Discuss the massively-multiplayer home defense game.
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Yeah, whichever one starts second will essentially "take over".
The server requires a unique sequence number for each client request and blocks requests with older numbers to prevent replay attacks.
So, the older client's sequence numbers become stale.
Oh... yeah, chill timers only tick while the house is on the list, visible to all.
So, a dual-account setup cannot camp in one account setup cannot camp in the second account until the chill wears off to grab the spoils.
I think they're leading you astray here a bit... Yes, connected walls are drawn under the shroud now, but the shroud becomes solid black by the third tile behind a wall:
R ABC
If R is the robber, A is a wall, and B and C are spaces behind the wall, then the shroud will be full black over C (maybe the edge of C will be visible).
This doesn't apply to the house above, because he has a 3-tile gap behind the door.
HOWEVER, the odds in the house in question are 1/14. And you had more than 14 people try the house, so there is no surprise that one got through.
YES, there is a chance of cheating in this game, but so far, no one has cheated in this way.
Try building something with 1/1,000,000 odds, and I think you will see bypasses dropping down to 0. If someone was really cheating, they would bypass such a house with no problem, and I'd hear about it right away.
Far more prevalent is "using multiple accounts" to scout without dying in your main account, and there's actually no way to detect or prevent that in all cases!
For the drama! It's empty. Empty? Empty! EMMMPPPTTTYYYY!
I thought about forcing people to make their way back out after reaching a full vault (you have to make it in and out), but that would make self-test less intuitive, and it wouldn't actually add anything to the game, because you can already build "in-and-out" security with what is there currently (like, you have to make it in to a deep button before coming back out to where a door opens to the vault).
Also, if a vault has been breached already, there are generally other signs around (like cut walls and such).
Blip, the wife's transition from "empty handed" to "shotgun-holding" happens whenever she steps on the gun tile, regardless of the reason that she is moving.
The dead child just changes her destination from the door to her child.
I just verified this offline, and yes it does work. Of course, the shotgun has to be positioned in a place where she will walk over it when she re-routes.
Did you find a solution to this in the other thread? Did rebuilding help?
Fixed that on the contest page, colorfusion!
Yes... I really like how probability makes us paranoid in these cases.
There shouldn't be any delays in the electronics, unless you build one on purpose, which is pretty complicated, requires the voltage-triggered switches, and is really hard to do by accident.
SnakeAes: I designed this game so that there are many possible "successful" house designs... some of them don't even use electronics. In my opinion, the folks that are "mastering electronics" are more doing it for their own amusement than actually given themselves a practical advantage in the game. Yes, they can quite compactly build something that gives you a 1/1,000,000 chance of solving it by accident, but you can also do that with dogs and doors!
Halfway in between those two extremes are the "simple" uses of electronics. It's not too hard to do cool things (like have a door open when a wall is cut).
AHA!
I tracked this one down.
So... if you leave tools in your backpack and then leave your house for a long time (and don't rob anyone), the tools are "force-returned" to your vault for you (so you can't hide tools in your backpack while you're out of the game).
When that happens, the value of the tools are added to the value estimate for the house directly, WITHOUT recomputing the proper rounding (it's done with a single SQL query that just adds the saved value of the tools right to the value of the house).
Of course, those two amounts may have been rounded at different scales. Like... 2100 worth of tools (rounded) added to a 22,000 house (also rounded) will make a 24,100 final value estimate.
Though, I'm confused about one thing. It says that it will count HOUSE WORTH right? So I can have 100$ Spare bucks but built it around 20000$ and it will count in costs of all I have, right?
It's the amount of money you have PLUS the resale value of your tools. What you've put into walls and traps does not count for the contest!
Hmm... looking at this particular robber's history, I don't see a pattern of any misbehavior or big heists. In fact, he has since died after robbing you. That one robbery does look strange (he opens every door in your 1/10 hallway, picks the right one, and then opens every door in your next 1/10 and picks the right one).
You know, this game does engender extreme paranoia, even in me!
After someone else reported something like this for a different robber, and I looked into it very deeply (even contacting the robber and asking to see the recordedGame).... well, it turned out that they were just bumbling through and got lucky. It was a 1/1000 chance, on their very first robbery in that house, but they bumbled the correct way. It was clear from the recordedGame that they were not peeking at the map... they loaded the house and bumbled through so quickly that they wouldn't have even had time to study the map! It was so innocent that the robber didn't even know what I meant when I mentioned a "combination lock." He just pressed a few buttons and didn't know what they were for, then walked down, found an open door, and went through to the vault.
