[MOD] Customizable Control Booths [V1.40 stable]

Discussion about Mods for Prison Architect

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murgh
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[MOD] Customizable Control Booths [V1.40 stable]

Postby murgh » Sat Mar 12, 2016 2:39 pm

Assemble your own custom control booth with various control and display panels. You can also add utilities to be loaded in the control booth.

Currently implemented utilities:
- NEW: POWER PANELS - Place a booth with two Power Panels, set desired range and objects to control, and wire a DoorTimer to the booth switch. It will turn on/off the selected items.
- Advanced Security Level to Gang sorter - Place a panel for Red, Green or Blue gangs, place a Security level panel and have the selected security level enter the gang you want.
- Advanced Gang to Security Level sorter - Place a panel for Red, Green or Blue gangs, place a Security level panel and have the selected gang members go to the security level you want.
- Fire Alarm - monitoring via sprinkler system. When a sprinkler starts to spray water the fire alarm will go off and start to evacuate people.
- Evacuation - Place a booth with Evac panels in an Evacuation Room and install Evacuation Alarms around in the prison.
- Workers on Call - Allows hiring of part-time workers and guards for large construction projects or shakedown.
- Also we have Cooks, Doctors, Gardeners and Janitors on call. Temporary staff can be summoned and dismissed at will.
- Snitch Sorter - A machine which automatically assigns snitches and ex-law enforcement to Protected Custody. This is the most advanced version ever!
- Release the hounds! - A special booth panel developed by someone called Mr. Burns: it allows you to release the hounds with the press of a shiny button!
- Obey - Activates the secretly implanted RFID chip your prisoners got at Reception to make them more compliant. Works in a 5-50 meter range.

Non-Steam Download here.
Steam Workshop item here.

Hands in the air for the original Workers on Call and SnitchSorter mods made by Sambot! Without his efforts to make those great mods this one would not have existed...
Some parts of the Evacuation mod are from Chinbob, so keep those hands waving. Both original mods have been extensively improved and finetuned to fully work in this mod. What used to be a small mod has grown into a script of nearly 2000 lines of code.

If you don't like guards on call then simply not use them. Personally I think it's handy to have a couple of dozen guards available with one switch to do Shakedown - it saves lots of time instead of manually spawning and deleting them. Just place some control booths on strategic spots in your prison, and connect a power switch via a logic bridge to all your guard panels to have some serious guard invasion when needed! (And to get rid of them when shakedown is done)


How does it work?
Simply place a control booth (found in utilities menu) and place the panels you desire around it. Workers will install both panels into the booth.
Turn the booth switch On or Off to activate/deactivate the panels. No need for wiring anything, except for Evacuation Alarms.

Workers placing the stuff (v1.0):

Image


...and some random results (v1.0):

Image

Image



Changelog:

Update V1.40
- Staff will no longer scan the whole prison once in a while to check if their booth still exists. This feature was added in V1.25 but has been taken out. Downside of this: if you remove a staff booth without turning it off first, you'll have to sack the staff manually... BUT, with hundreds of Staff who don't need to do GetNearbyObjects() in a prison wide range, this should increase performance.
- Completely removed scripts for staff members.

Update V1.39:
- The flashing alarm light below an Evacuation Alarm will only spawn when the alarm is active and gets removed when the alarm finished.
- Bugfix for showing/hiding a covered area: I thought the script would store the 'Covered Indicators' in a table inside a table, but it didn't so it would fail on a medium and large booth when two or three different ranges are shown at the same time.
- Added support for SmallTable in a Workshop and SmallSink in a kitchen.
- Code optimization, the booth script will perform way less tasks when in idle mode. It will only check a bare minimum of important things (a panel or switch status change) and only do action when really needed.
- Memory usage optimization, things now only get defined when needed and tables are set to nil as soon as possible.

Update V1.38:
- Tiny bug in Worker on call fixed.
- Tiny bug in needs.txt fixed.

