I have never gotten a fire in PA, and that basicly means that I also never needed the firemen. Therefor I would like to see a new sort of contraband added when prisoners have a lighter and some sort of fuel source that a fire breaks out forcing you to move the prisoners to a safer, less guarded area.
I really like that idea. It would make riots a lot more interesting too, potentially forcing you to rebuild the whole prison if you can't contain it properly :D
i will say fires dont happen very often But i was playing and somehow a fire started in my canteen not in the laundry or the power station, In the canteen where theres no power related stuff so fires are do happen but there rare
How to "fix" cooking: Just like the guard assignment page, assign cooks to kitchens. Then assign kitchens to canteens (like the wiring map). Predict amount of prisoners to be eating in the canteen. Any uneaten food stays in the serving table (like a buffet) until the next meal. Count the number of prisoners on average that eat in the canteen, use the number for future cooking. Summary: Cooks only leave their kitchen to rest, and get foot from deliveries. Kitchens are now assigned to canteens. Uneaten food stays in the serving table. Average eaten food is recorded per canteen, for future meal orders.
Hey guys at Introversion! Always loved your games since way back with Uplink, just want to say how I think Prison Architect is looking fecking amazing! All of your games remind me of that warm fuzzy feeling I remember when playing Elite back as a kid, so I think I have to thank you for that. Keep up the great work guys!
To me, I think the solution would be to have a method by which kitchens and canteens can be linked, and then designated to serve a certain block of cells, and that the cooks will produce an appropriate amount of food for the prisoners occupying those cells (plus a certain small percentage extra for extra-hungry prisoners or to allow for extra intake), at times corresponding to their schedules that the player has defined. At least that would be the solution I would choose, I'm not that experienced a programmer but I know that for any one problem ten people could think up twenty different solutions. To me having it run in the manner I described above feels like the way an actual prison would be run, that there would be processes and calculations to determine how much gets made for where and so on.
Totally agree. It took me a few minutes to work out the linking system with wires and that can get complex but a simple room linking tool would be extremely useful for kitchens and canteens. Could also go as far as to assign certain showers / yards to certain cell blocks but that may just make the AI even more complex rather than simplifying.
Yep this seems like the best idea to me too. Like the other reply says, linking canteens to kitchens would be a nice feature. If that's done on a one-to-many basis then you could effectively have two kitchens each serving their own two+ canteens, or just keep it one-to-one if preferred. I'm a little disappointed by the teleporting business as most things that happen are visually represented by goods being moved from one area to another.
They should add it so you can interact with things, like picking up a tazer from a dead guard, eating food, using the toilet, sleeping, maybe even a working mini-game, etc. You should be able to chose when you wanna fight, and punch by clicking or something, you should have needs, you should be able to actually escape, you should NOT be able to interact as God, meaning you can chose to lock doors open or closed, and the other clickey powers of being the architect. when you go to sleep you should chose what hour to wake up (that will affect your sleep need) and the guards drag you out of bed if you try to sleep in, you should be able to skip solitary (meaning that when you get put in, you can skip to when your term is up). Eventually you should be able to arrange things over the phone to tell your visiting family (which you can say how old they are, with up to 3 children, 1 mom, 1 dad, 0-3 siblings, and 1 ex/current wife/girlfriend, only if you have that last one, can you have kids. you also have a lawyer.) to smuggle in stuff, or throw it over the fence.
I would also make lockdown (as a penalty) skippable. Generally you should be guided a bit. So if your needs are not satisfied you can attack easier or something
It's so re-assuring to see developers really proving how much effort and work they're putting into the game, and you can see that throughout the game in how it is already such a good game, and is still technically in alpha.
Hey IVSoftware, you guys have been THE BEST example of how a great Alpha early-release game can be updated ni a timely fashion, made feature-rich, expanded and fleshed out making the game better and better each month. Really, Prison Architect is sooo good, and I just love these videos when you update. Well played, lads!
I'm suprised they wnet that rout with fixing cooks and such. I was expecting them to make us able to assign cooks to specific kitchens and specific kitchens to specific canteens.
Love these types of videos, I know that it can poses some problems for the presentation due to lack of content to present. But it is integral to interact with your community like this. Keep at it! :D
***** What if you somehow block the main canteen from the chefs (perhaps with land mines :P) so the only serving tables they can access are ones outside?
As far as I understand the problem is how much food should be produced in every kitchen so that all kitchens are always serving the nearest canteen. So you have a graph with a node for every kitchen and a node for every canteen. Every node has a number as its content. In case of a kitchen this is the maximum capacity the cooks can produce in this kitchen. In case of the canteen this is the estimated amount of food required. To make the problem at least somewhat easier we assume there are always enough cooks so that we don't have to assign the cooks to kitchens. Then we connect every kitchen to every canteen. Every edge gets a weight that equals walking distance to the kitchen multiplicated with the amount of food this kitchen would serve. Then we have to match the kitchens to the canteens. I'm not sure what this problem is called but I'm pretty sure its np-complete. There may be some serious logical errors in this post (I just wrote it on my phone). If you find one feel free to correct me Just some more information I found: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matching_(graph_theory) If this graph is bipartite (I assume it is) the problem wouldn't be NP-complete. But at this point the problem is getting to complicated for me and it also isn't worth the time to understand and implement regarding how deep into graph theory you would have to dig. My latest journey down their wasted my whole holidays :D
Why not implement a system for assigning cooks similar to assigning guards and prison labor? And implement a system for linking kitchens to canteens like with the new system for linking electronic systems? Then the only thing to be automated is calculating food produced per canteen--which the game can figure out based on the number of benches and serving tables. This is Prison Architect, after all: for large prisons with complex systems, the whole point of the game is to build and hook up systems in complex and interesting ways. If you're banging your head against the wall trying to make the game automatically calculate the player's intention... well, you're just skipping out on the whole point of the game, aren't you? If the player has an intention for a complex system to work in a certain way, just provide them the tools to manually assign it working in that way.
Thats what I was thinking, why make a whole new system when you could just implement a system where they station themselves in certain rooms. (And leave ocasionaly to get food)
That's a really neat idea of how the game should look like with future updates. I wouldn't mind using a complex interface to get all the systems in my prison to work.
13:37 This is great. There are three distinct answers in there, all of them valid in their own way. "Don't." "Don't issue death threats." "Don't issue death threats to Gabe Newell."
I haven't gone back to the game in a couple months, but these release videos always make me laugh. Almost fell out of my chair with the Q&A.. good advice for new devs!
