Hi! I’m Matt, and I’m the proud owner of the fourth most subscribed game save on PK’s workshop. Okay, not that impressive when you put it like that, but I still figured it gave me enough authority to write this guide. It’s filled with things I’ve learned and thought up over the course of my playtime. A lot of it is probably obvious, but I hope some of it proves useful to someone.

I’ve seen too many people remark that you can’t scale prefabs. This isn’t true: You can’t do it while you have the prefab selected, but you can do it while having each piece within the prefab selected.


[For the newcomers, that means you’ll have to click this button.]

But how could you be expected to select each element individually within a prefab containing hundreds of pieces, you ask? You don’t have to: press ctrl+A. You can also drag a selection box over the prefab now, but back in my day that wasn’t possible.

The orientation with which you move, scale and rotate a group selection is, as far as I can tell, equal to the orientation of the first object you selected. Ever found that a group has the wrong set of axes to easily move it where you want it? This is how you can solve that; by selecting the right object first, or even by adding a temporary object with the proper orientation first.

This knowledge also makes it easy to shear and squash objects in a controlled fashion. Take the example of the parallelogram below.

{I am changing the set of axes with which to change this diagonal wall piece using a straight pillar. Scale the group downwards and voila... Euclid would be so proud.}

{An example staircase using this technique: the fence posts all point upright even though the fence objects themselves are diagonal. It's finicky, but it can be done!}

DISCLAIMER: It really should be noted that this isn't intended behaviour. I've followed this exact procedure before and depending on the game's whim, it either works or I just get the default axis orientation.

When two or more prefabs are merged, the new group will inherit its grid from the last prefab that was selected before merging. This is useful information while building for myriad reasons, but I’ll highlight one: say you’ve been working on a build for a while, having split and merged parts here and there. Now you want to use the grid but you notice it’s aligned wrong. The solution is simply to grab a foundation piece (that one’s easiest since it fills one 4m grid square), place it so its grid is where you want it to be, then merge it with your building, making sure to have selected it last.

When you save a prefab for later use, the height of its associated grid will determine what height the prefab considers to be “ground level”. That’s why a quality prefab will have its grid aligned so that, when it gets placed into the world, the user doesn’t need to raise or lower it. Again, adding then merging then deleting a foundation piece is the best course of action here.

•Variation is key! No exhibit should have just one or even two, three types of terrain in it. A complicating factor is that no more than three or four textures can overlap, or one will eliminate another creating an ugly seam.

[An example of a texture seam.]

You know how a world map only needs four colours, and no two bordering countries on it will have the same colour? Think of the canvas that is your exhibit a little like that. Don’t let too many textures meet unless you’re prepared to cover up the seams with rocks.

•make sure the borders between texture zones are gradual and interesting. Start off with a curvy, tendril-y border (not a straight one), put splotches of one texture in the other, and blend the terrain types.
[An example of a forest floor texture, with foliage removed for clarity]

•At the end of your habitat building, it’s good to check whether or not the textures still make sense. Mud should be at low points in the terrain, fallen leaves should lie below trees, crumbling boulders can look a little better with some gravel underneath them, etc.

I used to get frustrated when paths would snap to each other where I didn’t want them to. Then a great fella who goes by Sticky taught me that paths and fences don’t snap while you’re holding shift. You can use this to ‘fake’ square path corners, to an extent, using the smallest path diameter to pad out the corners of a bigger path.

UPDATE: I've softened on all of this, personally. Eyeballing placement is totally fine most of the time.

•Say I want to place two wooden dividers within a window, dividing the glass into three equal chunks. Here’s the way I would personally go about this: I would stack three pieces of wood (or anything, really) on top of each other, assign them all different colours, and use the whole as a measuring stick.


•A quick way to repeat elements at equal distances from each other: Simply copy two of them and overlap one with the element already there. You can delete that one when you’re done and that’s that.

[A demonstration. I'm copying the two leftmost pillars to the right in order to create a third. The middle pillar is now two pillars inside of each other.]

•If you want to align a new element with an existing one on all but one axis, do this: Advanced duplicate the existing element, and select the new element you want from the menu below. Now you hold the new element at the exact same position as the existing one, and you can move it along one axis from there.

•If you have life-threatening OCD, make indulgent use of the ability to lock angles. If you made something using fixed angles, even if it’s just 5°, that will make it much easier to align additional elements to it, achieve more symmetry, etc.

•Tastes vary, but personally I think buildings look best when they have some general sense of symmetry about them, broken up by a few elements of asymmetry.

•Early in the process, you should look at the 2D shape of your building from a top-down perspective. If it’s a box, that’s bad. If it’s a collection of differently shaped boxes, that’s better. A hexagon or circle will do too. My go-to strat for adding complexity to a building’s shape is with a side shack, roofed terrace, towerlet, archway...

•When it comes to empty walls: compartimentalise. Add depth with pillars, quoins, planter boxes and horizontal dividers.

•You can mirror a piece/prefab by scaling it in the opposite way the axis points, dragging it ‘through itself’. You may want to mark the dimensions of the original piece/object with some tiny modular pieces or terrain painting, so the mirrored version doesn’t turn out squashed or stretched compared to the original.

•No angled roof is complete without a chimney & some dormers. No flat roof is complete without air conditioning, some solar panels, planter boxes and an access point.

Some pieces, like the glass-style building parts, have very dominant hitboxes, meaning objects partially within them aren't easily selected. Now, you could spend five minutes finicking the camera until you've selected what you want, or you could use box select and then deselect what you don't want, but there's a third option too. You can just delete the piece with the dominant hitbox, select what you want after that, and then press the undo button.

