Paleontologically Accurate DLC

[Dromna]

Hello!

I wanted to poll the forums, how many of you would be willing to pay reasonable money ($10-15? Maybe $20?) for a DLC that redid every dinosaur model in the game for paleontological accuracy?

Closer sizes, feathers, behaviors, even colors when we know them from schemochromes. Perhaps adding the use of pennaceous feathers in aggressive or social animations? Ornithomimus and the rest of the maniraptoriforms were definitely feathered and fuzzy with pennaceous feathers on the arms. The spinosaurids (especially Spinosaurus) could have a quadrupedal or mixed walk like some of the hadrosaurs. Even basal ornithischians have filamentous feather or hair like coating, from Hypsilophodon to Psittacosaurus, though the hadrosaurs and most of the large herbivores seem primarily scaley. The Sauropods are definitely covered in scales. Maybe such changes could be integrated into the game as genetic modifications that raise 'authenticity'.

Personally definitely worth it.

 

[Chewie102]

For me not worth it in the slightest - I want theme park monsters, I want a 6ft Velociraptor, a 4ft frilled dilophosaurus that spits, and all the other JP universe creatures as they are - I don't want feathers or any of that funny business to make it "real" that's not what jurassic park is all about for me

 

[Lora Craft69]

Hello!

I wanted to poll the forums, how many of you would be willing to pay reasonable money ($10-15? Maybe $20?) for a DLC that redid every dinosaur model in the game for paleontological accuracy?

Closer sizes, feathers, behaviors, even colors when we know them from schemochromes. Perhaps adding the use of pennaceous feathers in aggressive or social animations? Ornithomimus and the rest of the maniraptoriforms were definitely feathered and fuzzy with pennaceous feathers on the arms. The spinosaurids (especially Spinosaurus) could have a quadrupedal or mixed walk like some of the hadrosaurs. Even basal ornithischians have filamentous feather or hair like coating, from Hypsilophodon to Psittacosaurus, though the hadrosaurs and most of the large herbivores seem primarily scaley. The Sauropods are definitely covered in scales. Maybe such changes could be integrated into the game as genetic modifications that raise 'authenticity'.

Personally definitely worth it.

And how would that Paleontologically Accurate DLC look like?
Paleontologists are still divided about which dinosaurs had feathers and what they looked like.
T-Rex for example was regarded for several years to have feathers, until they found fossilized skin and to their surprise scaly no trace of feathers: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/t-rex-skin-was-not-covered-feathers-study-says-180963603/

I wouldn't buy it, this is Jurassic world and the dinosaurs we see in this game are what is expected of the book/movie canon.
They aren't suppose to be accurate because their dna is altered and the gaps are filled with present day animals.

 

[Dromna]

It's true that for some taxa there is no direct evidence of skin composition, but there's also no color data outside maniraptorans with schemochromes. A reasonable guess suffices. As you point out the article supports scaled T Rex, but considers that they may have had feathery backs. Most very large organisms lose outer insulation to deal with surface area to volume issues of heating - just look at elephants. Essentially all maniraptorans have direct fossil evidence of feather distribution, and the article provided discusses the known distribution of downy feathers across earlier tyrannosaurids. There's hardly a large quantity of uncertainty demonstrated, and it doesn't provide evidence contradicting any of the suggestions I posted above. In short, there's good data out there and enough context to fill what holes remain with educated guesses.

Perhaps instead of broadly 'they aren't supposed to be accurate' you mean 'I prefer the inaccurate dinosaurs that are true to cannon'. The point of a DLC is that only those who are interested will buy it: the release of such would not interfere with the cannon base product. The 'inaccuracy on account of other organism DNA' is a Jurassic World retcon meant to allow continuity of the dinosaur models while reconciling them to better public understanding of the paleontology. The frog DNA was initially purely a plot device to explain dinosaur breeding in the park despite being all female.

One 'not interested' then, thanks for your reply!

 

[Kevinosaurus]

In my opinion they should rather invest the time and money in a marine/flying/male dino expansion and/or a JP93 DLC (assuming Nublar doesn't include the old JP) or something else that has to do with the franchise, like a Sorna 97/01 DLC or something. If you want more scientifically accurate dinos you should check our Prehistoric Kingdom. I backed it on Kickstarter.

 

[Andrew2018]

Not all all. I would be if they spent their time, energy and money doing that. There is so much more they could be doing for the game like adding more dinosaurs, attractions and buildings

 

[Factabulous]

Another 'no thanks' - it's a game about a film- the film people will have had experts in and I'm willing to work with what they think rather than have FD go off and get a whole load of 'other' experts.