Just a thought guys, why not just join the kitchens up to the canteens a bit like you've done with the cameras and security doors? Create the association between the kitchen and which canteen they serve so the chefs put the food in the correct places. In terms of how much food, why not just have them make enough food for the amount of prisoners that "could" attend that canteen. Just periodically check how many prisoners will be allowed in each canteen at any time (taking into consideration zoning and meal times for the different security levels etc) Just an idea anyway, love the game :)
this game is awesome, definitelly one of my favorite games on my Steam library and I have over 900 games now we just need some use for the execution chair, lol
With this new kitchen could you not theoretically create 1 monster kitchen, stick 1 serving table in it and then it will serve all canteens in the entire prison?
That one serving table would likely run out of room very quickly though, and they'd end up carrying the rest of the food to the other available serving tables anyways. From what I gathered in the video, the food just teleports when a prisoner goes to collect food from an empty serving table. I could be wrong though.
About the kitchen thing, how about being able to assign a certain cook to a certain kitchen and canteen, kinda like deployment for guards? Same with prisoners, right now they just tend to go to the one that is the shortest way away, regardless of if it is overly full or not, it would be nice to be able to assign a cell block to a canteen and shower and stuff so you could basically limit the maximum amount of prisoners using them to avoid problems with prisoners not getting food or hygiene.
The Canteen problem is rather simple. In the deployment section simply add an option to link kitchens and canteens together. Would also be a good idea to allocate Chefs to certain kitchens to make sure they don't all go to the same one.
I think a real easy way to get around food and chef issue is to. Add in different tiers of chefs. one for low security kitchens and ones high security areas. Just would have to add a area label in the deployment tab to designate which kitchen is low or high security. Then the designated chef will not go to the other kitchen and vise versa. Maybe that would make sure food and supplies go to the right kitchen.
Could you guys maybe put in an option to enable true Edge Panning? I know the game has slight edge panning but it is not true panning though. I am a Moba player and would like to just position my mouse to the edge of the screen to move it around. Is there a setting that I can mess with in game for this? Because PA would work just great with Moba style panning.
How about people tunneling into the prison, to help friends escape from prison. Also, With the separating into zones, Max Sec, Normal Sec etc, I find it a little annoying that I want to keep my Max Sec prisoners out of areas like the Workshop and the Kitchen, but i want all prisoners below that level to be able to use these areas, but can only choose one. Maybe have a system where each area has a checkbox for which prisoner categories you want to allow access.
Why not add a management system for designating which cooks work in which kitchens (or generic staffing levels like in prisoner workshops) and designate which cell blocks go to which canteens? Also stocking options so that you can manage the food contained in kitchens for those days when we get several truck deliveries.
Laundries are still bugged, leaving dirty clothes everywhere and when you have multiple laundries in separate buildings some don't get any uniforms so it just doesn't work while there's a stack of 200 uniforms in the other one that they can't even handle.
SufferMyJoy I assume it's PCSX2, that's pretty much the only PS2 emulator worth using. And yes, there are no emulators on steam (Outside of segas official megadrive one)
Logic gates are amazing! Look at Minecraft, so many people make calculators and CPU, or just hidden trapes, with redstone. The same things can be made in PA, I think that's great.
Kitchen problem can be solved by asigning a number to a kitchen and kitchen staff. for excample, you have 3 kitchens/canteens. you can asign them with a number, 1, 2, 3 and you do the same with the chefs.
for the kitchen problem, why don't you have the ability to set what area the chef's work in, like the what play can set the inmate risk level. Allow the play to set the chef's work place e.g. one chef work in a low risk kitchen, and another chef work in a high risk kitchen, then lock them to only be able work and place food in those kitchens a food court.
LOOK HE HAS [INSERT GAME NAME HERE] WE MUST BUY IT BECAUSE HE HAS IT TOO. Why not just make it so Chefs can be assigned to a kitchen like prisoners are, then assign that kitchen to a canteen? (Food from that kitchen only goes to that canteen)
Why don't you use the previous day's information for number of prisoners in a canteen to work out how much food is needed in each canteen on the next day, for each eat time in the regime?
If you do that, the first day, when you have around 20 prisoners, you will need food for 20, so the game will do 20 rations of food. The second day, the game will notice that the day before your prison consumed food for 20 prisoners, but you actually have 40 in your prison now, but the game will do 20 rations of food again. At the third day, you have 60 prisoners, but the game thinks that because the day before you made 20 rations of food, you will need 20 again this day. It would be a constant loop, if it is enhanched with other technique, code, feature or something, it should work, but the basic idea is not perfect. Sorry for my bad English, I hope I have explained myself well. *EDIT:* I didn't notice you said the number of prisoners, not amount of food. Now, that could work, but only if you don't have new prisoners every day, because if day 1 you have 20, day 2 you will have 20 rations of food, even though you have new prisoners that day, but day 3, if you still have the same amount of prisoners that the day before, it should make the correct amount of food.
***** Could it be done so that the player simply organises how many meals are made for each kitchen - let the human brain sort out all the variables! Though keep it simple, otherwise it turns into Prison Canteen Architect...
