Dev Diary: July 2025
Welcome to the July Development Diary!
We are officially less than a month away from Update 15 and there’s still quite a bit to talk about! So without further ado, let’s get right into it.
Due to a variety of real world factors impacting our team, it was not possible for Update 15 to begin public testing in July. Despite this, we are continuing to work tirelessly on getting the initial PTB release candidate ready for players as soon as possible. This early version will include:
Gallimimus
Paleobotany and paleoflora excavations
Animal courtship, breeding and nesting
Animal Look IKs
Animal Milestones
New Nursery menu
New Landscaping menu and landscaping improvements
New Research trees
Improved world grid
Challenge mode rebalance
Features coming with the full live update in late August will include:
Oviraptor
Animal aggression and fleeing, threat behaviors
Animal vegetation browsing
New feeders and feeding enrichment items
For more information on breeding, you can check out last month’s Dev Diary to learn all about it. As for the release date of Update 15, we’ll be dropping a trailer within the next week, so keep your eyes peeled!
Update 15
Oviraptor
Joining Gallimimus in Update 15 is the equally (if not more) feathered friend, Oviraptor! This small dinosaur is similar in size to Velociraptor, boasting rich plumage and a particularly elegant tail fan.
In the park, our scientists discovered that most restorations of Oviraptor are actually based on a relative named Citipati. Though many guests expected to see a larger animal due to this error, the real Oviraptor was more compact and basal by comparison. Scientifically speaking, they have the vibe of an overgrown parrot!
Check out the iridescence on those feathers!
Having lived in the deserts of Cretaceous Mongolia, Oviraptor is a great companion to animals like Protoceratops. The pair go great together with some paleobotany, too!
Animal Milestones
Last year, we introduced a new scoring system for animals called Animal Points. Depending on the species, its individual size, mutations, growth stage, etc. would all contribute to its final value, making it more or less appealing to guests.
In Update 15, we’re adding on to this system through Animal Milestones - a collection of achievements that can be completed throughout an animal's life! With each milestone that’s unlocked, the animal will receive extra points depending on how much of an accomplishment it was.
Some examples of milestones include:
Ancestor
Became an ancestor to over 3 generations of offspringNewborn
Naturally born in the parkAlpha
Became the leader of a herdUnrequited Lover
Attempted courtship 3 or more times without success
The amount of points per milestone is subject to change!
Based on what a specific animal does during their time in the park, they could have a completely different journey to other individuals. There are currently around 20 milestones implemented in U15 with more planned to be added as the animal AI continues to grow in complexity.
Animal Look IK
One of the lesser discussed aspects of U15 is the inclusion of animal look IK - allowing animals to look at other creatures and objects.
Due to our seamless ontogeny, rigging pipeline and diverse neck shapes across the animals, this has been quite the undertaking! Lots of engineering has gone into its development and will continue to do so as we get closer to release. Though not yet ready for mass implementation, you can see how it’s developing below with some tests on the Ugrunaaluk.
Once it’s finished, this’ll become a core part of our future combat systems to take advantage of adjustable head positions.
Global Grid Improvements
In case you didn’t know, players can enable a global grid while placing objects or prefabs in the world. This can help make building a lot easier and more organised! The problem is that in the current game it doesn’t work too well…
That’s why for Update 15 we have vastly improved the global grid logic. It now has a dedicated grid graphic to indicate when it’s enabled, and it’s infinitely more usable for a variety of structures. It’s pretty satisfying to build a park this way!
In fact, players can now toggle this grid while building fences! Enabling this certainly gives us a wave of nostalgia for our favorite childhood zoo-sims.
We eventually hope to bring this feature to paths if we have the resources to rework them before leaving Early Access!
Feeders
One of our most anticipated parts of this update is the addition of new feeders! Increasing the player’s choice of feeders is crucial to us as in U15 some animals will not only want multiple diets present, but multiple feeder designs for enrichment, too.
This process began with designing a library of updated food assets that can be sprinkled across the upcoming feeder types. Though they adhere to the existing diets, their content is much more diverse. For example, the fish diet can now include crabs and squid!
Speaking of, we’ve updated our standard feeders to use new models, support recoloring and even added three new types: large, small and long feeders. As you might imagine, different sizes hold different amounts of food. There’s also a new plastic material, bringing the total styles to 4!
In addition to the three new feeder sizes above, we’re also aiming to include a few new feeder types inspired by zoos! One of our ideas is a plastic fish carcass that keepers can fill with chunks of fish.
Concept Art
And would you look at that: it seems all this talk about food have made our Gallimimus hungry!
Thanks to their height, Gallimimus will have the ability to eat from both short and tall feeders. This is a feature that we look forward to expanding to animals like hadrosaurs in the future!
Landscaping Improvements
July brought quite a few unexpected developments to our landscaping suite! To start, there are now a variety of brush types available for terraforming and texture painting respectively. Including perfect circles, squares and a set of noise brushes, it’s incredibly easy to create more organic looking terrain.
Players will also be able to use their mousewheel + shift or control to adjust the size and intensity of their brush on the fly.
Similarly, we’ve updated the grass masking rules, making it easier to blend multiple grass types together. You’ll also find that the 3D grass blades tend to remain visible even at low intensities, solving some of the usability issues we’ve had when subtly blending grass with sand or dirt.
And for our final trick, we’ve added a highly requested feature - Automatic Slope Painting! With this setting enabled, players can automatically paint rock on steep slopes, making it incredibly easy to create realistic looking mountains, cliffs or inclines.
The slope texture is automatically picked depending on what biome you’re painting from. So if you paint tropical sand or grass with auto-slope enabled, you’ll get the tropical rock on slopes. Temperate textures use temperate rock, desert uses desert rock, etc.
For terraforming, a similar option is also available called Sculpted Slope Painting. When enabled, terraforming actions will automatically paint grass and rock depending on the map’s biome. This can be handy for sketching out ideas or building habitats that don’t need unique terrain paint!
Putting all these features into practice, we’ve been having way more fun designing habitats. We can’t wait to see what you do with it!
Created by rott_n.exe
Created by Carvente
Created by ASSASSINSPINO
Thank you for reading July’s dev diary!
It’s been a busy month but we’re still chugging along. As mentioned, keep an eye out for Update 15’s trailer within the next week. You won’t want to miss it!
Until next time,
- The PK Team
