[BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

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Bubblez
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[BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby Bubblez » Wed Jul 01, 2015 8:40 am

First off, I was really excited when I read about the addition of shops in the game.

Now, I was really annoyed when I built a shop, and no matter what I did my prisoners wouldn't work the shop front desk, and theirfor, nobody could buy anything from the shop. I have max prisoners working the shop, I've attempted placing the front desk on every single wall, and yes, my prisoners have LOTS of money (one prisoner has 300$)

I dont know what else to try... so to clarify, my prisoners are working in the shop, but they will not work the front desk on the shop wall... If anybody knows how to correct this PLEASE HELP.
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Pogmothoin
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Re: [BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby Pogmothoin » Wed Jul 01, 2015 9:29 am

Just to clarify you say you've tried placing the shop front on all 4 walls, are you sure that the orientation of the counter was facing the correct way. The counter faces 4 different directions depending on how you rotate it, it could be that you keep facing it inwards instead of outwards. The calculator should be on the inside of the shop, or try building one on a wall and rotate it twice and build directly adjacent to it. you'll see which counter is being used and can remove the other. Also make sure the corridor outside the shop is shared, and the shop is shared, otherwise prisoners may not be able to get there.
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Re: [BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby smiler52 » Wed Jul 01, 2015 10:18 am

i had it working but then moved it to a bigger space no one would work on the shop front i then put another one in and removed the door and now I’m making a tidy some i got a feeling it may need a bit of space behind it
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Re: [BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby Icepick » Wed Jul 01, 2015 6:10 pm

Yeah there's unfortunately an issue with the shop front detection that was missed in our initial testing. I'll try and explain it a bit, and how you can try to get things working until the next release.

So, in the ideal case, you'll want something like this:

Image

As you can see in the deployment view, all 4 of the walls are inside the same area as the shop itself - when you highlight the area, the entire thing is selected, walls and all. Putting a shop front on any of the walls here will work just fine.
However, if you use the other half of the building:

Image

You can see that the middle wall isn't in the same highlighted area as the shop here. If you put the shop front there, it won't work - prisoners won't work it and so no one will be able to buy from it.

So, that's how you can tell a shop front will or won't work in a given location. Your best bet is simply to pick a wall inside the correct area and you shouldn't have any trouble. If that's no good, you can try experimenting with adding and removing walls to try and get things divided up how you want it, but unfortunately I don't think there's a concrete method for that which will work in all cases. So yeah, not ideal, but if you are having trouble with this you know how to work out which walls will work for you now.
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Re: [BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby xander » Wed Jul 01, 2015 6:46 pm

Icepick: the way that walls are assigned or not assigned to a room as been an issue that has irritated me for a very long time. Since it has been largely cosmetic until this update, I haven't mentioned it before. However, it seems to matter now, so I am curious: does the eventual solution to the problem with shops change this in general? Or will walls continue to be part of a room? and will the assignment of walls to rooms continue to be fairly arbitrary?

For what it is worth, I have always felt that it would be better if the boundaries dividing rooms ran down the middle of a wall (so, in the example above, the left half of the wall would be in the shop that currently works, and the right half of the wall would be in the shop that doesn't work). Alternatively walls should not be part of rooms. Of course, the problem with either idea is that some things will break (doors, shops (though they are already broken, I guess), etc.).

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Re: [BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby Thalyn » Wed Jul 01, 2015 7:01 pm

From what I can tell, the Shop Front cannot face a foundation. I encountered the same thing when trying to reposition the front to prevent a bottleneck occurring on the path (those prisoners are ravenous!) by simply building an indent into the wall. Without any further modification, no-one ran the desk and the whole thing seemed like a waste.

I then bulldozed the squares in front of the Shop Front, removing the foundation, and the next shift had someone on the till and prisoners once again stampeding. Subsequent shifts also occurred as expected.

It's rather a shame my initial idea of having 3 fronts didn't pan out - they always went to the same one, creating a jam. I'm not sure if it was the one I placed first but it was the lower-rightmost, which seems to fit in with the intelligence I've seen while building foundations (they always go down and right).

Now just make sure you have the shop staffed (workers) while able to have customers (free time)!

*NB My shop was a stand-alone facility. It had no internal walls and shared with no other room types.
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Re: [BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby Icepick » Wed Jul 01, 2015 7:29 pm

xander wrote:Icepick: the way that walls are assigned or not assigned to a room as been an issue that has irritated me for a very long time. Since it has been largely cosmetic until this update, I haven't mentioned it before. However, it seems to matter now, so I am curious: does the eventual solution to the problem with shops change this in general? Or will walls continue to be part of a room? and will the assignment of walls to rooms continue to be fairly arbitrary?

