Prison City News

As a rogue, superintelligent AI collective, the Voltaic Nodes supply power to the entirety of Prison City with ease. Together, the individual Nodes operate as Legion.



[h3]1. Bullet Spread[/h3]
Upon starting the battle against the Voltaic Nodes, the first Node will launch a circular bullet spread towards the ground! Dodge them by positioning Hal between two bullets and attack the Node as it descends!



[h3]2. Sinister Slide[/h3]
One of the Nodes will slide on the ground from either left to right or vice versa! Jump over this Node at the right time and try to get your hits in! Also of note: ALL Nodes will increase their movement and firing speeds as the Warden's overall health gets depleted, so time your jumps right!



[h3]3. Knight Shot[/h3]
Like a Knight on a chessboard, this Node (and the Node opposite it) will travel along an "L"-shaped path and fire three rounds of bullets! Remember, like the increase in movement speed as the Warden's health goes down, the rate of fire for all projectile attacks will be faster, too!





[h3]4. Fire Fumes[/h3]
The middle Nodes on the left and right sides of the room will spray fiery fumes toward the ground! Be sure not to get caught in the way of these and line up your Chakram attacks to destroy them!



[h3]5. Fire Rows[/h3]
The last type of attack involves a Node that will produce two rows of fire fumes that stretch out to the left and right! Hop over the fumes and attack the Node before it goes away after sliding to the top!


You can face off against the Voltaic Nodes in Prison City--Available NOW!

Follow Retroware's developer page to stay up-to-date on all our games, news, and more!

https://store.steampowered.com/developer/Retroware

This security zone was designed to power the entirety of Prison City. Infiltrate its walls and discover what the Techno-Terrorists are hiding!


[h3]1. Bzzzap! Electrified Chain Walls?![/h3]
You’ve seen them before, but you’ve never seen them…ELECTRIFIED! You’ll have to use quick-thinking and good judgment to get past all the chain walls of this type–or else you’ll get zapped and plunge to your doom!




[h3]2. Electrified Platforms!![/h3]
Not only can you expect nearly all chain walls to be induced with electricity, but you’ll find many of the platforms within the Power Plant to possess the same charged up trait! Be quick on your feet, or slide away to safety as you navigate the interior of this security zone!




[h3]3. Voltaic Node Voltage![/h3]
Upon making it to the Warden’s room, you’ll find no organic enemy, but the Voltaic Nodes! This Warden is a super intelligent AI gone rogue! When near other nodes, they operate as “Legion.” Although they work as generators to power the entire city, they have since abandoned their initial programming and seek to make the Power Plant their fortress!


Think you’re skilled enough to get through the Power Plant? You can take on this security zone and all others in Prison City–available NOW!

Follow the Retroware developer page to stay up-to-date on all our games, news, and more!

https://store.steampowered.com/developer/Retroware

[h3]As part of Retroware's Modern Retro Publisher Sale, Prison City will be ON SALE for 20% OFF![/h3]


[h3]You can take on the Techno-Terrorists across eight different security zones in Prison City NOW! Play as former cop Hal Bruzer and infiltrate the citywide prison to uncover its dark secrets.[/h3]









[h3]And don't forget! Prison City's Soundtrack will also be ON SALE for 20% OFF and the bundle with the game will be ON SALE for 28% OFF![/h3]



https://store.steampowered.com/app/2525340/Prison_City_Original_Soundtrack/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/34182/Prison_City__Soundtrack/

[h3]Follow Retroware's developer page to stay up-to-date on all our games, news, and more![/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/developer/Retroware

Think you’ve got what it takes to beat Prison City’s demo IN-PERSON?! Stop by Retroware’s remote booth in the REZZED ZONE at EGX on October 12-15!

See you there.....REMOTELY!

Follow Retroware's developer page to stay up-to-date with all our games, news, and more!

https://store.steampowered.com/developer/retroware

Note: If you would like to enjoy these bugs for yourself, I suggest holding off on updating until your curiosity is quenched.
Just make sure you read through the changelog to know the severity of the bug before you try to replicate it!

[h3]2023-10-6[/h3]



[h3][Preface][/h3]
A lot of these changes/updates are being made in consideration from watching people play both lurking on streams and from PAX- which I find to be one of the most valuable things you can do as a developer.
I've also spent a lot of time during development focusing on trying to make this fun for speedrunners, so I've been taking a lot of cues from that community as well.

This should be considered the "definitive" update- I've had a chance to make some adjustments and more dialog related things that I was unable to do before, and this is a version of the game that I'm comfortable with having on all platforms.

[h3][New Content][/h3]

• A new "Training" mode has been added to replace the tutorial tips in the Train level. Even if you're seasoned at the game, I suggest checking it out. There are easter eggs if you can cheese it. It also has a couple of rooms that teach some advanced tech. A new demo build of the game will be uploaded to Steam with this training available as well.
  
  Some backstory:
  The Train was meant to literally train you how to play. You have to perform most required actions at least once to finish the level. The problem is however that people were able to brute force their way to the end, and weren't fully understanding grabbing/hanging mechanics. When tutorial tips were added, they were being ignored, leading to confusion. Having an actual tutorial that forces you to learn these mechanics is a must. You don't
• need* to do the tutorial, but if you start a new file without doing the tutorial it will prompt you.
  
  
• You can now play minigames from the level select by choosing the level they belong to! Use this to farm lives/Power Chakram!
  
• There are now a couple of super secret achievement/trophies. They won't appear in the list until you unlock them. They're also not part of achievement lists, as they're more in-game accomplishments than anything else- but also, it's kind of hard to add more trophies and achievements to all platforms when they're very specific about point values (sorry). These ones are silly anyway though so...
  
