Prison Architect alpha 3 released with fog of war

Version three of the successful paid Prison Architect alpha build is upon us like a sewage-drenched Andy Dufresne in the night.

Burly new additions are fog of war and CCTV, plus a load of bug fixes and small changes.

Fog of war affects your visibility of an area. Guards are your eyes, so if an area is well patrolled, it'll stay clearly visible. But fog of war creeps back over time, so if an area loses guard coverage, visibility will start to go.

CCTV ties into fog of war; you can install cameras to be your eyes in areas that don't really need guarding, like store rooms, offices and power facilities. CCTV cameras give a cone of visibility that sweeps slowly from side to side as the camera does.

You will need a guard to watch CCTV camera output at a CCTV monitor desk, though. But one guard can handle multiple camera inputs, which is efficient.

These changes are demonstrated and detailed by Prison Architect maker Introversion in the following video. Fog of war was also something Introversion talked about during its Eurogamer Expo session, which we videoed.

A full list of Prison Architect alpha 3 changes can be found below.

Fog of war / visibility system

• You now lose visibility of the indoor areas of your Jail over time (Roof covers up the area)
• Guards reveal the area around them - spread them out to keep your jail fully visible at all times
• Fog of War is optional and can be toggled when creating a new sandbox

CCTV system

• Unlocked by the Security Chief after Deployment
• CCTV cameras can be used to uncover fog-of-war instead of Guards
• CCTV cameras require monitors - each monitor station allows 3 cameras
• Monitor stations require Guards nearby watching them (One guard can watch a lot of monitors)

Miscellaneous

• Researching "Deployment" now unlocks Guard Patrols immediately, rather than requiring a seperate research project
• Guards who are deployed within a sector will now stay within that sector unless ordered away by the player
• You can now press R to rotate objects during placement
• You can now press Q and E to zoom in and out
• Metal Detectors improved
• Low powered electrical items no longer take damage from water, nor electrocute people in water
• High powered electrical items should never be allowed to touch water ;)
• Holding Cells no longer count towards your prison's capacity. (And no longer affect intake of prisoners)
• You can now disable the checkerboard room pattern if you wish, to provide a cleaner look (Controlled by preferences option "RenderRooms")
• The PC executable now has an icon
• Fixed: You can no longer use the "Dismantle Object" tool to dismantle fire, polaroids, vehicles etc
• Fixed: Lights can now be dismantled
• Fixed: You can no longer search dead prisoners
• Fixed: The "Incident Reports" objective was sometimes remaining hidden when it should be displayed
• Fixed: You can no longer rotate the following objects: Light, Tree, Electric chair
• Fixed: Saving a prison with a '#' symbol in the filename would cause the game to fail to start on next run (Preferences.txt would remember the map filename and the game fails to autoload the prison on startup)