Update V1.37:
- Added support for wired objects to the Power Panels: when turning the power off, Phone Taps, CCTV Monitors and Door Control Systems will be hidden and moved beneath the Utility booth. For this to work properly, NO ELECTRICAL CABLE should be under the booth!
- Changed the big flashing 'no power' indicator into a tiny one. When the power is off, there should be a neat little flashing power indicator visible on the booth when it's hiding wired objects. This applies to all powered objects in the prison: it's now a tiny icon instead of 'in your face'.
- Changes in Workers on Call: when turning a Pager Booth off, it will now show a 'Sack' staff display and a new job is created: either a cook, janitor, gardener, workman or guard will come with a clipboard to properly dismiss the staff.
- Temporary staff is now stored in a cached list for current game session, so sacking them will produce almost no lag (unless the map got reloaded, because this cached list can't be saved).
- Added sound for sacking staff.
- Changed the way how a covered area is shown: this also goes into a temp cached list, so clicking the Range buttons should be more fluently.
- Changed the naming of the Range buttons for better understanding.

Update V1.36:
- Added POWER CONTROL panels: Place a booth with two Power Panels, set desired range and objects to control, and wire a DoorTimer to the booth switch. It will turn on/off the selected items. You can control Lights, Cookers, Fridges, Metal Detectors, Workshop Saws and Presses.
- Added Emergency Light: when a Power Control Booth is set to turn off the lights, you can click any light that has been turned off and click its button to change it into an Emergency Light. It will then stay on while all other lights are controlled by the booth.

Screenshot from V1.36:
A booth with power panels has turned off all lights:
Image

Update V1.35:
- Removed the CoveredBy indicators from objects menu - didn't notice they could be bought, oops.

Update V1.34:
- Added a small statuslight below each Evac Alarm. It will pulsate when the alarm is active. There is no need to wire it to the alarm, but if you do then it will light up for as long as the alarm is active instead of pulsate.

- Added an AlarmTest button on Evacuation booths: when enabled and turning the booth on, they will send a test signal to the connected alarms (so they learn to know their booth). The alarms will start to make noise for the test (to ensure proper wiring from the booth to the alarms), but no people will be evacuated. This button was very needed, because fire alarms always need a testrun before they can operate properly. But without the test button they would also start to evacuate immediately, which is of no use. Already existing evacuation booths will now also have this new Test functionality and it's always set to YES until you change it to normal evacuation mode.

- Fixed little bug in tooltips and some other small issues.

- Made covered area panels sellable, in case you deleted a booth/alarm with range indication still enabled.

Screenshot from V1.34:
Evac booth now with test button: set to YES for testing evac alarms, set to NO for normal evacuation mode:
Image

Update V1.33:
- Added support for installing a GangToSection and a SectionToGang sorter together in a medium or large control booth.

- Added Interval button for Obey, Snitch, Evac and Gang: they allow you to specify the time between sweeps. Handy for large prisons where you have several of these booths installed. Normally when you would turn them all on with a doortimer/bridge they would all activate at the same time, producing quite some lag. Now you can tweak those sweeps a bit with random intervals. Lag will not be completely gone, since scanning large areas for prisoners remains a heavy CPU task. But at least the booths won't be scanning all at once any more.

- Some more button and tooltip updates: Snitch, Obey, Evac and Gang sorting results will be shown by each booth when a sorting sweep has been done, together with a little timer indicating the next sorting sweep.

- On Snitch, Obey, Gang or Evac booths: when setting the range lower/higher or pressing the Range button, it will show the covered area. Evac Alarms will show range and which people it evacuates by using the booths' panel sprite.

- Fixed little bug in control panel order.

- Added Delete button on all panels to remove them quickly.

- Added transparent panels: when a booth is turned on/off, the display will change brightness.

Screenshots from V1.33:
Menu: all new transparent icons to be placed in the booths!
Image

Snitch sorter and obey machine: when setting the range lower/higher or pressing the Range button, it will show the covered area. The tooltip will show detailed results.
Image

Image

Medium booth equipped with 2 sorters. The example uses a solitary cell, but you could set the range to 51m and have a whole section turned into a gang, or in this case, death row...
Image

Evac Alarm / evac booth: will show range and which people it evacuates by using the booths' panel sprite. As you can see the alarm barely missed 2 sprinklers, so the range should be set a bit higher:
Image

Image

Staff pager: brighter display on active booths, dark display on inactive booths (works for all panels, also eye-candy panels!)
Image

Update V1.32:
- Test version, not released

Update V1.31:
- Temporary Workmen and Guards now have different helmets/uniforms again, so you can easily distinguish temporary staff without having to click on them.

