Prison Architect

[luckton]

And there should be a giant glowing sign telling you about the grants.  Playing without grants was painful and doomed to failure.

As someone in the industry in which this game is based upon, I can attest to this 

[Yoru]

(edit) Oh, while I'm posting.  What's up with large pipes not being able to pass through walls?  Am I not supposed to have my pumping station inside a building?  I've been building a "utility shed" to keep my generator and pump in, but I'm wondering now if that's even necessary.

According to the alpha wiki, it's a bug. They should be able to go through walls; as you noted, they can so long as the pipe is built first.

For now, I'm just putting them through doorways.

[Malakili]

Going to be streaming some of this for the next little while: www.twitch.tv/snugglezhenya

EDIT: Done streaming, here is the link to the video if anyone wants to take a peak after the fact.  Its mostly pure gameplay with the occasional bit of commentary from me, not super exciting, but probably give you an idea of what it is like to actually play the game if you are interested.  http://www.twitch.tv/snugglezhenya/b/333876804

[K9]

I like the concept, but as it stands this games seems more like Theme Prison than Dwarf Fortress; even then it seems to be lacking a lot of the depth that games like Theme Hospital had back in the day. You could chalk that up to Alpha status for now, but I do wonder what direction the game will take.

Also Mal, I watched your stream. You could definitely cut costs by firing some of your surplus workmen once you have a lot of your core structures up. Also, I think windows help cells, not sure though.

[Malakili]

I like the concept, but as it stands this games seems more like Theme Prison than Dwarf Fortress; even then it seems to be lacking a lot of the depth that games like Theme Hospital had back in the day. You could chalk that up to Alpha status for now, but I do wonder what direction the game will take.

Also Mal, I watched your stream. You could definitely cut costs by firing some of your surplus workmen once you have a lot of your core structures up. Also, I think windows help cells, not sure though.

Yeah, I think I can optimize my hiring. I'm not sure if I was over doing it with guards either.  The first (many) attempts ended with bloody brawls, and my first response was to add more guards.  But now that I am learning other ways to keep violence down I might be able to use a few less guards.  Also, yeah, windows do help in cells, I think they reduce boredom. 

As you say, it is a bit feature light at the moment.  My understanding is that they consider this very early alpha, this isn't like a pre-order beta or anything like that, they make it pretty clear in the promo video that you are supporting development by buying in now, and that there is a long way to go.  Since there is no NDA, I'll do my best to keep this thread updated as the game moves along. 

[Samwise]

The bugs are pretty obnoxious, especially with stuff not getting built because the workers can't find a route to it (even when there's a door -- or when the door itself is blocked because the guy in charge of building THAT can't path his way out of a wet paper bag).

When stuff is working it's very fun, but I get annoyed when my prisoners are all killing each other because they can't move into the cells I built for them because there are no beds because the guy who installs beds is le tired.

[tgr]

Rrrrriiiiise. They've now gone into paid public alpha:

http://www.introversion.co.uk/prisonarchitect/

[Thrawn]

$30, pass.

Yes, I'm cheap.

[Malakili]

Uh, this has been in paid public alpha for a couple of months at least now.  I've played it some, the basics are good but it still needs fleshing out.

Edit:  At the 30 dollar price point, it isn't worth it yet unless you just really love this style game.

[luckton]

Now available for auto-updating and playable via Steam.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/233450/

If you already threw money at Intro, check your email.  The download link page has your Steam key in it.

Fake edit: The promo video for the Steam launch is 

[Yegolev]

Is it worth the cash?

[Malakili]

It is borderline.  I have a feeling the full game is going to be worth at least 30 dollars when it is done, and I don't regret going in for 30 to get alpha access.  On the other hand, as the game stands right at the moment, it doesn't feel worth 30 bucks.  It does continue to steadily improve.

[Samwise]

It's the current item on my backlog (I finally finished Serious Sam BFE, holy fuck) so I've been pootling around with it.  It's fun but I'll agree that if you're expecting a $30 game it's not quite there yet.

[bhodi]

Yeah, it's a fun sandboxy game. I'd say it's got some content, but obviously not $30 worth. I like to support introversion, and all types of games like this though, so I had already bought it.

Even if you don't buy it, watch the steam video.

[apocrypha]

watch the steam video.

Haha, that was highly entertaining! 

[HaemishM]

FROM STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!

[Der Helm]

The video almost made me buy it. 

[Mrbloodworth]

Almost! Going to let it stew for a bit longer.

[Samwise]

My dudes like to tantrum because they're bored, break their beds and toilets, and then tantrum some more because they're tired and they have to pee. 

I want an option to furnish cells entirely in stainless steel and concrete.

[bhodi]

It's highly recommended that you remove showertime and make the day sleep->eat->free->yard->free->eat->free->sleep. They'll shower when they feel the need. Also, don't bother with a recreation room, put the pool tables, tvs (only small, large do nothing right now), and phones outside in the yard.

It's also highly recommended that you put metal detectors at the exit to your cantina.

[Samwise]

Metal detectors are fantastic; I don't think they existed the first time I tried this game, but I've been a big fan since I discovered them.  I just put them goddamn everywhere.

