Prison Architect Alpha 14

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Chris
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Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby Chris » Wed Oct 02, 2013 2:52 pm

Alpha 14 has been released! Steam users will be automatically updated. Non-steam users can download the latest version from the builds page here:
http://www.prison-architect.com/builds.html

You need an active forum account to access the builds from our website. If you are having trouble please click here for more information, or email us at support@introversion.co.uk

Here is our alpha14 video demonstrating the new features:


Guard dogs have arrived! You can now hire dogs from the staff menu, and they come as a team with a dog handler. Dogs will sniff any nearby prisoners and hiding spots, and can smell drugs and other forms of smelly contraband from several squares away. Assign your dogs to patrols within busy parts of your prison to have them sniff everyone during the day.

Image

Dogs can also sense escape tunnels, although it isn’t quite as easy as that. They will scratch at the floor and bark a bit, but you need to keep an eye on them to notice this and perform appropriate searches within your jail. If they happen to be scratching the floor when there is an actual prisoner digging directly under them, the prisoner is rumbled and the whole tunnel is revealed. We suggest you create long patrol routes around the perimeter of your jail and assign dogs to these, to keep a handle on your escape tunnels.

And if some prisoners do manage to get out of their cells and make a run for it, dogs are excellent at chasing them down. Much faster than the guards, for example.

Dogs do get tired after working for a few hours, and need a Kennel (we suggest an outdoor fenced off area for your dogs) with some dog crates to sleep in. The dog and handler will be out of action when they sleep, so you’ll need shifts of dogs and handlers to keep continuous coverage.

We have also started work on one of the end game features - you can now sell your prison from the Valuation screen. Any profits you have made in this prison will be automatically transferred to a brand new starting location, meaning you can plan much bigger layouts right from the start. You can only sell your prisons once, but nothing stops you going back and continuing to manage a prison you have already sold.

One of the most consistent requests from players is to deal with performance. The game has always lagged quite badly in large prisons or with large prisoner populations. Our resident technical expert John Knottenbelt has spent all month optimising the hell out of the game, and it’s running a great deal faster. The entire pathfinding system is now running on a separate processor, taking advantage of dual core and better setups that most gamers now have. This has lowered the cpu burden of the game, but also means there is much less “backlog” in the pathfinding system - often entities would be waiting around to have their route generated before they could move. Now it all happens virtually instantly. We hope this work will help you plan and build even more epic prisons.

Chris is expecting a baby (his second Son) in about a months time (well, his wife Jo is), so unfortunately our regular monthly alpha process will be disrupted while Real Life takes over for a bit. We are planning to skip the alpha that would have come at the end of October, and aim for alpha 15 at the end of November, ie two months from now. We hope you understand.

In the mean time, enjoy the new features (there’s a ton of additional stuff in the full change list below) and we will see you all soon.


Full change list

Code: Select all

= Guard Dogs
    You can now hire guard dogs from the staff menu. Every dog has a dog handler.       
    Dogs will sniff any nearby prisoners or hiding places, and will detect drugs, cigs etc
    Dogs can sense escape tunnels and will scratch at the ground when they find one, giving the player a strong hint
    If a dog smells a prisoner digging under them, they will dig up the prisoner and reveal the entire tunnel   
    Dogs are fast runners and are very good at chasing down escaping prisoners
        Note: Dogs smell drugs and detect tunnels incorrectly sometimes
        Note: If either a dog or his handler is killed, the survivor will act unpredictably for a while, before leaving the prison
   
- Dogs can be assigned to patrols just like Guards : From the Deployment screen
    Click on "Dog Patrols" then click on any existing patrol to assign a dog to it

= Kennels
    New room type. Requires dog crates for each dog to sleep in
    Can be outdoor, but must be surrounded by walls or fences or doors
    Dogs have an energy level represented by a green bar under their body, which discharges as they work
    When they become exhausted they will return to a Kennel and sleep in a dog crate to recover
    They will also heal any injuries sustained in the line of duty
   
= Prison Sale
    You can now sell your prison from the Valuation report screen, and use the profits to start a new prison with a large bank balance
    You require an Accountant on site, a minimum positive valulation of $50,000, and at least 20 prisoners to be eligable for sale
    You can always return to a prison you have previously sold and continue managing it, but you can only sell a prison once
        Note: You cannot sell someone elses prison shared via the Steam Workshop, for obvious reasons
        Note: We are aware this system is highly exploitable, and it will remain that way until we balance the financial side of the game
       
= Major performance optimisations
    We have resolved numerous performance glitches and done a great deal of optimising for this alpha.
    Areas optimised : Sector system, Work Queue, Rendering
    The navigation / route planning system has been multithreaded and will now run on a second processor core
    On large / heavily populated maps the average frame rate is now significantly higher
   