- Fire Alarm will scan area in a square instead of a radius, and it will only scan the area the alarm is facing. So when the alarm is mounted on a wall facing left, it will ignore what's behind the wall and scan sprinklers to the left of the alarm only. This new behaviour will require to set the scanning areas on your alarms again or to hang them in a more efficient spot. See the screenshot above, showing the old and new scanning method to have a visual impression on how it works.

- Active alarms will set all doors to LockedOpen in the square range of the alarm.

- Fire Alarm will no longer trigger when a known Sprinkler is removed, instead it will remove the sprinkler from its Sprinklers List

- Snitch, Obey and Gang Sorters now also scan in a square, but the booth will be the exact centre of the square range. Use the planning tools to draw a cross with the booth in the centre, then draw a square from the cross and you have the scanned range measured out.

- Added increase and decrease buttons for range setting.

- Updated sounds.txt since PA 2.0 now fully supports modded sounds without copying that whole file into the programs folder

- Updated interface.spritebank for compatibility with PA 2.0

- Partial multi-language support where possible, so the mod can be a bit more translated. Due to the very high complexity of the script, full multi-language support will not be possible.

- Added a convenient Delete button on the booth, one click will get rid of all the installed panels, switch, dummy panel at x/y 0,0 and the booth itself of course. If you delete a booth which called temporary staff, then those staff members will be resigned within 720-1440 game minutes, so they will still stay around for a while. This is intentional behaviour.

- When a box gets loaded it will now be deleted: it used to be a pain when it looked like everything was ok but a sneaky box was loaded instead (making the booth not work like it should).

- This mod is now fully compatible with PA 2.0 NOTE: due to changes in the interface.spritebank for PA 8a, this version has become incompatible with PA 7.

Screenshot from V1.31:
How evacuation alarms scan sprinklers in a square now:
Image

Update V1.30:
- Quick compatibility fix for PA update 8a (interface.spritebank)

Update V1.29:
- Changed the menu order of the panels
- Updated the Tooltips

Update V1.28:
- Added Security level to Gang sorter. Place a panel for Red, Green or Blue gangs, place a Security level panel and have the selected security level enter the gang you want. There will be an Undo button which can be used until you exit the map. Undo will NOT be available after saving and loading the map, so be sure you want everybody to be a gang member in your prison before you save it! The gang rank is determined at random: 90% of the new gang members will be soldier, 8% will be lieutenant, and there is a 2% chance of a leader.

Screenshot from 1.28:
The whole MinSec area gets turned into a green gang:
Image
Image

Update V1.27:
- Fixed the standard Evac Alarm so it will be able to scan for sprinklers instead of spitting script errors.
- Added advanced gang sorter: place a panel for red, green or blue gangs, place a security level panel and have the selected gang members go to the security level you want.
- Some minor bug fixes in tooltips.
- Updated interface.spritebank for compatibility with the new basketball mod.
- Sound for gang sorter added.
- Change in Evacuation Area: drink machine and toilet are no longer a requirement but likely objects, so the room now only requires either an evacuation bench or an evacuation chair.
- Change in Fire Alarm settings: when you turn off the fire alarm, the known sprinklers for that alarm will be now released again and thus show the warning sign for not being monitored.

Screenshot from 1.27:
Image

Update V1.26:
- Changed the way fire alarms work. The new system is much better than any other solution. When a sprinkler starts to spray water the fire alarm will go off and start to evacuate people.
- Fire Alarm lag issue fixed by scanning a Sprinklers List instead of searching for nearby fires, so you can have an Evac Alarm monitor as many sprinklers as you wish now. Click on the alarm and let it scan the area for nearby sprinklers. It will only scan for sprinklers if you press the button, after that it will just monitor its list. If you put new sprinklers in the area you should press the button again to let the alarm add the new sprinklers to its list.
- Fixed the quickbuild room.

