New updates

[affilius]

Hello, i would like to ask a question about the future update. So, when do you guys plan it and will it include the multi-core fix? The game is so goood... but having around 400 prisoners max, because of immense performance drop is really bringing it down. Thank you

Affilius

[YMS]

As the developers tend not to answer such questions or give any details about upcoming updates, you'll probably have to live with what information the community can try to give you:

The next update was announced to come "before the end of the month" in yesterday's mail. According to Mantis' changelog it will actually contain some bugfixes again (update 1 did not contain any, update 2 only 2, for update 3 it's counting 17 currently). Two of them are classified as performance issues (e.g. 0010370: Extreme low FPS with many idle prisoners"). However, both have been identified as the same issue (too many logs piled in the storage rooms). If that is the issue for your prison, too, the update may help.
The much-supported multicore request is not among those closed cases. This does not mean that they won't improve multicore utilization in this very release, it's just not very likely.

[rstd2]

IN addition, it seems that the devs will be adding guard towers soon, as they have a rough code set up for it, and more skins/UI.

Also, (although I doubt it will come soon, considering how long we had the other story stuff in the game before release) I found a bunch of unused polaroids in the files, which look like they might be for a new chapter or two.

[VoiD88]

I have to admit that I hate that specific bug report. Not the bug itself (I'll get to that) but the report, especially the name of it: "Game uses only one core of CPU". This is simply not true anymore since Alpha 15, when Johnny Knottenbelt put the navigation on a second thread. Since then, the game DOES use multiple cores, so this bug report should have been either closed, or at least renamed.

Secondly, it is not really a "bug" in the sense of the word. It's more of a "not yet managed to do this" thing. Optimization of code is probably the most F***ING hard thing to do in programming, that's probably why they haven't completed that specific job yet.

That said, I think IV's done a good job at optimization so far. Note that I don't say "great job", just a good job. They've done some nice code optimization already, especially in the aforementioned Alpha 15 (go play Alpha 14 or any earlier version for a while and you WILL notice the difference), but I do agree that a prison with 350+ prisoners runs too slowly. Now, whether they will ever be able to fix it, I can't answer that. As I said, code optimization is really hard and "just throwing more threads at it" as some people on these forums have often suggested as a "simple fix" is neither a thing that can be done with a few extra lines of code nor will it magically solve all the problems.

I DO hope that they find I way to improve performance some more, I'm just not holding my breath until then. I always design my prisons for 300-400 inmates from the start and that makes it run OK once I finish.

[affilius]

Hey guys, thank you all for your replies. I know, that multi-threading is a real bitch to solve, just wondered, what time i should expect it (or which update).

thanks again

Aff

[TheNob]

IV should have just take some of the XBOX release budget to hire someone who can fix these performance issues for a product they've already sold. It is so ironical that they now use similar practices like the big studios: why fixing a already sold product if you can just sell a "new" one(for another platform).

But thank god they introduced heatpipes.

[TheNob]

Thank you for the performance fixes with Update 5.