Alpha 10 has been released! Steam users will be automatically updated.
Here is our alpha10 video demonstrating the new features. This video is a bit longer than usual because we had quite a lot of new content to show, and the prison riot at the end took quite a while to sort out. We think it’s totally worth it though!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AvyvTYhB-E
We’d like to start by welcoming all you lovely new Linux users to our game. We are now supplying builds for Linux via steam and as a standalone download from our website. (Free to all users of course). The game should be widely compatible across the various Linux distributions, but please let us know if you have problems by logging bugs in our bug tracker. We have targeted Ubuntu 12.04 (32 bit and 64 bit) as a starting point, and we anticipate wider compatibility in later alphas. Please note that we do require glibc 2.15 or later, which unfortunately means Prison Architect does not currently work on Debian Stable.
We are continuously blown away by some of the prisons our community build. Layouts that we’d never considered, or packing an entire jail into 12x12 squares, or nightmarish concrete hellholes. Now you can share your best prisons with the rest of the world via the Steam Workshop. From the main menu in game you can access our workshop integration, and from there you can publish your prison, or play other peoples prisons at the click of a button. To browse the full list of published prisons click on “Open Steam Workshop”, and you’ll see the Steam Overlay popup with thumbnails of each jail. Click on the green plus to subscribe to a prison, and from then on it will show up in your game list as a playable prison. If the original author updates his prison you will get those updates automatically via steam workshop. We’d like to encourage you all to publish your best prisons - we really want to see what you’ve built with our game.
Click here to take a look at the Prison Architect steam workshop, and all of the prisons currently published:
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=233450
In the UK milk has to be labelled with “Allergy warning: contains milk”, and in a similar vein we think we are stating the obvious when we say that Steam Workshop integration is only available in the Steam build.
Our most significant change to the game itself comes in the form of an entirely new anger model. We have fundamentally changed the way prisoners get angry and express their anger through violence. Conceptually there is now a prison-wide “Thermometer”, which represents the overall danger level of your prison. It increases over time when you have a lot of angry prisoners (ie their needs are not met). Conversely, when prisoners feel they are well treated they will decrease the overall danger level of the prison. Over time as the anger level rises, more and more prisoners will start to kick off. Other factors affect this danger level as well - punishing a lot of prisoners acts as a deterrent, decreasing the danger level. Riot police on site act as an antagoniser, increasing the danger level. You can see all of this in the status bar at the top of the screen. (Note: Requires the Chief)
Read the rest of the blog on the Introversion website:
http://forums.introversion.co.uk/introversion/viewtopic.php?t=4375