Screenshot from version 1.26 (note: it's not working like this any more in V1.31)
Image

A little guide on how to determine the best spot for your Evacuation Alarms: (note: it's not working like this any more in V1.31)
Draw a square of 51m with the planning tool, find the centre of it and place your alarm. Then set its range to 25m to cover the whole square.
Next, draw another square of 51m right next to the first one, to determine the next optimum spot for the second alarm, and so on.
Image



Update V1.25:

!! IMPORTANT NOTE: to get the sounds working, read the readme.txt packed in the zip file !!

NOTE: evacuation alarms scan areas and therefore cause lag when activated. Deploy them wisely, using too many if your pc can't handle it may even crash your game!
Just follow the little guide above and you'll be fine.

- Evacuation panels, Evacuation Alarms and Selective Evacuation Alarms. Place a booth with Evac panels and it will evacuate certain people in the area to the booth when it is powered on. Can be linked to a Selective Evacuation Alarm elsewhere in the prison, to evacuate people from there over to the booth. In that case: wire the switch from the booth to the evacuation alarm(s) elsewhere.

- You can also place normal Evacuation Alarms which will evacuate people to all designated areas (= booths with corresponding evac panels), but they will head back to what they did if that booth wasn't powered on... Not sure which type of Evac Alarm to use? Take the Evac Alarm Selective, it's the better choice of the two.

- Evacuation panels in a booth will animate when active.

- Added sounds for Evacuation Alarm and booth: a siren will be audible when zoomed in at the area where an alarm has been activated.

- A control alarm will be audible at the booth so evacuated people will still know the alarm is active, they will stay at the booth until the alarm is turned off.

- A nice Fire Alarm has been added as well into the Evacuation Alarms. In case of a fire, it will sound differently and evacuate people to the booth it's linked to, no matter if that booth triggered the alarm with its power switch. The booth itself doesn't have a fire alarm. It would be a bit silly to send people over to a booth which surroundings are on fire...

- Fire Alarm functionality will by default be turned OFF, since this feature will have quite an impact on the CPU. With more than several alarms placed around in a large prison where they will cover a huge area together, the scanning for nearby fire objects will produce lag, no matter what. So it's advised to only turn the Fire Alarm ON at a few alarms that really need it, like in a kitchen or nearby power stations where there is water around. The setting can be turned off / on with a button. NOTE: lag issue fixed in V1.26.

- Added new need called Evacuation, this will only be available on fresh prisoners, but the evacuation should still work (be it less well) on older prisoners, since this mod is also affecting Safety needs.

- Prisoners will be evacuated to a new room called Evacuation Area when the Evacuation Alarm or the Fire Alarm is targeting them.

- Added Evacuation Area to the Quickbuild menu.

- Added new room icon, with compatibility for several mods which also modify the ui.png

- Buttons to change the Range for Obey, SnitchSorter and Evacuation. You can specify whether it should do it's work at 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 or 50 meters. This can be handy to evacuate a small kitchen for example, without having nearby rooms being evacuated as well.

- Buttons to customize Obey and SnitchSorter: you can now set the desired levels MinSec, Normal, MaxSec, SuperMax, Protect or DeathRow for specific targeting of prisoners. For instance: you can target only MaxSec prisoners at a shared yard to be suppressed while other prisoners won't be (and thus doing their jobs and reform stuff better).

- Sound for SnitchSorter: it will now give a nice sound effect when somebody has been moved to Protected Custody.

- Sounds for Workers on Call: you will now hear phone calling while the calling job is activated.

- Sounds for Obey: those guys go nuts under suppression. Hearing all kinds of whispering voices in their heads. Poor bastards.

- Buttons to change Control Panels and Display Panels will now load immediately (instead of a random time) after a saved game has been loaded.

- Added more useful debug info in the tooltips for booths. In case of Evac, Snitch or Obey panels loaded, tooltips will show the range it operates on, and show a message when a prisoner has been targeted.

- All scripting has been removed from the Utility Panel and merged into the booth script, resulting in massive performance improvement. Instead of having 2 objects scanning for things, this has now become 1 object, so in theory the performance gain is 50%. I also noticed by coincidence that all summoned staff would check every 5-10 seconds if their booth still exists - this semi useless very cpu consuming task has been altered to check every 6 to 12 game hours instead. So if a booth or staff panel has been removed without firing the staff connected to it first, that staff will now stay around working in the prison for a maximum time of 12 hours before they get fired. With many booths and staff around in a prison, this new version is therefore noticeably faster.

