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Alpha 9 (April 24th 2013)
Central to the new version is the concept of Prisoner Employment, and we've been planning this feature for a long time. Prisoners can now perform a variety of jobs around the prison, saving you money on staff and raising money for you by selling goods manufactured by your work force. Prisoners can work in the kitchen, they can clean the prison, and they can work in the laundry and the workshop, both of which are new in Alpha9. They can also take visits from family members in the new visitation rooms.
= Employment
Prisoners can now perform different jobs during a new 'Work' regime activity
Create employment opportunities with the new 'Jobs' button in the Deployment screen
Prisoners not employed during the 'Work' regime treat it as 'Free Time'
Currently available prisoner jobs : Laundry, Cooking, Cleaning, Workshop
Note: The rooms must be accessable, ie Prisoners can't cook if the kitchen is Staff Only
Note: Eventually you will pick who can work, but for now every prisoner is permitted to work
= Laundry
New rooms and objects have been added to support creation of a Laundry service within your prison
Clean prisoner uniforms are distributed around the prison in Laundry Baskets
Dirty uniforms are collected up and brought back to the Laundry room, where they are washed in machines
Prisoners now get undressed in their cells before Shower Time, and return to their cell after to re-dress
They will change into a clean uniform if one is available, leaving behind their dirty uniform for laundry.
Prisoners now have a 'Clothing' need that reflects how clean their clothes are
Note: Clean prison uniforms will be stored on any table space, or on the floor, in the Laundry
= Workshops
You can now create workshops and use them to convert cheap raw materials into trinkets of value
Raw sheet metal will be dropped off in your workshops
Your Prisoners will use the circular saw and hydraulic press to manufacture car number plates
These will be sold at midnight for a profit
Note: Sheet metal and License plates will be stored on the floor in the workshop.
Build tables if you prefer your rooms to be tidy
= Families and Visitation
All Prisoners now have various family members, listed in their Rap Sheet. Some prisoners have no family.
Family members will want to visit an inmate from time to time
You can now create a visitation room, and visitors will start to arrive every day (8am - 8pm)
Prisoners can also take visits from their lawyer
Note: All bios from old save games will be re-generated to support this
= Cleaning
- Prisoners can now help out with the cleaning of your prison
- New room : Cleaning Cupboard. This is required to assign Prisoners to the cleaning job.
- Janitors and Prisoners will now clean inside individual jail cells, so long as the cell is open to them
- The rendering of decay has been improved - eg muddy floors, dirty shower cubicles, overgrown pathways etc
- Surfaces will now Decay 50% slower than before
- Food Ingredients will now be stored on the kitchen floor if there is no available fridge space
- Older prisoners now have older faces, and are less likely to be incarcerated for certain crimes like Joyriding etc
- Fences now visually join onto walls better
- Electrical cable and water pipes now come in stacks to prevent flooding your deliveries area
- Fixed: Workshops no longer award you money per square.
- Fixed: The deployment system would not always update correctly, leading to a single grey sector
- Fixed: Crash bug in planning mode when drawing off the edge of the map
- Fixed: Dead staff members will no longer be paid a daily wage
- Fixed: The game would not render correctly on Windows Vista or higher when non-standard desktop DPI settings were used
- Fixed: Prisoners under lockdown in their cells would sometimes leave their cell to go to lunch/yard etc,
only to be chased down immediately by guards and returned
Alpha 8 (March 20th 2013)
Somehow we've achieved the impossible and convinced Valve to Launch the PA Alpha on Steam! We took this opportunity to make a really solid build and fixed 100s of bugs. You'll always be able to update your build from here, but if you prefer you can activate your copy of PA on Steam and get automatic updates. To get your steam key just follow the link in the email used when you bought the game.
= Steam integration
Prison Architect is now available from Steam (Pc & Mac)
Existing customers : You have been gifted a complimentary Steam Key!
