knoest26 wrote:Sure you could get Prison Architect to work on a console but let's think about placing an object for example (quite a vital part of PA).
You place objects based on a grid and the most common way to navigate through that would be the D-pad or analog stick where a flick to the right would switch your cursor one square to the right. So let's try this out, open your console and type this sentence into a search bar somewhere: "This kind of movement is fucking slow and annoying".
You could also allow a kind of free aim so you could just flick your analog stick in the direction you wish to go but since joysticks have massive deadzones this would be even worse.
Come to think about ... XBox-One'rs could resort to Kinect--could even be healthy sport: imagine a 20-minute swimmin-in-the-air session just to try to zoom into a specific room by waving your arms, and then juggling your hands to select an area and going through the varioues sub-menus! Amazing ... Possibly the Kinect-API could be expanded upon so that it will recognize when the player holds special houseold items in his hands (spoons, forks, ecc.) as an indication that he is working on a specific feature. I can easily visualize myself in the center of my bedroom, in front of a table fool of spoons, forks, sticks, and similia, "orchestrating" my prison to the Kinect!
Else, IV could come up with some new hardware contoler, some kind of wi-fi tablet which interacts with lego-like building blocks. PA could ship with a box of 500 prisoner pawns (in different colors, according to security regime), 100 guards, a few dog handlers plus all other pawns needed (warden, ecc.). It "might" increase the cost of the final game, but it would surely be a deterrent to piracy (and to the purchase of the game also).
If consoles producers were a bit broader minded they could have invested some more energy on touch-screen compatibility also. Like 3D monitors/Tv, touch-screen is another screen technology which is gradually becoming more frequent. I mean, consoles have long-market-lifes, you still find many people with PS-2. Distinction between home-tv and monitors is gradually fading away with new graphics cards. Touch screen technology does work well with many game genres (puzzles, card games, ecc.), and the Android/iPhone market realized that and capitalized on it. I have a 3D tv, but there are very few 3D games out there for consoles. Of course, 3D gaming is more demanding on the hardware, but usually it only requires lowering the rendering standard a bit. last generation consoles don't even have much of a hardware limitation. Well worth implementing 3D in games -- in my opinion.
One of these days I must try PA on my netbook, to see what I can get out of using the touchscreen. Just curiosity.
When I think of my XBox I think of it as a dedicated thing for playing heavy games which I wouldn't like to clutter my PC with. It's just a means of separating work from play. Games like PA are not invasive nor heavy, so I can use them on my working PC. For all the rest (FPSs, ecc.) I clutter the console.
But I agree: consoles are not better in hardware then custom gaming PCs, nor cheaper. There are many advantages in having a console-released-game though, after all consoles are specific for the end of gaming (no AV or OS updates background interference, ecc.). I was expecting that new generation consoles would have been 128 bit ! This not being the case, I don't really see a great revolution. The big issue is that consoles have small harddisk---XBox 360 gives me a 500Gb hard disk, which is small by any standards for gaming. New generation consoles seem to "improve" on that limit, but just about it. Custom PC at least don't limit such choices as disk-space.
)