And your price for an 'accurate' DLC seems ... a tad lower than I would expect for a complete rework of all the dinos...

 

[MrGoodbytes]

I applaud the sentiment, but Jurassic Park has never been paleontologically accurate. That being said, if someone made a similar game that featured paleontologically accurate dinos, I'd probably get it.

 

[CapSeagull]

A paleontologist opinion may count?
Is not a good ideia. Do you now why palleontologists love the two novels? Is because Crichton made few descrptions of the dinosaurs as possible. Who decide what the dinosaurs look like in the novels is the reader and this make possible see these animals with a fair amount of acuracy that is superior of that of the films who are fixed in a comercial mark.

And try to make dinosaurs "acurate" will only make they look like this for a decade or less. New descoveries are made every day and our depction of what a dinosaur look as not near close to the concrete image that pepole like the Saurian devs want us to belive. Of course when come to dinosaurs like Dromeosaurs and Ornithomimosaurs we have already a good notion of what they look like in real life. But they are exception.

And they don't have to be treat with homegeinity. Its not because one single one raptor have X style of distribution of feathers that ALL others will be exacly the same nor they will be exact copies of todays creatures. The things that will be determine what a animal will look like is almost never considered by the paleoartists. This is because is almost impossible do this given to the fragmentary apacts of the ecosystems and the animals itself (and it is why we have so many raptors that look exactly like a bird of prey).

Two good exemples of this is the Edmontosaurus and the Ornitholestes. About of the Edmonto we think we know exactly what it looked for almost a decade and last year they found that theses animals had a g crest. And we have the Ornitholestes who always had a horn/crest but had recently change by a discover that we are just looking to a bronken bone.

So I don't like the ideia of a "acurate" vision because such thing dosen't exist in the first place. Unless we have a time machine, we never know how the vast majorite of the dinos really look like, we can only conceptualize based on solid evidence to try get closer to a acurate depcition, but will never will be acurate.
Have this in consideration one thing that the frontier team could make is try is fix major anatomical errors (like the manus and pes of almost every dinosaur) and launch a DLC with a improved version of the base Skin system that allow us to breed dinosaurs with other types of intergument (feathers and protofeather for coelurosaurs, spike-like quills for ornitopods, quills for non coelurosaur tetanuerans, spikes and osteoderms for sauropods, etc). With this two things we have the most acurate dinosaurs possible with don't lose the Jurassic Park style.

And about minor anatomical concerns like the size o dino X and the number of teeth of dino Y? Well, frontier have to diferent tinghs that allow such "errors" to not be errors de facto. First, this animals are artificials, just like a dog, so a Velociraptor of the size of a small Utharaptor is just like a Pitbull in comparasion with a chiwawa. But they don't even need to resouce in this, that is because they don't show the real specie name of any dinosaur. Maybe some of you don't noticed this, but all dinos so far have only they genus divulged and not the specie. And, again, a Cannis lupus and a Cannis familiaris are in the same genera, but a chiwawa is a lot diferent from a wolf. So small details like size or number of teeth are forgiven (thus details that pull of the animal of the entire family like the narines of the apato and the teeth size of the Majungasaurus need to be fixed in order to these excuse have sense).

Again, this can't be named as "acurate" depiction of theses creatures because such thing don't exist. But will drive us close to what the fossil record tell us and even manage to keep the the Jurassic Park style and trademarks. Something like the best of both worlds.

Last, I need to apologize for any gramatical or sentence error that I made. I'm not used to write in english very often, so if you se some error (and don't gramatical ones, feel free to discord to disagree with me) please feel free to correct me. c:

P.s. Sorry again. This time for make this wall of text to explain something that actually we all know, but I really want to explain the whole "science never are 100% sure" thing. if someone here dosen't know already.

 

[PCMR4Life]

Nope, I wouldn't buy it. I have no interest in feathered Dinosaurs or anything like that in a JP themed game. That being said I don't care if they do it or that people buy it. I am fine as long as it's optional. But I don't see this ever happening cause it would mean they wouldn't be JP Dinosaurs anymore and they would have to basically redo all the Dinosaur models which isn't going to happen.

 

[Iskariot]

Hello!

I wanted to poll the forums, how many of you would be willing to pay reasonable money ($10-15? Maybe $20?) for a DLC that redid every dinosaur model in the game for paleontological accuracy?

Closer sizes, feathers, behaviors, even colors when we know them from schemochromes. Perhaps adding the use of pennaceous feathers in aggressive or social animations? Ornithomimus and the rest of the maniraptoriforms were definitely feathered and fuzzy with pennaceous feathers on the arms. The spinosaurids (especially Spinosaurus) could have a quadrupedal or mixed walk like some of the hadrosaurs. Even basal ornithischians have filamentous feather or hair like coating, from Hypsilophodon to Psittacosaurus, though the hadrosaurs and most of the large herbivores seem primarily scaley. The Sauropods are definitely covered in scales. Maybe such changes could be integrated into the game as genetic modifications that raise 'authenticity'.