Aqui Sparkyle! Stop thinking so binary. Or rather, think more so... First off, everything pre-edit was wrong for another reason. If we look at the prison as a mathematical function -like a computer- we can use math to easily solve the problem you noted. In your example, on day one, we had 20 prisoners and consumed 20 meals. We can instead adjust for any number of prisoners! It's clearly a 1:1 ration between number of prisoners and number of meals consumed. So if the next day the game notes 40 prisoners -it knows 40 meals need be made. Extending this logic actually leads to the real solution to the problem introversion is having -at least theoretically which isn't helpful cause it's obvious. Back to 20 prisoner prison. Le'ts say we have two kitchens such that kitchen A is much larger than kitchen B. Or KitA >>> KitB for short. Currently, the game has no idea how many prisoners will prefer going to KitA over KitB -unless we want the game to 'think ahead' of every prisoners day to figure who will eventually eat where. Which isn't feasible cause the player can influence any prisoners action at any time making all predictions pointless. So how does the game a lot meals to the two kitchens then? Well tkellaway would seem to suggest 'thinking back' so to speak. What did I do yesterday at this hour? -the game might think. This we can do! All the computer has to do is store some metrics in a file. Something like prisoners served (per kitchen) and total prisoners starved would be all you need. Then with maths, you can always approximate how much each kitchen should need next day. The game already knows 1 meal per prisoner -so any change there is immediately fixed. (But for fun, we could start varying prisoner appetite which could be compensated in this model -extra realism is fun.) The only problem is assigning which kitchens need to pick up the missed meals and new prisoners. KitA can generally be the one we default to, after all it's much larger than KitB and likely has more prisoners dining there to begin with. While we might not know FOR SURE if our one new prisoner is a KitB kinda guy, we can be fairly sure he's a KitA one. How sure? We can just look at the ratio of meals served by KitA to total meals served by the prison. In other words, if KitA is currently serving 15/20 meals, and today we have 50 meals to serve, KitA will likely have .75(50)=37.5 meals to serve today -round up to 38. KitB can either make all remaining meals since he's our only other kitchen, or we can use the same logic to predict his needs, either is fun but the latter leads to more margins of error -which is a goodish thing. Do we want kitchens making a handful of extra meals? It's wasteful but more realistic... Anyway, all that was to explain how we can use ratios to solve the entire 'how many meals go where' problem in the game. Wouldn't have to teleport meals anymore, they could be local to each kitchen. Only problem is again, predictions are useless. As mentioned before, the player could easily mess all the plans up by building KitC mid day. Then by formula, KitC would make no meals and then everyone would be in disarray, riots ensue, fires start... Kidding of course, but the point is valid. I'd handle all the random 'what if player did X' or 'What if we run out of meals too early, causing inflated demand on other parts of the prison' or really any logical exception we couldn't think to account the following way. When a prisoner tries to eat at a kitchen without enough meals, his demand is recorded and he goods else where. It's easy to not make a new variable out of it by fudging the others but let's pretend we aren't. So how would we find KitC's ratio? After the first day, just look at how many people wanted to eat there that day and couldn't cause there were zero meals. Make that many (adjusted for prison population change) and everything is in harmony again. Just don't forget to never count prisoners twice when we calculate demand. If a prison tried to go to KitC (thus adding to that kitchens tally for tomorrow) we can't count him again when he ends up eating at KitA (or tomorrow KitA is making an extra meal for no reason). So on paper, this works. Only 'problem' is making a 'if no food in kitchen, reroute prisoner' snip in the AI. And of course making this all work with the timing of meal prep and cook AI -but this should work organically. I'd be surprised if there wasn't an easily changed variable for handling changes in meal volume. (Cause by default, this changes all the time.) But it's a complex answer to a non-problem at this point. At the end of the day, we don't notice the number of serving going down that much. It's insanely easy for the game to lie to us without making it obvious with the teleporting meals. Maybe if I get an itch, I'll code some python to solve the prediction problem. It'll take a few assumptions to make the model fit, but it should prove the theory. Sorry it all that seemed obvious or over explained... the second he said 'just use previous days data' it all clicked for me. Side/Main topic: Introversion did a good solution here. While yes, you could do extra thee above and have a rather good guesstimate for meal demand per kitchen -it's messy and semi-pointless. Just fake it and save computations! Only downside is the prediction method has some good metrics that might help other parts of the AI process, is generally more real, and flexible. Meh, I might toss some prediction code just for fun. Edit: Oh yea, this game has canteens not kitchens. Well, both really... When I said kitchen I mean canteen or 'where they eat' actually. I didn't even want to touch how the AI handles preping the meals. Cause anything past a 1:1 kitchen:canteen ratio is hard to do -and how often is kitchen production matched 1:1 with canteen need? And that's before you add in travel time... Of course the same thinking works here though. How much did I make yesterday? After adjusting for the obvious and factoring in some ratios you have a pretty good guess. The problem becomes optimizing at that point. But that's semi-organic now isn't it? If more prisoners are eating at CanA, we can see how much KitA is preping and then determine if maybe KitB should prep half of it cause he's closer but slower. Easy enough to determine with the right info... Just have to be careful not to rely too much on past data or a non-optimal pattern may emerge.
***** It would be hugely useful if you could designate areas that certain prisoner lvls can't enter, so it allows everyone but that prisoner group to use an area. Very helpful with prisons with multiple canteens, kitchens & Yards etc. Currently if they are out working in your prison and lunch is called prisoners go to the nearest canteen even if they have a designated one a bit further away..
The kitchen problem is solvable and in a realistic way. Associate 2 values with each serving table, call them "wanted" and "filled." (initialize "wanted" to 10) The moment the kitchen is cycled to start its work phase, "filled" and "wanted" are calculated to be: filled = (3 * filled + wanted) / 4; //moving average wanted = 0; //reset The kitchen staff will fill the serving tables up to the "filled" amount rounded up. When an inmate goes to a table wanting food, it will increment the "wanted" value...if the inmate does not find food at that table, he will search for another table for food (and also increment that value plus get more pissed off), repeating the process until he finds food (noting which tables he's already tried). The multiple searches will keep a nominal increase of the moving average to account for new inmates arriving or unseen staff changes but still have room to allow a drop in population density without worrying about wasting too much food.
I'm not sure what the correct words are but I'm just gunna go for it. with the canteen food issue could you have PA randomly assign prisoners to a canteen that matches them e.g a max security prisoner will be assigned to a the closest max security or shared canteen? that way the canteen can request a certain number of meal/resources. e.g. the canteen has 50 prisoners. it asks the kitchen for 50 meals. The kitchen has 3 assigned canteens all requesting 50 meals so the kitchen asks for the resources for 150 meals.
About the food, why not just ask the player to decide the amount of meals for each canteen will get and link each one of the canteens to a kitchen, that way you can easily calculate how many meals each kitchen has to cook just adding the number of meals they have to provide for their linked canteens. Add a warning if the total number of meals for the prison is below the number of prisoners and you're done ... or am I missing something ?
8:09 I dont think its something you should be scared or concerned about. The people who do like and enjoy the cutscene will watch it, those who dont will skip it. Without the option all your doing is forcing those who dont like it to watch it, because those who like it will watch it either way.
Bram06 but how would you expect that to work...?! I see no good way to implement MP, i was actually wondering who thoought that would be a goood idee :P
loved that hahahaha i personally don't like multiplayer what's the point to have multiplayer on this game if the game it's about, you build your own prison etc...
An idea make it so every prisoner gets a designated canteen then put it up to the player to designate certain kitchens to certain canteens similar to the wiring from a CCTV monitor to a CCTV camera
Will you be implementing a method that allows players to assign staff to particular room like guards? I have been having real issues with my tiny supermax kitchen having 5 cooks for two hobs while the big one to feed 150 prisoners being understaffed. Also (getting greedy now) could you assign staff to particular jobs I had a full scale riot over food when all of my 15 cooks refused do the dishes and there were no clean trays.
