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#226 Re: Main Forum » Family psychology » 2013-05-18 08:12:03
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.
#227 Re: Main Forum » Prevent Broken Impossible Houses » 2013-05-17 23:19:38
If I understand your proposal correctly, this already happens. If a house is changed through a break-in, when the owner logs in they must verify the fairness of it before leaving.
#228 Re: Main Forum » CastleFortify: Save and share your designs » 2013-05-17 22:26:30
Great work segarch! Imports flawlessly now.
#229 Re: Main Forum » Joseph Alfred Mertens » 2013-05-17 22:15:23
Someone broke it.
They must've seen the map because they were very specific with what they did.
Anyway glad to give my artwork back to the world and have a family again 
#230 Re: Main Forum » Weekly Featured House/"Tool Set"/Sign Wall Building Block » 2013-05-16 02:18:24
Demon's Souls is a weird example here. They allow you to post text messages, but they don't allow you to type them yourself (you have to pick from a list of messages provided by the developer).
I would love a limited selection of messages that you can put on signs which fit into the aesthetic of the game, such as "Danger - Guard Dogs" or "Keep Out". They could reveal their message on mouse over like any other object.
#231 Re: Main Forum » New indicator lights » 2013-05-13 22:56:39
#232 Re: Main Forum » Abandoned Houses » 2013-05-13 22:52:11
...though because most of the top houses are magic dances (except Lance Ronald Maynard, who has one of the most interesting houses I've ever seen).
Sorry to inform you, but Maynards' is indeed a 'magic dance' disguised as a maze. At its most basic it is a "Huge Square-Room-Outline of Electric Floors", but is solved by the way in which Maynard recorded his path through the maze.
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.
Segarch also had a brilliant house design which fit this bill perfectly. Everything could be eventually seen by the player, yet it was a real challenge to solve it.
#233 Re: Main Forum » Abandoned Houses » 2013-05-12 01:47:40
... and to follow on from timsamoff here, the only secure house you can generally build for your starting cash is a electric floor yawnfest, and if you opt for a more interesting maze you then need to keep your wealth at $0 and wait forever to actually finish it because there are no basic houses out there to rob.
#234 Re: Main Forum » "Huge Square-Room-Outline of Electric Floors" » 2013-05-11 06:19:26
On the topic of the big electric floor layout, Lance Ronald Maynard's house is the richest house with such a layout. There is a maze inside with the requisite assortment of switches and whatnot, but the surrounds are this basic electric floor. It is 2 dogs tripping a series of switches (in this case 20 switches at the top and 16 at the right) which trigger inverted voltage switches to allow you to cross the electric floor. The trick with Maynard's is that you need to also move around the maze and trigger trapdoors to get to the crossing of the electric floor, making the job of getting the correct series of switches hit difficult. I imagine he has a hard time testing his trap lol.
The other top tier house with this same dog-hitting-a-series-of-switches theme is Gene Walter Warren, but in his case he has 17 switches to hit, and a safety buffer at the final electric floor tile. However, in his house you can just travel in a straight line making it much more straight forward.
Both of these mazes will be pretty flimsy with the map available. My house is probably the same I am afraid. In fact, I am not sure there will be many house layouts, short of an absolute monstrosity, which will keep their secrets hidden long once the map is available. This is why I have suggested a more piecemeal method for uncovering houses layout with the 'case' option. I think this would be more rewarding to the player as well.
It is very easy to see house layouts through the client output files, but perhaps Jason doesn't feel that it needs fixing if maps are freely available in-game.
#235 Re: Main Forum » "Huge Square-Room-Outline of Electric Floors" » 2013-05-10 21:29:06
dalleck wrote:setz: The solution is very simple, as are all great magicians tricks, but it does rely on knowledge of the level layout. It is NOT a combination lock. My hope is that the house is still reasonably challenging to figure out even with the map revealed, so maybe it is a little future-proof.
Sir dalleck, are you using a timer with your combination? Where you have to press certain buttons within a certain time frame?
I will not comment on rumour or speculation.
But let me just say that there ARE animals moving around out there and the solution is the buttons hit by chihuahuas visible to the player behind the pit bull at the doors.