- And probably some more things which I forgot to mention... See post below on extended information about evacuating prisoners.

Screenshots from version 1.25:
Tooltips on booth: Image and the new Evacuation Alarm: Image
Image
Image
Image

Update V1.24:
- Added Cooks, Doctors, Janitors and Gardeners on call.
- Removed workmen and guards sprites, this version is only using default staff sprites. So a bit less variation but more compatibility. Also smaller sprites file as a result.

Screenshot from version 1.24:
Image

Update V1.23:
- Added a new utility panel called OBEY - Activates the secretly implanted RFID chip your prisoners got at Reception to make them more compliant. Works in a 10 meter range.
- No other changes, fully compatible with V1.22
- If you should encounter problems with workmen sprites, then either try to reorder your mods, or simply get version 1.21 which holds all workman/guard sprites.

Update V1.22:
- Using a smaller sprites.png to save precious space for other mods. By borrowing guards and workman sprites from People.png it saves a lot of space. I could chop the sprites.png to about half the size it used in V1.21, so if you encountered problems with sprites from other mods, then maybe this version could help you. Otherwise there is no real reason to upgrade, both versions work the same.
- If you should encounter problems with workmen sprites, then either try to reorder your mods, or simply get version 1.21 which holds all workman/guard sprites (but may mess with other sprites due to bigger size). (Man this all sux).

Update V1.21:
- It should work fine now after a saved game has been loaded.
- Added a reset button to the booth: if there is a panel glitch just press the button and it will scan the booth again. Seems to solve the issue in most of the cases.
- If you load a saved game and want to change display panels, just wait a bit before the Change Display panel button reappears.
- Adjusted the price of all panels and booths.
- Polished the tooltip text everywhere.
- Added a thumbnail for the mod.

Screenshot from version 1.21:
Image

Update V1.20:
- added buttons to control and display panels so you can now more easily change the images for a booth.
- incompatible with prior version due to insane code freaking and optimizing.


Update V1.15:
Ok.. One last little update was needed.
- Guards, workmen and dogs now get spawned just in front of the booth, to hopefully prevent getting stuck in the booth when you spawn a lot of them.
- Also removed a relic snitchsorter panel from the productions.txt which was no longer defined.

Update V 1.14:
- (to get rid of number 13)
- Changed the helmets of the temporary workmen to grey for more contrast with normal workmen, so you can tell who's who without clicking them.

Update V1.13:
- No more need for connecting a power switch to the panels! Connection problem has been solved.
- Just place your panels and turn the switch On or Off to activate/deactivate the panels in a booth.
- NEW: Release the hounds! A special booth panel developed by someone called Mr. Burns: it allows you to release the hounds with the press of a shiny button! Place the booth in the far end of your prison, to make sure the dogs have something to eat on their way to the exit. NOTE: this panel works slightly different than the other panels: it will turn the switch Off after the dogs are released, so combining this panel with workman, guard or snitch panels in a medium or large booth is NOT a good idea. However, putting 2 or 3 dog panels in a bigger booth should be no problem (as long as the game time is not set to Fast or Fastest).

Minor update V1.12:
- Moved comments out of object definitions, the debugger didn't like that and I noticed it just after v.1.11 was uploaded...

Screenshot from version 1.12:
Image

Update V1.11 with big changes:
- Medium and large control booth added: load up to three utilities in one booth
- Panels will now show 'Booth required' until placed into a control booth
- Snitch sorter update time fixed
- Snitch sorter will now show 'OFFLINE' when the power switch is off
- Pager panels will now show 'CALLING' when workers or guards are called
- Guard and worker panels now retrieve a value from the pager panel mounted next to it in order to know how many staff should be spawned
- Guard and worker panels will now show 'NO Pager' if there is no pager panel loaded next to it
- Chopped guard and worker panels in half and designed pager panels for x10 x20 x50 and x100 for general use.
- In fact, all display panels are chopped in half as well so they now look neat in the menu.
- Added magic to allow a nice toolbarsprite for the control panels which are bigger than 1x1 tiles.

Note: due to slot limitations the large booth can only hold two control panels. This is because all 8 slots are used, but it would need 9 slots to fully load this baby up.

