Prison Architect Alpha 29

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Chris
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Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby Chris » Fri Jan 30, 2015 12:24 pm

Alpha 29 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 haven’t already done so, please register your game here to gain access to the builds, the private forums, the bug database and the wiki.
http://www.prison-architect.com/register

Here is our video demonstrating the new features:



Parole
All prisoners are now granted a parole hearing when they reach 50% of their sentence, and another at 75%.
To facilitate this you must build a Parole Room, and start the Parole Program.

- A parole hearing requires the Warden, the Chief, the inmate, and in the inmates lawyer.
- At the end of the hearing, the board will make a decision and the inmate may or may not be released early.
- The decision is based on their estimated re-offending chance (viewable in their rap sheet).
- Under the Policy tab there is a new slider that governs how lenient your parole board will be
- Inmates who are denied parole may become angry, and may even attack the parole board staff

- Financial rewards : If a prisoner is paroled early and does not re-offend, you will receive a bonus of $3,000.
If he does re-offend, you will be fined $10,000
This occurs the moment the prisoner leaves the map


- NOTE: Inmates must be able to navigate to the parole room. Eg Staff Only won't work.
- NOTE: Only one parole hearing can happen at a time, because the Warden and Chief must be present.
However you can have multiple parole rooms in different security zones,
and your Warden/Chief will move around as required.

- New failure condition : You will be fired if too many Wardens are killed in your prison
- New failure condition : You will be fired if too many paroled prisoners re-offend after early release


New room : Chapel
About one third of your new prisoners now have a Spirituality need
Build a Chapel (Multi-faith-prayer-room) to give them a place to pray.

- New furniture
Pews
Prayer mat
Altar

- New reform program : Spiritual guidance.
A religious leader from the community will visit your prison, and talk to your prisoners.
This will instill in them a sense of calm, which affects not only them but also those around them.
Prisoners may attend this program as many times as they wish.


New room : Library
Around one third of your new prisoners now have a desire to read books,
for education, curiosity and entertainment.

- New furniture
Library Bookshelves
Librarian's desk

- Boxes of used and donated books will be delivered to your prison once you have a library.
- Employ prisoners in the library to sort these boxes of books and place them on your shelves.
(Prisoners must have the "Foundation Education" qualification before they can perform this job)

- Prisoners can visit the library and borrow books.
- Prisoners will read in their spare time, wherever they are sitting - library/canteen/cell etc.
- Returned books must be re-sorted onto the shelves
- Books wear out and become ruined after a while, and more will be delivered

- Note: Boxes of used/donated books may be used to smuggle contraband into the prison, so plan accordingly


Parallel Deliveries
Trucks will now load and unload in parallel, so long as they are aligned with a Delivery/Exports/Garbage zone when they stop.
Extend your Deliveries zone vertically so you can unload 2 or 3 or even more trucks simultaniously.
Trucks now cope better with multiple Deliveries rooms (and Garbage/Exports rooms)
Trucks now move 50% faster


Mod warning window
Many prisons now use mods to enhance the game, adding furniture, materials, programs etc to the core game.
This causes problems when you attempt to load those prisons without the mods being enabled.
From now on, upon loading such a prison you will be shown a list of all mods that were used to make the prison
If these were Steam mods, you can easily click on each required mod and auto-magically download and activate it
If they were not steam mods, clicking the mod will open a browser to a URL where you can download the mod
Note: This will only work for prisons saved with alpha-29 or later


- World time index now stored in double precision
This only affects prisons that have been running for hundreds of game days
This caused visual bugs such as extremely jerky animation, slow moving particles etc


- Navigation improvements
- Entities will no longer attempt to navigate through "Remote Doors" that don't have a powered Servo attached,
as those doors cannot possibly be opened by anyone.

- Entities will wait at a locked door for 30 seconds. They will then attempt to find an alternative route.
This alternative route may well be longer, but will avoid the door they are stuck on.

- Fixed : Deployment scheduler doesn't always update live deployment (until end of hour)


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blipadouzi
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby blipadouzi » Fri Jan 30, 2015 1:22 pm

Spectacular update guys... Kudos. It's too bad you didn't cover the mod alerts in the video, but oh well. Really amazing stuff.

Thanks :D
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby gpgekko » Fri Jan 30, 2015 1:28 pm

Library, parole and staff that finally takes the staff door instead of blocking gates? Best update ever! :P This should also fix the annoying/hilarious situation of a guard assigned to a station waiting in front of a remote door that is controlled by said, unmanned station...
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby rokkr » Fri Jan 30, 2015 1:42 pm

I'm not sure about the ipad and console thing... Please finish your base product before you start with the ipad version.. And PA on a console with all the micromanagement and building and so on?


Edit: The update of course if fine... :D Libraries and chapels are long overdue.
Last edited by rokkr on Fri Jan 30, 2015 1:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby knoest26 » Fri Jan 30, 2015 1:47 pm

I'm also not really feeling the iPad and console versions. This seems like something to do after the release of version 1.0 . The update looks good but please reconsider porting to other devices during a different time period
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby CJH » Fri Jan 30, 2015 2:01 pm

knoest26 wrote:I'm also not really feeling the iPad and console versions. This seems like something to do after the release of version 1.0 . The update looks good but please reconsider porting to other devices during a different time period


I totally agree, please consider ipad and other console releases after the pc/mac/linux versions are done!

And don't dare ending PA without gangs being input first xD.

