Project Prison News

Hello everyone,

Based on the feedback from the playtest, here are some important upcoming changes

I've received reports of performance issues, especially in the interior levels where there are too many prisoners. I was aware of this issue. With the new update, you should experience at least a 50% performance boost compared to the previous version. I've also updated all interior levels, and now they all have different layouts.

If you find any issues with incorrect lighting or shadow pop-ups, please let me know on Discord.

Another change is the addition of noticeboards in all prison wings, making it easier to manage work schedules.

One more piece of feedback was about the interaction system. I've started working on improvements, so you won't need to go to the dictionary to view other prisoners' details while interacting with them. These details will now be shown when you select them. Additionally, I'm planning to make the overall selection of interactable much smoother.

Let's start with the attribute system. I've already discussed the traits/attributes that I'm including in the game. Today, I will share more information about it and a few GIFs to show the effect it will have on the gameplay.

There are two types of attributes:

Primary: Stamina and Health
Secondary: Bladder, Hygiene, Hunger, Smoking, Alcohol, Drugs


We now have multiple effects to show if the player is running low on any of the attributes. For example, for low Stamina (wobble effect).


When a character drinks too much alcohol


After consumption of pills



In the past, I've written about how I'm planning to deal with Smoking, Alcohol & Drugs. They are unlockable with levels attached to them. For example, if a player smokes, only then do they get the Smoking attribute.
Here are the withdrawal symptoms for each of them. They are animation effects with adverse effects on other attributes. For instance, if you have diarrhea, your character's Bladder attribute will keep falling down quickly. For insomnia, even when you go to sleep, your character will be forcefully woken up after a few minutes. As I said, I don't want to keep punishing players, but neither do I want to encourage the consumption of these substances. Don't worry, there are ways to fix them. You can have non-alcoholic beer or nicotine gum to reduce symptoms and slowly bring down the level, or you can keep buying and consuming them. The end result will be an accidental death with a heart attack or cancer (this is an extremely rare scenario, though). I will keep improving and changing these features during Early Access with your participation.

WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS:

Smoking withdrawal:

Slower stamina recovery or reduced maximum stamina until the craving is satisfied
Increased appetite and weight gain


Alcohol withdrawal:

Nausea and vomiting, with appropriate animations and sound effects
Headaches, represented by the character holding their head or squinting
Insomnia


Drug withdrawal:

Insomnia, leading to slower stamina recovery when sleeping or resting
Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea
Abdominal cramps
Fatigue and sleepiness


Ragdolls:
The game now supports ragdolls, bringing out realism in the player's falling animation. It looks natural when someone pushes them or collides with them while running.


UI Improvements:

We now have a nice circular tab for the inventory system.

You can easily consume items or trade them with other prisoners.

Each character attribute will have its own indicator. You can see the current state with nice transitions.
As shown in the below GIFs, once the player goes to sleep, their other attributes like hunger, hygiene, and bladder will pop up. They are tied to the time system in the game.


MISC:

I've added a face mask. If you are going on a raid or going to commit a crime, it's better to wear it before doing so, as it will make your character anonymous. You won't have to worry about payback from rival gang members or the police.

The interaction part is also done. Each and every character (player & AI) can now sit on a chair, use the toilet, sleep, and perform all interactions.

We also have an FOV slider for the camera and settings to let you control almost all graphical aspects of the game.


Added a blood effect when you hit a player in the head. Looks cool, lol.

Another simple but amazing addition is to let the player control the camera distance.

The player can do exercises like weightlifting. There are a total of 4 different exercises included in the game for now. Doing them will improve the stamina level of the character.



Here are the items you can buy from other prisoners:

• Candy bars (Snickers, Twix, etc.)
  
• Chocolate bars
  
• Protein Bars
  
• Canned Food (Veg/Non-Veg)
  
• Apples, Pears, Peaches
  
• Biscuits
  
• Beer, Whiskey, Rum
  
• Tonics, Health tonics (different types to cure different traits like diarrhea, etc.)
  
• Non-alcoholic beer, Nicotine gum, Ginseng or valerian root supplements
  
• 
  

Performance Improvements:

• Each character will consume 15 fewer draw calls. I've finally figured out a way to fake shadows for each character. It will be helpful for anyone running the game on low-end hardware. Also fixed shadow culling, so no more shadow pop-ups, and it looks much more natural.
  
• Added vision to each character, which also helps reduce the overall load on the CPU and GPU.
  
• Added an LOD system for the motion matching system. It helps a lot when we have multiple characters on the screen. The work is multithreaded, so they will be more efficient.
  
• 
  

I've submitted the game build for playtesting. Hoping to get it accepted by Steam sometime next week, so hopefully, I can start playtesting soon.

Hello, last month was productive. I finally managed to settle on the fight system, which is something I think I can build upon nicely during early access and will also be good enough for release after some minor tweaks.