Open your purchase receipt email then click on the URL and you'll find your steam product key
Use this key to activate your copy of Prison Architect for Steam
= New Planning Mode
Accessable from the main toolbar, use this to plan your upcoming buildings and room layouts
You can draw in the usual way with the left mouse and clear with the right mouse
Plans are automatically cleared once actually built by workers
= Door Lock system changes
- New object: 'Staff Door', which is a locked door that can be opened by any guard OR staff member
Note: Prisoners treat this as a normal door, requiring Guards to unlock in the usual way
(Staff never unlock doors for prisoners - it's not in their job description, and too dangerous)
(Want a Staff-ONLY door? Set the Sector type to be Staff Only in Deployment)
- Doors have two new special modes: Locked Shut or Locked Open. Click on a door to set this.
Locked Shut prevents anyone using the door at any time.
Locked Open keeps the door open at all times, EXCEPT during a lockdown when it slams shut
- There is a new sector setting called "Unlocked", which keeps all doors within the sector open
This is useful during construction of a building, or during a fire evacuation
- Doors that are blocked when closing will no longer push the blocking object aside.
They won't close fully until unblocked.
- Guards will now stick to their assigned patrols and sectors, only doing jobs within their sector
This makes them much more responsive at opening doors within / bordering their sector
- Fixed: Guards will no longer be called upon to unlock wooden office doors
= AI & Behaviour Improvements
- During Shower / Yard / Meal times, Prisoners will first go to the nearest room of that type,
then will only use the facilities within that room.
This stops prisoners in one shower running to another shower on the other side of the map
- Facilities within a Holding Cell may now only be used by prisoners living in that holding cell
- Prisoners will no longer nap during the day, instead preferring to sleep for longer at night
(Requires Sleep regime)
- Workers/Chefs/Janitors etc will now attempt jobs even if there is mild danger nearby,
but will still refuse if the area is very dangerous
Guards will no longer refuse any job because it is too dangerous. They are paid to be brave!
Jobs which are paused due to danger will be restarted quicker once the danger has passed
- Dead Firemen will now be taken to the morgue by Guards (rather than being left to rot),
and fire trucks will leave without them
- Guards that are not assigned anywhere will try to hang out somewhere useful
- Fixed: Chefs will no longer bin all prepared food during Bang Up / Lockdown
= Interface improvements
- The top toolbar now displays the number of available guards, prisoners, and cctv cameras when you have them
- The Lockdown and Bangup buttons have been moved onto the main toolbar (placeholder graphics)
- Tooltips have been added to many items in the main toolbars
- The prisoner Rap sheet now displays any recent misconduct they were involved in
- The graphics options screen now asks you to confirm a new resolution is acceptable, or reverts after 15 seconds
- The hunt for Stuck Entities
- Fixed: Prisoners could become trapped in Solitary Confinement forever after saving and reloading
- Fixed: All entities could become trapped in a Medical Bed
- The maximum number of prisoners you can receive in a day is now based on your prison size:
Small = 16, Medium = 24, Large = 32. Previously it was 24 for all prisons
- New command line option:
-safemode : Runs at 1024x768, windowed, with shaders disabled, and a blank new map
(Steam users can run this directly from steam by selecting "Launch in SAFE MODE")
- Prisoners minor injuries will now heal while they sleep overnight
- Prisoners misconduct is now saved correctly in save games
- Administrators now have a short view range (3 squares)
- Fixed: The hardware compatability survey will no longer popup when playing the Introduction level
- Fixed: Entity animations glitched for Eating, Cooking, Unlocking doors, Building etc
- Fixed: You can now construct (free) fences even when your bank balance is negative
- Fixed: You can now construct / place objects that you have in stock, even when your bank balance is negative
- Fixed: You can no longer sack Firemen
- Fixed: Crash bug caused by closing the prison to any category at the exact same moment the first prisoners arrive
- Fixed: Bug that caused the game to crash when loading partially corrupted save games
- Fixed: Prisoners sprites sometimes became corrupted whilst sleeping
- Fixed: Prisoners who trip the metal detectors whilst being escorted by a Guard will now be searched
- Fixed: Placing pipes will no longer be blocked by walls or sprinklers in progress
- Fixed: In the tutorial, Edwards new cell will never be used by another prisoner
Alpha 7 (Feb 21st 2013)
We've fulfilled the name in game and face in game tiers so some prisoners are now personalised. Guards are now the only characters that can open doors. This sounds small, but makes a massive difference to the gameplay. You now have to think a lot more about how many guards to use and where to deploy them. There's also a graphics option menu that should keep a lot of you happy!
