Hello Architects,

We are now starting up Dev Diaries with the Developers at Kokku! Today, the developers at Kokku are sharing some information about themselves in video format, and we will also be talking a little bit about what has been worked on during the past few weeks. Let’s begin with meeting three of the developers working on Prison Architect 2 over at Kokku: Video Link

We are super excited to share more from Kokku with you all going forward in shorter videos. If there is something specific you would like to see or know, add your questions in the comments below!

Let’s jump right into what has been worked on since we last chatted back in May; Looking back at the past couple of weeks, the main focus has been on the overall stability improvements and the reduction of crashes for lower-spec configurations. To do this, we have looked closer at what affects the game’s FPS (Frames per second) and found that the lakes and ponds had a bigger impact on the frame rate. The framerate mostly affected the lower spec configurations, and to heighten the player experience, there has been a re-work of lakes and ponds.

Other improvements to stability that have been made, are balance changes to inmate behavior, once these changes were applied we also had to do some further balancing adjustments in the Career Mode. After these adjustments were made, we were able to look into other QOL improvements, additional tutorials, and further clarifications for the onboarding process of new players in career mode.

Some of the inmate behavior and balance adjustments include changes to Freedom, Frustrations & Misbehaviours, walking speed, and building speed. Here is a little bit more information on some of the changes: For Freedom, we have looked closer to the parameters of which freedom is gained specifically in yards. With the changes made, the freedom meter is now being filled faster, and tasks by inmates in the yard take less time to finish. This change was made as our testers experienced issues with how the freedom meter behaved even though measures were given to try to make the meter go up.

For Frustration & Misbehavior, our testers have experienced a heightened level of destruction and misbehavior from individual inmates. The same inmates who misbehave have also had higher chances of falling back into misbehaving shortly after being handled. As the needs of an inmate are depleted, misbehavior and destruction may increase, and that is as intended. However, as it happened with too fast intervals, we have re-balanced the intervals of misbehaviors and destruction from inmates to give the gameplay a better flow, and for the frustration meter to not add up too quickly. The amount of frustration that builds up due to inmates waiting at locked doors is now also lowered due to it being filled too fast.

All walking speeds for inmates and workers have been doubled, and now prisoners reach their destinations faster, and guards reach doors faster.

Building Speed are now also doubled, and broken items are more quickly repaired. Which also prevents further frustration from inmates. As we have doubled the building speed, players now also require a smaller number of workers to maintain prison maintenance.

In earlier builds some sound effects did not play as intended, which led us to investigate the way ambient sounds and other sound effects play in the game. We want to give you the best experience of managing your prison through sound as possible.

What is our focus for the upcoming weeks?

Some of the things being looked into are what has been given as feedback from the community, our playtests, and our beta testers while playing the game. However, the main focus is still on the memory and performance improvements, improvements of already existing features, and QOL updates. Going forward there will also be continuous checks of the LOD (Level of Detail) on in-game models, to investigate additional ways of optimizing performance for lower-spec configurations. 

There will also be a continuous work on the Career Mode, as there are still a few balance adjustments we’re investigating. 

Additionally, UI and other visual updates to make the gameplay experience smoother, not only for new players but for returning players is also something that is being focused on going forward.

Lastly, Riots squads and Paramedic squads will also be getting more attention, as we believe that there are some QOL updates we can implement here before the release.

As we continue our work ahead, we look forward to sharing more of our progress with you and receiving your feedback. Please continue to share your thoughts and feedback with us!

Prison Architect Dev Team