Introversion

The idea just sprung to me when I saw a topic about having multiple floors where I thought, if you cant have two or more floors (due to not being able to see both floors at the same time which would be quite distracting) can you have two or more tiers of land! So you could have a prison cell block on one tier, lets say the lowest, and then a hill next to hit, with a cell block on the highest tier, and in between you could have a slope and on each side of this hill. Then you could have a lake or a river, getting it into negative tiers now, so its basically a level system to make hills or lakes on! I've drawn a very basic diagram here...

. . . . ___ = Example of hill (Ignore the dots)
___/. . . . \__
__[___]_ = Second level (Kitchen canteen etc)
_______ = First lower level of land (Road would be at this level)
~~~~~~~ = Bottom level of land (water level)

So that's my suggestion. I really think this would be a very awesome feature to add and would definitely open the game up, you could get prisoners swimming and escaping through rivers, stuff like that. I really hope this gets added into the game and I'm sure you would all like to see it to. So yeah. Terraforming, Woo!

~Jack :-]

What would be the purpose of hills? Rivers and the possible water escape work for me, I just don't see the use of hills.

I believe this turns into a 3d game, which IV stated it WILL be a top down format.
Also I believe that it has been suggested sometime before.

yos233 wrote:What would be the purpose of hills? Rivers and the possible water escape work for me, I just don't see the use of hills.

Well if you're going to let people lower land to make rivers etc, why not just let them raise it as well? The hills wouldn't be functional really aside from the possibility of bridges (again delving in to that multiple-floor ruling), only just for aesthetics and maybe to cordon off a specific area of your prison, like offices, on a hill which would make it stand out more.

The difference between lakes/rivers and hills is that the lakes and rivers can be drawn on the same level as everything else with their own properties. If you add hills then you have created a z-level, whereas Prison Architect was and is designed to be a 2-d game.

It can still be 2-d, you could just add a speed debuff for the slope of a hill.

But how do you display it so that it's unquestionably a hill and not a random texture so the play can tell at a glance relative height?

christopher1006 wrote:But how do you display it so that it's unquestionably a hill and not a random texture so the play can tell at a glance relative height?

Shading at the bottom end of the hill, more light at the summit.

That works well until night hits.

Why would you need to understand where a prisoner is running at during night?

If there's a hill and a prisoner is making a run for it then I would rather know the hill is there to send my guards around rather than slog up the hill only to find the prisoner sprinting down the other side already. Also it'll be annoying to not see why I can't build when the game notices I'm building a foundation on top of a hill and extending it over the lower terrain.

Hmmmm….. I see your point, but what is your point? Are you telling me you DON'T like it when the game behaves erratically and un-balanced?

Depends, in this case though, no.

Soon....
Joe



Hehe