= Name-in-the-game / Face-in-the-game
The community database of personalised Names and Faces has been imported into the game
You can view the full database from the main menu option "Names in the game"
Around 30% of all randomly generated prisoners will now include a custom name and bio taken from this database
You can manually transfer any prisoner from this list into your jail - they will arrive in the 8am delivery
= Only Guards can open doors
All locked doors must now be opened by Guards using their keys. Prisoners and staff must wait to be let in.
The exception is the doors on each jail Cell, which open automatically when the prisoner should be let out
Office doors are never locked - anyone can pass through at any time
You can right click on any door to open it manually
Doors can be blocked open but will gradually push blocking objects aside until they close
= Alarm buttons
Under 'Emergencies' there are two new "alarm" buttons:
LOCKDOWN immediately closes and locks all the doors in the prison
Guards will not open doors for anyone. However they will unlock doors on their way if you move them somewhere
BANGUP instructs all prisoners to return immediately to their cell (confusingly, this was called Lockdown in alpha6)
Prisoners will obviously ignore this alarm if they are misbehaving
= Game Options menu
From the main menu you can now access an 'Options' menu to control the application settings
Under GRAPHICS You can control the screen resolution, fullscreen/windowed setting and filtering mode
- Multisampling uses fullscreen anti-aliasing (4xMSAA) to improve the sprite render quality
- Supersampling renders everything at double resolution then downscales to your screen
Both improve the game visuals at the cost of reduced performance
There are also options for Sound, Game etc
- You can now press F11 at any time to toggle fullscreen
- You can press ctrl-p at any time to save a screenshot
- The game will no longer crash on launch if your previous save game was corrupted.
We have disabled autoload of previous saved games for now, until we can fix some loading issues.
(The game now launches with a new empty sandbox)
- Prisoners can now be re-categorised (Max/normal/Min) from their rap sheet
- All research times have been halved
- Fixed: Building lots of fences whilst paused caused endless delivery of empty boxes
- Fixed: Prisoners were no longer bothering to run around the yard whilst exercising
- Fixed: The main build toolbar was sometimes scaled wrongly at certain resolutions,
leading to an annoying scrollbar in the lists of objects/rooms etc
- Performance improvements:
Fixed a major performance bug in the renderer, causing occasional extreme frame lag
Many parts of the render system have been optimised - some visual glitches may occur in entity animations
Alpha 6 (Jan 30th 2013)
Alpha 6 introduces prisoner risk categories with coloured uniforms to reflect this. Prisoners now have a criminal history and are classified according to perceived risk, however this is an ESTIMATE and may not be accurate - you'll still need to keep a close eye on the little darlings! We've also adjusted the prisoner intake settings to allow even more customisation of the game.
= Prisoner Categories
All prisoners are now classified based on their risk level - Min, Normal, or Max.
Prisoner uniforms are coloured to reflect this: Grey, Orange and Red respectively.
Note: The Category of a prisoner is an ESTIMATE of their risk level,
based on their convictions. However their true risk is determined by their TRAITS
= Prisoner Traits, 'Rap Sheet' & Criminal History
All prisoners now have Bios that detail their criminal history, length of time in jail etc
Click on any prisoner to review his Rap Sheet.
Prisoners have (internal) traits which determine if they are violent, destructive etc
These traits determine the Prisoner's likely response to their needs not being met
= New Sector Categories
You can now set sectors to be used for MinSec or MaxSec prisoners in the deployment screen.
Note: This only affects prisoners cell assignment. They currently share all other rooms.
MaxSec or MinSec prisoners without cell space will overflow into the shared (White) sectors.
A Holding Cell is required as temporary housing to facilitate cell changes
= Intake Control
You can now control the intake of new inmates from the 'Prisoners Report' screen.
You can choose which categories you are open to, or stop receiving any new prisoners.
Note: Unavailable if 'Continuous Intake' is enabled; You will receive a random mixture
= The hunt for Stuck Prisoners
Several subtle bugs have been fixed which resulted in prisoners becoming stuck, shackled,
pushed into the wall, forgotten, or trapped in hospital beds. (Guards sometimes as well)
Prisoners who are trapped will now be escorted back to their cells by a guard.