ANYWAY... in this case, we are talking about 1/100 odds. Indeed, you had dozens of people try your house and die before he got through. So, it's really not that strange that one person got lucky. What are the chances??? Well, they're 1/100.
I REALLY like that trap and the way it uses the edge of the screen, by the way.
But yeah, I too am seeing patterns in static over here.... I've been investigating every report that I get, and haven't found a genuine case of modded-client cheating yet!
Arggg! Yeah, I beat my head against this one way back when with Josh... I thought I figured it out, but I guess not.
Will take another look.
Swanson and Ochoa do indeed seem to be the same person, from what I can see in the server logs. I've emailed that player.
As you can imagine, this is pretty much impossible for me to detect in any kind of automated way. In the worst case, it could just be friends giving each other tips about houses.
Fortunately, Swanson has since died and does not have a top house.
At least it doesn't allow people to push through top houses without skill. Scouting well, even with a second account, takes a lot of skill. And they can only scout a given house so many times with the second account (death means a chill for 24 hours). Finally, repeated "dumping" of tools between two accounts is hampered by the chills as well (as is stealing tools from a second account). You can only do this once every 24 hours currently.
Currently, the "true" top house list pretty much matches the top 8 seen in the game (there are a few houses being edited and robbed).
One top player has had his house checked out for edit for 3 hours. I'm going to figure out how to deal with that soon.
Hmm... actually, for the second robbery, Acester, I see him taking 17K.
And he scouted you multiple times before that second robbery... one of the scouting trips was like 300+ steps.
It looks like he was just poking around until he finally found the right door.
But yeah, he is a really good player for sure.
If you want to do this and remain in windowed mode, you should also change useLargestWindow.ini. If that is on (1), then it ignores your size settings in windowed mode and tries to make the window as large as reasonably possible automatically. Once you turn that off, you can set the window size to whatever you want.
I have thought about doing this for first-edit houses. It may be coming at some point in the future. Essentially, a save-and-quit button.
You should know that, for your first edit, there is NO timeout, and you can take as long as you want. For the time being, I'd suggest pressing ESC to get to the pause screen, which brings the FPS and CPU usage down to near 0. Then, just minimize the game. It should safely remain there, waiting for you to finish your edit later.
HOWEVER, keep in mind that for later edits, after your house has gone live at least once, there is a 5-minute inactivity timer (if you're not actively editing) that will discard your changes and return your house to the list (so you can't camp in your house to protect it).
I really wanted sleeping pitbulls to turn into landmines that block hallways, so you really have to think before passing out drugged meat like candy at a parade.
I had some thematic justification for it way back when.
How about this:
"As a pet owner yourself, you just can't bear to club a sleeping animal."
Yes, I added Sell All just for that purpose!
The idea of everyone in the game seeing everyone else by a different name is interesting (but messy, server-side, because I'd need to maintain an n^2 mapping for n players).
Anyway, I DID want people to be able to discuss houses and share stories/lore. You can see some of those stories in the forums, and it's always cool.
You mean awkward in the editing interface, like when you realize this hallway needs to be moved over by two squares?
This confusion stems from the fact that house changes are always undoable and changeable as long as they haven't been sent to the server yet.
So, you still "have" that money. When you go to buy tools, you can spend that money! Then, when you come out of the backpack screen, you no longer have enough money for the pending changes that you have made in the house.
You can undo what you buy on the backpack screen only until you leave that backpack screen. After that, you will probably have to roll back some of the changes in your house.
You CAN freely replace everything, and effectively "move stuff around," as long as you haven't completed a self-test (reached your own vault). After you do that, all your changes are billed to you permanently.
Think of it like, instead of a refund... you are just sticking a lead on the dog/cat/family member and moving them to a new location.
You also have a leash for your pet panic button.
You mean, stats for the owner, instead of stats for the house?
Or stats for the player, across multiple lives?
WEIRD.... hmm... I have no idea what happened there... like, the game is running, but the window is transparent??
Your ghost from the past life is haunting that house...