Otherwise nice new inputs!
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby MouldyK » Fri Jan 30, 2015 2:20 pm

Console would not work for the game...unless it's for Wii U!

Wii U PA would be sweet!
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby Arailies » Fri Jan 30, 2015 2:53 pm

Oh no, you left out not only the "jedi" religion but you missed out the pagan,norse and zoroastrian religions.

Also before you "finish" perhaps you can satisfy the gaming communities feminist views by incorperating both male and female gender prisoners and staff.
The sprites shouldn't be to complex AND it would allow our female gaming community to actually want and use the face in the game !!!!!!!!!
:arrow: Furthermore, perhaps to further help speed up unloading of trucks, have a road side crane to unload/load building materials/ containers for import and export?

Bro goth agan tasow, dha fleghes a'th kar!
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby ElSalvaje » Fri Jan 30, 2015 2:57 pm

Pretty cool update guys!

Parallel deliveries and alternative routes should be great improvements. We all wanted that I think. The library and multi-faith-prayer-room looks very nice! And I very much love the thought you've put into the parole system. Seems very well thought through to me. Can't wait to see how this will work out in my prison!

Will you guys do me one favour? Never ever really finish this game! Just give us every month a new update video introducing new features for the rest of your lives haha! I've read so many good suggestions for this game in the forums. Seems to me that this game shouldn't be finished ever. Just keep it a continuous project. :mrgreen:

Now if you will excuse me, I have a lot of work to do... *downloading alpha 29*
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby Arailies » Fri Jan 30, 2015 3:06 pm

ElSalvaje wrote:
Now if you will excuse me, I have a lot of work to do... *downloading alpha 29*


:mrgreen: indeed :twisted: they will never get parole :twisted:
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby ElSalvaje » Fri Jan 30, 2015 3:23 pm

Arailies wrote:
ElSalvaje wrote:
Now if you will excuse me, I have a lot of work to do... *downloading alpha 29*


:mrgreen: indeed :twisted: they will never get parole :twisted:


Hahaha! That's dark! Just build a parole room with the only purpose to agonize your prisoners by never giving them actual parole. They all deserve this! You bunch of no-good hoodlums! :twisted:
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby Nicotin » Fri Jan 30, 2015 3:43 pm

For everyone interested:

If I'm not mistaken, to not make any loss in the long run your "parole cutoff" should be set to maximum 23%.
At this percentage you will make 0$ in the long run.

If you want to make money set it to something below.
If you want to make your prisoners happy but loose money set it to something higher.

Formular to check my calculation: (1-p) * 3000 + p* -10000 = 0
If I'm not mistaken this should be correct
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby VoiD88 » Fri Jan 30, 2015 5:18 pm

Nicotin wrote:For everyone interested:

If I'm not mistaken, to not make any loss in the long run your "parole cutoff" should be set to maximum 23%.
At this percentage you will make 0$ in the long run.

If you want to make money set it to something below.
If you want to make your prisoners happy but loose money set it to something higher.

Formular to check my calculation: (1-p) * 3000 + p* -10000 = 0
If I'm not mistaken this should be correct

You didn't consider that not granting parole will keep you the prisoner grant ;)

Yay, update sounds amazing, I think I'll even start up a new prison for it again (haven't played since A25 :P).
Also this is the first time I've seen my Face in the Game prisoner make a brief cameo appearance in the Alpha video xD However, I am sort of wondering as to why he was wearing his civilian clothing while borrowing a book from the library, he should've donned his prisoner uniform before that...
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby WiseWoodrow » Fri Jan 30, 2015 6:58 pm

Though the rooms are sound, how they work concern me. I don't think i'll like the idea of the parole rooms.

In my prison, I have an average of less than 30k due to building. If I get fined 10k per unlucky prisoner, I can very easily go down under. But you see, if paroles are something I generally have to get done, then that's problematic. I either set the rate really low, and risk warden death (3 wardens and game over, apparently, making this extremely worse if I don't realize a super-max has just entered the parole room.)
or I set it high and go bankrupt. I think, with "84 prisoners awaiting parole" in the video, this is a bit outrageous of a number - they all get released? You're rich! They all get denied?

You literally cannot dig yourself out of that 800k debt you'd have.
If anything the numbers need nerfing. I sort of don't even want to start my save game to avoid having to deal with potentially all my prisoners rushing to a parole room.


And with the Chapel, are all prisoners religious, or just some? I'd hope they have a "religious" flag in their information, because that'd make the most sense. If they all just flock to the chapel no matter what, than you aren't paying as much detail as you think you are. But I assume you did indeed make some religious and some not, after the library, I'm going to now hold you up to that detail standard ;)
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Re: Prison Architect Alpha 29

Postby LennyLeak » Fri Jan 30, 2015 8:04 pm

I'm really happy that this patch brought new rooms, but I'm not really sold on the reward/fine aspect of parole.

As a PC player I am also unhappy about the iPad thing. I would hope for the game to be 1.0 before going for conversion.

The most important thing for me though, is that there are just 2 features left that I really feel like I need before I want to play this game a lot: gangs and multiperson cells. I understand that these a major features, but every month I hold my breath when the patch comes out, and every month I am disappointed that these things are not added or even talked about. Now I have to wait two more months before I can hold my breath and hope to see those features - and most likely be disappointed again. I so wish these features would be addressed so I knew the status on them and when to expect them. IMO they are really the only important things that are still missing.

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