That is all.
#236 Re: Main Forum » Joseph Alfred Mertens » 2013-05-10 21:24:30
Don't mind those puppy dogs.. they are just happy to see you!
#237 Re: Main Forum » New horizontal and vertical wires » 2013-05-10 08:39:46
Gonna be a nice addition, especially on the eyes. (damn bridges are ugly all over my lovely wiring!)
Any chance we could have rats as a new pet? They move to the right by default regardless of player position and when they encounter a wall they turn back the way they came. If they cannot move right or left they then will start to move up and down, and go back the way they came again when they hit a wall. It would allow some kooky map designs of thing flashing off and on or a sense of 'automation' which the current animals don't quite have.
Also a spring-loaded switch. De-toggles when weight is off it. Many requests. Would make many traps available.
Thank you. Good luck.
#238 Main Forum » An alternative to maps » 2013-05-10 08:11:37
- dalleck
- Replies: 5
Maps. Interesting to buy. Maybe a little too easy. Like the difference between bedding a prostitute or someone you picked up at a club.
I am offering the club root.. ahem, route.
Here is how it goes. You can case every house you wish once per day and it costs cash. The option would appear in the rob menu to 'case' the house. You would be taken into that house as normal, but instead of your man appearing at the doorway, you would instead be a flashing target. You would then move this flashing target around the house, with the only parts visible being what you see from the doorway of the house and what have been seen 'casing' since the house has been modified. Time would be frozen to the map as it is when designed in build mode. Areas which you have not seen will be dark or blacked out. When you find a tile you want to case from you click the 'case' button and the area will become visible as if you were there and stepped into that spot. I.e. if you chose a tile next to a wall you would have the same visibility as if you were there is person, no magic vision. If you choose a tile which is a solid wall you will only see that tile alone.
Slowly slowly, people will build up a clear picture of someone's house, and all the accumulated viewings would eventuate in seeing exactly how that trap works. Casing then also becomes looking at the map of the house and working out the path through. I think it is a far more creative solution than a little old map and it achieves the same aim in a gamey way. Of course, one way around this would be to change one square in your house every day, but unless you changed your entire house every day you couldn't actually stop people accessing crucial knowledge about your trap and eventually cracking it. People could also work together out of the game to piece together how your house looks.
Anyways, I'm off to the club. Enjoy your time.
#239 Re: Main Forum » Abandoned Houses » 2013-05-10 07:46:06
The rob list sure is a ghost town now though.....
...I mean before it was a graveyard. I kinda enjoyed digging up graves and reaping the rewards.
Maybe some middle ground is possible?
#240 Re: Main Forum » "Huge Square-Room-Outline of Electric Floors" » 2013-05-10 07:38:47
setz: The solution is very simple, as are all great magicians tricks, but it does rely on knowledge of the level layout. It is NOT a combination lock. My hope is that the house is still reasonably challenging to figure out even with the map revealed, so maybe it is a little future-proof.
#241 Re: Main Forum » "Huge Square-Room-Outline of Electric Floors" » 2013-05-10 07:05:57
Well I have combined the electric floor trap with the bit-lock, the magic dance and the dog-door to come up with this:
(notice the bum farting on Jason? the bum has 'wind' (the air balloon). hilarious.)
It DOES have working chihuahuas and these are the switches which solve the puzzle. There is a hidden cat there somewhere and a pair of dogs that roam around to hit the switch which kills the dog blocking the door.
The great thing is, if you want to walk over to see if in fact your combination has worked it is certain death.
I know it is essentially the same as an electric floor trap, but it is much more fun! Plus, the player does actually get to attempt to break the house rather than simply run across a death trap and pray for dear life.
-----
Oh, and here is the results of my testing with dogs and doors. It seems that dogs moving from the south square move first, because a chihuahua ain't gonna protect you from that guy.
#242 Re: Main Forum » Joseph Alfred Mertens » 2013-05-10 06:26:58
Hey! That was my house! Ya low down dirty wife killa!
But yeah I like to invest all my money in guns while my wife is alive so as to not lose too much in an opportunity robbery....
