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[Taky]

World map for our campaign getting hooked in. As with all world maps... the front end is easy? Back end is tough. We want save games, and quick saves, for each mission that remembers a local progression and a global progression, oh, and it'll have to work with the cloud. eep.

[Taky]

We mostly haven't had time to chat about the mechanics in the game for newer players, so trying out creating little snippets of game tips that also reveal fun stuff that we've added since alpha.

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There has been a long-standing feeling that unlocked a ton of dinos at once didn't feel good. Instead we're trying to make the dino unlocks individual by species, so hopefully, this feels more meaningful. Had to make a new panel for this, and still trying to figure out where to put it.

[Taky]

Front end work! Spent bit of extra time adding functionality so I can dynamically change the location of the levels on the world map. Easier option would of been to "hard code" this ... but, from past lifetimes I know how much of a pain in the ass that is for the design side, where things are constantly in flux.

[Taky]

A big patch just released, "Campaign: Episode 1". We should have known better, but somewhat underestimated time and pain of setting up the infrastructure of a world map/campaign. Going from a stand-alone level to the support of multiple levels, save games for them, continuing campaign, resetting campaign, etc. Throw in cloud saves. Eep. Still, now that this baseline is done I'm hoping the content from here on in will be much quicker.

[Taky]

Deciding to take a little break and make a Halloween patch... because, sometimes development needs a funny distraction. We'll be putting in dino masks, monster guests, and pumpkin toys.

[Taky]

Adding more Halloween fun for the patch. Truthfully this is probably a pretty big distraction to finishing the game... but sometimes your team (2 of us) need a mental break. And Halloween is awesome.... Dinos smacking around a pumpkin? Ya of course.

[Taky]

Tried out an item that in game swaps out our guests with vampires, zombies and ghosts. Replacing our guest models a few months back has made this process way easier. Got us thinking about swaps out for specific levels, ie, the moon where everyone wears space helmets.

[Taky]

Adding new traits unlocked from breeding; my favourite is "Shiny". True, more bioluminescence, but "Shiny" sounds nicer. Basically every time a dino is created in game they get a few random values for DNA pieces 1 - 3. When we combine this with another dino's DNA, we appropriate pull out traits from a list for their off spring.

[Taky]

Working on a DNA Analyzer - this is an item the player can unlock in the Science tree. Basically, it allows them to see the effects of slotting in different items into their dino eggs. Some items add traits to dinos, some change the marking colours and skin colours of their dinos. Before, it was all trial and error.

[Taky]

The upcoming Breeding feature has us returning to dino/dino interactions. Trying to tune them up to be more obvious when dinos might be "courting". Nothing too intricate, but at least provide the player with an obvious glimpse of what's going on under the hood.

[diegzumillo]

I played very few management and design games. Sim City and a few others. So this isn't exactly my cup of tea. But I'm finding the screens extremely appealing.

Also, I love the end of that trailer! with the menacing roar of a t-rex with a slice of cheese on its head. My kind of humor.

[Taky]

I played very few management and design games. Sim City and a few others. So this isn't exactly my cup of tea. But I'm finding the screens extremely appealing.

Also, I love the end of that trailer! with the menacing roar of a t-rex with a slice of cheese on its head. My kind of humor.

Cool thanks. Ya, the humour and style is either spot on for people or not. We usually encourage people to give the game a chance and they usually see there is a ton of cool stuff going on. Speaking of which, I need to update that trailer.

[Taky]

Another situation where we have some pretty cool mechanics going on under the hood and we never revealed to the player. No more! We're naming all the pings guests hit our dinosaurs with as "Intrusions" and you can find them under the respective dino's info pane. This way, as you change your exhibit with regards to privacy, you'll see the Intrusion hits on your dino change. The Intrusions are colour coded from bad --> good to also help explain this. You can see this information on the far right of the screen in the dinosaur info pane.

[Taky]

Starting full integrate our Ship Park system. Players earn Ship Parks during missions, and this is the currency for unlocking world persistent buffs.

[Taky]

Final tweaks to Breeding (mainly finding bugs) before releasing to PTR. A lot of balancing / back and forth on the requirements for a dino egg to be "activated" ie, to become a full egg. Essentially we looped it back to your dinos being happy, which is essentially a core tenant of the game. 80% happiness was the chosen target. Once this is achieved, along with a few other requirements, your egg starts to glow.

[Taky]

Released a huge patch this weekend; been a few months in the works. I'd say our preparation is one of our strong suits, but yesterday we were slammed with hot fixes. Ok, I suppose it was not *too* bad yesterday; no losing save game bugs (disastrous), but not being able to see the world map. Things that would turn off new users. We have quite a high threshold for hot fixing anything but yesterday it was rough. Happy to say we still seem pretty stable. We'll be watching over the weekend. Very exciting for us though!

Anyways, very happy. Full genetic breeding in the wild.

[Taky]

Parkasaurus released the largest update to date: Breeding and Episode 2. We had booked off 3-4 days for an influx of bugs...and I'm pretty happy we did. Despite a fair amount of testing on our PTR we got fairly slammed with some bugs that required the dreaded hotfix(es). We try to avoid any form of hotfix but we really had no choice. A really terrible navmesh bug turned out to be a lot more prominent then what we had first thought...made most of the missions un playable. Everything seems calm, and now it is full throttle to add the remaining features, missions, all towards a 1.0. Anyhoo, happy holidays!

It is hard to show "hotfixing" in image form, but we ran a screenshot contest. Truthfully running a contest falls under my responsibility and I just never have time for it...butttt, I found time for this one. Here were the 2 winners voted on by the community (I love them both for different reasons)

[Taky]

Alright...major update was done. Time to try and put in our last features. Currently, working on the long wished for toys. I think we left these until the latter half of development because all the other tuning had to be in place. Toys will be the main way dinos can fill their enrichment meter. Weirdly, although the physics look simple, they are crazy finicky with the dinos. More work to do.

[Taky]

A ton of updates! The core base of the game is done, so now we're finishing up smaller add on features and quality of life fixes. I don't think I had quite appreciated how fast these are done when the base is finished. Anyway, one QoL I'm really happy with is that we can build small buildings under bigger buildings. We had always blocked this area off. The complications mainly stemmed from save game issues.