Project Prison News

I'm not fond of how video games typically handle smoking and drinking they often portray it as cool without showing any consequences. The approach I've adopted involves an 'Addiction' trait. If you start smoking or drinking, your character acquires this trait. Once addicted, you need to continue buying cigarettes and alcohol to maintain your character's mental sanity. Otherwise, the character's boredom will increase rapidly if contraband items are not easily accessible. Moreover, smoking and drinking can be fatal for your character. Exceeding a set limit increases the likelihood of your character developing cancer. The game will alert the player once a certain threshold is crossed, advising them to cut back. Additionally, drinking too much will give the player a 'Drunk' trait, which will be represented by a post-processing effect and reduced visibility.



Both the player and AI can perform certain actions like eating, drinking, smoking, etc. The key feature is that these actions can be carried out while performing other activities. For example, player can smoke while running, walking, sitting, or lying on the bed, etc. The only limitation is that the player cannot sprint, but jogging and walking are perfectly fine.
PS: As the game nears its public beta phase, I've decided to post updates once or twice a week. Apologies for the default character in the gif. I have the 3D models of the prisoners ready and integrated, but I'm currently working on some optimizations to reduce draw calls while the build is under review. Thus, I captured the gif with a default character.

I spent the majority of last month improving the visual fidelity of the game. The game now has a day and night cycle that is integrated with the prison regime system. Other prisoners will react to weather conditions for instance, if it is raining, they will stay in their cells instead of going outside to the yard. Interactive objects like exercise equipment, chess tables, and benches get wet. If you're playing a chess against another prisoner, they will stop the game if it starts to rain. If the player's entertainment stat is already low, then rain could worsen it, especially if you go out in the rain to use the exercise equipment, as your clothes will get wet.

I've also integrated volumetric clouds, cloud shadows, and redesigned the yard terrain. There are now mini-games for exercise and workshop jobs (like cleaning toilets, laundry etc.). Environmental effects include birds flying, leaves falling, and fog, among many other things. I'm planning to submit the game to Steam for playtest review by the end of next week. Hopefully, it will be approved quickly so I can start playtesting by the end of this month. If you have any questions, feel free to ask I'll be happy to answer them. Thanks.

Hey guys, last month I was quite busy implementing the dialogue system, player locomotion, and with the optimization. The dialogue system is divided into two parts: non-dialogue options and the interaction menu. In the first option, whenever you are near any NPC, the player can interact with them, greet them, or just annoy them. There's a bar above the dialogue options that shows the current relationship between the player and that character. Based on the relationship level, new options (like a hug, punch, etc.) will become available to the player.

In the interaction menu, you can ask for a favor or ask them to join a gang, or you can join theirs (I will explain more about this when I share more about the gang system).

For character creation, there will be a few pre-made characters with their backstories. They receive different buffs to their stats based on that. Or players can create their own character (I'm not sure, but maybe I will add this during Early Access).

I've already mentioned in the past that the yard scene is pretty heavy on VRAM due to its size. But I've managed to reduce the requirements for that; it is now down to 2GB from 4.5GB. I've also implemented a motion matching system for the player for smooth locomotion. One more interesting thing I ended up adding is to the fight system; rather than allowing the player only to punch or kick, there's
now an additional option to grab, tackle, etc.

I've remade all indoor and outdoor scenes, updated textures, and implemented an LOD system for NPCs. Overall, the game can support up to 240 prisoners, but at the start, you can reduce the prisoner count to achieve better performance. The bottleneck is on the GPU side, so if you have a good GPU, you can easily run the game on max settings with the maximum number of prisoners. I've also implemented a workshop system that allows players and NPCs to take on different jobs. This is an extremely interesting feature, especially the mail job where the player has to mail prisoners their letters in person. In my next blog, I will add GIFs or videos showing how the different jobs work.

Today, I want to delve deeper into the gang/faction system in our game, as it is the most crucial aspect of gameplay. Additionally, I will explain a couple of the design choices I've made.

Gangs, Guards, and Territories
Players must continuously strategize, expand their faction's territories, and take control of trade to survive. Initially, I planned for dynamic gameplay within the gang system, allowing NPCs to band together, form gangs, and challenge rival territories. While this concept was exciting, it introduced significant problems due to the game's scale. The game can support a maximum of 220 prisoners (Not exactly hard limit but there are 10 prison block and each block can house 20-40 prisoners) Also In reality, not all prisoners will opt to join a gang some are docile and prefer to avoid participation, meaning each gang could at most have only 4-5 members(with a gang structure consisting of a Leader, Lieutenants, and Soldiers), which doesn't seem realistic. For this reason, there will only be three different gangs that control the entire prison. Players can choose to create their own faction or join one of the existing gangs. As indicated in the screenshot, each territory is marked with the corresponding gang's color.

The Gang Hierarchy
Each gang operates within a hierarchy of Leader -> Lieutenants -> Soldiers. The Leader assigns territories to Lieutenants who manage and control contraband trade in their area and also recruit Soldiers.

The Guards’ Gambit
Guards are not just obstacles they're opportunities. They tend to overlook minor scuffles between prisoners. Players can earn favor and even bribe them. Each zone in the prison has a different captain assigned to it. Bribes, favors, and threats are how gangs control captains when planning to raid another territory. This creates interesting dynamics, as some captains are loyal to certain factions and will reject any takeover attempts.

Contraband Trading
The gang that controls a zone also oversees the trading within it. Some contraband items are only accessible in specific territories. Merchants operating in these zones must pay taxes to the controlling gang. This setup creates a dynamic market simulation, which I will elaborate on in another blog post.

Alpha Testing
I want to apologize for the delay with the alpha release. I'm using Unity's High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP), and it doesn't scale well with low-end hardware. The yard scene in the game is big with different area's, while other scenes like the prison block, dining room, or various workshops are smaller. However, if we look at recent releases that utilize Unity and HDRP, you will notice that the performance has been poor. I'm trying to resolve this issue, but it has necessitated adding loading screens when players move from one place to another. While these transitions are extremely fast and don't take much time, I am trying to find workaround. If I remove loading screen it will increase memory consumption

Hello everyone,
I apologize for the lack of updates over the past two years. My inspiration for this game comes from the prison biographies I read during my childhood, as well as experiences shared by past prisoners on Reddit and other platforms. While I wanted to make the game as realistic as possible, I had to omit a few elements due to age rating restrictions.

After considerable effort, Project Prison is finally ready to enter the alpha stage. My focus has been on creating gameplay that not only provides players with a sense of control but also maintains a degree of realism. Players can form, join, and control their own gangs. Alternatively, they can choose to avoid playing the bad guy and instead follow the prison routine: earn money, finish jobs, and play the role of the good guy. The picture above showcases a painting workshop where players can perform painting jobs to earn money. There are over 5 to 6 different jobs available, and I will keep posting more information about them every week.

I'm currently looking for five alpha testers to help test the game. If you're interested, please share your system configuration with me. If everything goes according to plan and not many bugs are discovered during the Alpha stage, I plan to conduct an open beta next month.