March 2014 poll : What next?

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What should we focus on next?

Poll ended at Thu Apr 03, 2014 6:47 pm

Bug fixes - eg AI errors, crash bugs, game glitches, broken content
181
11%
Performance enhancements - permitting higher capacity prisons at high FPS, with less frame lag
94
6%
New and different starting conditions - eg existing broken jail / harsh landscapes
48
3%
New 'Mid game' content - eg new grants / staff / weapons / rooms / furniture / jobs / reform programs etc
445
27%
New simulation systems - eg drug abuse / gangs / complex injuries / weather + seasons
494
30%
The 'End game' - ie Parole / re-offending / victory+failure conditions / game-over events / score
148
9%
Please stop adding new systems, and improve/finish the existing systems first
58
4%
Campaign mode - ie illustrated story chapters like the introduction with written characters and dilemmas
63
4%
Better mod support - eg support for community created game objects, staff etc
35
2%
Game balance - rebalancing of all prices, timers, systems etc, so the game is challenging and fair
61
4%
I want everything above - and my vote will therefore be ignored
12
1%
 
Total votes: 1639
JSD
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Re: March 2014 poll : What next?

Postby JSD » Fri Jun 06, 2014 9:25 am

acegamer08 wrote:is it me, or do they not even pay attention to the polls. for example, the 2 winners are the mid game aspects (adding new items and such)...but it looks like (at least on my screen from the two bold options) they will work on performance and bug fixing, as oppose to the two winners (percentage wise) midgame and sim systems.


Yes, they do. But as said in the last Alpha video; they don't want to go silent for god knows how long during the "Beta" period just for bug fixing. This is just a month bug fixing. (You seen Mantis? There are a LOT!) Believe me, they leave plenty of bugs untouched :wink:
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Re: March 2014 poll : What next?

Postby acegamer08 » Fri Jun 06, 2014 4:50 pm

JSD wrote:
acegamer08 wrote:is it me, or do they not even pay attention to the polls. for example, the 2 winners are the mid game aspects (adding new items and such)...but it looks like (at least on my screen from the two bold options) they will work on performance and bug fixing, as oppose to the two winners (percentage wise) midgame and sim systems.


Yes, they do. But as said in the last Alpha video; they don't want to go silent for god knows how long during the "Beta" period just for bug fixing. This is just a month bug fixing. (You seen Mantis? There are a LOT!) Believe me, they leave plenty of bugs untouched :wink:


its not beta...not yet.
i know its a month of fixing bugs instead of adding bugs (features).
i posted that before the last alpha came out....
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Re: March 2014 poll : What next?

Postby quasicoltd » Mon Jun 16, 2014 9:47 pm

The "stop everything and fix the serious bugs" approach was badly needed, alpha or not. The existing features simply couldn't be tested because the bugs were so bad. It sure was nice to add the rehab and education programs, but the fact your prison would decay into anarchy because of the bugs meant you couldn't even get far enough in the game to test them out! The major game breaking bugs are apparently 75% hammered out and it shows in a big way to those of us play testing the bugbash builds.

As the code increases in size and complexity bug fixing becomes much harder. Better to squash them early. More devs should take the mini-beta-in-alpha approach. The old method is clearly outdated. Just look at all the AAA titles out there that are released with more bugs than a crack house.
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Re: March 2014 poll : What next?

Postby VoiD88 » Tue Jun 17, 2014 7:49 am

quasicoltd wrote:The "stop everything and fix the serious bugs" approach was badly needed, alpha or not. The existing features simply couldn't be tested because the bugs were so bad. It sure was nice to add the rehab and education programs, but the fact your prison would decay into anarchy because of the bugs meant you couldn't even get far enough in the game to test them out! The major game breaking bugs are apparently 75% hammered out and it shows in a big way to those of us play testing the bugbash builds.

As the code increases in size and complexity bug fixing becomes much harder. Better to squash them early. More devs should take the mini-beta-in-alpha approach. The old method is clearly outdated. Just look at all the AAA titles out there that are released with more bugs than a crack house.