•It’s probably not for everyone, but if you haven’t tried it out yet: make a drawing of your building first! Don’t worry about your skill level: if you can draw a box, you can draw a couple of boxes. If you can draw a couple of boxes, you can draw a building. I’ve personally started most of my building prefabs with a little sketch. The end result often looks a bit different, but that’s okay!

•Inspiration can have many sources. Go outside and observe the buildings around you. Make a Pinterest account. Blatantly rip off the architecture from your favourite video game or movie.

•As nice as Prehistoric Kingdom’s scaling feature is, it’s actually best not to scale rocks too far from their default size and proportions imo. It blurs their texture, and I think it’s best to keep a consistent level of detail.

•There is no cheating rocks. When I build a large rock feature, I keep one finger on the hotkey for switching to advanced edit, because those features look best when every rock of one type is scaled and rotated differently. That said, you can still build such a feature pretty quickly if you build and repeat a couple of subunits. Try combining some rocks of different types into a piece of wall, a big boulder, or a pillar. Variation is still key, so combine as many of these prefabs as possible.

•Remember that the undersides of many rocks also look nice. You’re basically getting two rocks for the price of one. That's twice the amount of rock per rock!

•Colour variation really elevates a rock wall that little extra bit. Just select a fraction of your rock pieces at random and make them a little darker, then do the same again but make these ones a little lighter, etc.

Making waterfalls in PK is a challenge because we (still!) only have two pieces for it: I’ll call them “Fall” and “Splash”. Fall emits whitewater effects along a short line. They fall straight downwards. Splash is similar but emits larger and, well… splashier effects that have a bit of momentum imparted to them. With advanced rotation, that means that Splash can be aimed a little bit. This makes Splash very useful, in my opinion, for application not just at the base of a waterfall but along its height too. But we’ll get to that.

These two pieces are suited to one specific type of waterfall: the type that flows over a rugged diagonal piece of small cliff, as you might see with a medium-small creek in hilly terrain. They’re much less suited to lower-energy waterfalls/river rapids where not all the water turns white with foam, or to much higher waterfalls with longer pieces of freefall.

So let’s walk through how I build my waterfalls. Results may vary.

First, put down your water on two or more levels which come as close to each other as possible. That much is obvious. Due to the game’s water system, however, “as close to each other as possible” isn’t very close. That’s why the top of your waterfall is always going to be dry, aka the water effects don’t flow continuously from the upper reservoir to the lower one. There will always be a gap. Depending on the situation and the level of scrutiny you expect, be prepared to cover that gap up with an overarching rock piece, some logs, a bit of foliage… Or you could have the water effects coming out of a pipe/culvert.

Now, it’s time to put the rocks down. My process for waterfalls is kind of a back-and-forth where I place the rocks, place the water effects, adapt the rocks to the water effects, adapt the water effects to the rocks, etc. The end result should be that the rock has a bit of a channel carved into it where the water goes (only subtly, I mean) and the water effects react to the rock as they should. Fall effects go where there is a purely vertical drop. Splash effects go under Fall effects or other Splash effects, and they’re rotated towards the normal of the rock surface on which the Fall effect lands so that the water seems to “bounce off” of it a little.

I like to have my waterfalls split into multiple smaller streams by the topology of the rock. This is far from a requirement, however, especially for smaller waterfalls. Once you’re done with how the water flows over the rocks, you can add a few final splash effects in the lower reservoir and you’re done.

[Still my favourite waterfall I've made. It showcases what I've talked about in this section pretty well.]

I’m obviously not an expert on this, but here goes.

•First of all, replace that long glass wall with a discrete number of viewpoints. Not only does this allow you to better sculpt what the guests see (the landscape only needs to look good from a couple of angles), it means that animals can choose privacy behind a solid wall. Variation is once again key: one viewpoint is high up, the other is close to the ground, yet another gives you a few tiny glimpses into the animals’ shelter...

•Bleed the inside of the habitat to its outside. In general, this means using the same types of foliage and terrain outside of the fences, in the immediate vicinity of the exhibit.

•It might be interesting to hide your fences, or avoid their use altogether. Use rock walls, moats, and dense foliage. Safer, too. A Tyrannosaurus might break down a fence (when the devs add that possibility), but I’d like to see that ♥♥♥♥♥ jump five meters.

[Here's an example of what I'm talking about. This stone-bordered ditch is not visible from the perspective of the guests, giving the illusion that the exhibit goes on forever.]

Prefabs can be shared on the Steam Workshop. This can be done right away as you’re saving it, or it can be done later by finding your prefab in the Prefab or Modular Pieces menu, then clicking the little Steam icon that appears when you hover over the thumbnail.
Before uploading, make sure that you’ve put the prefab in a sensible category! This will help people find what they’re looking for. To that end, it might also be a good idea to include some keywords in the item’s description.
Also be sure that you’ve given the item a good name. Nobody’s gonna subscribe to “Modular Group 261”, and rightly so.

An attractive prefab will include some screenshots on its workshop page. Just know that Steam doesn’t take kindly to the kind of file size a 1080p .png screenshot brings to the table, so you’ll have to convert the images you want to .jpg files first in that case. Once you have those on your disk somewhere, adding them is done via the “owner controls” you’ll see when you navigate to your workshop item in Steam.

You can also upload your saves! This is done via the load menu. The save’s thumbnail in the workshop will be the same as it is in-game, so it’s the camera view you had when you last saved. I’m not sure if it always causes problems, but it might be best to avoid uploading from your autosave slot.

Mau pls add ammonites