#243 Re: Main Forum » One object to take the edge of happy dancing » 2013-04-20 20:36:31
+1
Yes I have always felt such an item would tip the balance of fairness over towards the thieves. Too many houses rely on this blind faith and it seems unfair that the only way to find out is putting your body on the line.
A cat seems like a reasonable item to attract dogs, but the cat is already a house item. Perhaps it is a spray bottle of pheromones instead which only gives you one square of dog movement and does not remain behind.
#244 Main Forum » on Artworks » 2013-04-19 05:41:19
- dalleck
- Replies: 2
As I have been playing today, one player who had amassed enormous wealth and owned all the artworks died. This meant that every piece of art suddenly went on the market. As there are not many players currently about, nobody is bidding on them and they are each just over $100 to buy, which means they could easily be hoarded again by a single player. Perhaps players should be limited to 1 purchase per day to limit hoarding.
Another thought is: What if players were limited to 4 art pieces total? Then, to change their collection, allow players to auction their art off.
I also think the art auction is a little too simplistic at the moment. Perhaps prices should drop more slowly, and certain pieces should be worth more than others. If it became more like an auction, each individual piece would have an end-time for bidding, and players would put bids in, perhaps silent bids. Each artwork would show what it was previously bought for, and that would create a reserve price for bids. Each time bidding ends without reaching reserve, the reserve price will drop down until it is finally sold.
#245 Re: Main Forum » UX suggestions - include yours » 2013-04-13 22:03:54
A wooden sign object would be great.
Can be used to leave messages to thieves and also to give yourself clues and reminders when running your maze. Can function like a wooden wall and show the message on direction push, but shouldn't take up a movement turn or it would be exploited.
*****
Secondly, even though I am sure Jason is changing the build menu as we speak, I would prefer if some things are shuffled around a bit.
I find I am constantly needing to go between pages for certain things.
Here I have placed all the walls and wiring on the first page and the switches and traps on the second.
You may also notice electric floors are $150. It essentially is a reversed electric trapdoor, but can be shorted out and turn off all other connected ones, whilst the trapdoor can only be singularly overcome by ladders, so I have priced it accordingly.
Edit: However, in considering trapdoors, it got me thinking that a ladder can be placed over both an OPEN and CLOSED trapdoor, however an unpowered electric floor cannot be shorted. Perhaps this trapdoor behaviour should be changed.
#246 Re: Main Forum » CastleFortify: Save and share your designs » 2013-04-13 21:44:37
Ok, it turns out that my house didn't get deleted. When I saw the error message, I exited immediately without clicking anything, and sent the report in straight away. In Jason's reply he said that what happened is that the client checked back in with the server, but the response was incredibly slow and the client sent a second check in message, but then the response from the first one finally arrived, causing an error, so I suppose that the server maybe didn't realize that I'd even had an error. So I'm not sure what happened to your house then.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that I finally got to see your tape. Here's the record: http://pastebin.com/vZZx3hLL. I still don't know how you got that electric floor lit: as you can see from my run, how it's meant to work is that you chase the cat across the entire screen, and then the cat steps on the switch one turn after you fry the dog, which is supposed to disable it. Edit: ok I see the problem now - turning on that last pair of switches bypasses the middle rail entirely. I was trying not to break the pattern
. Someone bypassed an earlier version of the same design (where I'd left a clear path straight through the maze) by setting up the correct combination and then backtracking across the maze itself to kill the dog.
That's really cool that you solved it without the map. I remember shortly after I posted the map I saw some tapes (which I now think would have been some of your earlier attempts, based on the times you've told me) where the burglar seemed much more confident than others had been - stepping into that nook with a switch behind an electric floor, for example - and I remember worrying that I might have shared too much, that it might be less fun if you already knew the entire layout.
Thanks for posting that, was great seeing the run through, especially the switches at the end where you turned off fog of war. Yes, I did do the switches incorrectly, looks like you may have a wiring error there. The cat thing though, well he is at the edge of the map for the entire run, and it is not until you get to that right side that he runs off onto activate the switch.
Anyways, it seems the recording I posted to Jason was very useful and he thinks he has fixed the server side error. We will see. Happy robbing.