Version 1.0:
- initial test release
- incompatible with newer versions
Last edited by murgh on Sat Oct 08, 2016 12:03 am, edited 102 times in total.
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Re: [MOD] Customizable Control Booth

Postby murgh » Sun Mar 13, 2016 8:50 pm

Coding done, photoshopping done, markers done, so I guess it's time for you to play around with it!

Updated version 1.12 is now available for download at http://prison-exchange.com/browse/mods/ ... ol-booths/
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Re: [MOD] Customizable Control Booth

Postby murgh » Thu Mar 17, 2016 10:33 pm

Oh yes baby.

Image

Version 1.14 is now available for download here!

Changes:

- Changed the helmets of the temporary workmen to grey colour.
- No more need for connecting a power switch to the panels! Connection problem has been solved.
- Just place your panels and turn the switch On or Off to activate/deactivate the panels in a booth.
- NEW: Release the hounds! A special booth panel developed by someone called Mr. Burns: it allows you to release the hounds with the press of a shiny button! Place the booth in the far end of your prison, to make sure the dogs have something to eat on their way to the exit.
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Re: [MOD] Customizable Control Booth

Postby murgh » Fri Mar 18, 2016 1:51 pm

Ok.. One last little update was needed. Guards, workmen and dogs now get spawned just in front of the booth, to hopefully prevent getting stuck in the booth when you spawn a lot of them. Also removed a relic snitchsorter panel from the productions.txt which was no longer defined.

V1.15 is final (for now), I can't think of any more things it would need at the moment. Feel free to leave suggestions for future updates though, also if you see possible ways to make the coding a bit more efficient without braking it, that would be cool. Enjoy!
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Re: [MOD] Customizable Control Booth

Postby murgh » Sun Mar 20, 2016 11:49 pm

I think I said V1.15 would be final. Oops. How wrong. I couldn't resist to find better ways to code this mod. So I did. In fact, I went totally berserk on it and improved it in many ways I couldn't imagine before.

This script will blow your mind!

- You can place three different booth sizes from the utilities menu as before, but now they will all be deleted as they will spawn one single control unit, which on its turn will either show a small, medium or large booth. Sorting out how the markers work for an object with three different sized SubType sprites was massive. Three different sized booths are all using the same 6 slot markers, coding was insane but fun to find out. And the best thing is: it works!

- I also took out most of the intelligence from the panels and put that into the booth instead, where it should belong in the first place. The booth script can sort out things in a more efficient way than a panel could before, so it's using far less GetNearbyObject calls. Only when it's really needed it will scan the area, otherwise important values are just being moved from one to another object. This means the script can update a bit faster now, so response times from where a call is placed and the call actually happens has also been reduced.

- Control panels are no longer available in the menu, they will now spawn onto the booth directly with a random image. You can click on the control panel to change the looks by pressing a button, so it will scroll through the available sprites.

- Shiny display panels can still be bought, but only one for left and right side of a display. This makes the utility menu much cleaner. Same here: a button now controls which sprite you want to see, so you can adjust the looks way more easily.

The whole thing has been documented where needed for future reference. Where other people say 'don't steal my code', I will tell you: if you need to, be my guest and make good use of it for your own inspiration and future mods. Learn from it as I learned from it while coding this mod and improve it to make even better mods yourself! Copyright was invented in a period in history where it was needed, but nowadays this ancient relic only holds back evolution in technology and knowledge. It should be banned from this world. At some point giving me credits would be nice in return if you reuse any of my code.

Download V1.20 now and have fun!
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Re: [MOD] Customizable Control Booth

Postby murgh » Wed Mar 23, 2016 5:55 pm

Hmm, seems I totally forgot to write the utilitybooth settings to the saved game, so it acts strange upon reloading a game. Expect an update coming for it soon.
I also adjusted pricing and tooltip messages (utilitybooth will tell in its tooltip what it thinks it has loaded) and added a nice Reset button for the issue with glitching panels.