Which game breaking bugs are you referring to? I'm still playing the "unfixed" Alpha 21 (I don't use steam) and I'm running 260 prisoners (more to come once I get the time to play again) with no problems. None of the bugs that I occasionally see keep me from playing.

Also, what makes you think it would get harder to fix bugs in a few years time as opposed to now? It will take more time because there will be more bugs, sure, but it won't be harder to fix them.

Quite the opposite is true: New features WILL break old ones, that's an inescapable fact in software development and has already been seen several times over the course of the Prison Architect Alpha. If they tried to keep the program bug-free all the time while developing it, we won't be seeing the finished product until the mid 2020s, and they would end up having to fix the same bugs over and over again.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against bug-fixing in general, if there's a truly game breaking bug, I'll be as happy as everyone else when they adress it quickly (which they did in several previous releases), and I'm not against a "bugfix month" every now and then, but don't expect them to keep PA bug-free until it's released.
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Re: March 2014 poll : What next?

Postby xander » Tue Jun 17, 2014 4:05 pm

VoiD88 wrote:Which game breaking bugs are you referring to? I'm still playing the "unfixed" Alpha 21 (I don't use steam) and I'm running 260 prisoners (more to come once I get the time to play again) with no problems. None of the bugs that I occasionally see keep me from playing.

To be fair, there are some major game-breaking bugs that don't effect everyone. The inability to understand paths with accented or non-Latin characters comes to mind, as well as problems with certain graphics cards and displays (I think that high resolution displays may be a problem?). Granted, these are probably not what quasicoltd was talking about, but they are real problems. ;)

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Re: March 2014 poll : What next?

Postby Pachinko » Sat Jun 21, 2014 3:10 am

The one feature that keeps coming to my mind when I play PA is that I'd like more control over which prisoners belong in which cells. I'd like to decide where each prisoner - or ar least each class of prisoner - goes, because I'd assume that higher risk prisoners would be more likely to try to escape from their cells, and should therefore be placed in cells which are more secure, or located farther from an escape point.
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Re: March 2014 poll : What next?

Postby xander » Sat Jun 21, 2014 4:49 am

Pachinko wrote:The one feature that keeps coming to my mind when I play PA is that I'd like more control over which prisoners belong in which cells. I'd like to decide where each prisoner - or ar least each class of prisoner - goes, because I'd assume that higher risk prisoners would be more likely to try to escape from their cells, and should therefore be placed in cells which are more secure, or located farther from an escape point.

If all you want/need is to put higher security prisoners in more secure cells, you can already do this by designating a cell block as low, medium, or high security (in addition to the general population setting).

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Re: March 2014 poll : What next?

Postby Pachinko » Sat Jun 21, 2014 10:18 pm

xander wrote:
Pachinko wrote:The one feature that keeps coming to my mind when I play PA is that I'd like more control over which prisoners belong in which cells. I'd like to decide where each prisoner - or ar least each class of prisoner - goes, because I'd assume that higher risk prisoners would be more likely to try to escape from their cells, and should therefore be placed in cells which are more secure, or located farther from an escape point.

If all you want/need is to put higher security prisoners in more secure cells, you can already do this by designating a cell block as low, medium, or high security (in addition to the general population setting).

xander


Really? How do you do that?

*Edit* Never mind - got it.
Last edited by Pachinko on Sat Jun 21, 2014 10:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: March 2014 poll : What next?

Postby MAdMaN » Sat Jun 21, 2014 10:28 pm

Pachinko wrote:Really? How do you do that?

Unlock Deployment through Bureaucracy.
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Re: March 2014 poll : What next?

Postby Pachinko » Sat Jun 21, 2014 10:43 pm

Thanks. I was in the middle of figuring it out when you replied. This will help me organise my prison even better. I like to keep the maximum security cells in the centre of the facility, so that even if they tunnel out of their cell they'll still be miles from the perimeter :)

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