Personally definitely worth it.

I would love dinosaurs in the game to be (proto ) feathered, and with the spectacular colours many of them possessed,
I listened to a lecture the other day and scientists can see microscopic pigment particles in some fossils that betray the color patterns some dinos must have had.
They were quite spectacular.

I would pay for such a DLC.
Do I see it happening? Definitely not, considering the IP. Hollywood does not have the balls to show us Dinos like they most likely really walked the earth.

 

[blubbit]

I would hate nothing more than to see Spinosaurus as its accurate representation. That beast needs to be like its JP3 self in Evolution.

As for other dinos like Velociraptor and Dilophosaurus, I welcome their accurate counterpart. Heck, accurate Dilophosaurus is more of monster than in the movie.

 

[CapSeagull]

I would love dinosaurs in the game to be (proto ) feathered, and with the spectacular colours many of them possessed,

Do I see it happening? Definitely not, considering the IP. Hollywood does not have the balls to show us Dinos like they most likely really walked the earth.

I defenitively agree with you, we really need some balls (in Universal specialy) to make theses things hapen!

Also, about the dinosaurs colors, I have see that some folks are working with Edmonto/Rex/Trike skin impressions to try see if there still any sing of the color in there, so, soon we probably have the first skin colors theses creatures and a DEMAND a skin for each one of them when this hapen. XD

 

[Butter]

Yeah I don't see this happening. This would essentially require the devs to make two models for every single dinosaur in the game (and also any dinosaurs they add in a future dlc).
Personally I'd prefer the devs spent their time on more important additions like new dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine reptiles than waste it on such a useless add on like "accurate" dinosaurs.

 

[Dromna]

Well, I'm surprised at how many people active on the forum really don't want a more probable or natural representation of the dinosaurs available. A couple yes but mostly just favoring spending time expanding the roster of jurassic-park-universe dinosaurs instead. I find our best natural estimates just look better - just look at the aesthetic difference between a good Ornithomimus or Utahraptor rendering with or without feathers, where we really know the feather distributions now - but I also see the appeal of adding new interesting dynamics like flying and aquatic creatures, and the restrictions imposed by the media license. I suppose, like JPOG, fans will likely supply mods if Frontier does not sell a DLC.


Shout out to Cap Seagull for the wall of text. I feel you basically agree with the thrust of the DLC idea when you argue for a DLC fixing the worst of the anatomical issues and allowing integument differences (feathers, quills, etc.) by skins or gene options - characters about which the science is unequivocal. Kudos for the genus size difference idea - the size is less important, though most genuses of dinosaur are split along size, so you don't see that size difference within dinosaur genuses, and most natural genuses don't begin to approach the size variation achieved by artificial selection on dogs. Unlike the books we are forced here to have a visual representation, and I find the more natural scientific estimates a lot better looking.

A final idea is that Frontier could potentially get governmental or grant funding and positive press coverage for such a DLC as an education outreach program.

An example of a cool rendering that isn't shrinked-wrapped-hairless-cat:

 

[PCMR4Life]

Well, I'm surprised at how many people active on the forum really don't want a more probable or natural representation of the dinosaurs available. A couple yes but mostly just favoring spending time expanding the roster of jurassic-park-universe dinosaurs instead. I find our best natural estimates just look better - just look at the aesthetic difference between a good Ornithomimus or Utahraptor rendering with or without feathers, where we really know the feather distributions now - but I also see the appeal of adding new interesting dynamics like flying and aquatic creatures, and the restrictions imposed by the media license. I suppose, like JPOG, fans will likely supply mods if Frontier does not sell a DLC.


Shout out to Cap Seagull for the wall of text. I feel you basically agree with the thrust of the DLC idea when you argue for a DLC fixing the worst of the anatomical issues and allowing integument differences (feathers, quills, etc.) by skins or gene options - characters about which the science is unequivocal. Kudos for the genus size difference idea - the size is less important, though most genuses of dinosaur are split along size, so you don't see that size difference within dinosaur genuses, and most natural genuses don't begin to approach the size variation achieved by artificial selection on dogs. Unlike the books we are forced here to have a visual representation, and I find the more natural scientific estimates a lot better looking.

A final idea is that Frontier could potentially get governmental or grant funding and positive press coverage for such a DLC as an education outreach program.

