[Suggestion] Bring back staff-only door setting

[perryliu97]

I'm not saying that the staff-only deployment zones introduced so many alphas ago should be removed, it's just that I sometimes don't want prisoners using certain doors, despite wanting them to be in that area.
For example, I want prisoners to be able to work in the kitchen, but I don't want the others to go through the kitchen just to enter the canteen, because that is just a recipe for disaster.
The staff doors right now don't do that, since prisoners still want to go through the door, but while wasting guard's time unlocking them.

What do you think?

[HeroFV]

I agree. I have very similar suggestions to this.

[Suggestion] Traffic, area and staff control options

I think this would accomplish what you're saying.

[perryliu97]

I agree. I have very similar suggestions to this.

[Suggestion] Traffic, area and staff control options

I think this would accomplish what you're saying.

Wow! Those are brilliant suggestions!

[HeroFV]

Well I thought so, but no one has said anything on it

I figured some people felt like I was trying to take credit for some of them. I tried to clearly state that they all aren't mine. Some of the original places I've seen them either weren't "proper" suggestion threads or were sort of vague. I tried to elaborate on them and give enough information on the suggestions to make sense of exactly how they would be used/implemented.

[Meeeps]

with the current path finder penalty system it is already possible, I didn't play with Alpha 16 that much but with alpha 15, prisoners rahter go around a room then through it to enter another room, how does your layout look?

Also how should a prisoner enter a room with staff-only doors?

Edit2: also it is possible to simulate a staff-only door with current system, simply create a small "air-lock" room as staff-only before

[HeroFV]

with the current path finder penalty system it is already possible, I didn't play with Alpha 16 that much but with alpha 15, prisoners rahter go around a room then through it to enter another room, how does your layout look?

Also how should a prisoner enter a room with staff-only doors?

Edit2: also it is possible to simulate a staff-only door with current system, simply create a small "air-lock" room as staff-only before

What do you mean path finder penalty system?

Well if prisoners have access to the room but there are staff doors then they should be going through the doors you want them to. The purpose is to control traffic, right?

[planettop92]

Well I thought so, but no one has said anything on it

mostly because there's been several suggestion threads about it already and people who had something to say already said it (no one really likes repeating themselves) it's appreciated if you can update the wiki: http://devwiki.introversion.co.uk/pa/in ... uggestions so people, who hasn't yet voiced their opinions and have their own ideas and want to discuss it, can find it.

with the current path finder penalty system it is already possible, I didn't play with Alpha 16 that much but with alpha 15, prisoners rahter go around a room then through it to enter another room, how does your layout look?

Also how should a prisoner enter a room with staff-only doors?

Edit2: also it is possible to simulate a staff-only door with current system, simply create a small "air-lock" room as staff-only before

What do you mean path finder penalty system?

Well if prisoners have access to the room but there are staff doors then they should be going through the doors you want them to. The purpose is to control traffic, right?

For your first question: I think Meeeps means the path-finding when prisoners have contraband on them and don't want to be penalized....?
For your second, yes; that is the purpose of this thread. It doesn't answer Meeps question though:

Also how should a prisoner enter a room with staff-only doors?

edit: I would expect prisoners to either riot, wait at a door, or spaz out due to failure of path-finding.

[HeroFV]

Well I thought so, but no one has said anything on it

mostly because there's been several suggestion threads about it already and people who had something to say already said it (no one really likes repeating themselves) it's appreciated if you can update the wiki: http://devwiki.introversion.co.uk/pa/in ... uggestions so people, who hasn't yet voiced their opinions and have their own ideas and want to discuss it, can find it.

with the current path finder penalty system it is already possible, I didn't play with Alpha 16 that much but with alpha 15, prisoners rahter go around a room then through it to enter another room, how does your layout look?

Also how should a prisoner enter a room with staff-only doors?

Edit2: also it is possible to simulate a staff-only door with current system, simply create a small "air-lock" room as staff-only before

What do you mean path finder penalty system?

Well if prisoners have access to the room but there are staff doors then they should be going through the doors you want them to. The purpose is to control traffic, right?

For your first question: I think Meeeps means the path-finding when prisoners have contraband on them and don't want to be penalized....?
For your second, yes; that is the purpose of this thread. It doesn't answer Meeps question though:

Also how should a prisoner enter a room with staff-only doors?

edit: I would expect prisoners to either riot, wait at a door, or spaz out due to failure of path-finding.

I didn't realize I could edit that page. Thanks.
There are suggestions on that page that haven't been made or suggested in that depth, though.

I also didn't realize that prisoners would take another path with contraband. I didn't understand his question.

[planettop92]

I didn't realize I could edit that page. Thanks.
There are suggestions on that page that haven't been made or suggested in that depth, though.

your welcome. and yeah, people tend to forget the wiki's made available to everyone who's participating in the alpha. also, no one really wants the tedious and menial job of looking through all the new suggestions that pop up in the forums everyday and updating the page accordingly. ideally, people should read the viewtopic.php?f=43&t=21233 post, but they can't even be bothered to do that >.>

[jodev]

For your first question: I think Meeeps means the path-finding when prisoners have contraband on them and don't want to be penalized....?