• Added a gargoyle to DCP2 so people will be like "hey, that's a pretty cool gargoyle" :)
  
• You can now see unlocked trophy/achievement info in the menu by selecting the trophy. This will also give you the date unlocked.
  
• The introduction has been updated to have artwork during the story scroll. This was always intended, but never implemented. As a result, the title screen how returns you to the story crawl on inactivity.
  
• New teleportation sound effect was made to replace the existing one. Pitched down/up sounds never sound authentic, so I've fixed that.
  

[h3][General Bugfoolery][/h3]

• Fixed issue with background mortar missiles still being able to hurt Hal when respawning from a pit.
  
• Security Eye pink damaging THINGS (official name) could hurt you while waiting to respawn- this has been fixed. (Same issue as above)
  
• Fixed issue where Yoku blocks wouldn't trigger when spamming jump and when jump attacking (which could be quite annoying). Basically just rewrote them again, nbd.
  
• Removed Herobrine
  
• Shield Drones (you know, the derivative enemies you remember from that ONE series that float back and forth that you can only destroy by attacking from behind, or very persistently spamming attack on their fronts) have been fixed up a bit. I don't think anybody's reported it, but if you picked up any item that pauses the game (health) while they're turning, they'd just sit in the turn state for a bit. This has been fixed.
  --> Also, grenades used to not work while they were turning. This has been fixed as well.
  
• Not really a bug but I changed the flicker rate of the Light Drone trail from every other frame to turning off every 4th frame. This is just so when streaming at 30fps instead of 60 it doesn't disappear completely.
  
• There was an erroneous 2nd "Language" option specifically in the Settings menu you get from pausing the game in-level. Selecting it brought you to a version of that menu that isn't meant to be accessed in-level and can cause the game to go into a sort of "lost worlds" state, where the game doesn't really know what to do with itself anymore when you select it under certain conditions. There's a really simple explanation for this but it sounds more complicated and crazy than it really is. It's gone now.
  

[h3][Text/UI][/h3]

• Some text has been updated and relocalized for the sake of clarity.
  
• A prompt appears when you attempt to perform any action that exits gameplay via menu. This is to prevent accidental quitting.
  
• Warden Rush now has a unique quit option that's different from the Warden Practice. Before they were the same.
  
• The notifications you receive after completing the game the first time for the unlocks now tell you where to go to enjoy the unlocks.
  
• Vinny credit is now randomized so there's no confusion about which Vinny it belongs to. (But also Vinny would very likely not enjoy this game lol)
  
• When copying or deleting files, the color of each bar would become the same regardless of bomber mode or normal mode. This has been changed.
  
• For consistency, the "Get Ready" and "Blow This Joint!" level start text(s) are now capitalized in English.
  
• Made the Trophy/Achievement unlock prompt scale a little bit better for localizations.
  
• The Game Mode selection screen now shows "FOR SUPER PLAYERS" on Bomber Mode to match the tradeshow version to indicate that it's a much harder game mode.
  

[h3][Gameplay Adjustments][/h3]

• Because of the new Training Mode, the tutorial tips (and option in the menus) has been completely removed- it's obsoleted. If the player decides to start the game without playing the training mode and has issues with knowing how to grapple and stuff that's on them!
  
  Some backstory on THIS:
  Turns out having little tips that explain how to play can be a very big problem for porting. You have to be very specific in your verbiage, and as a result you may have to drastically change it. You can see this between the original demo of the game (not the jam version) and the final release how much it changed. It was originally changed (and ultimately diminished) out of necessity, but now there's something that is a lot more in-depth and more in-line with how I want to do it.
  
  
• Mistress Drosera's fakeout can be manipulated. Now she will commit to appearing if you're far enough away, but if you're close and she's planning a fakeout she'll still fakeout. This means if she's at the point that she's doing fakeouts, you can just move to the opposite side of the room and she'll appear as normal. Note: This isn't something most players will notice, and you have to be fast. When you see her start to appear, move away from her until she does fully. There are 4 frames of animation where she checks if the player is nearby or not.
  
• Coolant Drive can be damaged by grenades. It counts as 1 successful volley. Hal doesn't care about cheating at Pong, tbh
  
• Fury Rhoads will shoot forward if you die while he's firing his pistol, instead of still shooting toward you. Before it made it look like he was shooting his gun backwards.
  
• I had a catch in the game that removed particles if the FPS dropped at all, but I've removed that. It was really such a negligible amount of time save if for some reason there was slowdown, and it only caused visual confusion with explosions and stuff.
  
• Aim Diagonal Down button works differently on the motorcycle now. Instead of it aiming your chakram down-forward when you attack (useless on the bike), it now aims behind you and up. This gives extra control for the warden of Freeway.
  
• Crates originally "quietly destroyed" when broken off-screen, causing no explosion or item to appear. This has been changed to allow the box to drop the item regardless.
  

[h3][Level Adjustments][/h3]

• Changed a rail in Stadium to extend a bit further. When making rails stop you from falling off, it became impossible to jump off to a certain ledge from the rail without getting creative.
  
• Adjusted the vent in the secret room in Stadium a bit. It was kind of hard to jump into it off of the ladder while holding the hang button. This has been solved by adding a little distance.
  
• Enemy and layout adjustments in Stadium (Bomber Mode) for the sake of flow.
  
• Improved performance in Stadium when both BjortFX and palette swap options are toggled (both very taxing). On PC it's not so much of a problem, but now it's a little more potato friendly.
  
• Changed some ground graphics slightly in Power Plant just to make them more readable.
  
• Some crates have been adjusted/moved/added. This is to make better use of the trap crates in Bomber Mode, as well as make sure the player has plenty of opportunities to get more lives.
  --> For example, DCP2 has a 1-Up crate in close proximity to almost every checkpoint, but more have been added.