Note: All entities need to be healed before they will be let out the medical ward, and
Prisoners need to have a cell to be taken back to.
- There is now some variation in the physical size of prisoners. Higher Risk prisoners tend to be larger
- Doctors will now heal injured people around them more reliably (within range 10 sq)
- The tape measure dragging sounds will no longer play unless you are laying out construction orders
- Building frameworks now look more 3d and cast shadows when under construction
- Links have been added to the Main Menu to access the latest version, legal terms & conditions and buy page
- Fixed a bug which allowed prisoners to glitch through doors when they were trying to escape,
making it quite a bit easier for them to succeed
- Fixed: The game would crash on loading or selecting a saved prison, if that prison had a
thumbnail image of width or height > 2048 pixels. (Happens if you are running at higher res, eg Retina)
- Fixed: You can no longer callout unlimited numbers of firemen
- Fixed: A dead or unconscious firemen will no longer drop/spawn his firehose continuously
Alpha 5 (Dec 14th 2012)
This new build has a number of new features ranging from totally new cool stuff to some pretty massive improvements to existing tools. We have new “Staff Only” zones, which Prisoners are not permitted to enter. We have the first emergency service callout - the Fireman - which means you no longer need to watch your prison burn to the ground without being able to do anything about it. And we’ve massively improved the Foundations tool so it’s much more intuitive and intelligent to use.
= Staff Only sectors
You can now create Staff Only Sectors from the Deployment screen. They will show up Red.
Inmates will avoid these completely (unless misbehaving)
= You can now call in Firemen to put out your prison fires. Use the new 911 Emergencies menu.
Firemen are a special controllable unit with its own icons on the right of the screen.
Firemen will automatically spray nearby fire, or you can press H to aim their hoses manually.
To dismiss firemen, send them all back to their fire engine.
= The Foundations tool has been much improved. It is now much easier to expand existing buildings,
and the door/entrance detection is much better at spotting valid entrances to new buildings.
- You can now cancel foundations by right clicking on them, or right-click-dragging a box around them.
- All construction tools now continue to work correctly even when the game is paused
- There is a new tool in the Materials menu for demolishing walls (indoor and outdoor)
- Localisation improvements:
All object/material/room/equipment/research names are now included in the language file (english.txt)
Lots of other hardcoded english has been moved into the language file for easy translation
- You will no longer lose visibility of your indoor areas until your first Prisoners arrive
- Main build toolbar tweeked to scale/layout better on higher resolutions
- The Medical Ward has been renamed to the Infirmary
- Fixed: You sometimes had to wait a very long time for prisoners to arrive when Continuous Intake was disabled
- Fixed: Firing someone who occupies an office now vacates the office
- Fixed: If an Administrator dies his office will now be released
- Fixed: When a prisoner dies or escapes, his cell will now be released for re-use
- Fixed a massive performance bug affecting the Intel HD graphics 4000 chipset
Alpha 4 (Nov 19th 2012)
The key change in this version is an overhaul of the Fog Of War system, in response to community feedback. Almost immediately after launching Alpha3 we began to hear from alpha users that the rooftop style fog-of-war (which blocks out the view of the insides of your prison unless you have Guards watching the area) was annoying because it stopped you from building things - you just couldn’t see what you were doing.
= Fog-of-war overhaul in response to community feedback
- Areas hidden by fog-of-war are now rendered in darkened greyscale instead the solid roof effect
- Walls, floors and Static objects under fog-of-war remain visible but greyed out.
- Guards and Cctv now have a longer view range.
- The Chief has a long view range
- Workmen, Cooks and Doctors have a short view range
= The game is now more permissive when loading corrupted saved games. It will no longer crash.
- Errors in the save file will be reported to debug.txt.
Alpha 3 (Nov 1st 2012)
For this update weve focussed on a new system called Fog Of War, which changes the game in a number of ways. Internally we refer to this as the Visibility system, because you now lose visibility of the indoor areas of your jail gradually over time. Your guards are the only staff members who can unveil the hidden areas, and if you lose visibility of an area you have no idea what sort of things are going on there. This ties in very closely to the Alpha2 update, because you now have to use Deployment and Patrols to create pathways for your guards to walk along to ensure your entire jail remains fully visible at all times.