Love that the kitchen issue is getting attention with this one, i'll admit i haven't tried it yet though since i pretty much stopped playing for a while (due to that exact issue). But regarding the whole "difficult to make it reallistic" thing, can't you simply make it so the chefs/inmates carry the food to the closest canteena they can find? Every prison i've made so far have the kitchen right next door so that should solve it, though i guess if someone only has one kitchen on several canteenas it might be more diffcult... Still though, just throwing ideas out there.
Maybey the simple fix for the kitchen is this; Simply order even food to fill every serving table the player places. If a player puts one in the yard, the chefs will fill it up. Then for meal time, simply make it so the chefs will strive to keep food in the severing tables. They only have to rotate food every 6 hours. It will work because you have scheduled security classes separately now. If they run out of room for serving tables they will have trouble, and if they have too many they waste money. Some of this stuff can be simplified.
hello, not sure whether you guys have fixed this or didnt plan to fix it but just to let you guys know that the prisoners can steal contraband over walls. For example, prisoners inside their cells can steal contraband as things were brought into the prison past their corridor.
Cant you just program it so to set a specific number of prisoners to the nearest canteen according to number of serving tables and the cooks in the nearest kitchen will cook according to the number of prisoners eating at that canteen. Maybe as a bonus, indicate in a special tab, maybe in deployment, how many prisoners are assigned to that canteen out of the max capacity. Assigned/Max. If the kitchen cant supply the canteen make it so to warn the player as well as when your canteen are over capacity.
Would be good to maybe see in the future some multilayer like someone plays as the builder and gets guards and stuff and someone controls the prisoners ie set-up contraband set-up other prisoners riots etc.
I know you already gave a solution to the whole food problem with food not going where it needed to but here is an idea. make it so when a meal is in progress one of the cooks or workmen will sand by the serving tables and have them count the number of prisoner that eat there. Then after they count up the numbers they redistribute the food so it will match the number more evenly. kind a like how schools will count how many people get hot launches.
That's a pretty good solution. I was thinking something kinda similar where it counts the error after each meal time and then adjusts how many meals get sent to each area next time. So, if you make a change to your prison, then the next meal time might be wrong and not everyone gets food, but over time it stabilizes and corrects itself. This way food can be sent in advance without knowing the actual numbers. Basically assume that today the food requirements will be more or less the same as yesterdays requirements, so if yesterdays were wrong, we can adjust and hope for the best. Should get good results unless you keep changing things that alter requirements. But I think that's realistic, because if you keep for example reallocating prisoners, how the hell are the cooks supposed to know how much food each canteen needs? :)
hmm. Could the teleporting food be abused? Put a single large kitchen completely isolated from the prisoners with a staff-only canteen and a single serving table. Then only have canteens in your actual prison.
NOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! YOU F***ERS! HOW COULD YOU RUIN THIS HIGHLY ACCURATE HARDCORE PRISON REALITY SIMULATION BY CHEATING WITH THE FOOD?!? Seriously, great to hear that a lot of bugs are fixed. I'm fooking forward to the next content update, keep up the good work!
Nice bit of bug bashing there. +26 Generic Development Points
can i have some:)
also will we be getting a new video today
hi official stuff
Hi:)
Hi :D
Hello generic overlord.
I have never gotten a fire in PA, and that basicly means that I also never needed the firemen.
Therefor I would like to see a new sort of contraband added when prisoners have a lighter and some sort of fuel source that a fire breaks out forcing you to move the prisoners to a safer, less guarded area.
I really like that idea. It would make riots a lot more interesting too, potentially forcing you to rebuild the whole prison if you can't contain it properly :D
I don't know, i had a random fire in a cell before once. No idea how it happened, i assume a prisoner lit it himself.
If you have stuff like a TV in there cell and they broke the toilet a fire will start
Gibbo Gibster No TV. Just a cell door, toilet and a bed.
i will say fires dont happen very often But i was playing and somehow a fire started in my canteen not in the laundry or the power station, In the canteen where theres no power related stuff so fires are do happen but there rare
These videos are always fun. The discussions are informative and fun.
I'd listen the hell out of an Introversion podcast.
How to "fix" cooking:
Just like the guard assignment page, assign cooks to kitchens. Then assign kitchens to canteens (like the wiring map). Predict amount of prisoners to be eating in the canteen. Any uneaten food stays in the serving table (like a buffet) until the next meal. Count the number of prisoners on average that eat in the canteen, use the number for future cooking.
Summary: Cooks only leave their kitchen to rest, and get foot from deliveries.
Kitchens are now assigned to canteens.
Uneaten food stays in the serving table.
Average eaten food is recorded per canteen, for future meal orders.
You could extend this by assigning cell blocks to canteens, thereby allowing each kitchen to know how much food to make...
Good idea!
what do you mean assign cooks and assign kitchens to canteens there's no button or anything for that
Digidude50 But their could be.
JJ ceo
Wonderful ideas!! I like this very much!
Hey guys at Introversion! Always loved your games since way back with Uplink, just want to say how I think Prison Architect is looking fecking amazing! All of your games remind me of that warm fuzzy feeling I remember when playing Elite back as a kid, so I think I have to thank you for that.
Keep up the great work guys!
I love how much work you guys put into this game! youre a glowing example of doing early access right! also the game is awesome! kudos!
Next alpha, gangs, like they can take over territory and fight each other and etc. You know gang stuff.
***** I hope they include an off feature for that. Might completely mess up some prisons if not done right.
Finlay Mortimer inb4 name a gang pack to purchase
Finlay Mortimer "The Prison People"
vzwGrey
Just "Prison People" is better! Imagine when you say their name! *We are the P.P. and will pee pee on you if you don't join us!*
Killeru Copilasu "You should be scared of us!"
-why?
"Cause we are dangerous!We are P.P."
- xD
"What's so funny?!"
To me, I think the solution would be to have a method by which kitchens and canteens can be linked, and then designated to serve a certain block of cells, and that the cooks will produce an appropriate amount of food for the prisoners occupying those cells (plus a certain small percentage extra for extra-hungry prisoners or to allow for extra intake), at times corresponding to their schedules that the player has defined.
At least that would be the solution I would choose, I'm not that experienced a programmer but I know that for any one problem ten people could think up twenty different solutions. To me having it run in the manner I described above feels like the way an actual prison would be run, that there would be processes and calculations to determine how much gets made for where and so on.
Totally agree. It took me a few minutes to work out the linking system with wires and that can get complex but a simple room linking tool would be extremely useful for kitchens and canteens. Could also go as far as to assign certain showers / yards to certain cell blocks but that may just make the AI even more complex rather than simplifying.