Edit: the little bug after a loadgame has been fixed. I'll do just a bit more of testing with the new version 5 of the game plus some more editing on the tooltips to make things pixel perfect before V1.21 gets released.
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Re: [MOD] Customizable Control Booth

Postby murgh » Fri Mar 25, 2016 7:40 pm

Ok, version 1.21 is out in the wild! Enjoy and don't forget to give some feedback if you like or dislike. Fresh ideas for panels are also welcome!
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Re: [MOD] Customizable Control Booths [V1.21 stable]

Postby murgh » Wed Mar 30, 2016 11:32 am

Version 1.22 is out - using a smaller sprites.png to save precious space for other mods. By borrowing guards and workman sprites from People.png it saves a lot of space. I could chop the sprites.png to about half the size it used in V1.21, so if you encountered problems with sprites from other mods, then maybe this version could help you. Otherwise there is no real reason to upgrade, both versions work the same.

See viewtopic.php?f=88&t=50923 to check on how I borrowed sprites from People.png to make this possible.
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Re: [MOD] Customizable Control Booths [V1.23 stable]

Postby murgh » Mon Apr 04, 2016 11:11 pm

Yes, new stuff keeps coming!
A 4th utility panel made its way to the booth: OBEY - Turn on the switch to activate the secretly implanted RFID chip your prisoners got at Reception to make them more compliant. Works in a 10 meter range.

- No other changes, fully compatible with V1.22
- If you should encounter problems with workmen sprites, then either try to reorder your mods, or simply get version 1.21 which holds all workman/guard sprites.
Last edited by murgh on Tue Apr 05, 2016 11:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [MOD] Customizable Control Booths [V1.23 stable]

Postby rsdworker » Tue Apr 05, 2016 12:43 am

very nice
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Re: [MOD] Customizable Control Booths [V1.23 stable]

Postby murgh » Sun Apr 17, 2016 12:16 am

rsdworker wrote:very nice


Thanks.
Happy to announce V1.24 is released, now with cooks, doctors, gardeners and janitors on call as well!
murgh
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Re: [MOD] Customizable Control Booths [V1.24 stable]

Postby murgh » Sun May 08, 2016 11:22 pm

Regarding the evacuation of prisoners:

Only fresh prisoners will have the new Evacuation needs. But the mod still works with older prisoners (be it less well), since it is also affecting Safety needs.

Best way to deploy the Evacuation Alarms around in the prison:
Use the Planning tool to draw a 51m square, then pinpoint the exact centre of that square to place an Evacuation Alarm. Set its range to 25m and it will cover that square area. Then draw another square, touching the outer lines of the first one, so you know where the second alarm should be placed without overlapping the first alarm. This way you will notice you don't need so many alarms to cover quite a large terrain. On a large map with a bit of land expansion, I had to use about 6 alarms to cover a big area. This gave a lot less stress to the system than putting an alarm around in every workshop/cellblock. Of course it looks cooler if you have a dozen alarms hanging around everywhere, but you don't really need that in order to have a big place evacuated.

Evacuating staff is easy: just use the type of staff panel in the evac booth you desire, connect its switch to an alarm and pull it. Staff will immediately evacuate. Even cooks who are making meals will leave the kitchen and forget about cooking until they don't hear the alarm any more. Evacuating prisoners requires a different method, since they are stubborn as hell and normally don't move on your commands.

When the Regime is set to Freetime, prisoners will leave everything they did and rush over to the Evacuation Area, and they will stay there for about 45-50 minutes. If you want them to stay longer at that area, simply place a booth with an evacuation panel for prisoners over there as well. It can be but doesn't have to be the booth which triggered the evacuation alarm in the first place, as long as you turn the booth on so it can keep the prisoners around. It's good to have 2 Evac booths: one to enable all Evac alarms in the prison for a few seconds: since they produce lag, it's advised to only turn that booth on for a short while, until the Evacuation needs went berserk, then turn it off again. And a second booth at the evacuation area which is set to a short range to cover the room in order to keep them there.

Prisoners will stay on their bench or chair for hours and hours if you wish. The evacuation needs will go up and down and safety will peek, but it will always be calm in the evacuation room. It's a good idea to have two armed guards or some normal guards stationed there. The only thing they do is sit still and whine for evacuation until the alarm has been turned off. No fights. When the alarm is turned off it will take 45-50 minutes for them to completely satisfy their needs. Then they will stand up and go back to what they want to do. If Sleep time starts while they are sitting in the Evacuation Room, they will stand up and go to sleep, even if their evacuation needs are still sky high.

