tree:plant:rock. We could add a little overlay box for each bar. This might be more difficult in the spider graph. Feedback welcome.


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« Reply #9 on: December 01, 2017, 10:05:39 AM »

This looks amazing!  I love tycoon games, and it reminds me of the best parts of Viva Pinata, when you're making a little zen garden for your animals.

The spider graph looks cool as heck, but I agree that it might not be as intuitive to read.  It also could get out of hand if you decide to introduce more variables.
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Snö
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« Reply #10 on: December 01, 2017, 12:47:38 PM »

I am in love with this! Saw it a few days ago.
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Taky
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« Reply #11 on: December 03, 2017, 12:42:47 PM »

@jcjohnson - good point on the extra variables. Ok, we'll go bar graph for the alpha and maybe there will be a use for the spider graph somewhere else.

@Snö thanks. It's insane how motivating it is to get positive feedback  Grin
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Taky
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« Reply #12 on: December 04, 2017, 09:04:05 AM »

Update #3 : Flowing water & Water pressure

Today we finally started work and re-doing how we did water. 1st pass out, new pass in. With the addition of terrain lowering & raising, the original way we did water was not going to cut it - originally the water would stand still all the time. It was decided that we'd have to add some grid fluid animation. This is probably too early post and update about - but so far I freaking love it and am so pumped to show before done. The pic below shows some early steps. Now - funnily - our first implementation (seen below) we KNEW the water was filling - ie. more water was being generated - and knew there was movement, but had no idea where it was going. Apparently out the button and up around the edges of the entire park, flowing back to the center... result in a pretty cool tsunami result.

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Taky
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« Reply #13 on: December 05, 2017, 10:37:39 AM »

Update #4 : Water movement with new Terrain tool

So while fixing the water movement we decided the terrain tool had to be updated. Originally one could only highlite terrain to raise or lower, now we added the option to "pull terrain" higher or lower. The image below is where we're at with water.


To summarize it from the technical perspective:
-uses Compute shader for 99% of the work
-pressure gradient is calculated by gravity and terrain
-rendering is done reading the water volume taken from the compute shader

Still to do, I think the water isn't "sticky" enough, it comes apart to easily. Also, I think "spilled" water on large flat areas, so where the water gets too thin, should evaporate off. This is especially true when water gets onto flat areas that weren't intended to receive water.
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SchriefFighter
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« Reply #14 on: December 05, 2017, 11:20:24 AM »

I wrote about this game for a website I work for, I think this has a lot of potential. And I like how the game can shift from builder to FPS shooter when a dino gets loose!
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Taky
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« Reply #15 on: December 06, 2017, 11:00:03 AM »

Working on the meta code for buildings; want to keep it flexible but constrained at the same time. My objective is for every food stall / building to have some sort of set values. And, of course, the main trim on the buildings will be adjustable.

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JoPed
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« Reply #16 on: December 07, 2017, 01:38:19 AM »


@JoPed We are 100% focused to get this out...as long as they don't turn off our electricity (our #1 bill to be paid...)

That sounds really good, I will look forward to playing it.

The new water system looks very nice, I like the video from update #4.  Smiley
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Taky
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« Reply #17 on: December 12, 2017, 06:19:23 AM »

Well, got slammed with the flu this weekend and being a 2 person studio means work comes to a halt. How do people handle the guilt with this? Anyway - getting myself goofed up on NyQuil and going to get back to it.
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Taky
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« Reply #18 on: December 13, 2017, 12:12:10 PM »

Despite having the flu Sad I'm trying to get through a 1st pass on quests. The next update will go into a bit more detail on the various types of quests we're looking to have. At the moment it is a huge task (warning anybody wanting implement quests...) and I can already see the bugs of the future.

Working on quests where you "build" item or "sell x" items. In the image below the cotton candy stand is in full operation. I labeled the quest "Dentist Promotion"

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Taky
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« Reply #19 on: December 15, 2017, 08:49:33 AM »

With the addition of terrain height changes required us to solve the problem of our Dino feet not sticking to the ground. Designated mesh now keep our Dino feet planted, mostly stopping the "air walk" if a hill or ravine is encountered. This is working in tandem with the animation of the walk cycle, and so far we haven't seen too much fighting between the two  Undecided
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