Alpha 11 has been released! Steam users will be automatically updated.
Here is our alpha11 video demonstrating the new features:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OsN3OSk8G0
We spent quite a lot of time this month working on performance enhancements and bug fixes. We found a lot of memory leaks and performance bugs and fixed them, and the end result is the game is running quite a bit smoother. There’s still a lot of work to be done here but things are definately improved.
You can now purchase neighbouring plots of land. Your accountant has to research “Land Expansion” and then you can click on any edge of your prison land to buy up the neighbouring plot. You can do this as many times as you like, money permitting. We should warn you that we haven’t fully tested what will happen if you expand to the right of the main road. You can build here but there will always be a section of road on which you cannot build, so you’ll never be able to join up the two sides. You might find prisoners on one side decide to walk to the other side, then escape when they find themselves on the road. But try it and see!
We’ve updated the Objects toolbar to intelligently highlight objects that might be useful, given what you are looking at. So if you are looking at a kitchen, you’ll see the cooker, fridge and sink are automatically highlighted. As we add more objects to the list the task of finding what you want is getting harder, and this was our shot at fixing that.
Finally we have an entirely new Timelapse recording feature. You can use this to record timelapse videos of your prison being built. You’ll find the options to control this under Options -> Timelapse, and you can set how often a frame is captured, and the playback rate of those frames. We export videos to your save folder in OGV (ogg video) format, which can be played by VLC, or imported into youtube, etc. Here’s an example of the sort of video you can create:
http://youtu.be/Ow2BUfRfxc8
There’s also quite a few bug fixes, and we’ve fixed the issue of Clothing needs leading to riots. It was almost impossible to have a laundry functioning before your prisoners rioted due to clothing, which seemed a little unfair. This won’t happen anymore.
We hope you enjoy alpha 11 - we’ve got some big things planned for alpha 12 and alpha 13, and we’ll see you in a months time with that. We also did our first ever development livestream during alpha 11, and we are hoping to do more during alpha 12. Sign up to our twitch.tv page to stay notified and watch us developing the game live: www.twitch.tv/introversionsoftware