(Suggestion) Freehand planning.

[Kal Imist]

Hello, this is my first topic, I searched around with some different terms but can't find anyone's brought it up yet but if so I apologise in advance.

Seems small but could open up a lot of options.

Does anyone remember a little game called defcon? It had this awesome feature where you could free draw your battle plans on an overlay of the world map and was quite responsive to the mouse. If you had a pen tablet it was even more fun. Now, granted, most of my battleplans ended up looking like Randy Marsh's predictions of global warming but I'm just childish like that. The point is I've often wanted to make a quick note on the screen (this block, med sec, 50 cells) for example, that could be brought up and added to as part of the planning overlay (as in add this to whats already there or give it its own overlay). Not only could it help in remembering what you were building, you could leave notes about things for quick reference such as circling things you wanted to remove, alter (I mostly build new bits of the prison at night time as my workers are often in a constant antline from deliveries to workshop to exports during the day). Sometimes think of stuff I want to build later and have to make notes in pencil and paper format, so:

Pros: Help in planning and prison management

Cons: Might add to lag and people will be tempted to draw body parts

[xander]

Does anyone remember a little game called defcon?

Heh.

I can't tell if you are being funny or not, but on the off chance that you weren't aware, Defcon was created by Introversion, the same company that is building Prison Architect. Many of us remember is, and a few people even still play it. ;)

xander

[Kal Imist]

I can't tell if you are being funny or not

Words fail me

Many of us remember is, and a few people even still play it

good I'm not alone

[Kal Imist]

Sorry just reread that and realised I'm being unnescessarily sarcastic, to clarify I was trying to be funny, obviously failed, and am sorry, love Defcon and still play. Anyway, care to drop your two pennies about freehand planning, you must remember how useful it is/ was in Defcon.

[xander]

Sorry just reread that and realised I'm being unnescessarily sarcastic, to clarify I was trying to be funny, obviously failed, and am sorry, love Defcon and still play. Anyway, care to drop your two pennies about freehand planning, you must remember how useful it is/ was in Defcon.

While it is hard to convey subtlety via text, I may simply have been dense. At any rate, I laughed, first, then realized that it might be offensive if you had *not* been joking. I tried to hedge, and overcompensated. ;)

That being said, a lot of people have complained that it can be difficult to keep track of what rooms are supposed to be what in the planning tool. I like your idea of a freehand tool in the planning menu, as this would allow the player to label things in order to keep track of what is going on. I would be better than requiring separate tools for each type of material, object, etc which some people seem to have argued for in the past.

xander

[Kal Imist]

So refreshing when people are straight with each other on the interweb.

Thinking more, I'd say should realy be a second overlay so you can erase it without erasing plans for buildings and vice versa.

[Kunovega]

Sorry just reread that and realised I'm being unnescessarily sarcastic, to clarify I was trying to be funny, obviously failed, and am sorry, love Defcon and still play. Anyway, care to drop your two pennies about freehand planning, you must remember how useful it is/ was in Defcon.

While it is hard to convey subtlety via text, I may simply have been dense. At any rate, I laughed, first, then realized that it might be offensive if you had *not* been joking. I tried to hedge, and overcompensated.

That being said, a lot of people have complained that it can be difficult to keep track of what rooms are supposed to be what in the planning tool. I like your idea of a freehand tool in the planning menu, as this would allow the player to label things in order to keep track of what is going on. I would be better than requiring separate tools for each type of material, object, etc which some people seem to have argued for in the past.

xander

I always mark the objects in the room as I do the building plans. This way I don't forget what rooms are what. I know what shapes of clusters of blocks I use to mark each type of object setup for the rooms and none of them match each other

Or if you dont want to do object for object planning you can just use the object blocks to spell initials for each room

Or use the pathing tool to spell letters; the outlines dont seem to be removed for pathing marks until you take them off yourself

[aw_hockey]

just an idea, but since there is a "room" section, you could at least put a 3x3 block of whatever it is you want to put in each building you plan out. costs you nothing, and aside from setting a storage, nothing gets moved around. it doesn't have to be 3x3, if you can read the words when its smaller than that, then go right ahead and make it smaller, and if you need to make it bigger then do that instead. its not like theres a cost associated to setting a room down

[pieslife123]

You cannot insert indoor only room in the planning stage, before you have built foundations.
That is the main problem, but a sensible one realistically.

I would also like to see a slightly more advanced planning system please.
Perhaps it could also include wiring planning and an ingress/egress tool which will tell you the rate of traffic flow over whatever square.

This would be really useful when planning high traffic areas such as the canteen, although the AI traffic seems to need some modification to make something like this work correctly.

[Kunovega]

You cannot insert indoor only room in the planning stage, before you have built foundations.
That is the main problem, but a sensible one realistically.

I would also like to see a slightly more advanced planning system please.
Perhaps it could also include wiring planning and an ingress/egress tool which will tell you the rate of traffic flow over whatever square.

This would be really useful when planning high traffic areas such as the canteen, although the AI traffic seems to need some modification to make something like this work correctly.

rate of traffic would currently be meaningless, the width of doors and hallways has no effect on movement speed and the prisoners can all occupy the same spaces. there is nothing controlling movement speed other than the tile type they are walking on

[xander]

...the width of doors and hallways has no effect on movement...

That really isn't correct. If you watch a large number of prisoners all trying to leave a room at the same time, you will note that they clump up because only a certain number can get through a door at any time. I am also fairly certain that high densities cause the freedom need to go up (that is, it seems like this is what is going on, though I am not sure how to collect really convincing data).

xander

[Kal Imist]

A lot of this discussion would be helped by freehand planning, you could make notes on areas you notice to be high traffic etc, arrows to show what direction the prisoners move, that sort of thing.

[Pallemaker]

A free-hand drawing tool would be great!

For those of us that recieve regular criticism for our hand-writing, it might be possible to implement planning tools such as text boxes and arrows (strongly inspired by the battle planning tool of hearts of iron 3: http://static2.gamesrocket.com/ga/image ... 3f2e2f.jpg), though free-hand drawing certainly sounds simpler to implement.

[pderuiter]

Great idea. Allow for boxes, ellipses, arrows and text and you have all the tool you really need. Put it on a separate overlay that you can always show, even when setting up patrols. Having different colors would be nice but not neccessary.

[ThtCooperFellow]

I'm all for this idea.