Jan 27, 2016

Prison Architect - sPray

Prison Architect Update 3 has been released! Here is our video demonstrating the new features:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsfyfGNiAYg

This month we start with a special demo of the console build of the game, showing off the completely redesigned interface.

Our new features:

Guard Towers + Snipers
You can now build guard towers around your prison for an extra level of security, intimidation, and force.

- New entity type : Snipers
Hired from the staff menu.
These guys will equip themselves with a scoped sniper rifle from the armoury, if you have one.
They will then take turns manning the guard towers you have built.

- Snipers will project 'Suppression' to all prisoners within their line of sight.

- Rules of engagement
When snipers see trouble occuring, they will fire warning shots.
If three warning shots are ignored, they will shoot to kill.
If you have enabled "Freefire" they will always shoot to kill, without warning.
They will also shoot to kill if they see an escaping prisoner already outside the prison secure zone.

Secure Visitation Booths
You can now build secure visitation booths in your visitation room if you choose, instead of the usual tables.
A secure visitation booth has a glass panel that seperates the inmate from the family member, and they use a phone to talk.

- No contraband can be imported through a totally secure visitation room
- However the inmates family needs will not be satisfied nearly as well
- Nb. There must be a complete seperation of visitors and inmates for a room to be considered secure.

Female Names-in-the-game
If you are a Name in the Game customer, you can now update your bio and create a female prisoner if you wish.
Go to http://www.prison-architect.com/register to do this.

Mod API updates
Scripted interface buttons now correctly pass click callbacks to the script that created them.
This allows scripts to add interactions to other objects in the game world.

- Dormitories of 40 or more squares will now get their own sector for the purposes of guard deployment and security zoning

New Translations
Japanese

Bug Fixes
- Fixed: 2x3 Dormitories with a bunkbed will now correctly accept 2 prisoners

- 0010359: [AI & Behaviour] Doctors not treating during Virus Outbreak Event
- 0010445: [AI & Behaviour] Overdosed prisoners put in solitary instead of infirmary
- 0010477: [Gameplay] Intake System brings in wrong amounts of certain levels of prisoners
- 0010333: [Gameplay] Fill to capacity improvement
- 0010438: [Control & User Interface] CI window shows two % signs rather than one
- 0010352: [AI & Behaviour] Nasty change in the priority of the job assignment
- 0010461: [Gameplay] Contraband scan cooldown causing problems
- 0010459: [Control & User Interface] Suspicion percentage is displayed twice
- 0006604: [Control & User Interface] Double billing of reform programs
- 0010437: [AI & Behaviour] Multiple mailrooms do not work
- 0010480: [Gameplay] Intake not calculated properly
- 0008937: [Control & User Interface] Carpentry Apprenticeship
- 0010452: [Gameplay] Dormitories and adjacent rooms counts as one room
- 0010322: [Gameplay] Prisoners not being taken to Dormitories
- 0010298: [Gameplay] 2x3 dorms dont get extra prisoner space
- 0010472: [AI & Behaviour] Opened mail thrown throughout Holding Cell
- 0010453: [AI & Behaviour] Laundry taken from Dormitorys
- 0006883: [Mod System] Allow mods to augment the selected object popup
- 0010367: [AI & Behaviour] Prisoners get ReadBook status and freeze in place
- 0010417: [Control & User Interface] Policy screen in female prisons says "HIM"
- 0010471: [AI & Behaviour] Laundry Room uniforms in odd piles
- 0010095: [Performance] One specific prison that has updated across mutiple alphas is experincing 1sec freezing every 10sec
- 0010468: [AI & Behaviour] Shower Drainage Behaviour Issues
- 0010370: [Performance] Extreme low FPS with many idle prisoners.
- 0010348: [Other] Open mails spawning from my inmates

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Jan 27, 2016

Update 3 released

Prison Architect - Chris

Dec 18, 2015

Update 2 released

Prison Architect - sPray

Prison Architect Update 2 has been released. Here is our video demonstrating the new features:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsTOSHhy-_Y

Women's Prisons
You can now choose the gender of your prisoners in the "New Prison" screen.
Female prisoners have different needs and behave differently than male prisoners.

