We need a cook's deployment option NOW!

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jlcame
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We need a cook's deployment option NOW!

Postby jlcame » Mon May 04, 2015 9:41 pm

This is sooo over discussed on the interweb and yet it seems so simple to make. This should be a priority for the dev's to make!
Don't get me wrong, i've started playing A32 for almost a week now (i stopped playing at A13 or A14) and i must say, the dev's and contributors should be proud of themselves, this version is SO much bug fixed and innovative and i love it.
Back to the issue, one kitchen and one canteen for a big prison (300+ inmates) is a no-no for me. I like to segregate and make logical builds and schedules that works best. Like multiple kitchens and canteens. Now... if i have, for ex, 3 same sized kitchens and canteens with the same amount of kitchen stuff, thats easy, the cook's will just split up. But sometimes fail at STAYING in theire place, like running to one kitchen to another to check the rat soup and pigeon eggs. But a practical prison will have, at least for me, different size kitchens and canteens.
At first, i got lucky, i had three major canteens and one small for MaxSec and somehow, they worked fine, but since i hadded a protective ones with a new kitchen, opposite to the others canteens place, it screw it up completely. Some stuff is ignored that cant be ignored everywhere. Putting the same amount of cooks to cookers will not work and it is ubber expensive.
It would be so intuitive, logical and practical to just assign cooks the same way you deploy guards to the kitchens i desire. Honestly, if the dev's make this masterpiece of a game, how hard it is to make this happen? This is like, the ONLY thing that makes my head boil in rage. The rest of the game is good to perfect.

A little bit off-topic. Is this game supposed to be somehow heavy on CPU? My Toshiba Qosmio (good gaming laptop) will start to vent fast and hot playing PA. Not even FSX, or COD or heavy games like that will speed my fans like this. It won't over heat thought. It will just heat up to like... 75%. And i don't like it. I love my PC and CPU too much to get cooked when i play PA hours straight making me pausing every couple hours and exiting the game for a while. Call me paranoid, but i protect my stuff. My good stuff.

Thank you so much for the attention and making PA one of the best i've played.
5hifty
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Re: We need a cook's deployment option NOW!

Postby 5hifty » Mon May 04, 2015 11:00 pm

Your PC will automatically shut down if it gets hot enough to do damage. If it doesn't do that, it's fine.

As for the actual suggestion - I brought this up about 15 seconds after they released the alpha that let you control laundrys. I don't know why they haven't done it. There seemed to be a pretty standard Introversion lack of direction/focus/endgame initially in the development of this game, and somewhere around alpha 25-7ish they had a minor, but important shift of focus. Intially everything was presented as 'you build it, the game will 'run ' the prison', but when Johnny came in there was a slight shift in focus to letting the player control some of the background decisions (eg laundrys). I honestly think they should have just ran with that and put pretty much everything into the users hand - most choices that the game makes are horrible at best and down right stupid at worst.

Rant over - more directly on topic jobs of any type should be allocated the same way prison jobs are and dependant on the regime timetable the same way guard patrols are - eg:janitors work here at X times. X many cooks here at Y times
jlcame
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Re: We need a cook's deployment option NOW!

Postby jlcame » Mon May 04, 2015 11:27 pm

I know it wont cook my CPU... duh
But i'm a fail preventive, kind of love giver user to my beloved PC. And i hate seeing it vent like a oven. Even if its normal. At-least, for long play marathons.
The point was: This game is actually heavier than real heavy games are heavy on the computron. Possibly due to the massive, kind of inefficient programming the game rolls.

As for the rest, i agree with what your saying, give us all the macromanaging or give us tools to manage the macromanage, thats what i think.
Although this cook deployment is the only major problem left in the game in my opinion. And should get patched ASAP.
5hifty
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Re: We need a cook's deployment option NOW!

Postby 5hifty » Tue May 05, 2015 1:58 am

jlcame wrote:I know it wont cook my CPU... duh
But i'm a fail preventive, kind of love giver user to my beloved PC. And i hate seeing it vent like a oven. Even if its normal. At-least, for long play marathons.
The point was: This game is actually heavier than real heavy games are heavy on the computron. Possibly due to the massive, kind of inefficient programming the game rolls.


Eh. its because of the mass amounts of path finding that has to be done. Even a standard RTS which is normally pretty CPU intensive only ever has 100-200 individual pawns paths to determine, while this game can have possibly thousands of pawns, each requiring their own pathfinding and constant updating on their needs. That said, yeah it isn't that well optimized, tho you should have seen it before Johnny done his sweep
Image

jlcame wrote:As for the rest, i agree with what your saying, give us all the macromanaging or give us tools to manage the macromanage, thats what i think.
Although this cook deployment is the only major problem left in the game in my opinion. And should get patched ASAP.


I could rattle of plenty more that needs to be done other then just the cooks - hell the cook gripe barely registers on my radar - it is far from done. I was actually quite surprised when they said they were releasing this year - I mean it makes sense timeline wise, this is year 4(5?) of development - but the game still feels very bare boned, short on features and desperately lacking in depth. One of my biggest gripe is the lack of feedback. Any game of this genre relys heavily on feedback data - data that can be easily reviewed, sorted and filtered. The current needs bars tell me very little - knowing that some prisoners are pissed about clothes doesnt help if I don't know who they are, and where they are. Also, as I said, depth - prisoner have very little minds of their own. What happens in your prison is determined solely by the majority view point, individually the prisoners are blank slates. The trait system was a great starting point, but without anything else to it, it all just gets lost in the noise. Currently the only variance is PC and SM prisoners - there is bugger all difference in holding a volatile Max Sec or a regular Min Sec (aside from, in my experience, the Min Sec being more likely to tunnel).
jlcame
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Re: We need a cook's deployment option NOW!