An example of a cool rendering that isn't shrinked-wrapped-hairless-cat:

Why would want feathered Dinosaurs? This is a Jurassic Park/World game and there are no feathered Dinosaurs in the lore.

 

[Tegry]

Why would want feathered Dinosaurs? This is a Jurassic Park/World game and there are no feathered Dinosaurs in the lore.

Absolutely. Thats Jurassic Park/World Dinos! We want them the way we saw them in the Movies!

 

[discocat]

I already wrote in those forums about the fact that Jurassic movies' dinosaurs weren't accurate from the start. This is due to the frog's DNA they used.

Alan Grant made it clear in JP3 saying : "Dinosaurs lived sixty five million years ago. What is left of them is fossilized in the rocks, and it is in the rock that real scientists make real discoveries. Now what John Hammond and InGen did at Jurassic Park is create genetically engineered theme park monsters, nothing more and nothing less."

Wu repeats it again in Jurassic World : "Nothing in Jurassic World is natural, we have always filled gaps in the genome with the DNA of other animals. And if the genetic code was pure, many of them would look quite different."

What I mean is that it's canon for those dinosaurs to not be accurate.

 

[Lora Craft69]

Well, I'm surprised at how many people active on the forum really don't want a more probable or natural representation of the dinosaurs available. A couple yes but mostly just favoring spending time expanding the roster of jurassic-park-universe dinosaurs instead. I find our best natural estimates just look better - just look at the aesthetic difference between a good Ornithomimus or Utahraptor rendering with or without feathers, where we really know the feather distributions now - but I also see the appeal of adding new interesting dynamics like flying and aquatic creatures, and the restrictions imposed by the media license. I suppose, like JPOG, fans will likely supply mods if Frontier does not sell a DLC.


Shout out to Cap Seagull for the wall of text. I feel you basically agree with the thrust of the DLC idea when you argue for a DLC fixing the worst of the anatomical issues and allowing integument differences (feathers, quills, etc.) by skins or gene options - characters about which the science is unequivocal. Kudos for the genus size difference idea - the size is less important, though most genuses of dinosaur are split along size, so you don't see that size difference within dinosaur genuses, and most natural genuses don't begin to approach the size variation achieved by artificial selection on dogs. Unlike the books we are forced here to have a visual representation, and I find the more natural scientific estimates a lot better looking.

A final idea is that Frontier could potentially get governmental or grant funding and positive press coverage for such a DLC as an education outreach program.

An example of a cool rendering that isn't shrinked-wrapped-hairless-cat:

Why are you even trying?
I just noticed your post in the pre-order thread in the news and announcements forum and you aren't even buying the game! (see below)
As most of us said before, this is a licensed Jurassic World/Park game and we want the dinosaurs to look like how they are represented in the movies.
We would rather see Frontier put their efforts in other areas, like adding new buildings, attractions, rides, avian and maritime species and other dinosaur species and some of the great ideas found in the pinned wishlist
If you want an education outreach program, go ask National Geographic to make a game, good luck with that.

And below the post you made about not getting the game.

*pulls out wallet to pre-order*

*sees on the steam page windows only*

*puts wallet back*

Yeah... I use a Mac for work purposes and can't really afford messing with the drive to dual boot it. Probably wouldn't want to dual boot it even if I could. Oh well, Cities Skylines for me then. ;n;

 

[Gondrasia]

It’s a cool idea, but it’s not without flaws:

Firstly, I would much rather have Frontier Developments concentrate on potentially more important things to do with JWE; such as adding more dinosaurs, creating pterosaurs and marine reptiles, a few additional hybrids, more attractions and amenities, new maps and general bug fixing.

Secondly, and most importantly, I don’t think it will be possible for a complete overhaul to the design of Jurassic World’s dinosaurs. Not only has it been canonically explained by Dr. Wu from JW, but personally, I find the idea that these dinosaurs can’t have a 100% accurate portrayal to be very realistic. After all these animals have had their genes heavily modified; they have a variety of modern animal DNA spliced with the ancient dinosaur DNA in order to bring them back to life, thus as a result, genetic anomalies (null alleles) are to be expected such as the lack of feathers.

But that doesn’t mean I am opposed to having a comparatively more accurate portrayal of the dinosaurs for JWE, after all the Science division wants players to create a more genetically pure version of the dinosaurs species such as Edmontosaurus, Tsintaosaurus and Suchomimus are faithfully recreated. I'm hoping that Frontier will continue to be inspired by Julius Csotoyni's artwork and will have created more brightly coloured and striped skins as an option for players to choose for their dinosaurs, and even inspired by the JP franchise to make subtle anatomical differences such as JP///'s Velociraptor and Main Steet's Spinosaurus.