- Escape tunnels have been nerfed and are now much more rare.
    - Only prisoners with the "Clever" trait will even consider escape tunnels (10-20% of your inmates)
    - They need to have a stolen digging tool within their possession
    - Motivations for digging: Fear for life, High freedom need, Misses family
    - Prisoners caught digging will have the punishment for "Escape Attempt" automatically applied
           
- Deliveries and Garbage rooms can now be placed anywhere on your prison site, including behind locked doors
    - Delivery trucks will stop and load/unload when aligned with delivery/garbage rooms
    - Prisoners will get off the truck immediately if they can walk to deliveries easily
    - However if your deliveries zone is within your prison they will be escorted in by a guard
   
- The Load / Save dialogs now have the option to sort by "Date modified" as well as by filename.
    This is very useful for quickly finding your recent prisons.
    Click on the column headings to toggle the different sorting methods

- There is now much more variety for many of the existing staff types:
    Male and female versions of many staff types
    Body shapes and sizes vary
    Skin tone also varies
   
- Planning Mode continued
    We have extended the planning mode to permit three different types of materials:
    Walls : Plan where your walls will be
    Objects : Drag out any size of object to show where you plan to place the furniture
    Paths : Use this to mark your planned outdoor pathways
   
- Fixed: Workers will no longer load and unload garbage in an endless loop
    (This happened when you had the Garbage zone above the Deliveries zone)
   
- Fixed: The tooltip regarding guard patrols was being displayed in all kinds of wrong places

- Fixed: All entities would drop whatever they were carrying after loading a saved game


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thekillergreece
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby thekillergreece » Wed Oct 02, 2013 2:54 pm

Woooooow!Wooooot!My favourite dog breed!!!German Shepherd!!!Great alpha!!!!

Hey how about more dog breeds? :P
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby RGeezy911 » Wed Oct 02, 2013 2:57 pm

Excellent, I will be testing this when I get home.
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby 111none » Wed Oct 02, 2013 3:08 pm

Well deserved chris... Well deserved, as for your second child. Congratulations!!! A new IV member.
(Hopefully i beat the download rush)
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby thekillergreece » Wed Oct 02, 2013 3:15 pm

Oh yeah, I hope you will have a beautiful son!!!Congrats!
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby Pendrokar » Wed Oct 02, 2013 3:22 pm

Heh, from that thumbnail I thought you actually added cryogenic prison cells. :D

Image of Freezed Silvester Stallone in Demolition Guy
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby Lint21 » Wed Oct 02, 2013 3:24 pm

Thank you so much for taking some performance optimization steps, I can't wait to try to out today!
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby AGutierrez » Wed Oct 02, 2013 3:48 pm

Hi,

What is the gerenerates lakes check box on the latest alpha 14? what does it do!?
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby thekillergreece » Wed Oct 02, 2013 4:00 pm

AGutierrez wrote:Hi,

What is the gerenerates lakes check box on the latest alpha 14? what does it do!?


Well, we already saw them on Alpha11 maybe, but they are still not finished yet to be brought in alpha. Dunno what they do, probably adding challenging
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby InteNs » Wed Oct 02, 2013 4:04 pm

AGutierrez wrote:Hi,

What is the gerenerates lakes check box on the latest alpha 14? what does it do!?


Well, maaaybe , just maybe, it will generate LAKES??!
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby MAdMaN » Wed Oct 02, 2013 4:26 pm

AGutierrez wrote:What is the gerenerates lakes check box on the latest alpha 14? what does it do!?

The Alpha 13 video showed bodies of water in the prison grounds. It's this the check box is referring to.
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby MAdMaN » Wed Oct 02, 2013 4:30 pm

MAdMaN wrote:
AGutierrez wrote:What is the gerenerates lakes check box on the latest alpha 14? what does it do!?

A previous video showed bodies of water in the prison grounds. It's this the check box is referring to.
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby xander » Wed Oct 02, 2013 5:03 pm

What, no mention of the most important bug fix?

Code: Select all

- Deliveries and Garbage rooms can now be placed anywhere on your prison site, including behind locked doors
    - Delivery trucks will stop and load/unload when aligned with delivery/garbage rooms
    - Prisoners will get off the truck immediately if they can walk to deliveries easily
    - However if your deliveries zone is within your prison they will be escorted in by a guard


:P

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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby veio » Wed Oct 02, 2013 5:03 pm

wooo doggies! lol. Also I like the changes to the tunnel mechanic. good work guys.
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 14

Postby rugisty » Wed Oct 02, 2013 5:44 pm

I have all kinds of graphic bugs since the patch and no idea how to fix.

Almost all my prisoners have just a big head icon (same goes for the menus as well)

In my canteen there are big staff door and delivery truck icons (filling up the whole canteen)

Empy black squeres everywhere

Took a screenshot too:

http://imgur.com/NM0ffvE


Any advise how to resolve this? (What I tried: create a new game / restart steam / restart the computer but nothing worked)


Thanks

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