Yep this seems like the best idea to me too. Like the other reply says, linking canteens to kitchens would be a nice feature. If that's done on a one-to-many basis then you could effectively have two kitchens each serving their own two+ canteens, or just keep it one-to-one if preferred. I'm a little disappointed by the teleporting business as most things that happen are visually represented by goods being moved from one area to another.
I still vote for a full-blown "play as prisoner" gamemode
Also, Apperently there are no comments yet :O
They should add it so you can interact with things, like picking up a tazer from a dead guard, eating food, using the toilet, sleeping, maybe even a working mini-game, etc. You should be able to chose when you wanna fight, and punch by clicking or something, you should have needs, you should be able to actually escape, you should NOT be able to interact as God, meaning you can chose to lock doors open or closed, and the other clickey powers of being the architect. when you go to sleep you should chose what hour to wake up (that will affect your sleep need) and the guards drag you out of bed if you try to sleep in, you should be able to skip solitary (meaning that when you get put in, you can skip to when your term is up). Eventually you should be able to arrange things over the phone to tell your visiting family (which you can say how old they are, with up to 3 children, 1 mom, 1 dad, 0-3 siblings, and 1 ex/current wife/girlfriend, only if you have that last one, can you have kids. you also have a lawyer.) to smuggle in stuff, or throw it over the fence.
I would also make lockdown (as a penalty) skippable. Generally you should be guided a bit. So if your needs are not satisfied you can attack easier or something
Try "The Escapists". It might satisfy you a bit. Game still in alpha but it serve me well enough.
actually you can play as prisoner but you need your prison to go crazy
Isaac Bassmann yeah, but its kinda boring because you can't interact like a prisoner
I want to really thank you for making these videos and letting people into the process. I really enjoy them. I have watched each one.
Aww too bad. Was hoping for something exciting. However I think we all appreciate the bug fixes. Nice work guys!
"Don't issue death threats." I died there. Best answer/advice ever.
I wait every month to watch you guys. well time to start a new prison and see where this adventure will take me! :)
It's so re-assuring to see developers really proving how much effort and work they're putting into the game, and you can see that throughout the game in how it is already such a good game, and is still technically in alpha.
Excellent as always, and Notch thinks so too! :D
You need a "Notch Approved" badge at the bottom of the screen for the next vid!
Hey IVSoftware, you guys have been THE BEST example of how a great Alpha early-release game can be updated ni a timely fashion, made feature-rich, expanded and fleshed out making the game better and better each month. Really, Prison Architect is sooo good, and I just love these videos when you update. Well played, lads!
I'm suprised they wnet that rout with fixing cooks and such. I was expecting them to make us able to assign cooks to specific kitchens and specific kitchens to specific canteens.
I do not own the game, but I like watching how it gets larger and better :D
Fun game.. definitely worth playing
same here really ;D
It was $10 on Humble bundle a month ago
Thats what she said :p
Marcuss2 It's 10 bucks now on steam
Love these types of videos, I know that it can poses some problems for the presentation due to lack of content to present. But it is integral to interact with your community like this. Keep at it! :D
I didn't even realise there was an Introversion FB page, liked, keep up the great work guys.
I'm cracking up at the not even knowing what alpha you're on. I love the work y'all are doing!
I'm sure it's been asked for many times before but I'd love something like a podcast where they just talk about random stuff and have discussions.
So now i can build a kitchen and a canteen out of the main prison walls and another canteen inside the prison
and beam the food in?
:P
Mr Scotty: Beam in the food!
TheZurkey Make it so Mr. Zurk!
***** what if you close it off . park a few chefs in there and maybe a janitor? i suppose then you couldnt get ingredients
***** What if you somehow block the main canteen from the chefs (perhaps with land mines :P) so the only serving tables they can access are ones outside?
YOU FIXED THE SLEEP/SAVE BUG!!! I love you!!!
These dev videos are just pure awesome - It gives the customers a glance into an otherwise largely "mystical" and closed off system.
As far as I understand the problem is how much food should be produced in every kitchen so that all kitchens are always serving the nearest canteen. So you have a graph with a node for every kitchen and a node for every canteen. Every node has a number as its content. In case of a kitchen this is the maximum capacity the cooks can produce in this kitchen. In case of the canteen this is the estimated amount of food required. To make the problem at least somewhat easier we assume there are always enough cooks so that we don't have to assign the cooks to kitchens. Then we connect every kitchen to every canteen. Every edge gets a weight that equals walking distance to the kitchen multiplicated with the amount of food this kitchen would serve. Then we have to match the kitchens to the canteens. I'm not sure what this problem is called but I'm pretty sure its np-complete. There may be some serious logical errors in this post (I just wrote it on my phone). If you find one feel free to correct me
Just some more information I found:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matching_(graph_theory)
If this graph is bipartite (I assume it is) the problem wouldn't be NP-complete.
But at this point the problem is getting to complicated for me and it also isn't worth the time to understand and implement regarding how deep into graph theory you would have to dig. My latest journey down their wasted my whole holidays :D
Why not implement a system for assigning cooks similar to assigning guards and prison labor? And implement a system for linking kitchens to canteens like with the new system for linking electronic systems? Then the only thing to be automated is calculating food produced per canteen--which the game can figure out based on the number of benches and serving tables.
This is Prison Architect, after all: for large prisons with complex systems, the whole point of the game is to build and hook up systems in complex and interesting ways. If you're banging your head against the wall trying to make the game automatically calculate the player's intention... well, you're just skipping out on the whole point of the game, aren't you? If the player has an intention for a complex system to work in a certain way, just provide them the tools to manually assign it working in that way.
Thats what I was thinking, why make a whole new system when you could just implement a system where they station themselves in certain rooms. (And leave ocasionaly to get food)
That's a really neat idea of how the game should look like with future updates. I wouldn't mind using a complex interface to get all the systems in my prison to work.
ya i don't get way they don't do that
Finally you fix save/load games. You have my endless thanks. :D
Thank you for this great game. You have a fan for life, keep up the good work.
Been waiting ages for this :)
Guys you should make the "fake hacks" an option in the new prison menu!
Keep up the good work guys!!!
We
13:37
This is great. There are three distinct answers in there, all of them valid in their own way.
"Don't."
"Don't issue death threats."
"Don't issue death threats to Gabe Newell."
Yea I think I prefer the analogue clock. It's almost like a timer ticking down until a riot occurs because you got distracted by watching the clock.
I laughed really hard at "don't issue death treats at Gabe Newell" :D
Love these videos, great job.
I haven't gone back to the game in a couple months, but these release videos always make me laugh.
Almost fell out of my chair with the Q&A.. good advice for new devs!