WARNING: when enabling the Evacuation Alarm on a time when they cannot full-fill their needs, prisoners will go ape shit after a while. For instance: it's Yard time and 5 minutes later it's Eating time. Pull the alarm 5 minutes before eating time and they will start to complain that they want to evacuate already after a few seconds, but they are bound to stay in the yard and will still go to the canteen to eat - since the Regime turned out to be All Mighty and there seems to be nothing that can be done about it. When finished eating, the temperature has risen a bit already, and prisoners will start crying for safety and evacuation and start to run around anxiously in the canteen.

When the hour of Eating time is finished, they will rush over to the Evacuation Area as fast as they can. If they have stolen anything in the Canteen and a Metal Detector went off while they are rushing, they won't even stop to be searched. Guards will have to grab them from an Evacuation Bench because they are all running, not caring about anything else any more. Fights might have broken out during this rushing, even with a couple of deaths as a result. It all looks quite funny though, some gang members fighting while a horde of other people try to run them over. :P Almost everybody will make haste: even fat Legendary prisoners will desperately want to evacuate (and start recruiting people at the evacuation area). I've seen only about 4 out of 100 prisoners don't care a fuck about anything and still go to Work or do a Reform Program instead of immediately choosing to satisfy their massive needs for Evacuation... But as time goes by even these stubborn ones will go to the Evac room to calm down, when others have already finished a long time.

I've tried about every trick I could think of: using jobs, production rules, reform programs, but messing bigtime with their Needs gives the best results. A production rule with Entity didn't work out (cooks got carried by cooks to the evacuation area, gardeners by gardeners, guards by guards, workmen by other workmen, and the list goes on... but not prisoners by guards and sadly also not prisoners by other prisoners grrr.). Reform programs didn't work out (armed guards would be standing there teaching, but the 'students' would come an hour or two or five later to finally do their Mandatory(! ffs) evacuation program while the prison burned down...). Jobs, well, they would only be done during Work time anyway, not even trying. I even tried loading all slots on the evacuation benches with prisoners and linking all the id's, to no use.

Set the Regime to Freetime, or pull the alarm a few minutes before a new Work Regime gets active should give the best results. If you sound the alarm when Eating time is about to end and it's 3 hours of Work coming up with an hour of yard time afterwards, you can in theory hold them for three hours at the Evacuation Room before divine intervention from the Regime will make them to go to the yard no matter what. So you will have to play around a bit with your regime settings in order to get the results you desire. UPDATE: ok I found out that by killing their current jobs, they will also immediately abandon the workshop when the Evac Alarm goes off. They will either go to their cells first and after a short period to the Evacuation Room if the regime is still Work, or they will immediately head over to the Evacuation Room if you have set the current hour to Freetime while pulling the alarm. Only people on Reform programs will stay reforming, unless you cancel that reform. So it seems this is as good as it gets, unless somebody comes up with another workaround. I also tried the Withdrawal option on the evacuation needs, which seemed to be the only other way to make prisoners leave anything they do - but besides everyone puking and heading to their cells, that was about it what they would do. No evacuation would happen... This mod gave some hard time thinking about stuff to make it work.

- Compatible with 1.24, this new version 1.25 is to be released soon!
Last edited by murgh on Mon May 16, 2016 12:36 pm, edited 20 times in total.
rsdworker
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Re: [MOD] Customizable Control Booths [V1.24 stable]

Postby rsdworker » Sun May 08, 2016 11:32 pm

looking great i will use that system so its will be on steam workshop or i need download?
murgh
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Re: [MOD] Customizable Control Booths [V1.24 stable]

Postby murgh » Sun May 08, 2016 11:36 pm

rsdworker wrote:looking great i will use that system so its will be on steam workshop or i need download?



For now only available at http://prison-exchange.com/browse/mods/ ... ol-booths/
Have fun, it's a cool mod and I had a great time creating it!
murgh
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Re: [MOD] Customizable Control Booths [V1.25 stable]

Postby murgh » Sun May 15, 2016 10:44 am

Ok, version 1.25 is out in the wild, have fun!

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