Prison Architect

I remember in the early alphas, there was a single story-based intro mission. It looked like they were going to add a campaign. Did that get scrapped?

There's still just the one intro mission then essentially a sandbox. There are 'grants' you can get with small mini-objectives like having x amount of cells or educating so many prisoners.

deftly wrote:

I remember in the early alphas, there was a single story-based intro mission. It looked like they were going to add a campaign. Did that get scrapped?

That's the tutorial, and they stated that a storyline is the main thing they're holding back for the full release.

trueheart78 wrote:
deftly wrote:

I remember in the early alphas, there was a single story-based intro mission. It looked like they were going to add a campaign. Did that get scrapped?

That's the tutorial, and they stated that a storyline is the main thing they're holding back for the full release.

I'm glad to hear that. I think that would really liven the game up quite a bit.

Just got an email from Steam saying it's 75% off.

Alpha 30 released:

We spent a lot of time this month working on the tablet versions of Prison Architect, and the game is now running very nicely indeed on iPads and Android. We will be starting beta testing on the tablet version very soon - sign up to our mailing list if you want to be a tablet tester.
http://www.introversion.co.uk/prisonarc ... D_Maillist

As a result of the tablet focus this month, this alpha update is a touch lighter than usual, but we did find time to add some serious game updates for alpha 30. We hope you enjoy the new build - normal service will resume next month.

Prisoner Intake
You can now control the intake of inmates to your prison, via a new Intake report tab.
Use the controls to set an exact number of inmates you'd like to receive each day.
Any prisoners not accepted will accumulate in a pool, and can be brought in at a later date.
You can use the ratio sliders to alter which categories of prisoner you will receive.

NOTE: The ratio sliders affect which prisoners will be coming next from the pool,
but they ALSO affect which categories of prisoners will be added to your pool each day

- You now receive a one-off payment for each inmate you accept into your prison:
Minimum security : $300
Medium security : $500
Maximum security : $1000

- You now receive a fixed daily grant of $150 per prisoner, regardless of category

- Prisoners now arrive by bus, instead of on the back of a delivery truck

Parole (continued)
- The Warden and Chief are no longer required for Parole hearings.
The Parole program now uses a 'Parole Officer' and a 'Parole Lawyer', both of whom count as external staff
They will arrive on site to hold the parole hearing with a prisoner, and leave when it has completed.
This means you can now run as many parallel parole hearings as required.

- The $10,000 fine incurred if paroled prisoners re-offend has been removed.
The $3,000 bonus is still available, and can be won by paroling a prisoner who does not re-offend.
This can be a significant source of income, if you work to reduce the re-offending chances of your inmates through punishment and reform.

- The failure condition still exists: If 10 of your paroled prisoners re-offend, you will be placed on warning.
If 5 more paroled prisoners re-offend within the next 48 hours, you will be fired.

Wire Tidy Mode
If your wiring diagram is becoming too messy, you can now tidy up the layout using the new tool in Utilities: Tidy Wires.
Click on any Wired object to begin, then you can click on the wires to pin them into fixed positions.
You can click and drag pins around as you wish, and Right click on pins to remove them.

Grant cancellation
You can now cancel any Grant currently in progress, from the Reports/Grants window.
You will have to repay any money advanced as part of the grant, as well as a 10% fine.
The grant can be accepted again at a later date if you wish.
NOTE: Some grants cost you money to acccept, eg the Investment grants.
Cancelling these grants will REFUND the money you invested, but you will still pay a 10% fine.

- Prisoners in solitary confinement or locked-down in their own cells will now have meals brought to them
This should prevent prisoners starving to death in solitary.

- The Logistics/Jobs view now shows the qualification required to work in each room type
Eg the Workshop says "Required: Workshop safety induction"

- The range at which prisoners will surrender when shot at has been reduced from 6 squares to 4
And a maximum of 10 prisoners will now surrender per gun shot
This should stop huge crowds of rioting prisoners being defeated by a single gunshot

- Added new animations for prisoners exercising on a weights bench

- New toolbar icons for Intelligence, Dangers, 7 days/24 hours contraband, and Informants

- Prison Architect now uses significantly less memory, as a result of work done for iPad/Android

BUG FIXES
- Prisoners sent to solitary could sometimes end up stuck there forever
- Extreme performance glitch in the Laundry logistics system, if you had a single extremely large sector with lots (hundreds) of cells