- Children : Some female prisoners are mothers of young babies (less than two years old)
and are entitled to look after their baby during their stay in your prison.
This requires some new facilities - often called "MBUs (Mother and Baby Units)"

- Family Cell : A new type of cell for mothers with babies only.
Similar to a normal cell, but also requires a Cot and an integrated Shower.
Nb these cells will never be assigned to female prisoners without babies.

- Nursery : A shared room for all mothers to live in, typically isolated from the rest of the prison.
Mothers will spend much of their time in this room with their babies.
Requires cots and play mats for the babies.

- Mothers will eat their meals in this room, so it also requires a serving table, benches etc.
Your kitchens will be assigned to cook meals for the nurseries as if they were canteens.

Modding API (continued)
- Added world and world cell data variables to the scripting API.
This includes getting the size of the world, time index, etc.
Setting these variables, however, is currently unsupported.

- A new interface scripting API has been included as well.
Mods can now add, remove, and change buttons in the BiographyWindow (shown when you select a non-prisoner object in the world), with callbacks to it's script.

- Modding in escape mode has also been improved by allowing player interaction on scripted objects.
A callback to the script is given when the player is close to an object and interacts with it.

- General performance enhancements, especially to laundry system.

New Translations
Danish, Dutch, Hungarian, Thai

Bug Fixes
- Needs.txt not loaded in correct order when using mods
- 0010162: [Gameplay] Surrendering in escape mode causes insane amounts of rep points / surrendering doesn't work
- 0010309: [Control & User Interface] [Prison Architect] Crash when opening confidential informant window

Dec 18, 2015

Update 2 released

Prison Architect - Chris

Dec 17, 2015

2015 Personal Pick Prison Architect

Prison Architect

CHRIS LIVINGSTON'S 2015 PERSONAL PICK

Along with our group-selected 2015 Game of the Year Awards, each member of the PC Gamer staff has independently chosen one game to commend as one of the best.

Early on in my first game of Prison Architect, I found I had to readjust my thinking. I'd been playing the good warden, being as attentive as possible to my growing population of inmates, constantly checking their list of needs to see how I could improve things for them. Were they missing their families? I built payphones, a mailroom, and scheduled time for visitations. Were they looking for ways to improve themselves? I built classrooms, a library, and acquired grant money for alcohol and drug rehab, workshop training, and other life-enhancing programs. I added a second kitchen and cafeteria after noticing some prisoners weren't getting enough time to eat, and I put bookshelves and TV in every cell to ensure they weren't bored. For a while, I treated Prison Architect like any other building and management sim. If I kept everyone happy, surely nothing could really go wrong.

Then five prisoners escaped. They'd been digging a network of tunnels at night with tools they'd smuggled from the workshop, and they dug their way to freedom right under my wall. That's when it finally sunk in: Prison Architect isn't really like other sims. Sure, there's the same management tasks like planning, construction, power and water distribution, budgeting and schedules—but no matter how hard you try to satisfy the needs of your civilian population, it won't change the fact that they're prisoners. Work hard at creating a humane facility and there may be no outright complaints, no violence, and no major disasters, but there will never, ever be real happiness. No one wants to be there, and even the best of wardens can't change that.

Prison Architect works well on both a large and small scale. The planning and construction of buildings is enjoyable and challenging, and I'd even find myself mentally planning projects when I wasn't actually playing. It can also require a laser-like focus on specific issues and even on individual inmates. After a virus swept through my prison, I had to check each individual prisoner for illness and lock the sick ones in their cells, one by one, to avoid spreading the disease further. Another time, an informant told me one of my inmates had been targeted for a hit because he was a former prison guard. I put the target in solitary while I set about planning a new protective custody wing to keep at-risk prisoners safe from other inmates. I eventually realized I hadn t paused the game while planning my new annex, and that he d been released back into gen-pop. I found him just in time to see him being stabbed to death in the cafeteria. Oopsie.