I need to kill some time, so maybe in this context it might be interesting to explain pathfinding penalties a bit? This is a simplified (read: not completely how it works in code) explanation, but it should get the general idea across. Suppose we have nine tiles as below:

Code: Select all

+---+---+---+
| A | B | C |
+---+---+---+
| D |XXX| F |
+---+---+---+
| G | H | I |
+---+---+---+


The tile with XXX represents a wall, all the other tiles are empty and have the same surface type (grass, concrete, whatever...). Suppose a prisoner is currently standing on tile D and want to walk to tile F. Using just these nine tiles, there are two ways to go about it: through tile B or through tile H. If the game would not allow diagonal movement, it would take four steps to do so (ABCF or GHIF). Let's assign each step a score of one. So it four points to go from D to F.

Now suppose we have the same grid, but we replace the empty H grid with an obstacle:

Code: Select all

+---+---+---+
| A | B | C |
+---+---+---+
| D |XXX| F |
+---+---+---+
| G | # | I |
+---+---+---+


The obstacle add a penalty to the movement score. For example, the surface type is slower to walk on (grass vs concrete for example) or the prisoner really want to avoid the tile if there are better alternatives. For example, a prisoner carrying contraband will not want to use a metal detector if he can avoid one. Let's add the penalty score (let's assume a penalty of 1 in this case) to the walking score. In this case, going from D to F using B still has a score of four points (no penalties are applied). However, going through H now has a higher score (5) due to a penalty being applied. Pathfinders always take the route that has the lowest score, so you will see prisoners take the B route.

Metal detectors carry a very high pathfinding penalty for prisoners that have contraband. Prisoners happily take a much longer route to get to the other side of the detector if they can do so without going through one. As long as the penalty for walking around is lower than the metal detector, they will. In another practical scenario, always have faster walkable pathways in yard, especially if your laundry guys happen to go through the yard for example. They will then use the paths and cross the yard much quicker.

Note that all of the above is for the most clean situation. Depending how prisoner AI is programmed they may randomly screw up and do take the metal detector route. From a programming view, such screwups are deliberately added assuming the pathfinding works correctly.

[planettop92]

oh, so I was kind of on the right track. is there a difference between "penalties" and "weights" then, or are they just aliases of the same concept?

[jodev]

oh, so I was kind of on the right track. is there a difference between "penalties" and "weights" then, or are they just aliases of the same concept?

It would depend on how you define weights. If you assign a number to each square where a higher number means less attractiveness / movability / whatever you want to call it to walk on, then they are basically the same thing. But like I said, my description above is extremely simplified. I basically explained why pathfinding takes a certain route and not another, but didn't explain how it actually determines the route. I used the word penalties because I think it makes sense to most people.

The more accurate term would be movement cost, though that actually covers a bit more than I explained. If you really like to read up on it in technical depth, do a search for "a* pathfinding".

P.S. I feel like I kind of hijacked this thread... sorry about that...

[Meeeps]

And we all just guess, because this is proprietary software. So until we don't get official feedback from devs, use this as a example how it might work.

[xander]

oh, so I was kind of on the right track. is there a difference between "penalties" and "weights" then, or are they just aliases of the same concept?

The theory of pathfinding comes from graph theory, which is a part of discrete mathematics. Each square on the map can correspond to a "node" or "vertex" in an abstract graph. If it is possible to go directly from one square to another (i.e. if they are right next to each other), then there is an "arc" or "vertex" connecting the vertices that represent those squares. Hence the entire map can be represented by a graph in this manner. Alternatively, the dual graph (where squares are edges and paths from one square to adjacent squares are vertices) may be used.

In either case, the "weight" on an edge represents the cost of using that edge in a path. From an abstract point of view, the weight is just a number. In the example of path-finding, you can think of it as the sum of all of the penalties and bonuses assigned to a particular path. For instance, concrete tile might incur a bonus for speed, but a metal detector would incur a penalty if a prisoner has contraband. The total of all bonuses and penalties is the weight assigned to a particular edge.

Hence a penalty isn't really the same thing as a weight, though the two are related. And, of course, this all depends on the exact implementation in code---I can only speak from a pure mathematics point of view, and discrete math isn't my field, so even then, I won't claim that the above is a perfect explanation.

xander

[planettop92]

hmm, I think I have a better understanding of it all now. So going back to the subject of this thread, would an easy way to implement this suggestion be to increase the penalty of tiles with staff doors to be higher than those of metal detectors? That way, prisoners will prefer to go through metal detectors than staff doors, and it will also answer Meeeps question:

Also how should a prisoner enter a room with staff-only doors?

the prisoner will go through staff-only doors only when they have to in order to get to the room.