- 0007880: [Control & User Interface] Easier canceling of "dismantle" and "dump"
- 0007864: [AI & Behaviour] guards escort dead prisoners to their cell
- 0006901: [AI & Behaviour] Workmen not installing certain small pipes
- 0004853: [Gameplay] Prisoner 'Home' set to Solitary
- 0006170: [AI & Behaviour] Prisoner keeps getting sent to solitary, can't break out of loop (causing starvation)
- 0007691: [Control & User Interface] "NO TEACHER" glitch when Editing Schedule for Programs

Not a lot of meat in the patch this month, but the parole fix sounds promising.

Alpha 34 is out and it has GANGS!

Gangs sound real bad, exactly what this game needs

Release notes (I've bolded a couple of good one :D)

= Gangs
Some prisoners will now have gang allegiences upon entering your prison.
This can make those prisoners much harder to deal with, as they will work to defend each other during trouble.

This is an optional feature, enabled by ticking the new "Gangs" tickbox in the New Map screen.
(Nb. You can also hack gangs into an existing prison by adding 'EnabledGangs true' to the top of the .prison file)

More dangerous / higher security prisoners are more likely to be gang members.

- Gang members can be identified visually by their full body tattoos
- Gang members will always come to the aid of their fellow gang member when fights break out.
This includes coming to the aid of a fellow gang member involved in a fight with guards.

- Gang members more likely to try to steal weapons, and more likely to carry them rather than stash them
- Gang members will not participate in any voluntary reform programs
- Gang members will not work for the prison

- New view : Intelligence => Gangs. Highlights all known gang members and shows the total number of members of each gang.

Nb. This is part 1 of a larger feature.

= New room: Shop
- Requires shelves and a shop front. The shop front should go on a wall such that prisoners can acces the shop front from a corridoor.

- Shop goods will be brought into the prison in the usual way, and taken to the shop.
- Prisoners can work in the shop, and will unpack the boxes of goods onto the shelves.
- Prisoners can buy items from the shop to help with their needs:
- Soap, shampoo etc for Hygene
- Towels, blankets etc for Comfort
- Magazines for entertainment
- Snacks for Hunger

- All prisoners are now paid a fixed wage of 50 cents per hour when working for the prison
- Items in the shop cost $5 each
- Prisoner wages and shop takings are now shown in the daily cashflow report (updated at midnight)

- Prisoners are more inclined to participate in voluntary training programs, and will concentrate harder,
when there is a shop on site. (They want to earn that wage to buy things for themselves).

- The shop is a potential source of smuggled contraband

= Asian language support
The game now supports asian character sets, paving the way for translations into
Japanese
Chinese
Korean
etc

- Mail room (continued)
- Fixed: Mail satchels would be endlessly delivered in certain circumstances
- You can now dump mail satchels if you end up with too many

- Escape tunnels (continued):
- Each member of a dig team now brings diminishing returns to the overall speed of digging.
This represents the fact that (say) 10 prisoners just couldn't dig all at once in one square.
Previously 4 prisoners would dig four times faster than just 1 prisoner.
it will now take 4 prisoners to dig twice as fast as just 1 prisoner
It will take 11 prisoners to dig three times as fast as just 1 prisoner

- Searching a toilet manually will now reveal any escape tunnels.
Nb this requires you specifically search the toilet itself, and does not apply if the toilet is searched
as part of a "search cell" or "search cell block" order

- Conventional fences no longer slow diggers down

- The research screen now flashes a warning if you are attempting to research an item,
but are missing the neccesary Administrator, or he does not have an office