= Fog-of-war / Visibility system
- You now lose visibility of the indoor areas of your Jail over time (Roof covers up the area)
- Guards reveal the area around them - spread them out to keep your jail fully visible at all times
- Fog of War is optional and can be toggled when creating a new sandbox
= CCtv system
- Unlocked by the Security Chief after Deployment
- CCtv cameras can be used to uncover fog-of-war instead of Guards
- Cctv cameras require monitors - each monitor station allows 3 cameras
- Monitor stations require Guards nearby watching them (One guard can watch a lot of monitors)
- Researching "Deployment" now unlocks Guard Patrols immediately, rather than requiring a separate research project
- Guards who are deployed within a sector will now stay within that sector unless ordered away by the player
- You can now press R to rotate objects during placement
- You can now press Q and E to zoom in and out
- Metal Detectors improved
- Low powered electrical items no longer take damage from water, nor electrocute people in water
- High powered electrical items should never be allowed to touch water ;)
- Holding Cells no longer count towards your prison's capacity. (And no longer affect intake of prisoners)
- You can now disable the checkerboard room pattern if you wish, to provide a cleaner look
(Controlled by preferences option "RenderRooms")
- The PC executable now has an icon
- Fixed: You can no longer use the "Dismantle Object" tool to dismantle fire, polaroids, vehicles etc
- Fixed: Lights can now be dismantled
- Fixed: You can no longer search dead prisoners
- Fixed: The "Incident Reports" objective was sometimes remaining hidden when it should be displayed
- Fixed: You can no longer rotate the following objects: Light, Tree, Electric chair
- Fixed: Saving a prison with a '#' symbol in the filename would cause the game to fail to start on next run
(Preferences.txt would remember the map filename and the game fails to autoload the prison on startup)
Alpha 2 (Oct 18th 2012)
The first major feature of this new build is the Deployment screen. This shows you a security schematic of your prison and allows you to assign guards to each of your sectors, and to set patrols for them to walk along. This makes locking down your prison a lot easier! Weve also fixed a bunch of bugs and introduced an option when creating a new prison which lets you restrict the incoming rate of prisoners so they dont overwhelm you. Rather than receiving a random number every day you will only receive prisoners when you have space.
= Deployment mode
New screen in the toolbar, unlocked in the usual way by the Security Chief
You can assign Guards to the sectors of your jail
You can draw Patrol routes within the sectors, and your guards will follow them
- Intake options: When creating a new map there is an option called Continuous Intake
- "Enabled" behaves like Alpha1, ie a semi-random number of prisoners arrive every day
- "Disabled" means prisoners only arrive when you have capacity to fit them in
- Max 24 prisoners per day either way
- Newly created sandboxes have a Time Warp Factor, which govers the speed of the game clock.
Large maps now "slow down" the game clock by 50% to give entities longer to get around.
Medium maps slow down the game clock to 75%. Small maps run at 100%.
- The game now saves thumbnail PNGs when you save a level.
These are displayed in the Loading / Saving screen when available
- Large Pipes can now be built under existing walls
- Fixed: Game now runs on MacOSX 10.6 or greater (issue with libcurl)
- Experimental Fix: Game should now run properly on Retina Mac screens
It will default to fullscreen at the lower (non retina) resolution
You can force Retina resolution (2x higher) in preferences.txt with screenW and screenH
- Fixed: Some needs should not be displayed to the user (Eg need for Weapon)
- Fixed: Prisoners will no longer sit on chairs or use any equipment in any Office
- Fixed: An issue where goods and Prisoners in a supply truck could be left behind on the road
- Fixed: Prisoners would sometimes become stationary zombies after being escorted from the deliveries zone
(AiTargetSet flag not cleared)
- Fixed: Room type was often forgotten after a Save & Load. Room type would show up after load as "None".
Note: Save games with this bug will still be broken on Load. The game will assign these rooms type "Cell" as a guess.
- Fixed: An issue that caused Save Games to load very very slowly (appearing to crash) if you had created a single very large room
