[Suggestion] A few ideas from an old PC games dev

[( )vertkill]

(Note: Post edited from another forum, brought here by suggestion)

Hi there gang!

So far, I'm diggin this game. Smile

Dialog Menu's:

I am not sure if its been suggested, but it seems like the Objects and related dialog's could use a tabbed layout for the items, based on the type of room you are building at the moment. This would also give you more space to add other objects and items to the game easily. Also related, would be enabling the use of scroll bars in those dialog windows, plus reducing the size of the icons and the spaces between them somewhat.

Having worked in the security electronics market in the past who dealt with design challenges and the surveillance & access control side, there are tons of things that could be added... Barricades, watch towers, barred walls (instead of traditional walls), forcing guards to marked guard stations for security around door areas and camera monitor stations (maybe a context comes up when right clicking on someplace you want to send the guard(s), Guard, patrol, escort.. I saw mention of a guard armory, which is a grand idea since prisons do have them.

Other bugs: Sinks appear to be floating, and some objects cannot be rotated yet (washing machines and a couple others).

Some ideas (that may or may not have been suggested):

1. Not sure here, but multithreading for multicore CPU's.. To help reduce the lag that ensues after a while of game play. May be planned or implemented, just thought I would throw it out there. The lag appeared even on my I7 3930k 64GB, Geforce 590 Classified machine. Also, I am not sure if this game was planned to be cross platform to Android or whatever, but many portable devices are now multicore. Bolded for importance with a larger prisons. (Please Please PLEASE?!?!!

2. Visitors Entrance: The front door of the facility. Can't have visitors entering through the loading/unloading area. Smile

3. Configurable hot keys: Would help immensely when building and what not.

4. Security Chief: He really should get out of the office to rally his troops. Maybe they don't wander so much when he's around and walking the floor... (the boss is watching)

5. The game should not unpause the clock after you save a game. It should probably remain the way the user sets it. So if a user sets the game to pause prior to saving (I know the game does this for stability during a normal save), it should revert to the user's setting.

Additional areas/items that could be added:

- Recreation area instead of "common area." Further refinement that defines the zones.
- Class rooms. Educate those pesky inmates, so they don't come back.
- Prison Library complete with inmate jobs to distribute those naughty magazines and raunchy romance novels to the population. This might also work as a form of recreation for those who aren't working there.
- How about a prison chapel and priest in the build tree (Bureaucracy). Last rights for the electric chair... Also alternate means of execution would rule too... Lethal injection room, firing squads....
- Prison Jobs to work in the kitchen and on the prison grounds.
- Defining certain routes that the work crew should use through a prison instead of having your workmen hoof it through the morgue or the kitchen with whatever they are shlepping. This might also be something to assign areas and routes that prisoners "should be" following while working or going to the visitation areas.
- Guards should probably escort prisoners to visitation, but this might get tricky if too many people show up to see their favorite jail bird.
- The ability to build hexagonal structures (per the inverted castle design common with the newer super-max prisons), etc. I'm pretty sure the last won't be in this game, based on how things work in game to date, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. Smile
- Multi-floor buildings (Offices and cell blocks). Here they (prisons) come in absolutely HUGE sizes.
- Plexiglass separated visitation areas (I can think of a few comical cartoon drawing ideas there), you get the idea. (PM me if you want the full idea, its not PG-13)
- Multiple inmates to one cell, 2 to 3 maximum like most prisons, otherwise its a holding cell.
- Player addable content. Some of us old school PC games developers and many skilled users love to mod their games with custom content. This greatly extends the life cycle of your software.

I'll think more about it as I have more time to play this killer game. As simple as it is, its fun as Hades to play.

Thanks for a very fun game to play, from a former PC games Dev.

-Overt.

[Spectre Incarnate]

Hi! Welcome to the dev forum!
Actually, most of these ideas are already on the suggestion list or are planned. I don't know the details of every single one, though.

- Prison Jobs to work in the kitchen and on the prison grounds.

They already do!

After researching delpyment, open the deployment layout and click jobs. Add prisoners to rooms with jobs with a click, and right-click to remove. You need to do this for the laundry room so prisoners don't get upset about dirty clothing. The other prison jobs are not required, but workshops give you tons of income, cleaning closets will reduce the need for janitorial staff, and the kitchen will reduce the need for cooks and prepare food for lots and lots of inmates very quickly.

The kitchen has a little problem, though. The prisoners assigned there will occasionally go to the delivery area to grab ingredients and once they're "outside", they will make a break for it!

[Daiky]

I would move that point 1 to the very end of the list. I've you're a former game dev, you must have heard about premature optimization.

[( )vertkill]

They already do!

After researching delpyment, open the deployment layout and click jobs. Add prisoners to rooms with jobs with a click, and right-click to remove. You need to do this for the laundry room so prisoners don't get upset about dirty clothing. The other prison jobs are not required, but workshops give you tons of income, cleaning closets will reduce the need for janitorial staff, and the kitchen will reduce the need for cooks and prepare food for lots and lots of inmates very quickly.

Aye, I do understand the jobs system, but was thinking more in adding the kitchen to the job model. Regarding trips to the docks to get the ingredients, shouldn't these ingredients be moved to an indoor storage room prior to anyone getting them? (as with real life).

I would move that point 1 to the very end of the list. I've you're a former game dev, you must have heard about premature optimization.

Developing an multithreaded application or game isn't the same thing as code optimization. This is something that should be done in the design phase. Optimization removes bloated code (for simpler/faster/leaner code) and removes a lot of debug information. A big difference. Also, my team was virtual world creation and also a couple teams of artists, not programmers. All the same, we worked directly with them in developing our in house tools + game features and bug fixing after our side of the projects were complete (we play tested after our side of the project was completed). So we do know a thing or two about all aspects of games development as we were involved in every step, as was the whole company. The logic being that: Sure our various departments had our assigned tasks. However we all had to know something about the project as a whole, in regards to the many phases and what other departments were developing, along with their various phases and processes to work best as a team. We would work together to help each department make their goals happen and they for us. It makes for a well rounded development crew that openly communicate between one another. Communication and assistance between departments being the key to producing a great product. We certainly had the know how.

The guys and gals at Intorversion had my repect from the beginning. They seem like a bunch of forward "outside of the box" thinkers who love what they do! Their videos sum this up nicely. I would be honored to work with such a team as theirs.

Thanks for reading....

-Overt.

(Sorry for the long winded answer, but I felt like some explanation was needed.)

[henke37]

Optimization does not in general remove debugging information. Sure, some specific optimizations (usually done by the compiler) can complicate things, but they do not remove debugging information.

[Lolloler]

- Player addable content. Some of us old school PC games developers and many skilled users love to mod their games with custom content. This greatly extends the life cycle of your software.

+999.

Also, Steam Workshop can help bring this user created content better/faster to the players.

[Vereor]

Just want to put my +1 forward for the optimisation point.

However it's important to consider that at this point in development it wouldn't be the low-level optimisation (and thus, obfuscation) of code that many people think about, it's the high-level algorithmic optimisation that can be done early on and not be premature.

If I create a new large prison and lay foundation for one building covering the entire plot of land, PA becomes unplayable (2-3 frames per second). I have a 3930K (12 effective cores) w/ 64GB ram and a GTX 680, for reference.

On a final note, I love PA