Large TVs not working might explain why my dudes ignore them and complain about not having enough recreation.  I had noticed the guys showering during free time when they felt grubby, so eliminating designated shower time seems like a good move.  I assume you can also get away with smaller showers once you aren't trying to cram everyone in there at once.

Do workshops do anything?  I built one once and it looked like nobody ever went in there but I still got $50 a day from it.  I suppose I could experiment by building a hundred of them in an empty building and seeing what happens.   

[luckton]

It's highly recommended that you remove showertime and make the day sleep->eat->free->yard->free->eat->free->sleep.

That's basically how most RL jails run, with the exception of inmates serving disciplinary sanctions.

Don't ask me how I know that 

[bhodi]

Here's my jail. It's running at 80 people in the second screenshot. I need more money! I'll try building that workshop.

Theoretically, I can extend it to the left, just mirroring the cells, moving the yard to the left and extending the cantina. Realistically, next time I build this I'll probably rework the cantina and kitchen to make them slightly taller; it's faily cramped. The cell to shower ratio is good; putting them at the end of the cells works well. I put little stalls so that they don't get annoyed at being near each other while showering. Having the kitchen near the deliveries or at least storage is really important, and for my first few jails I had a entrance corridor until I realized it was pointless: They get escorted immediately in, and that can go through a staff door just as easily without having to keep a guard there to open it for my workers. You also need serving trays fairly near the kitchen, because they don't start to move the food out until it's literally mealtime.

I don't have the right cooker / cook amount because they don't start cooking fast enough, I can't get enough meals in for 2, and so I moved to an additional mid-afternoon meal as well. I'll probably hire another few cooks and scale that back, because they don't clean the trays fast enough with 3 meals.

I hired additional workers at the start and so was able to finish the entire foundation of that before the first prisoners arrived.

[Samwise]

The first day my latest prison was open, one of the prisoners cornered a worker in the yard and beat him to death with his bare hands.     Good lesson there about getting construction completely done before you designate a room.

[Samwise]

Here's my jail. It's running at 80 people in the second screenshot. I need more money! I'll try building that workshop.

Are you running all that off a single generator?  I'm totally baffled as to how power works; my generators get overloaded and shut down, and after that even if I add more generators I can't seem to get them to stay up.  Adding capacitors doesn't seem to do anything either.

[Malakili]

Adding capacitors increases the max load.  They must be placed adjacent to the generator.  If you somehow max out on power with that many capacitors, you can build a second generator.  Be careful though, I think crossing the power lines from two different generators will short the system (I've read that but not tried it).

[Samwise]

I've noticed that adding more generators to the same circuit doesn't work, but wasn't aware it might actually cause a short.  In my last attempt I wound up dismantling chunks of cable to try to establish isolated circuits for each generator, but that still didn't work.  So in theory one generator should be able to handle a shitload of stuff as long as it's got a lot of capacitors around it?

[Malakili]

So in theory one generator should be able to handle a shitload of stuff as long as it's got a lot of capacitors around it?

Yea.  I've never had to go above one generator at this point.  Keep in mind though, the capacitors have to be adjacent to the generator itself in order to add to the max capacity, you can't just keep stacking them out to one side, for example.

Edit, here I've taken a screenshot of a  "maxed out" generator.  Note how on the power gauge on the generator itself there is one "bar" per capacitor.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=135509542

[Samwise]

Here's my prison!


I think if they keep working on the AI it could be really fun to try to build an escape-proof prison to hold crafty and determined prisoners, but for now it's much easier to just keep the inmates fat and happy than to try to hold them against their will.  I've found that putting a TV in each cell works wonders for keeping boredom down.

[Mrbloodworth]

What the hell? No guards and open doors to the outside?

That's a bit off id say!


Just picked this up, I'm hitting a really bad slow down kinda early in this. Am I alone? It Cant be my hardware, tings like movement and i guess AI get really choppy with not much going on at the time.

[Samwise]

Performance has been fine for me.

My prison has 12 guards (it shows 0/12 because they're all assigned to specific patrols, hence none are "free"), and uses staff doors everywhere (including for the cells).  Otherwise your guards just spend all their time running around opening doors for your workers, which is kind of very stupid.

I actually had to assign all my guards to patrols so that they wouldn't all uselessly clump up in the security room -- it only takes 1 guard to watch the monitors as long as you tell him where to stand, but left to their own devices 3 of them will go in there and then mill around without necessarily even watching the monitors.

[luckton]

I actually had to assign all my guards to patrols so that they wouldn't all uselessly clump up in the security room -- it only takes 1 guard to watch the monitors as long as you tell him where to stand, but left to their own devices 3 of them will go in there and then mill around without necessarily even watching the monitors.

Oh but the realism that this simulates...

[bhodi]

You know, I don't even put doors on cells. There's no game reason to.

[Malakili]

You know, I don't even put doors on cells. There's no game reason to.

Lockdown?

[bhodi]

Right now, the AI stays in the cell during lockdown, and lockdown only sends willing people back to cells.