The Castle Doctrine Forums

Hey guys,

sorry for the long silence, but work keeps me totally busy in April and May.
So, the next update will take some more time. But it will come, I have not given up!

Yeah, you are right. I will add a small captcha or question to the registration with the next server update.

Thank you for playing!

If nobody buys the paintings their costs slowy decrease to the minimum of $1.

Regards,
Frosty

Wow, that's evil... But nice idea anyway.

So much for every house being solvable without tools. ^^

Very good question!

I have been thinking about this for a bit and see the following options:

1. Forum posts
I have posted about the server in the following locations:
TCD forum (current thread): http://thecastledoctrine.net/forums/vie … hp?id=3100
Steam TCD forum: http://steamcommunity.com/app/249570/di … 228375450/
Reddit TCD subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/CastleDoctrine/ … _features/

As expected, the TCD forum itself created the most registrations. Steam paid off a little, there were some answers and registrations. Reddit was a underwhelming, only 2 or 3 upvotes and no comments.

Does anyone know about other forums or communities where we could post about the server / the game itself? Currently, my only idea is is trying some of the more frequented subreddits on reddit (like /r/IndieGaming) but I am not sure where such post are allowed or welcomed.

2. Writing to old players
This forum allows sending emails to registered accounts if the account owner enabled it. I thought about simply going through the list of accounts and writing them once (or twice ) about the server.

3. Twitter / Facebook / Youtube
I thought about looking for people who reviewed TCD when it was released or made "Lets play" videos and asking them for a little tweet/post/mentioning of the server. This could be a great boost but I do not know if people would be willing to do this.

4. Events
Even though I missed the Steal Real Money event when TCD was released, I think it is a great idea. I'm thinking about doing something like it. But obviously I cannot afford giving out $3000. However, I would be able and willing to spend a little amount of cash on this. Because of the possibility of dual-accounting there would have to be some additional restrictions/rules, so this needs some more thinking.

Thanks for the info! This should be fixed now.

Thanks for the feedback!

Good points, I haven't considered that. I'll give it some thought.

Players already have to enter a name when they register a ticket. These names are used. They are not unique, but this should be fine for this purpose.

Hi everyone,

I've had the time to implement some of the promised changes. While all old game clients are still compatible with the new server version, an update of the game client is necessary to use the new features. You can download the new modified client (version 37) from HERE. I've also updated the server description on the registration page (see here).

Remember to make a backup of your settings files (email.ini, downloadCode.ini, reflectorURL.ini) before updating your old client to the new version!

Here is a short summary of all changes:
- Added a "Statistics" page that shows over 30 different metrics about your robbery career. More or other metrics are easily possible, suggestions are welcome. There are statistics for your "Current Life" and "Overall" statistics. The overall statistics are collected since 2015-03-23.

- Moved storing/restoring maps to own page.
- Added 2 new slots for storing maps.
- Stored maps and their cost for restoring can now be previewed with the "Show Map" button.

- Instead of automatically adding maps to the list of predefined bot maps, each player is now able do this manually trough the "Share Map with Bots" button.
- The creator of a shared map is credited by name on the "leaving screen" every time someone attempts to rob a bot with this map.
- The creator name of all predefined maps is "<unknown>" for now.
- Currently, a player can only share one map per life! Repeated sharing of maps within the same life will only keep the last shared map!
- There are some minimum requirements to be able to share a map with bots. See the registration page for details.

- Added "Switch Account" functionality to simplify dual account use. The second account can be enabled by adding the files "email2.ini" and "downloadCode2.ini" to the settings directory.

Your feedback and suggestions are welcome! If you encounter any bugs or problems, feel free to write me an email. In the next days I will focus on fixing bugs and adding maps to the list of predefined bot maps.

I'm especially looking forward to your shared maps! It doesn't matter if small or big, easy or hard - any shared map helps, so don't hesitate!

Thanks for playing!
Regards,
Frosty

Directly importing an encoded map is a bit problematic, since I'd have to a do lot of integrity checks to the map (e.g. if it is the right size, if all exterior walls are there, etc.). By only allowing the import of maps build directly with the game client, these checks are not necessary. Also, I'd like to keep all interaction directly in the game, instead of relying on external representations or tools.

Hey everyone,

thanks for all your registrations and respones. I'm really having fun so far. Special thanks go to Protagonizzle for the detailed feedback and constant activity. Currently, we have 14 registered accounts.

Since I'm a little short on time at the moment, I'll just write down a quick list of fixes and developement ideas. If you have comments or own ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Server Changes
==========
- Fixed missing library in Mac OS X client. (Thanks to eppfel!)

- Fixed download of ".ini" files on registration page in Safari browser. (Thanks to Protagonizzle!)

- Added some bot maps. Currently, there are around 30 maps. But I want to add a lot more. However, finding and checking the maps is really time consuming. Any help would be appreciated here. If you would like to add a map, simply send me an email with a link to the map on castledraft.

- Since bot maps are directly taken from castledraft, there can be maps that are unsolvable without tools. One of them was even missing the vault... Several of these maps have been fixed, but there may be more. If you find such a map, send me an email with the name of the current owner and I'll take a look at it.

- Fixed: Bots were able to spawn with a map that another bot was currently using.

- Fixed: Trying to store a map with a family member and a pet in the same spot returned an error.

Developement Plan
============
- Add more bot maps of varying difficulty.
- Add a "Allow/Disallow as bot map" to enable players to decide, if their current map can be used as a bot map after their death.
- Add "Switch Account" button to allow switching between first and second account without relaunching the client.
- Add a "Statistics" page showing statistics about the player's current life and cummulative statistics of all lives. (e.g., sum of robbed money, number of kills, ...)
- Move "Store/Restore Map" buttons to own page and add 2 additional slots for storing/restoring maps. This should allow storing different houses or different building stages of a house.
- Add a "Show Stored Map" button which allows you to preview the stored map before restoring it. Preview should be similar to build mode but no changes to the stored map can be made.

Best regards,
Frosty

I learned something new about mapshots ("+"-key) today: There is a difference between a mapshot in build mode and in robbing mode.

Build mode: All electronics are inactive and all doors are open.
Robbing mode: Electronics are active and all (red) doors are initially closed. To make a mapshot in robbing mode you have to play one of your tapes, it won't work in a self-test.

http://castledraft.com/editor/YdZNPV

He answered that with the following, but I didn't get it on the first read either. ^^

The red and orange lines are one tile above the yellow line. This means that you simply won't see the chihuahua (unless you moved up one more tile, to check if the first chihuahua is still there).

Hm, you could try to just remove those two files instead of reinstalling the whole game. Otherwise I have no idea.