- Emergency services personel no longer need to rest in a staff room

- More prisoner faces added to the sprite bank, for greater variety

= BUG FIXES
- 0003270: [Control & User Interface] Flashing Yellow area in deployment screen not explained
- 0004990: [Gameplay] Basic Detention Center fails to recognize completed rooms if other rooms are incomplete
- 0003318: [AI & Behaviour] Delivery Trucks fail to stop and unload (when delivery zone at bottom of the map)
- 0006493: [AI & Behaviour] prisoners use the same seat/phone/shower etc
- 0007248: [Mod System] Special Characters prevent mods from work
- 0008666: [AI & Behaviour] Prisoners reading books will stop following regime and freeze up unable to fulfill needs.
- 0008916: [AI & Behaviour] Mail Room keeps ordering more Mail Satchels
- 0007670: [Control & User Interface] Spelling of bureaucratic in Chapel Description
- 0003271: [Gameplay] Clone Tool + Water
- 0007630: [AI & Behaviour] Gardeners and other AI vibrate when in 3x speed mode
- 0006067: [Gameplay] Prisoners are tunneling too fast (through perimeter wall)
- 0001166: [Gameplay] Guards wont take prisoners to Solitary Confinement, prisoner stuck in limbo
- 0008714: [AI & Behaviour] Some dump jobs are never done
- 0008766: [AI & Behaviour] Empty Parole Program slots not being filled despite long queue of eligible prisoners
- 0005953: [Graphics] Uniform's are sometimes under the bed
- 0006142: [Graphics] Render issues when stacking drains with other items
- 0008750: [AI & Behaviour] Prisoners do not leave Transport Bus if reception is full of laundry
- 0005453: [Gameplay] Power Switch + Cctv Monitor = UNLIMITED VISIBIlITY!
- 0008996: [AI & Behaviour] Prisoner released during shower leaves naked
- 0000665: [Gameplay] pausing stops the limit-check for daily spending
- 0008034: [AI & Behaviour] Chefs Don't Cook
- 0008129: [Graphics] Death Row font too dark
- 0006952: [AI & Behaviour] In large prisons suboptimal transport job causes death of overdosing prisoners during transportation to infirmary
- 0005830: [Gameplay] Bureaucracy research never finishes if started during pause after firing warden
- 0002935: [Gameplay] Guard dogs kill prisoners
- 0007920: [AI & Behaviour] Unconscious dog and dead handler
- 0006228: [AI & Behaviour] Dog handlers can't get tazers anymore, but research says they can
- 0009032: [AI & Behaviour] Dead guards in hearse still have flashlight on
- 0003311: [AI & Behaviour] Guards escorting prisoners to from their cell to the same cell over and over
- 0008135: [AI & Behaviour] Dirty trays are being stacked outside canteen (in a remote solitary cell, for example)
- 0007151: [Gameplay] Truck drivers can be sacked
- 0006966: [AI & Behaviour] 0 demand for meals in the second hour of Eat
- 0003132: [Gameplay] Sometimes contraband is listed as "None"
- 0007437: [AI & Behaviour] Cooks Not Cooking
- 0007933: [Other] cooks wont cook (Cellblock assigned to non-canteen in logistics)
- 0008904: [AI & Behaviour] Laundry without door breaks near-by rooms
- 0008624: [AI & Behaviour] Riot Police get tired
- 0007675: [Graphics] Altar not displaying properly against a wall
- 0008988: [Save & Load] Last Game Save causes a Crash to Steam Client
- 0008946: [Gameplay] Library Books keep coming

Is ... is this game ever coming out?

This one is more complete than most early access games. I didn't have lasting fun with the first few builds, it was a novelty game. Now there's real meat on these bones and I can fully recommend it as a proper game.

My issue with the game is I got over 100 prisoners and now my prison crashes the game every 15 minutes. The gangs sound like...fun though.

Does anyone know how to funnel prisoners to multiple yards?

polypusher wrote:

This one is more complete than most early access games. I didn't have lasting fun with the first few builds, it was a novelty game. Now there's real meat on these bones and I can fully recommend it as a proper game.

Oh, I own it and have played it and am good with it, I'm just curious if it's ever gonna leave Early Access.

garion333 wrote:

Is ... is this game ever coming out?

[snark] Clearly Introversion has no ideas for a different type of game, so they just continue to feature-creep the sh*t out of this one. I wonder if there will be 30+ beta builds as well. [/snark]

I had a lot of fun with it, but it's one of those games where the end game is just more of the same.

I want them to put a campaign into the game, like they teased with the original tutorial mission. That probably won't happen until the features are done though, and I don't really want to dive back in while they're still adding features.

deftly wrote:

I want them to put a campaign into the game, like they teased with the original tutorial mission. That probably won't happen until the features are done though, and I don't really want to dive back in while they're still adding features.

Correct. They stated that the story is being held back as part of the final 1.0 release.

Happy launch day!

So how "done" is the game by now?

Tamren wrote:

So how "done" is the game by now?

