Postby Chris » Mon Nov 19, 2012 5:12 pm

Code: Select all = 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.



Today we have released Alpha4 of Prison Architect for Pc and Mac, and Alpha customers can download and play it immediately. Go to our PA wiki and download the file in the usual way. Not signed up yet? Join us now at www.prison-architect.com We’ve made a video demonstrating the key new features - take a look: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. This was a particular problem in the early phase of a prison when you don’t have many guards and haven’t yet researched cctv systems. Prison Architect’s core gameplay is about building things and this needs to be super-satisfying at all times, so we realised we had accidentally spoilt one of the main parts of the game in order to add a new feature. Nobody’s perfect!So we went back to the drawing board, and redesigned the look of the fog-of-war. We now darken the hidden areas and render them greyscale, and you lose vis of any entities in those zones. Static objects like furniture and walls remain visible but greyed out, so you can continue to build as normal, but it’s clear you have no visibility of the prisoners in that zone.This is why we are in alpha! We put out an update, we get feedback direct from the community (by forums and twitter), and we respond to that feedback in the very next update. We hope you like the new version of fog-of-war, but we can’t be certain until you give us your feedback once again when you’ve tried it.Our Prison Architect Alpha has been an incredible success, more successful than any of our previous games already. This fills us with joy! We think this method of paid alpha crossed with Kickstarter tiers is a very good way for Indies to do business right now, and we’ve decided to make our ongoing sales figures public. If you take a look at www.prison-architect.com right now you’ll see live sales data for each tier as well as the overall sales of the alpha!Join the Prison Architect alpha now at www.prison-architect.com Stay up to date: