Discuss the massively-multiplayer home defense game.
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I think perhaps Christopher Jessie Hansen's house, even though it relies on an elaborate series of unseen trapdoors and electric floors, is the most interesting maze at the top of the leaderboard. But I don't think we have yet seen the truly great house designs yet which can feed the player information for them to come up with a solution, yet still be difficult to solve.
It was at the top of the leaderboard... I was Hansen, but someone managed to rob me, though I'm not sure how (I stupidly died before checking the security camera footage so I can't tell whether they worked it out or 'cheated' by looking at the map - I look forward to v6!). Here is a link to it: http://castlefortify.com/?id=3181d4a
I'm glad you found it interesting despite the underlying 'magic dance' approach, which still seems a bit cheap to me. However, even if you can see the map, magic dance designs can still be quite difficult to work out and solve first time. I was planning on trying to add clues by adding distinct tiles at certain locations in relation to the pattern.
I was surprised how almost everyone seemed to give up once they'd reached the main 'magic' switch at the end of the maze when it didn't open the way to the safe with one press.
I have been observing my behavior, basically I do not invade any house. The only ones I rob are the low $ ones, which usually have no defense. Why do I do it? To build my own house. Once I have built a fortress, I have an extra disincentive to try the high paying and hard houses: if I die, my fortress also dies.
Maybe there should be a disconnect between house and robber, in the sense that if you die robbing, you lose money (maybe you give every penny you have or a % to clone your body or whatever) and not your house. It basically stops me from playing the game, I only watch people die at my security tapes or rob very easy houses to build a better house.
I tend to do this too. I had the idea of (for example) being able to conceptually hire burglars to rob houses on your behalf - which may require spending a lot of money to do so. The player then controls the hired robber, but if they die the hiring player's house remains intact and the money is lost. I asked Jason about this (and related ideas) and he replied with:
I have thought about this, but I really want there to be a strong, tense sense
of drama in the game. I want you to have a lot on the line when you rob a
house.
I agree that when I've built my fortress at great expense and go robbing it is a very tense process! On occasion I have lost it all in an unexpected trap due to lack of casing. After playing the game for a few weeks I see that with most houses the risks are too high when many traps are impossible to foresee or impossible to escape from after an attempt.
It's virtually impossible (without cheating) to counter the "9-thick walls", "combination", "magic dance" and "no escape" techniques. However, when building my own house it's hard not to use some of them otherwise people will fairly easily get through my defences. Perhaps I'm not very good at designing houses...?
how you got that picture, i cannot find any videos/pictures of my castle doctrine in anywhere on it folder, please help me
You can also use the '=' key. It saves the images into the screenShots directory.
Matthew Frederick Waters owns a house of pure genius.
Now I've seen the map I would tend to agree, but with a map it's pretty easy to solve (I thought I'd try it and managed it on my second attempt - but didn't steal anything of course). This suggests providing maps are going to make it too easy (assuming they can be afforded).
As for how I got the map, I'm not going to answer that, because answering that will lead to rampant cheating. Maybe if Jason wants to know, I'll email him privately, but I bet he already has a good idea.
Ahh, I've figured out how to look at the initial map too! I won't use my new found powers for evil though.
I've had someone do the same thing to me, Jason banned him.
Same here, 3 times!
1) Why are combo locks allowed?
There's not a good way to forbid them, algorithmically. I originally envisioned that people would figure out how to do this eventually, especially after some players rose to the top and became rich. I didn't realize that it would happen so quickly.
In v6, buyable maps will help robbers deal with these kinds of houses.
I'm not sure I like buyable maps:
I agree that combination locks are cheap and no fun to crack; I've tried. One of my first attempts at making a house included a nasty 16-bit sticky-switch combination lock with pitbull traps. Not as impressive as this Matthew Waters' house, but it would have been practically impossible to break into. In the end, someone cheated to rob my vault and I forgot to reposition my pets when I tested it to check the footage and lost it all... (what an idiot!)
However, this encouraged me to try something different and now I have an electric floor-based maze-like trap which is much more interesting, if technically easier to break into, and I'm happier with it. I've had over a hundred people dying in attempts to break in, but very few have managed to get close. (One managed to get quite close, but they gave up for some reason.)
My point is that I don't think people have had a good enough try at beating my house yet and being able to see a map would spoil it. Also, if I have a clever idea for something, I don't want people to learn my secrets. I think people should figure it out for themselves. I feel quite protective about my security systems, and maps seem like a violation.
If map buying makes it into v6, at least I hope people won't be able to look at maps unless the owner of the house has a lot of money. If it is based on how many deaths have occurred, people could artificially bump up the death count by dying quickly to force a map to be made available - though I guess they would have enough money to buy it!
Instead of automatically making maps available based on some fixed criteria, perhaps players could petition for a house map to be made available if it appears to be unbeatable by practical means? If enough people petition, and Jason thinks it's fair, a purchasable map could be made available.
How do I know this? I looked at a map of the house's start position. Let me stress that I did not hack or otherwise modify my client in order to do this.
If you don't mind me asking, how did you get a map of the house's start position?
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