[MOD] Going postal!

[Puman]

After a few weeks of coding, a bunch of dead ends and more than 2000 lines of text files and just a teaspoon of debugging, I'm ready to release my postal service into Beta.

Please help me in trying it out and let me know what you think! It's a complex piece of machinery pushing the mod-system to it's boundaries, so some bugs are likely to be sneaking around.

Edit: After a lot of positive feedback and an update for some bug fixes I think this no longer needs to be called a beta. I will still keep updating it with new features.

Check it out on Steam:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=337850572

[tertaim]

oh wow! this mods seems really awsome, when i get back home il give it a shot right away!

edit:got some questions!
- Can you give some more info on how much mail every prisoner gets?
- Is there contraband hidden in those mails?
- do prisoner moods change according to the mail they get? like the need for family lowering.

[lugaru]

I will be testing it asap as well, this is one of my like top 5 list features/mods so I really want to see your succeed.

[Puman]

oh wow! this mods seems really awsome, when i get back home il give it a shot right away!

I'm curious to know how it works out

edit:got some questions!
- Can you give some more info on how much mail every prisoner gets?
- Is there contraband hidden in those mails?
- do prisoner moods change according to the mail they get? like the need for family lowering.

- There isn't an exact number of mail since there is a double randomization each day. Every 20 prisoners will generate a 100% chance of a cart delivery. The total amount of deliveries is then randomly distributed on the 'Prisoner Mail Marker's with the randomness being weighted based on the markers amount of connected beds. Each actual delivery then distributes letters randomly into an average of around 12 delivered letters, if that many beds are available. Crystal clear? I made it random in this way to make it look better and to ensure that all connected beds will get a letter some time. I guess on average a prisoner will get mail every other day, if your markers are not far too numerous (1 per 15 beds would be a good maximum).
- I want to include contraband in the mail, haven't gotten around to testing if it is technically possible yet.
- There are two new needs which can be resolved by reading or sending mail. I cant 'consume' mail on use, so unfortunately it would be imbalancing if I included other needs like recreation or family. I had to cancel another large mod because of this limitation, they mentioned they would improve on this in future updates, lets hope

[rsdworker]

i loved it its perfect - but carts needs have moving aminations like laundary cart
The outgoing mail needs own marker to place after its sent from mailboxes - the current outgoing mail is under the cart on empty carts marker
but the prisoner mail waiting to be delivered needs be addressed that come in boxes on delivery room

this would a ideal for food carts delivery system - similar method to deliver food in cells

[Puman]

i loved it its perfect - but carts needs have moving aminations like laundary cart

Thanks And yeah, I'm not actually sure about that one, it sounds like an impossibility, but it might just be that it is actually perfectly possible. Would definitely be cool but requires a bunch of research.

The outgoing mail needs own marker to place after its sent from mailboxes - the current outgoing mail is under the cart on empty carts marker

I see what you mean, I didn't want to make the chain of events too complex. Almost every single step in the chain requires a bunch of code and around three new objects. The number of buyable objects is only 7, but the number of different objects in total is 21 right now. Of those only the outbound mail bag and the sorting desk don't require custom scripting (directly or indirectly).

but the prisoner mail waiting to be delivered needs be addressed that come in boxes on delivery room

I don't quite understand what you mean?

this would a ideal for food carts delivery system - similar method to deliver food in cells

Now that is a cute idea, I'll give that a thought.

[jamespond]

Love this mod but for somereason Alpha 28 has broken it, at least for me, can anyone else confirm it or maybe if known a possible fix?

[WHiZSTeR]

yeah its broken for me too, i had to remove it for the time being until the author has time to update it.

[seronis]

If you give more details beyond "its broken" it tends to help a modder update quicker. A good bug report includes a minimum of the following

action taken
expected behavior
observed behavior

[Puman]

It's been fixed now.

The primary problems were:
- when they switched to the new metatable representation objects could no longer be treated as strings
- the metatable representation can cause CTD if used in certain ways that was/is possible with the old representation
- some variables that used to be defined at all times could now be nil instead

[rsdworker]

so is change logs - for changes to this mod?

[Puman]

so is change logs - for changes to this mod?

There were no functional changes, just bug fixes caused by updates in Alpha 27 and Alpha 28.