Postby jlcame » Tue May 05, 2015 5:38 am

Well, i don't believe path finding and needs should be so heavy while theres other games that do similar and in much bigger scale, and they wont overuse it so much like this. Personas has either a random or a destination, and its set one time before its blocked or reached. But, then again, what do i understand of programming, its out of my understanding. But i still have my common sense thought.
I do agree that some extra feedback would be nice, but this dosent grind my gears like the cooks problem does... Im telling this because, this is the one thing that completely ruins my game experience while other things are complementary, i can play just fine with the current feedback, most because each prisoner tells me his needs if i put my mouse over his persona and i can play with that. And for ex, when they are in lock up, it allows me to map problems, like, laundry.
But i can't enjoy if my cooks wont stay in their God established place and forgets stuff. Just like some nasty bug preventing me from enjoying the game unnecessarily.
And yeah, i've notice that MinSec tend to tunnel all the time, is there a way to stop the wooden pick axe flow?
kommo1
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Re: We need a cook's deployment option NOW!

Postby kommo1 » Tue May 05, 2015 11:48 am

All games of this genre are like that. There is no architecture game, that doesnt struggle with the performance. DwarfFortress, Gnomoria, PrisonArchitect. And its always because off the dozens and dozens off little AI that needs to be handled. Its nothing new. in DwarfFortress the FPS-death is an actual way to lose... not that we needed a reminder, that this diabolic game only excists to fuck us.

As for the suggestion.
Just send the cooks to the kitchens you want them to be, during free times. Just like the doctors they tend to stick to that kitchen. The only cooks that realy always return to a specific kitchen are the ones who are tied to a reform programm.
jlcame
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Re: We need a cook's deployment option NOW!

Postby jlcame » Tue May 05, 2015 11:46 pm

I give up playing while this cook problem isint fix. Really F annoying. They just wont do what i want. Even send them there, they'll just leave and go do nothing on the other kitchen.
metalbunny
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Re: We need a cook's deployment option NOW!

Postby metalbunny » Fri May 08, 2015 8:18 am

I find that if you have cooks keep running back and forth between kitchens, then you don't have enough cooks. My big prison is built up to 375 cells with four kitchens and 38 cooks (because the game is horribly inefficient at assigning jobs). The only times I see them run off is when they go to get more ingredients. And because I have different meal times in different blocks, when they're done cooking in one kitchen they go to cook in the next (which is neat and I didn't know they could do that)..

The right number seem to be about one cook for every 2 stoves, and then a few extra to compensate for having 20 miles from the kitchen to deliveries.

I feed 75% of my prisoners at each meal time (3 times a day), and I honestly think that's more important than how it's done.
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Ric666
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Re: We need a cook's deployment option NOW!

Postby Ric666 » Wed May 13, 2015 10:37 am

kommo1 wrote:All games of this genre are like that. There is no architecture game, that doesnt struggle with the performance. DwarfFortress, Gnomoria, PrisonArchitect. And its always because off the dozens and dozens off little AI that needs to be handled. Its nothing new. in DwarfFortress the FPS-death is an actual way to lose... not that we needed a reminder, that this diabolic game only excists to fuck us.


Factorio runs like a dream. I'm still amazed that they manage to get that running so damn smoothly!!
I know you don't actually construct buildings but with the items and the conveyors/robots going everywhere, I simply do not know how they do it :o


On topic, the more control I can have the happier I'll be. A big +1 from me.
Echo51
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Re: We need a cook's deployment option NOW!

Postby Echo51 » Wed May 13, 2015 1:25 pm

jlcame wrote:A little bit off-topic. Is this game supposed to be somehow heavy on CPU? My Toshiba Qosmio (good gaming laptop) will start to vent fast and hot playing PA. Not even FSX, or COD or heavy games like that will speed my fans like this. It won't over heat thought. It will just heat up to like... 75%. And i don't like it. I love my PC and CPU too much to get cooked when i play PA hours straight making me pausing every couple hours and exiting the game for a while. Call me paranoid, but i protect my stuff. My good stuff.

Thank you so much for the attention and making PA one of the best i've played.



Enable vsync by forcing it in your graphics control panel so the game only runs 60fps, else it just runs as many frames as it can, and since it's 2d it can easily get all GPU's fully loaded.
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CumpyLustard
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Re: We need a cook's deployment option NOW!

Postby CumpyLustard » Sat May 16, 2015 12:30 am

My prisons seem to be able to handle about 2 or 3 kitchens, but they really start to struggle past that. Which is unfortunate, because my latest kitchen and canteen were meant for my max sec wing, and those guys really like to freak out when they aren't fed.

This is brought up all the time and I imagine they try to improve it every update. Hopefully it will keep getting better.
Zombi3HeroBrin3
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Re: We need a cook's deployment option NOW!

Postby Zombi3HeroBrin3 » Sun May 17, 2015 2:12 am

hmm well you make a valid but there is one problem with it...THE DEVS DON'T KNOW HOW TO ADD THIS :evil:

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