Trying to keep your prison free of drugs and weapons is a huge challenge until you learn a few tricks, and every time you turn around you'll find cellphones, drugs, and weapons arriving concealed in deliveries, smuggled in from other buildings, even thrown onto the grounds over your outer wall by visitors. Even when things are running smoothly it's hard not to feel paranoid and unsafe, leading to metal detectors at every door, tapped payphones and security cameras, frequent shakedowns and lockdowns of cellblocks, as well as an army of informants who provide good information but may wind up dead if anyone catches wind. It's an interesting feeling, staring at what is essentially a city similar to the ones in other simulation games, yet knowing every tiny little cartoon man on the screen hates you, is plotting against you, and wants nothing more than to leave your carefully constructed paradise far behind.

As grim as it all sounds, it's still a joy to play, a deeply engrossing exercise in planning and management, and there are plenty of ways to have additional fun, such as when I tried to escape from a modded-in Star Wars prison, and the time I built a prison to cater to a single inmate.

Nov 13, 2015

Prison Architect update 1 released

Prison Architect - sPray

And we are back! Update 1 has been released. Here is our video demonstrating the new features:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCszMNlwIwk

= Shared Cells
- New room type: Dormitory
- New furniture: Bunk Beds

A Dormitory can house any number of prisoners, based on the number of beds installed
Dormitories can be small eg 2x3, replacing the normal Cell, allowing for two or more inmates to share a cell together
Or Dormitories can be large, with shared showers, toilets, phones, tvs, recreational facilities etc.
Better facilities will result in a higher room grading, which will have a positive effect on your inmates

= Prisoner Intake (continued)
There are now several different modes of Intake that can be set for your prison
Choose your mode from the Intake report

- CLOSED No inmates will be brought to your prison
- FILL CAPACITY Inmates will be brought into your prison when available, until your available capacity is full
- TOTAL PRISONERS You set the total number of prisoners desired, and the Intake system works to fill that number
- NUM PER DAY You choose the number of prisoners to bring in each day (The old method)
- ALL All available prisoners will be brought in every day

= Escape mode (continued)
Escape mode was deemed too easy and unbalanced, and several features have been nerfed.

- Damage done to a prison and its staff is now repaired automatically,
once the player surrenders or is knocked out.

- All staff killed are replaced with new hires
- All fires are extinguished
- Burnt down walls now get construction jobs created to replace them

- All ranged weapons now have limited ammo.
Nb you can press G to drop the current weapon.
- Shotgun : 6 shots
- Pistol : 6 shots
- Tazer : 1 shot
- Assault rifle : 30 shots

- If you steal an item from a room, there is now a three hour timer before that item can be stolen again from that room.
This will put a stop to whole teams of escapees stealing knives from the kitchen.
Nb these timers end instantly when the player surrenders or is knocked out.

- Reputations rebalanced
- Skilled fighter: chance to disarm opponent now reduced to 20% per hit, down from 30%
- Extremely deadly: chance to kill reduced to 15% per hit, down from 30%
- Ranged weapons are no longer made more powerfull by the Strong/Deadly reputations
- Ranged weapons no longer disarm opponents when the attacker has the Skilled Fighter rep

- Improved game over screen to stack up victims in the same way as the intake report's prisoner preview.

- Gangs rebalanced
Rebalanced the chances of gang members and leaders arriving,
to make gangs a more likely occurance.
- Doubled the chances of receiving gang members at intake
- The chance of an incoming gang member being a leader is now much higher
- The probability of receiving a gang leader also increases as the size of the gang increases.

- New translations
Greek, Romanian, Swedish, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese

= BUG FIXES
- no more saving on escape mode gameover screen
- Items still loaded on trucks dont get search jobs during shakedown
- deployment menu has the correct default selected based on your research
- fog of war turns on sooner on GABOS level
- error sound only plays once when unable to afford objects

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Nov 13, 2015

Prison Architect update 1 released

Prison Architect - Chris