For what it is worth, I have always felt that it would be better if the boundaries dividing rooms ran down the middle of a wall (so, in the example above, the left half of the wall would be in the shop that currently works, and the right half of the wall would be in the shop that doesn't work). Alternatively walls should not be part of rooms. Of course, the problem with either idea is that some things will break (doors, shops (though they are already broken, I guess), etc.).

xander


The shop fix is specific to the shop fronts, it wont change the way walls are divided up like that. It's tricky problem for a whole bunch of reasons related to the internal structure of the game but honestly I don't think that specific issue is one we've really thought about much - as you said, it's largely cosmetic in most situations. It's a tough situation to change, especially since doing so wouldn't really gain much and doing so has a lot of potential to cause problems. I'll try and remember to have a word with people about changing it (it will almost certainly be that walls aren't included in rooms if we do it, as dividing a wall between 2 sections is impossible without lots of hack-work in the current setup) but there's a good chance it will just stay as-is.

Re: the issue with multiple shop fronts, that's unfortunately something that can't be worked around it the current version (as far as I know), though it has been fixed and will work fine in the next release.
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Re: [BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby xander » Wed Jul 01, 2015 8:46 pm

Icepick wrote:The shop fix is specific to the shop fronts, it wont change the way walls are divided up like that. It's tricky problem for a whole bunch of reasons related to the internal structure of the game but honestly I don't think that specific issue is one we've really thought about much - as you said, it's largely cosmetic in most situations. It's a tough situation to change, especially since doing so wouldn't really gain much and doing so has a lot of potential to cause problems. I'll try and remember to have a word with people about changing it (it will almost certainly be that walls aren't included in rooms if we do it, as dividing a wall between 2 sections is impossible without lots of hack-work in the current setup) but there's a good chance it will just stay as-is.

I kind of figured it wasn't a high priority (again, it is cosmetic more than anything). Thanks for the response.

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Re: [BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby Bubblez » Thu Jul 02, 2015 4:15 am

Icepick wrote:Yeah there's unfortunately an issue with the shop front detection that was missed in our initial testing. I'll try and explain it a bit, and how you can try to get things working until the next release.



Yikes, took a little bit to understand what Icepick was saying, but I finally figured it out! Thanks a ton Icepick, its great to have my shop working :)

New mission.... I'll go onto the steam community forums and share this bit of info with all of them as there are a lot of topics about this Shop bug on there.
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Re: [BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby Adenauer » Thu Jul 02, 2015 7:08 am

Icepick wrote:Yeah there's unfortunately an issue with the shop front detection that was missed in our initial testing. I'll try and explain it a bit, and how you can try to get things working until the next release.

...



Thanks! I managed to get my shop to work.

ImageImage

No wonder no prisoners were going up to the counter. I thought it was normal for the prisoners who were working in the shop to walk around aimlessly inside after sorting out all the goods.
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Re: [BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby rsdworker » Fri Jul 03, 2015 1:06 am

yeah - i was wondering why no one buying but alternate idea - you could add counter inside the shop part - some prisons have proper shop - just walk in and buy things and go off to cells - this usually in Low secuirty also a cart shop - which moves around prison to sell the things a worker could assigned it
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Re: [BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby Medu_Salem » Sun Jul 05, 2015 6:56 pm

Well, I just ensured that all of the walls belong to the shop room...

... but even if prisoners are working on the shop front in the room, nobody buys anything from them.

- Yepp, there are free prisoners roaming around, so there are potential customers, so that's ruled out.
- Yepp, they have enough money (30-50$+)

Could it be that it doesn't work if for example the shop front faces a maximum security, but the shop room itself being medium security?

Or that in general a max sec has to buy from max sec, med sec from med sec and so on?
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Pogmothoin
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Re: [BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby Pogmothoin » Sun Jul 05, 2015 9:16 pm

Just now a shop can only have one active counter, I'm pretty sure there is a fix coming in alpha 35 for the shops to have multiple counters.

Your medium sec shop should still be able to serve max sec customers, but only if that is the only counter in the shop.

Also prisoners only purchase items from the shop if they need them, if their needs are generally filled they will only go to the shop on rare occasions that they need something.
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Re: [BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby Medu_Salem » Sun Jul 05, 2015 9:37 pm

Well it is the only shop front, so it works (at least I've seen some med secs using it, just to test it, then changed the deployment to max sec on the customer side)

But the max secs are avoiding it for some reason.

I only realised that because I don't have a library to serve my max secs... (don't want to give scissors to them :D a reason for why the library/mail should work similar using shopfronts to avoid bringing contraband into supermax/max sec/protective custody)... so their literacy need is quite high. But they don't feel like going to the shop buying some stuff to fulfill their literacy that way. But maybe the guys just don't care that much about fulfilling their literacy need even if it tops out.

Another thing is that some of the max secs also don't go to the shop to get something even if they are hungry.

So that's why I came to think that there might be a bug in there that prevents interaction between different security levels.
Last edited by Medu_Salem on Sun Jul 05, 2015 9:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [BUG] SHOPS (Alpha 34)

Postby rsdworker » Sun Jul 05, 2015 9:43 pm

i seen min and max buying but death row cant be let out to shop - so i suggest to chris and mark and icepick that death row or lockdown prisoners should get a trolley service or escorted service to shop front

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