Just a thought guys, why not just join the kitchens up to the canteens a bit like you've done with the cameras and security doors? Create the association between the kitchen and which canteen they serve so the chefs put the food in the correct places.
In terms of how much food, why not just have them make enough food for the amount of prisoners that "could" attend that canteen. Just periodically check how many prisoners will be allowed in each canteen at any time (taking into consideration zoning and meal times for the different security levels etc)
Just an idea anyway, love the game :)
this game is awesome, definitelly one of my favorite games on my Steam library and I have over 900 games
now we just need some use for the execution chair, lol
Tips to new indie gigs: worship Gabe as your lord and saviour
dungeon on the endless and planetary annihilation. great taste in games!
With this new kitchen could you not theoretically create 1 monster kitchen, stick 1 serving table in it and then it will serve all canteens in the entire prison?
yup, i guess so.
That one serving table would likely run out of room very quickly though, and they'd end up carrying the rest of the food to the other available serving tables anyways. From what I gathered in the video, the food just teleports when a prisoner goes to collect food from an empty serving table. I could be wrong though.
Reverse it then? Lots of serving tables near the kitchen and then just 1 in canteens arounds the prison?
ragerancher
Yea, that would probably work a bit more like you were suggesting.
Logic gates are useful in the game. They help control the flow areas in a fine grained way.
About the kitchen thing, how about being able to assign a certain cook to a certain kitchen and canteen, kinda like deployment for guards? Same with prisoners, right now they just tend to go to the one that is the shortest way away, regardless of if it is overly full or not, it would be nice to be able to assign a cell block to a canteen and shower and stuff so you could basically limit the maximum amount of prisoners using them to avoid problems with prisoners not getting food or hygiene.
The Canteen problem is rather simple. In the deployment section simply add an option to link kitchens and canteens together. Would also be a good idea to allocate Chefs to certain kitchens to make sure they don't all go to the same one.
I think a real easy way to get around food and chef issue is to. Add in different tiers of chefs. one for low security kitchens and ones high security areas. Just would have to add a area label in the deployment tab to designate which kitchen is low or high security. Then the designated chef will not go to the other kitchen and vise versa. Maybe that would make sure food and supplies go to the right kitchen.
I would love to see a game mode where you have to escape from your own prison
***** Escapist Architect
i think the escapist is supposed to have a mode where u make a prison to escape from in the future
go play the escapist ^^
Depending on how the resource allocation is built it might very well be NP-Complete
Could you guys maybe put in an option to enable true Edge Panning? I know the game has slight edge panning but it is not true panning though. I am a Moba player and would like to just position my mouse to the edge of the screen to move it around. Is there a setting that I can mess with in game for this? Because PA would work just great with Moba style panning.
How about people tunneling into the prison, to help friends escape from prison.
Also, With the separating into zones, Max Sec, Normal Sec etc, I find it a little annoying that I want to keep my Max Sec prisoners out of areas like the Workshop and the Kitchen, but i want all prisoners below that level to be able to use these areas, but can only choose one. Maybe have a system where each area has a checkbox for which prisoner categories you want to allow access.
The "don't issue death threats" bit utterly cracked me up, you have to be following industry drama to properly get that, but yes! :D
Why not add a management system for designating which cooks work in which kitchens (or generic staffing levels like in prisoner workshops) and designate which cell blocks go to which canteens? Also stocking options so that you can manage the food contained in kitchens for those days when we get several truck deliveries.
Laundries are still bugged, leaving dirty clothes everywhere and when you have multiple laundries in separate buildings some don't get any uniforms so it just doesn't work while there's a stack of 200 uniforms in the other one that they can't even handle.
I think that we all want the prisoners to be able to drop the soap...
What games did you recently play on that PS2 Emulator? :P
*****
best one in recent years, good taste!
Will Ferrous I was thinking it could have been Shadow of the Collosus
Pirat
i thought the context is clear, "best one" refers to the best game in the *ff series* in recent years.
Seriously, XI and 13 are both shite
SufferMyJoy I assume it's PCSX2, that's pretty much the only PS2 emulator worth using. And yes, there are no emulators on steam (Outside of segas official megadrive one)
Will Ferrous I meant that I thought the emulator was for SotC before I read the comment.
Best quote: NOOO NOOOO YOU FUCKERS *hitting table*
Logic gates are amazing! Look at Minecraft, so many people make calculators and CPU, or just hidden trapes, with redstone. The same things can be made in PA, I think that's great.
Visitation Booth? Like the phone through glass. It would look cool.
Kitchen problem can be solved by asigning a number to a kitchen and kitchen staff.
for excample, you have 3 kitchens/canteens. you can asign them with a number, 1, 2, 3 and you do the same with the chefs.
The Halloween Dane is EPIC!
for the kitchen problem, why don't you have the ability to set what area the chef's work in, like the what play can set the inmate risk level. Allow the play to set the chef's work place e.g. one chef work in a low risk kitchen, and another chef work in a high risk kitchen, then lock them to only be able work and place food in those kitchens a food court.
What about laundry vs security zones ? I was hoping for that to be tackled soon ;(
LOOK HE HAS [INSERT GAME NAME HERE] WE MUST BUY IT BECAUSE HE HAS IT TOO.
Why not just make it so Chefs can be assigned to a kitchen like prisoners are, then assign that kitchen to a canteen? (Food from that kitchen only goes to that canteen)
nozajdarkcaster you should, it's a great game
I've always found bureaucracy kinda interesting. Even if im on the crap receiving end of it.
Why don't you use the previous day's information for number of prisoners in a canteen to work out how much food is needed in each canteen on the next day, for each eat time in the regime?
If you do that, the first day, when you have around 20 prisoners, you will need food for 20, so the game will do 20 rations of food. The second day, the game will notice that the day before your prison consumed food for 20 prisoners, but you actually have 40 in your prison now, but the game will do 20 rations of food again. At the third day, you have 60 prisoners, but the game thinks that because the day before you made 20 rations of food, you will need 20 again this day.
It would be a constant loop, if it is enhanched with other technique, code, feature or something, it should work, but the basic idea is not perfect.
Sorry for my bad English, I hope I have explained myself well.
*EDIT:* I didn't notice you said the number of prisoners, not amount of food. Now, that could work, but only if you don't have new prisoners every day, because if day 1 you have 20, day 2 you will have 20 rations of food, even though you have new prisoners that day, but day 3, if you still have the same amount of prisoners that the day before, it should make the correct amount of food.
*****
Could it be done so that the player simply organises how many meals are made for each kitchen - let the human brain sort out all the variables! Though keep it simple, otherwise it turns into Prison Canteen Architect...
