I gave Prison Architect(PA) a play again. I started with the tutorial where you have to build an execution facility, so four walls and a large jail door, and they give you the layout on the ground as a guide. I got stuck at the walls 27% complete, and the jail door installed.
I've tried a number of times to play this game but just find it frustrating, not sure how to build etc. Don't get me wrong I like challenging games but not a challenging user interface. Maybe I'm just spoilt and expect to fire the game up and just be able to figure it out via menus and tooltips as you go along.
Don't get me wrong I'm a fan of this game from the start, and love the concept etc. It's the first time in a long time where I encountered a game where this still happen, last one I recall was the map view of Graviteam's Kharkov.
If I compare my experience to Banished that I recently bought on the Steam sale, played the tutorials and able to enjoy the game in no time at all.
Anybody else feel the same way about PA?
I've had some issues with it, mainly not recognizing doors or not letting me place doors. I found my designs rather poor but the game didn't draw me in enough for me to want to spend hours dicking around with figuring out optimal placements/spacing.
Then I go on teh Interwebz and find an incredible amount of designs that people have done - people with nothing but time on their hands, apparently. One dude did a prison that looks like the Enterprise, for cryin' out loud.
So, it's drawing some people in, but I found it a bit unwieldy. I have not uninstalled it yet, though...I'd like to return to it. I do enjoy the building aspect but the door thing, that kind of messed it up for me.
I feel exactly the same way fran and had the same trouble with the tutorial. Deleted.
I didn't see what all the fuss was about.
Thought I was the only one. I cannot get past the first tutorial...door placement seems to be the issue.
Prison Architect isn't even beta yet, it's still in alpha, and the developers have always been, rather unapologetically, more focused on adding features than fixing anything other than game-breaking bugs. This is why I never buy into an unreleased game unless I've researched it thoroughly and accept the risks. Yeah it's rough around the edges in places - I can't remember the tutorial but evidently I got through it without issue. Perhaps it's been neglected and even broken with recent development, I don't know.
Having said that, I can't let the comments about door placement go unaddressed. Here's how you build a door:
1. Select a door.
2. Click on the map where you want it to go.
It sounds like I'm being facetious, but it really is that simple. Hell, you don't even need to make a gap in the wall to fit the door into. Of all the things that could've been singled out, I'm a bit puzzled that it was door placement.
^Well there is obviously an issue Huw. Several people have commented in this thread that there are problems with building the initial room. I don't remember if my problem was one of door placement or wall placement. It just didn't make sense as to how to get a properly walled room. I play some pretty complex games and can usually figure things out on my own, but this one is just stupid.
Aha - are you talking about door placement specifically within the tutorial scenario? If so we might have our wires crossed. I might fire up the tutorial again and have a look. Perhaps they really have broken it, which would be a bit of a shame even for an alpha.
Quote from: Huw the Poo on February 15, 2015, 06:27:54 PM
Aha - are you talking about door placement specifically within the tutorial scenario? If so we might have our wires crossed. I might fire up the tutorial again and have a look. Perhaps they really have broken it, which would be a bit of a shame even for an alpha.
It was definitely when building the first room in the tutorial. I don't remember exactly what the problem was because it was so long ago. Additionally, if it was a bug, it could have been sorted since then too. Although the OP is still apparently having problems with it too.
OK I've just gone through the tutorial again. I'm not sure anything has changed (other than the UI) but it's been ages since I last did it. Also, in fairness, I'm pretty experienced with the game so I'm likely to overlook something which is obvious to me but not to a new player. Anyway...
I'm willing to bet that foundations are the problem. You need to lay a foundation before building anything. The foundation tab does flash to indicate this, but in my opinion the game could, and should, do a much better job at telling you to do this first. As well as the flashing foundation tab, the objects tab also flashes to indicate that you need to build a jail door too. Along with this, the layout on the screen shows where the walls and door go. So it's perfectly feasible that a new player would just go straight to building the room itself before laying the foundation. This would certainly be frustrating because you would reasonably assume that after building walls and a door, the room would be complete.
I think this is the problem you guys have had because, other than that, I couldn't break the scenario (at least, only while doing sensible things). Placement of any kind of object works precisely as I described earlier. So give it another try, this time filling the highlighted layout with foundation and waiting for it to be laid before adding the door. I believe that the edge of a foundation also acts as a wall so you might not need to build them specifically.
Huw, very helpful advice! I was building the walls first and that was causing the problem. Finished the tutorial with no other problems.
Looks like that was my problem too. I swear, that foundations button couldn't have been flashing last time I tried to play. Its too obvious.
Anyway, thanks for posting Huw. I played through the tutorial and had a good time.
I feel pretty bad for Edward...I bet he had a shitty public defender.
Yay! Glad I could help, and even more glad you both enjoyed it too!
I'll offer one more word of advice if I may - a lot of what you might reasonably think you should be able to do is locked behind research. You can't set guard patrols without researching it first, for example, or get prisoners working.
I love this game. Very addictive. One second you think your prison is great, the next you have a guard killed in the laundry room.
You can pick up a lot by watching videos on you-tube if your having trouble.
I managed to figure it out in early access but it didn't hold my attention long. Maybe the theme doesn't catch me. *shrug*
There is a Star Wars mod out there that may help with that. Who wouldn't want to be an Imperial Corrections Warden?
I'm also not sure if they still have that nutty animated intro to the game, but it was terrible. Talk about out of place. Some dark depressing thing about some dude murdering his wife and her lover.. and then it cuts to the game with some cartoonish meeple-looking guys hopping around a green grassy cartoonland. Whutdafuk? :-\
Quote from: Nefaro on February 16, 2015, 12:10:35 PM
I'm also not sure if they still have that nutty animated intro to the game, but it was terrible. Talk about out of place. Some dark depressing thing about some dude murdering his wife and her lover.. and then it cuts to the game with some cartoonish meeple-looking guys hopping around a green grassy cartoonland. Whutdafuk? :-\
I totally forgot about that. Yeah, that was a little...odd.
I just wrote it off as it being a fur'nur outlook on things (them being a UK developer, though that looked more like something an Eastern European dev would do). Like naming a main character 'Mayonnaise.' Ugh.
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on February 16, 2015, 01:15:19 PM
Quote from: Nefaro on February 16, 2015, 12:10:35 PM
I'm also not sure if they still have that nutty animated intro to the game, but it was terrible. Talk about out of place. Some dark depressing thing about some dude murdering his wife and her lover.. and then it cuts to the game with some cartoonish meeple-looking guys hopping around a green grassy cartoonland. Whutdafuk? :-\
I totally forgot about that. Yeah, that was a little...odd.
I just wrote it off as it being a fur'nur outlook on things (them being a UK developer, though that looked more like something an Eastern European dev would do). Like naming a main character 'Mayonnaise.' Ugh.
They do still have that in game. I rather liked it, though. I thought it added depth to the prisoners. Each one has a story and a different personality. The art may not fit the style of the game, but I have nothing against personalizing the prisoners, guards and other characters in game.
In this game, the nicknames are pretty good. I can see a prisoner being named "Mayo" (LOL).
My "mayonnaise" reference was to a Jagged Alliance game back in the mid-2000s that I reviewed for WG. It was so awful I didn't do the review. They actually named a soldier that. I dunno...it weirded me out way too much to take that game seriously at that point.