I apologize for not being able to release the playtest last month. I feel I spent far too much time on mundane stuff that particularly no one's going to notice, like the I added with random flickering to searchlights. If you keep looking at it for a few seconds, you will notice it.


I talked about nighttime rendering last time, and one big problem I mentioned was with shadows and moon position. While I'm not aiming to do an accurate day and night cycle, I did spend some time fixing issues with the rotation of the moon so we can get nice shadows at night.

Another point I touched upon last time was color grading for different weather presets. I'm adding some GIFs here, but due to size constraints, they are compressed. Somewhat better quality GIFs are available on Discord if you want to check them out. I'm also adding culling for lights at night, so overall, we will get better performance.







The fight system, which I think is ready, has one design problem. When the player keeps hitting the AI, the AI's chances of dodging or blocking the next attack increase, which creates a loop where the player definitely gets hit after a few successful hits. To solve that, I added feint attacks, so now the player and even the AI can feint an attack, which will force their opponent to react (either dodge or block) and give you an opportunity to attack. Another functionality I'm trying to add is sidestep, which is not completely ready yet but looks like this.

I also experimented with the camera. I want fights to be intense and brutal, so camera movement is important. I'm looking into different games, and keeping the camera over the shoulder seems to give such an impact, but I'm thinking of giving the player an option to disable camera animation in the settings.



What I'm thinking is keeping all these things for now and removing them after feedback during the beta and demo. Sorry for the delay, but I'm sure it'll be worth it.

I've been working on the fight system for the last 3 months and have remade it from scratch 4 times. Sleeping Dogs, Mad Max, and RDR2 are my biggest inspirations for the melee combat. My idea is to make it feel less arcadey/beat 'em up and more realistic, with importance given to strategy. It makes the fights lengthy, but let's see once I get more feedback in demo/beta, I will make necessary changes.

In the fight system, there are a few stages:

1.Approach
2.Attack
3.Block/Dodge
4.Hit
5.Disengage
6.Knockout
The fight system is based on the distance and direction to the target. If the target is not in eyesight or is too far, pressing the attack key won't have any effect, as it doesn't make sense for the character to swing in the air. You will notice a small placeholder animation when this happens.



When the character is in the attack zone, if he is too close and in the front direction, the player will push. Or, he will make the character look towards you and then attack the player.




Attack: There are uppercuts, punches to the gut, jabs, hooks, and a few kicks that the player can perform. Based on the distance and direction, the player will play that attack animation. One important part is that I've tried to avoid the sliding thing. If you play similar fighting games, usually the game slides both characters to make them stand at the exact position and then plays the animation. It makes sense, but what I've done is that rather than sliding, the player will walk to that position and then attack his target. Also, I'm using IK for attacks, so even if the distance is greater or there is a change in direction, IK will try to ensure the attack hits the target body part.


Block: For each attack, there are block animations for the player. They are time-based. I've added an outline that changes color so the player can perfect block, but I've removed it and added a block stance instead. The block stance will block any upcoming attack, but it consumes stamina. You can also block attacks, although some are hard to block, like jabs, but they are time-based and not impossible.



While playing against AI, I noticed that it is extremely difficult to block the AI's attacks as they are time-based. To make it easier, I've added an indicator. Now, you will notice that there's an outline around the AI when it tries to attack the player. The outline has different colors at different stages of the attack, which will help players block attacks more effectively


Dodging: I have implemented dodging mechanics. Some attacks, like quick jabs, are hard to block. For such attacks, dodging is the perfect solution. After a successful dodge, the player can also perform a counter-attack.


There are still many things which I can add in the fight system but I feel like this is a solid foundation for now on which I can build upon during early access. Big problem is with animations as I need to create them manually so plan is to hire animator to fix these animations during EA. Also I'm trying to post dev update every day or two on Discord so you can keep track of current progress.

Hi, sorry for the delay. I wasn't able to post last week as I've been working on creating the fighting system again from scratch for the past two weeks. This is the 4th iteration of fighting system. I made all new blocking animations and removed a few features(front grappling and slam animations). The goal is to make it less beat 'em up/arcadey and more challenging. I had to create some animations (especially for the block). I will write more about it later once I feel it is at a better stage to show.

I've added weather presets to the game. In the past, I've already written about rain, but now there are 4 different presets, and the game will simultaneously transition between them. The sky system also received a new update. Now it will be physically accurate with cloud shadows for better visual fidelity. Also, with the new weather presets, the color grading system will change.
I've reduced the transition effect between weather in gif

Now there are 4 different weather types: Rain, Misty, Sunny, and Overcast.

I've tried to make this system as immersive as possible (at least for now). For example:

The ground will be wet even after rain, and the wetness will gradually reduce.
In the rainy season, you will hardly see any other prisoners on the ground, etc.
I'm considering adding a splashing effect with footsteps (but I will probably skip it as I've noticed that I keep polishing things, and I need to get the game out as soon as possible).