Aqui Sparkyle!
Stop thinking so binary. Or rather, think more so...
First off, everything pre-edit was wrong for another reason. If we look at the prison as a mathematical function -like a computer- we can use math to easily solve the problem you noted. In your example, on day one, we had 20 prisoners and consumed 20 meals. We can instead adjust for any number of prisoners! It's clearly a 1:1 ration between number of prisoners and number of meals consumed. So if the next day the game notes 40 prisoners -it knows 40 meals need be made.
Extending this logic actually leads to the real solution to the problem introversion is having -at least theoretically which isn't helpful cause it's obvious.
Back to 20 prisoner prison. Le'ts say we have two kitchens such that kitchen A is much larger than kitchen B. Or KitA >>> KitB for short.
Currently, the game has no idea how many prisoners will prefer going to KitA over KitB -unless we want the game to 'think ahead' of every prisoners day to figure who will eventually eat where. Which isn't feasible cause the player can influence any prisoners action at any time making all predictions pointless.
So how does the game a lot meals to the two kitchens then?
Well tkellaway would seem to suggest 'thinking back' so to speak. What did I do yesterday at this hour? -the game might think. This we can do! All the computer has to do is store some metrics in a file.
Something like prisoners served (per kitchen) and total prisoners starved would be all you need. Then with maths, you can always approximate how much each kitchen should need next day. The game already knows 1 meal per prisoner -so any change there is immediately fixed. (But for fun, we could start varying prisoner appetite which could be compensated in this model -extra realism is fun.) The only problem is assigning which kitchens need to pick up the missed meals and new prisoners. KitA can generally be the one we default to, after all it's much larger than KitB and likely has more prisoners dining there to begin with. While we might not know FOR SURE if our one new prisoner is a KitB kinda guy, we can be fairly sure he's a KitA one.
How sure? We can just look at the ratio of meals served by KitA to total meals served by the prison. In other words, if KitA is currently serving 15/20 meals, and today we have 50 meals to serve, KitA will likely have .75(50)=37.5 meals to serve today -round up to 38.
KitB can either make all remaining meals since he's our only other kitchen, or we can use the same logic to predict his needs, either is fun but the latter leads to more margins of error -which is a goodish thing. Do we want kitchens making a handful of extra meals? It's wasteful but more realistic...
Anyway, all that was to explain how we can use ratios to solve the entire 'how many meals go where' problem in the game. Wouldn't have to teleport meals anymore, they could be local to each kitchen. Only problem is again, predictions are useless. As mentioned before, the player could easily mess all the plans up by building KitC mid day. Then by formula, KitC would make no meals and then everyone would be in disarray, riots ensue, fires start...
Kidding of course, but the point is valid. I'd handle all the random 'what if player did X' or 'What if we run out of meals too early, causing inflated demand on other parts of the prison' or really any logical exception we couldn't think to account the following way. When a prisoner tries to eat at a kitchen without enough meals, his demand is recorded and he goods else where. It's easy to not make a new variable out of it by fudging the others but let's pretend we aren't.
So how would we find KitC's ratio? After the first day, just look at how many people wanted to eat there that day and couldn't cause there were zero meals. Make that many (adjusted for prison population change) and everything is in harmony again. Just don't forget to never count prisoners twice when we calculate demand. If a prison tried to go to KitC (thus adding to that kitchens tally for tomorrow) we can't count him again when he ends up eating at KitA (or tomorrow KitA is making an extra meal for no reason).
So on paper, this works. Only 'problem' is making a 'if no food in kitchen, reroute prisoner' snip in the AI. And of course making this all work with the timing of meal prep and cook AI -but this should work organically. I'd be surprised if there wasn't an easily changed variable for handling changes in meal volume. (Cause by default, this changes all the time.)
But it's a complex answer to a non-problem at this point. At the end of the day, we don't notice the number of serving going down that much. It's insanely easy for the game to lie to us without making it obvious with the teleporting meals.
Maybe if I get an itch, I'll code some python to solve the prediction problem. It'll take a few assumptions to make the model fit, but it should prove the theory.
Sorry it all that seemed obvious or over explained... the second he said 'just use previous days data' it all clicked for me.
Side/Main topic: Introversion did a good solution here. While yes, you could do extra thee above and have a rather good guesstimate for meal demand per kitchen -it's messy and semi-pointless. Just fake it and save computations! Only downside is the prediction method has some good metrics that might help other parts of the AI process, is generally more real, and flexible.
Meh, I might toss some prediction code just for fun.
Edit: Oh yea, this game has canteens not kitchens. Well, both really... When I said kitchen I mean canteen or 'where they eat' actually. I didn't even want to touch how the AI handles preping the meals. Cause anything past a 1:1 kitchen:canteen ratio is hard to do -and how often is kitchen production matched 1:1 with canteen need? And that's before you add in travel time...
Of course the same thinking works here though. How much did I make yesterday? After adjusting for the obvious and factoring in some ratios you have a pretty good guess. The problem becomes optimizing at that point. But that's semi-organic now isn't it? If more prisoners are eating at CanA, we can see how much KitA is preping and then determine if maybe KitB should prep half of it cause he's closer but slower. Easy enough to determine with the right info... Just have to be careful not to rely too much on past data or a non-optimal pattern may emerge.
Marcus Love DUDE great reply... holy crap, you deserve a job
***** It would be hugely useful if you could designate areas that certain prisoner lvls can't enter, so it allows everyone but that prisoner group to use an area. Very helpful with prisons with multiple canteens, kitchens & Yards etc. Currently if they are out working in your prison and lunch is called prisoners go to the nearest canteen even if they have a designated one a bit further away..
The kitchen problem is solvable and in a realistic way. Associate 2 values with each serving table, call them "wanted" and "filled." (initialize "wanted" to 10) The moment the kitchen is cycled to start its work phase, "filled" and "wanted" are calculated to be:
filled = (3 * filled + wanted) / 4; //moving average
wanted = 0; //reset
The kitchen staff will fill the serving tables up to the "filled" amount rounded up. When an inmate goes to a table wanting food, it will increment the "wanted" value...if the inmate does not find food at that table, he will search for another table for food (and also increment that value plus get more pissed off), repeating the process until he finds food (noting which tables he's already tried). The multiple searches will keep a nominal increase of the moving average to account for new inmates arriving or unseen staff changes but still have room to allow a drop in population density without worrying about wasting too much food.