It's officially 1.0, story mode and everything.

trueheart78 wrote:
Tamren wrote:

So how "done" is the game by now?

It's officially 1.0, story mode and everything.

It's been so long that I forgot they were making a story mode. If I hear enough good things about that, I might revisit this game. Maybe.

Surely someone has started playing story mode by now. Details!

Story mode huh?

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Surely someone has started playing story mode by now. Details!

I hate to say it but I've been pretty disappointed with story mode. I'm in the last of 5 chapters. The first 4 chapters are pretty much on rails - build this, do that, etc. The story is pretty bland. The 5th and final chapter seems like it may be more interesting as it finally has the player building a prison from scratch to meet some objectives. Story mode does at least get you some familiarity with what can be done.

SO it sounds like story mode is basically an overglorified long-haul tutorial.

Which I am totally fine with.

Bought this on Wednesday. I've been furiously scribbling down designs instead of working.
Was surprised that Alan was so turned off by the delivery of content (this week's podcast), but I have ignored all of the story modes.
I love the balance of risk vs reward in this game, and am currently pushing the limits of my first prison to see where it breaks.
Love the black humour. One of my first high risk prisoners was a multiple murderer who killed a bunch of golfers with a golf club because they dared to cough whilst he was driving.
Great fun.

I finished story mode and chapter 5 was more interesting because it was much more open ended. You get to build a prison from scratch too. The game still seems pretty flakey. One of my laundry rooms just won't function. I have ones serving other cell blocks just fine. I have inmates assigned to work there, but they just enter the room and wander around. I've tried removing and readding the equipment. I had a similar situation in the kitchen and fixed that by removing and readding the equipment and removing the workers and readding them. Found other people having laundry issues and one said they fixed it by dezoning the room and leaving it that way until the baskets disappeared, then rezoning it. That didn't fix it. Custodians will use the room, but that's it. Inmates want more clean clothes.

Luckily I was able to achieve the final optional goal for chapter 5 so I could move on, but I don't have a lot of patience for weirdness like this. If it happens in my sandbox mode prison I'll probably just give up and put the game away.

I wonder if sandbox mode will be much different than chapter 5 in story mode since you get to start from scratch. There were some options setting sandbox mode up, like events and fail conditions.

It's interesting enough, but I'm not sure it's a game I can play again and again. I was thinking the game may generate some crazy and interesting situations, but once I got more than a dozen or two prisoners it doesn't seem practical to take the time to check them out individually. I'm typically a goal-oriented player that needs some kind of 'win' so I'm not so sure I'd just screw around for the heck of it.

Is there really no way to jump to individuals who have serious complaints? Right now the Danger Indicator specifies there are 35 prisoners with serious complaints. Eyeballing the Needs Report, it looks like the same number with serious issues. Most of these are hygiene issues. I've got showers in every cell, and some in the yard too. So it's easy to see there is a problem, but no easy way to jump to the people having those problems. I don't have patience for games that don't get the basic things right. If I missed it please let me know.

Watching for the little speech bubbles all over the prison isn't a great solution.

I think laundry is part of hygiene and you mentioned above that you have a laundry room that just won't function. Im not sure how to fix the problem, but I think you should focus on that.

Yup, that is a laundry issue robc.
I'm seriously loving this game, and consistantly giggling at the stupid crimes that they committed.
I love how they have "indie video game piracy" a serious crime. There was one last night that I saw in prison for licking the President, 83% chance will lick again if released.

I ran the nutrition test, where you only feed the prisoners once a day and really meagre portions of crap food for two days and see what happens. My prison had 60 high security prisoners, and lots of gangs who then went ape s**t and tore the place apart.

Such good fun.

I agree with you pinkdino99, the game has lots of little touches that give it personality. For me, I don't think it's going to hold up for me as a game. Some of it is due to the UI issues I mentioned - not being able to get the info in a way that I can then conveniently act upon it.

I'm also the type of player that needs the game to throw up goals to try and achieve instead of me making up my own. When left to my own devices, I tend to just try and grow bigger in these games in the way I find most efficient. In my case I decided to try and keep them happy to reduce the amount of incidents. Money was tight because I was giving spacious cells, so I started running out of room at 150 prisoners. It would have taken a little while to save up money to buy more land so I stopped for now.

I'm seriously tempted to put gun racks in the cell block...