Large prisons very slow?

[patrick_g2003]

I don't have a turly huge prison, ~1,600 prisoners. But I have noticed the game play gets VERY slow and sluggish. I have a fairly new machine and my GPU fans never even come on while playing this game, (I play WoW on ultra). Is there a setting I am not seeing that can speed things up a bit?

[Estelyen]

1600 IS a pretty big prison. On my 10 years old machine, I can get up to about 500 before the slow down sets in, so you're doing pretty well. The slowing down of the game is due to the fact that so many entities (prisoners, staff, visitors and so on) have to calculate a viable path every time they want to go somewhere and there's no way of calculatng that any faster than the game already does (using the A* algorithm if you want to get technical :P).

And on a sprite-based game with no 3D elements, of course your GPU doesn't have much to do. Comparing a sprite-based game with a 3D game like WoW simply doesn't make any sense. You could have a Geforce 210 or something and this game probably wouldn't run any slower.

[patrick_g2003]

Originally posted by Estelyen:

1600 IS a pretty big prison. On my 10 years old machine, I can get up to about 500 before the slow down sets in, so you're doing pretty well. The slowing down of the game is due to the fact that so many entities (prisoners, staff, visitors and so on) have to calculate a viable path every time they want to go somewhere and there's no way of calculatng that any faster than the game already does (using the A* algorithm if you want to get technical :P).

And on a sprite-based game with no 3D elements, of course your GPU doesn't have much to do. Comparing a sprite-based game with a 3D game like WoW simply doesn't make any sense. You could have a Geforce 210 or something and this game probably wouldn't run any slower.

Thanks for the reply. I kind of figured that the logistics were the problem and I am well aware of the video demands of some games, this not being one of them.
That's a shame, I was looking forward to a 20k+ prison, but I don't see me getting past 2k at the most.
Again, thanks for the reply.

[Lieutenant]

I have 2k guards, 600 other staff, 1.8k inamtes..runs fine.

[patrick_g2003]

Originally posted by The - Gas - Man:

I have 2k guards, 600 other staff, 1.8k inamtes..runs fine.

So you have more guards than inmates? Why?

[Lieutenant]

Originally posted by patrick_g2003:

Originally posted by The - Gas - Man:

I have 2k guards, 600 other staff, 1.8k inamtes..runs fine.

So you have more guards than inmates? Why?

Safety concerns

[Seal]

Originally posted by patrick_g2003:

Originally posted by The - Gas - Man:

I have 2k guards, 600 other staff, 1.8k inamtes..runs fine.

So you have more guards than inmates? Why?

You may need a load of CCTVs and such with almost 2000 inmates to watch over. It also helps with contraband, if you have CI's, and I assume you do with a prison that big.

As for the OP; the game is known to run poorly with larger prisons.

[patrick_g2003]

Originally posted by The - Gas - Man:

Originally posted by patrick_g2003:

So you have more guards than inmates? Why?

Safety concerns

I have just over 1700 prisoners and ~300 guards. VERY few problems. Having 1+ guards per prisoner is overkill in the extreme. Not trying to slam you or anything, it's your game play it as you see fit, just seems a bit odd to me is all.

[patrick_g2003]

Originally posted by Seal:

Originally posted by patrick_g2003:

So you have more guards than inmates? Why?

You may need a load of CCTVs and such with almost 2000 inmates to watch over. It also helps with contraband, if you have CI's, and I assume you do with a prison that big.

As for the OP; the game is known to run poorly with larger prisons.

Yea, I am seeing that...currently around 1700 and it's starting to get laggy big time. What I did, as a possible workaround was get rid of all the prisoners, (a lot harder than it sounds), then build the prison up to a capacity of ~2k. THEN refill the prison. Again, still slow, but I just want to see if I can get it to 2k.
Wth the ability to (seemingly), expand all you want to, it's dissaponting that ~2k prisoners is the upper limit, (and I am too cheap to buy a Cray).