The clocks to big :) hahaha love you guys at introversion ;)
Kitchens and maybe other rooms should have the option to be micromanaged about who works where and which canteen(s) they serve
Sounded good guys, bugs are often the hardest part of any product. :)
There has not been a single dev video that did not make me laugh. I LOVE THESE GUYS!!!!
Will there be an option for a women's prison in the final game?
Same ere and diabled prisoners
You could try letting the player designate a time and kitchen a serving table will accept food from. or link a canteen to a kitchen
love your game, had the flu for a week so I just played all day every day for a week I'm all better now
I'm not sure what the correct words are but I'm just gunna go for it.
with the canteen food issue could you have PA randomly assign prisoners to a canteen that matches them e.g a max security prisoner will be assigned to a the closest max security or shared canteen? that way the canteen can request a certain number of meal/resources. e.g. the canteen has 50 prisoners. it asks the kitchen for 50 meals. The kitchen has 3 assigned canteens all requesting 50 meals so the kitchen asks for the resources for 150 meals.
SAAAAAM! Best bit of the video!
So... since this is a prison, when do we get a 'dropped the soap' mod???
you need *guard towers*, guys =)
it's iconic for every prison ever!
About the food, why not just ask the player to decide the amount of meals for each canteen will get and link each one of the canteens to a kitchen, that way you can easily calculate how many meals each kitchen has to cook just adding the number of meals they have to provide for their linked canteens.
Add a warning if the total number of meals for the prison is below the number of prisoners and you're done ... or am I missing something ?
8:09 I dont think its something you should be scared or concerned about.
The people who do like and enjoy the cutscene will watch it, those who dont will skip it. Without the option all your doing is forcing those who dont like it to watch it, because those who like it will watch it either way.
"Are there any plans for multiplayer?"
"No... next question."Lol
I was disappointed when I heard this D:
Bram06 but how would you expect that to work...?! I see no good way to implement MP, i was actually wondering who thoought that would be a goood idee :P
one architect, and a few others as prisoners trying to escape
loved that hahahaha i personally don't like multiplayer what's the point to have multiplayer on this game if the game it's about, you build your own prison etc...
Two architects, one prison
An idea make it so every prisoner gets a designated canteen then put it up to the player to designate certain kitchens to certain canteens similar to the wiring from a CCTV monitor to a CCTV camera
also make it so you can assign chiefs to certain canteens
WOW! I've literally spend almost 80% as long as Chris has on Prison Architect! Woohoo
I think you dudes.are.doing a.better job each time keep up the.work I love it
the new clock looks nice...but i think it should be less squareish and more rectangle like an alarm clock..
Hmmm, yes but one thing, a lot of my prisons have prisoners that doesn't want to take part of the Workshop
RIP headphone users @ 12:39 :
Will you be implementing a method that allows players to assign staff to particular room like guards? I have been having real issues with my tiny supermax kitchen having 5 cooks for two hobs while the big one to feed 150 prisoners being understaffed.
Also (getting greedy now) could you assign staff to particular jobs I had a full scale riot over food when all of my 15 cooks refused do the dishes and there were no clean trays.
"Don't send death threats" Had me in stitches.
For the "Cooks running between canteens problem" why not have the cooks find the nearest serving table and make them pathfind to it?
Love that the kitchen issue is getting attention with this one, i'll admit i haven't tried it yet though since i pretty much stopped playing for a while (due to that exact issue). But regarding the whole "difficult to make it reallistic" thing, can't you simply make it so the chefs/inmates carry the food to the closest canteena they can find? Every prison i've made so far have the kitchen right next door so that should solve it, though i guess if someone only has one kitchen on several canteenas it might be more diffcult... Still though, just throwing ideas out there.
How to avoid trucks delivering only single packages at a time?
Why don't you add a system where you link certain kitchens to certain canteens?
Maybey the simple fix for the kitchen is this; Simply order even food to fill every serving table the player places. If a player puts one in the yard, the chefs will fill it up. Then for meal time, simply make it so the chefs will strive to keep food in the severing tables. They only have to rotate food every 6 hours. It will work because you have scheduled security classes separately now. If they run out of room for serving tables they will have trouble, and if they have too many they waste money.
Some of this stuff can be simplified.
hello, not sure whether you guys have fixed this or didnt plan to fix it but just to let you guys know that the prisoners can steal contraband over walls. For example, prisoners inside their cells can steal contraband as things were brought into the prison past their corridor.
Good thing you guys bring up Notch because I was just watching a Yogscast video on Minecraft and you guys sound very much alike
Bugs And A Clock. Keep Up The Good Work Guys :)
About the kitchen problem. Just let us assign a cook manually to a specific kitchen and canteen.
OMG PLEASE
already done
Cant you just program it so to set a specific number of prisoners to the nearest canteen according to number of serving tables and the cooks in the nearest kitchen will cook according to the number of prisoners eating at that canteen. Maybe as a bonus, indicate in a special tab, maybe in deployment, how many prisoners are assigned to that canteen out of the max capacity. Assigned/Max. If the kitchen cant supply the canteen make it so to warn the player as well as when your canteen are over capacity.
Would be good to maybe see in the future some multilayer like someone plays as the builder and gets guards and stuff and someone controls the prisoners ie set-up contraband set-up other prisoners riots etc.
I know you already gave a solution to the whole food problem with food not going where it needed to but here is an idea. make it so when a meal is in progress one of the cooks or workmen will sand by the serving tables and have them count the number of prisoner that eat there. Then after they count up the numbers they redistribute the food so it will match the number more evenly. kind a like how schools will count how many people get hot launches.
That's a pretty good solution. I was thinking something kinda similar where it counts the error after each meal time and then adjusts how many meals get sent to each area next time. So, if you make a change to your prison, then the next meal time might be wrong and not everyone gets food, but over time it stabilizes and corrects itself. This way food can be sent in advance without knowing the actual numbers. Basically assume that today the food requirements will be more or less the same as yesterdays requirements, so if yesterdays were wrong, we can adjust and hope for the best. Should get good results unless you keep changing things that alter requirements. But I think that's realistic, because if you keep for example reallocating prisoners, how the hell are the cooks supposed to know how much food each canteen needs? :)
hmm. Could the teleporting food be abused? Put a single large kitchen completely isolated from the prisoners with a staff-only canteen and a single serving table.
Then only have canteens in your actual prison.
NOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! YOU F***ERS! HOW COULD YOU RUIN THIS HIGHLY ACCURATE HARDCORE PRISON REALITY SIMULATION BY CHEATING WITH THE FOOD?!?
Seriously, great to hear that a lot of bugs are fixed. I'm fooking forward to the next content update, keep up the good work!