The Castle Doctrine Forums

thanks so much largestherb!  Definitely helps to have such a clear example - will give me something to test on... Not sure when I'll be able to get around to fixing it, as I'm in the process of moving between states, but will make sure it's on the list!

Just finished playing for a few - here's my reaction. 

Certainly a few unhappy mappers out there!  I get the impression that this latest change represents such a huge shift, that it's going to take sometime for the builders to figure out new strategies.  But I gotta say, this time around I feel more like a robber this time around than a doomed victim.  Now any trap that has puzzle elements leaks information that you can study visually.  This resulted in one of the more pleasurable robberies I've had, where I actually felt like I solved a puzzle by observing my environment carefully.  That just wasn't possible before. 

Dying also feels more like my own fault, and not being able to go back in to a house you died still feels like a fitting punishment.

K, that's all the random thoughts for now.  Really curious to see how people adapt.

Oh wow, good to see this is a feature - I noticed this during a game, and it only heightened the brutality of what the robber was doing.  She would have gotten away if not for grief..

And now a completely Random thought: what would bulldogs be like if they only became activated on sight of the robber?

Hmm.. This discussion definitely captures something interesting.  On one hand I've definitely caught myself wishing I could furnish some rooms to heighten the emotional impact of stepping into the "bedroom" of a family member, on the other hand I get that once you start going down the road of aesthetics that don't influence the core gameplay, it's starts to become kinda banal.   

What if something encouraged some kind of tradeoff.  I know the idea of putting paintings up in the house has come up before.. what if the family members "enjoyed" seeing those paintings, resulting in higher pay per hour, but more risk on a successful robbery?

This might go against the game philosophy, but another thought that popped in my head is, it would be cool if family members were programed to hit nearby switches when they see a burgler, allowing us to create traps that involve family members...

Hmm, I'll look into this - Thanks for the heads up!

Cool!

Version 0.6 of Castle Fortify Released!

Features:
1. Improved ease of uploading maps

Now instead of clicking "Code" you click "Import."  Since I suspect more people are interested in using this tab for importing their maps, than messing around or exporting, this makes sense.  Also added a wiki article on how to import your code from Castle Doctrine. https://github.com/SethArchambault/Cast … e-Doctrine

I'm on a Mac so the walkthrough doesn't cover PC or Linux in any detail. If you have experience with PC or Linux and want to write up a walkthrough of finding the Castle Doctrine map code, please post it here or on the wiki!  I'm sure others have questions on how to do this.

2. New, clean code structure

This is mostly for my sake, but I probably fixed some glitches along the way, and now features can be added in a more logical way than just stuffed in there. 

Alright, that's all I've got for now.  Let me know if you see any bugs - or have any great feature ideas!

@matrix you rule! Thanks for fixing that!

Oh, and also thanks to @mjbarker for finding some more issues and @matrix again for fixing them!!

Awesome!

@Matrix Your code is up!  Looks like it works great, thanks! 

BTW - I rewrote the the readme to include a section on contributing. (https://github.com/SethArchambault/CastleFortify)  For changes like this, it's really easy to contribute directly, just click the edit button on the file you want to change (in this case index.php), and then save.  Easy as wikipedia!

Of course this is totally about whatever is easy for you - contributions on the forum are awesome too!

Yeah there's definitely something about building a sense of morality (or a sense of violating morality) into the game. At the moment, the wife character is basically an easily accessible vault from the perspective of the intruder, and from the perspective of the house builder the wife is a vulnerability that is impossible to protect - the sooner she's gone, the better.  And the kids just make the system more vulnerable to brute force attacks, so the sooner they're gone the better.

Right now the story - one about a family - is not present in the gameplay, where family members are more of a liability and provide no benefit.

This casing idea sounds awesome.  Imagine spending a week casing a house, biding your time for the perfect break in.. 

This kind of break up of the timing is actually interesting in general.. what other tools could have an incremental effect over time?  Maybe something where you can tunnel in from any wall, but only tunnel one tile at a time?

Although yeah, it would have to not come off as "grindy".

Re: connecting with castlefortify:
Just about to release a new update that allows you to import and export maps from the native format of Castle Doctrine.  After that, I will begin work on an API that allows you to interact with the castle fortify data from other applications, getting maps, posting up maps etc. - all in whatever format you desire (CastleDoctrineNative, json, custom text). Really curious to see what is possible once the site is FULLY open like that.. would be cool to see a map from Castle Doctrine be imported and end up in a 3d environment somewhere.